Christmas Day

We went to the Bristow's house on Christmas Day. We arrived at their house at the same time as Cole and his family. Jane was busy in the kitchen cooking. The kids had lots of fun playing together. They counted all of Thom and Jane's Santa Clauses, which took some time.

The Bristow's

We were able to get a group shot. Unfortunately, someone had to take the picture, so Thom is missing from the picture.

The Bristow boys

The kids all had a great time playing together. The house was full of motion with four kids. Kate hung right in there as the lone girl.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas at Our House

After we got home from Mom and Dad's Christmas Eve, we exchanged gifts as a family. The boys have been wondering what was in these packages for weeks now.

Hunter and Jordan

They were very excited to finally get to open them. Inside was a gaming chair for each of them. I'm glad they both liked them since they had been wondering about them for so long. They would have been so let down if the boxes were full of socks and underwear.

The Missing Present

We celebrated Christmas Eve with Mom and Dad this year. We arrived at their house for a late lunch. Then we went to the Christmas Eve service at their church. They were serving Communion at the front of the church as we walked in. So we were able to take Communion as a family, which was very special. After church, we opened Christmas presents. After all the presents under the tree were opened, Mom presented the boys with clues for their Missing Present.

Hunter and Jordan with their missing present clues.

Each of the boys had separate clues. They read their own clues which lead them to their present.

Jordan finds his Missing Present

Jordan's present was hidden in the guest bedroom under the pillows. It was a bike helmet which was to stay at Grandmom's house.

Hunter finds his missing present

Hunter's present was hidden in the dryer which is one of the last places Hunter would ever look for something. It was a great jacket he could wear over short sleeved shirts and there were some pants.

The boys had a great time on their treasure hunt!

Merry Christmas

We hope you have a very Merry Christmas! Take the time to enjoy Christmas. Treasure all the small joys that Christmas can bring if you take the time to look. Do something you enjoy and be with the ones you love.

Merry Christmas!

The Big Chill

All the second graders at Jordan's school appeared in a Christmas/Winter performance called The Big Chill. The funniest part is that it was 80 degrees outside the day of the performance. Our seats were not the best. Jordan is on the far left side about 4 rows back. (which is on the right side of the video) He is the only red head boy in the second grade. There are two of sections of kids behind Jordan's sections that you can not see in this video. He did a great job and was very excited.

Merry Christmas

Laura took this awesome family picture of us on the beach. The weather was wonderful. I thought we were going to freeze on the beach in December. But it was not cold at all.

Nights of a Thousand Candles

During our visit with The Lee's, we went to Brookgreen Gardens. Brookgreen Gardens is a National Historic Landmark with a huge collection of sculptures in a lovely outdoor setting. It also has a great zoo. We went to their holiday event called Nights of a Thousand Candles. There were candles everywhere. It was beautiful!

Hunter and Jordan in front of the lion

When I would visit Brookgreen Gardens when I was little, we would always get a picture taken with the lion. The theory was that when you compared the pictures you could tell how much you had grown. I have tons of the pictures taken with this same lion. Since we were there, I made Hunter and Jordan get their picture with him also.

Trees

This was a Grandmom's favorite poem at Brookgreen. She would read it to me every time we visited it. I love it.

Hunter, Anna, Henry, Jordan, Arthur and Thomas

Laura and Sean's friends, Beth and Dan Bacon, were in town the same weekend. So we were able to meet them. They are currently touring the US this year in a RV. They are visiting a state a week for 50 weeks. They have an amazing website that tracks their adventures. They even gave us some cool "Bacon Across America" t-shirts. (Get it.. their last name is Bacon.)

I thought this looked cool. How many other states are as proud of their state flag and symbols as South Carolina?

There were candles and lights everywhere... floating in the water around the sculptures, on the walkways and even inside the walls.

Hunter and the poinsettias

Visiting Laura's Family

This weekend we went to Pawley's Island to visit my cousin, Laura and her family. They just moved into their beautiful new house Monday and still let us come and stay with them... boxes and all. :)

Hunter, Jordan, Thomas and Anna

The kids had a great time playing together. Anna hung in with the boys but we also had some "girl time." Anna would get Laura and myself and we would look at jewelry. Little girls are great!

This is the view from the back of their house. It is a tidal cedar swamp. Luckily I did not see any alligators or snakes. :)

Happy Halloween

This year for Halloween, Jordan wanted me to dress up with them. So I did. Here we are right before we left to go trick or treating. Hunter was a painter (he used in the paint bucket for his candy), Jordan was Old West Sheriff and I was an Egyptian complete with black hair.

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween

Jordan's class celebrated Halloween by carving all these wonderful pumpkins. They also weighted, measured them and counted all their seeds. Jordan is in the back in front of his teacher. Being a redhead, he is pretty easy to spot.

