Canton Trip 2015

For like seriously 15 years now, I've been going on an annual trip to the First Monday Trade Days with my sister, her family, and her in-laws.  I think I missed one or two years in there, but for the most part, it's been a winter staple for me.  Last year Anna was finally old enough to go along, and this year she was super excited to go again!  Especially since she gets to spend my money when we go.  I'm starting to realize how my Mom must have felt all those years.  ;)

Here she is wearing just about everything she purchased!..more on these marshmallow shooters later!

Shopping away...spending Mom's money.  ;)

I love this pic.  Haha!  

These two are soul sisters I think...They used to just drive each other crazy, but the older they are getting the more they seem to gravitate toward each other.  

Dallas and Maddison came along this year, and we ended up taking a couple of Sarah's girls back to the camp site early so she and Kevin could get in some more intense shopping.  We offered to start the fire too.  We were fairly terrible at it, but Dallas finally managed to get it going.  It was pretty dark at this point, and the camera's autofocus was obviously struggling, but this was too funny.  

The girls also wanted to try out the marshmallow guns.  I bought so many bags of marshmallows, and the girls had them all over the campsite.  The raccoons ate well.  We couldn't find a single one on the ground the next morning!

They also spit so much into them that they started getting clogged up.  Haha!

The next morning was fishing.  Anna's got very little patience for it.  I commiserate...

Sarah's girls obviously do it more frequently than Anna.  They were pros at baiting their lines and casting.  

Anna finally got tired of fishing and me taking pictures of her, so I let her take over the camera for a little while again.  She's suddenly taken a much more avid interest in this.  She stalked a bird for a while and made me wish I had a longer lens for her.  But I guess if it was much bigger, she might not be able to hold the camera up.  Regardless, she got some cute pics again.  :)  I guess I'm just going to start a little Anna section here at the end of each blog until she gets bored with the camera.  

She takes pictures I don't ever think to.  

I really love the angles she gets.

This was my favorite of the bunch she took.  :)

As I was packing up the tent my little helpers were all playing in the leaves, and they kept coming over and asking me to take pictures of them jumping into them and throwing them around.  I looked over at where they were playing, it was about 2:00pm and they were playing under some trees that had obviously lost all of their leaves...  The lighting was horrible!  There's no way to fix images like that...at least I haven't figured out how to anyway.  So I just said "no".  That might sound cruel to a 10-year-old.  My sister came over and way like "why aren't you taking pictures of them?"  So I explained it to her, told her she could feel free to grab the camera and try to get some, but I wasn't going to bother.  

Although they are cute, I know this isn't the picture you have in your head when you envision your kids playing in a pile of leaves.  Wish they'd done it around 5:00pm.  ;)

Ha!  I'm not sure what had happened to Hannah, but this cracked me up.

Sarah walked off with the camera for a while, and I thought I'd post some of her pics.  I enjoy seeing what other people snap photos of when we're all at the same place together.  

I tent camp, but Sarah and Kevin bring their camper.  It never fails that one of more of the girls want to come and rough it in the tent.  :)  I ended up bringing an extra bed this time, so it worked out great!

She was trying to catch the girls jumping off this wall.  I love the looks on their faces.  So funny  

Kevin taking a break.  I never really get pics of adults when there are kids around...

I love this pic she took of Granny and Bob.  They have always been a part of this trip.  And Granny brings yummy sweets every year!  

Until next year....  :)

My "Cooperative" Family

Once a year I gather the 5 of us up and try to take pictures for our Christmas card.  And to be honest, I don't make it too big of a deal.  I take the pics myself, so there's no photographer to have to deal with, and I do it on this trail right behind our house.  So, come November I just wait around for the weather and lighting conditions to be okay, and then give Josh a heads-up that it's coming.  Low key, right?  

Well...apparently my husband hates taking pictures.  His Mom assured me he's done this forever, and his sour expression in no way implies that he's ready to cut ties with the family and run for the hills.  Josh kept dragging his feet to start getting dressed, even after I had the kids and myself ready....and I was trying to beat the imminent cold front!  It was less than an hour away!!!  This coupled with the major tiff we had over the creative direction of the photo shoot (seating options, shoes, standing vs. sitting)...oh yeah.  Josh looked thrilled to be there.  And since when does Josh get to be creative director for anything regarding pictures???

In addition to the fun I was having with Josh...I had waited on Meredith to wake up from her nap, figuring she'd be ready to go, but she apparently just wanted to run around and pick up rocks.  Sitting for pictures wasn't on her list of things to do today.  She eventually cooperated though.  

And Wallace...he stared at his shoes for most of it.  Ha!  Good grief.  At least Anna was on board.  

