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.