Scout meeting at the corn maze

Since we had so much fun at the corn maze last year, we went back this year. Hunter's boy scout den had a trip planed there and somehow I talked Jordan's den into going there on the same day and at the same time. What are the odds in that!! So Chris went into the corn maze with Hunter and I went with Jordan.

Hunter and Jordan in the maze

We meet up once in the maze. The maze is over 6 acres so it is huge! They had split the den up into small groups. Auston, his dad and baby sister were grouped with Jordan and myself. We just let the boys chose which way to turn in the maze. The whole point was to get lost .. Right???

Hunter lost in the maze

This picture was taken as Chris and Hunter past by us. They were in a completely different section of the maze. The sections were marked off with different colors. As you moved to a different section the path dividers changed colors.

View of a blue section of the corn maze from the tower

Each year the maze has different themes. This year's theme was the election. Along the maze they are little stations. There were 3 different types of station. One was a map of the maze. They gave you are map that we covered in red. At the map station, you slid your map under a red plastic and the map with revealed. Another type of station a word game. There were questions about our government. ( What are the 1st 10 Amendments? or The upper house of Congress is referred to as the _ _ _ _ _ _ ) Certain letters of the answer were circled and those letters made another word. The last type of station had pictures you could collect by rubbing them with a crayon. There were 9 different pictures to find.

View of the corn maze design

We spend a lot of time in the T. We kept ending up there. We finally helped Auston and Jordan find the way out of the maze. Chris and Hunter were waiting on us. They had already been out of the maze for 45 minutes!

In the tower with the maze behind us

Jordan looking at the map

This a how the map stations looked. They had so much fun in the maze. We did it again as a family. Next year I think we will go back at night and find our way through the maze in the dark with flashlights.

Jordan graduates from Speech

We are very proud of Jordan for graduating from speech. He earned this giant candy bar and a small rubber ducky. He was so excited!!!

Cuboree

Jordan joined Cub Scouts this year. So now both the boys are in scouts. Saturday we went to Cuboree. About 120 Cub Scouts were there. They learned about first aid, made a trick billfold and went on a nature walk. But the best part was shooting BB guns and archery.

Jordan and Hunter shooting BB guns

Both the boys loved shooting BB guns. Hunter did this last year but it was Jordan's first time. I helped Jordan and Chris helped Hunter. I'm not sure how much help I was since it was also my first time shooting a BB gun. But we learned quickly and Jordan shot his target 10 times!

Jordan and his Bow

Archery was also a big hit. This also was Jordan's first time shooting a bow and arrow. He shot a total of 10 arrows and hit the target once. It is harder than it looks.

Hunter aiming

Hunter also shot 10 arrows and made the target twice. Most of the kids didn't hit the target and no one in our group hit it more than twice.

I spent my birthday at Smurf Village

On the way back home, we stopped in Greenville at Smurf Village. Smurf Village in a ROTC training area. One letterboxer planted three smurfs there and invited other boxers to plant smurfs as well. So the Smurf Village population has grown. There are 22 smurfs living there now. Every smurf you can imagine is there. Before we went to Smurf Village, Hunter and Jordan had never seen a smurf. We are going to try to watch a rerun on Cartoon Network. The letterboxers that we boxed with at the farm decided they would go there also. It was on the way home for all of us. One group had started boxing first. They had left before us and skipped lunch. We ate lunch first. Letterboxing with hungry children is no fun. Along the way, there was ROTC training equipment like this cool rope swing.

Hunter swinging on the rope

I had fun spending my birthday with my family just walking in the woods following clues and finding letterboxes and no TV around.

Hunter stamping in

Farm Boxing

For my birthday, the family went to Cleveland, SC for a letterboxing gathering. Cleveland is in the upper part of SC above Greenville. It is very close to Table Rock State Park. It rained all day Friday. We left after the boys got out of school. We arrived in the dark and had some trouble finding the farm. Thank goodness Holly saw us driving down the road and showed us where to turn. Luckily it had stopped raining so we could set up the camper.

This picture was taken Saturday morning. It was beautiful with the fog over the mountains. A couple of other letterboxers had also arrived Friday night. After breakfast, we decided to letterbox at the farm first. There were about 30 letterboxes on the farm. So Buttercup, Johnny Quest, Hawkeye, JDog, The High Rollers and our family (Box Hunters) started hunting letterboxes. There were lots of letterboxes planted by x marks the spot. His letterboxes look like ordinary things but have letterboxes hidden inside. They were lots of fun to find. One of the clues was look for something unusual. Hunter found this one. It was near the stream. Holly was in the stream planting letterboxes for the night boxing that night. The stream was lower than the ground so Hunter did not see her. Hunter was asking Chris if he should look inside. As he was reaching for it, Holly yelled "Don't touch that!" and scared Hunter. Hunter ran all the way back to the house with the letterbox. He was completely out of breath and all he could tell me was the lady who owns the farm was in the creek. Later Holly filled me in on the whole story. It was pretty funny.