Look what a happy camper!  Ha! At this point all 3 kids were running away from us down the trail.

And my cooperative angel.  

Oh yeah...she was fun.

She would go from limp noodle to planking.

He finally gave up.

I think we managed to get a keeper.  I'll have to let Josh pick which one will go on the card later I guess...since he only smiled in one, and that may have just been a grimmace.  Anyway...glad my family doesn't have to have these meltdowns in front of anyone else.  We just do this for our very own entertainment.  :)

Cropping helps!  ;)

Anna wanted a little photo session before we went back inside. :)

Anyway.  2 out of 5 isn't bad on a Christmas card...right?  Oh well...  I assume this 15 minutes of sitting for photos will always be a struggle.  It's hard to get all 5 of us dressed up and awake and happy all at the same time.  At least the outtakes are funny! :)

Thanksgiving at Eric's

We get 2 Thanksgivings this year!  The one today at Eric's and another tomorrow in Blanco!  Yay!  So much turkey.  :)  

So, what do you do when it's November in Texas?

Play in the swimming pool, of course!  :)  She ended up completed soaked...

Wallace just stripped.

Supposedly we're about to get a cold front...  We'll see.

Eric has a karaoke machine!  

I'm a little surprised that Wallace liked it so much.  All he would do was count, but still!  Maybe he's not as much of an introvert as I thought.

Sarah Faye treated us to some Vanilla Ice.  :)

Eric's shuffleboard is also very popular! Who doesn't love shuffleboard?

Wallace just liked playing with the sand.

I feel like I've known Valerie and her girls for years now.  I met her girls when they were so young!  One was asleep when we took this pic...  Tryptophan.  ;)

I think I've figured out how to get Wallace to eat....put food on a stick!  He sat here and chowed down, and so Josh put some ham on stick, and he ate it too!

Anna took some pictures again today.  I usually put the camera on all auto for her, but the dim lighting from the cloudy day made that impossible today.  So, I ended up leaving it on manual and just took the camera off back button autofocus, which means she needed to get whatever she wanted in focus in the little box in the view finder.  She got some cute pics.  Adults are a lot more willing to ham it up for a kid with a camera.  :)  These next two are hers.

Thank goodness he wasn't shooting the bird!  ;)  And way to use the rule of thirds, Anna!

Woohoo! Let's do it all again tomorrow!!

Cute Pics from Blanco Today

It's Josh's birthday (his 40th, so kind of a big deal!).  Big Mama and Joe-Joe came to town for Thanksgiving early and got us some BBQ.  On a side note, I think I may have been spelling Big Mama wrong for years now.  "/  I happened to put one of the kids in their Alaska shirt recently (she and Joe had matching shirts made for all of us which had all of our names on the back), and saw out of the corner of my eye that it's spelled as I've written here...not as I've been writing it forever!!!  Sorry Big Mama.  How annoying of me.  

Anyway.  Although it was crazy windy, the weather was super nice and so different from the never-ending heat we've had since July.  So, we spent most of our time in Blanco today outside.  :)

He was pretty wind-blown.  :)

We spent a lot of time looking for rocks...

And throwing rocks...

Anna asked to take some pics, and she did a great job!  The rest of the ones here are hers.

sssssssssss

I may be getting old and wrinkly...but at least my teeth look awesome!  ;)

I thought this one was especially cute!  She carries this basket around a lot, it's one of her many prized possessions.  

Veteran's Day

So, I got the day off!  But my kids didn't.  This actually ended up working out quite nicely!  Anna had a program up at school this morning, and I got to go to it!  How exciting!  I also got to take her lunch again, which was just awesome.  

I got there with enough time to snap some shots of Anna after her class came in and sat down.

Ugh.  She's not in focus.  Stupid striped shirt behind her, and stupid D7000 with only 39 focus points!  I just need to make sure she's wearing a striped shirt from now on for stuff like this.  Anyway, this kind of cracked me up and reminded me of when I was in elementary and they would cram us all in there criss-cross applesauce, and then yell "MOVE BACK" like a hundred times so they could jam another row of students down in front.  

So this was my view of her performance.  :(  I was craning to get that good of a view.  Must get there earlier next time!

I half stood up to get a slightly better pic.  They sang America the Beautiful and flapped these plates around.  It was cute.

And out of fear that everything was out of focus, I snapped another pic of her before I left.  :) 

I didn't get any pictures at lunch, and it was the craziest day for me schedule-wise.  I was up at the school at 9:00 for the program, then back up there at 11:15 for lunch, then back again at 12:40 for early dismissal.  I should have just stayed up there all day.  Ha!  At least Josh dropped  her off for me this morning.