Hunter riding a horse

Holly also let everyone ride her horses. This was a special treat for the boys.

Jordan on his 1st horse ride

Jordan rode a horse for the first time this weekend. He loved it!

Jordan riding a horse

He looks so natural on a horse.

After we finished boxing at the farm, Holly fed us again. Then we decided to go to Jones Gap State Park. Holly printed clues for us and gave us some tips. This is a beautiful state park with streams and huge rocks. We found our first extreme letterbox there. We had to cross a stream moving from boulder to boulder across the stream. The kids loved this one!

JDog, The High Rollers, Hunter, Super J (Jordan) and Johnny Quest
at Jones Gap State Park

Jordan and I

When we arrived back at the farm, Holly's husband, The Troll, had made everyone delicious chilly. There were 40 to 50 letterboxers there. We exchanged stamps and talked. Holly had 2 night boxing events planed. One was for the kids. They all had flashlights and had to search for letterboxes with reflective tape on them. Hunter and Jordan loved this! The other night boxing event was an adult event named the BCU trail (bring clean underwear). Chris had heard that you would get wet on the trail and since he only had one pair of shoes he wouldn't go. Hunter said I could wear his crocs. (Hunter's foot is almost the same size as mine.) So I was the lone Box Hunter who went. I had my flashlight and some index cards to stamp on. First we had to go down an embankment backwards holding on a rope. Remember this was in the dark. We ended up in the very cold creek. So in the dark with our flashlights walking in a creek, we looked at the trees for reflective pins. (like the kind used for hunters in the woods.) They pointed to letterboxes. Some were covered in slim. Other had fake spiders around them. You get the picture. Also as you walked in the creek, the water got higher and then lower. Charles, one of the High Rollers, was wearing water boots that went up to his knees. The water was so high that his boots filled up. So after we got out, he could lift his leg and water would pour out. One group tried to scare our group. As one of them walked away, she tripped and fell into the water and we all heard a kirpluc. Can you say Karma? It was very funny. After we were finished, we had to climb back up with the rope. It was so much fun! I did have to change my pants and underwear because the creek was that high!

Let's Bike

Hunter had his birthday party today. He wanted a biking party. So everyone brought their bikes and helmets. All the bikes were put into Chris' trailer. That was a sight!




We went to Harbison State Forest which has some incredible biking trails. The trail we took had a curving path with lots a roots and rocks which made great bumps to ride over.

The path was a little over a mile. We rode our bikes to a shelter, ate cake and drank lots of water.

Hunter wanted a bike themed cake. Since I could not find one anywhere, I made one. Hunter requested chocolate cake with vanilla icing.


After everyone ate and played at the shelter, we rode our bikes down the trail again. Everyone, especially Hunter, had a wonderful time!

Hunter Turns A Decade Old

We asked Hunter what he wanted to do on his birthday. Out of all the choices in the world or at least in a 25 miles radius, he chose for us to eat lunch with him at school. Then after school he wanted us to work at the house we are remodeling and eat supper at the local Mexican restaurant. So that is what we did.

Here is Hunter next to the railing we put up on his birthday. He loves building things and is a great help!

Next, we ate at the Mexican restaurant. He ordered cheese dip(his favorite) and ate it all along with his meal.



I baked him a birthday cake with a huge 10 made out of candles and he opened presents. Hunter saved his money for months and bought a Wii. So we got him a new Wii game for his birthday.

Hunter has now entered into the double digits!
Happy Birthday, Hunter!!!

Ice Skating

Hunter's Boy Scout den went ice skating today. It was Hunter's first time on ice skates and he did great. He was very brave and within minutes of being on the ice for the first time, skated out to the middle of ring with his friends.

Hunter, Tyler and Brendan

Jordan had only been ice skating once before. It was about a year ago for a birthday party.

Jordan skating

I had not skated since middle or high school. So it had been over 20 years since I had been on ice skates. So imagine the situation, basically Hunter, Jordan and I cannot skate. Chris did not come, so I'm trying to skate and the boys need help learning. Luckily, Charlie, Hunter's awesome den leader, helped us. Also, most of Hunter's friends had been skating before, so they gave him tips and helped him up when he fell. We were definitely the comedic relief!

Charlie, Hunter and I

I mainly skated around the edge. But I did make it out to the middle twice. Jordan loved the disco ball in the center of the ice skating ring. He also liked the colored lights which would flash.

Hunter's den