RenFest 2014

My Dad is not feeling well. It looks like he may have to get his gall bladder taken out and he has something wrong with his liver. We are waiting now to find out what is wrong. Hopefully he will be back to perfect health very soon. I don't even know the point of a gall bladder anyway.

Erik got his new computer today. He was SO excited and has spent all day downloading Starcraft and Diablo. He is looking forward to playing with it. We will be playing Warcraft just for testing purposes.

Every year we go to the Renaissance Festival. This year we went with Aaron, Michelle and Vina, and Matt (Bogg - his D&D name) and Allison. The girls have really gotten into the shows. We watched the Mudd show twice and the Kamikaze fireflies three times. We did archery (obviously), walked around the little town, and ate yummy food. The girls wore their ballet costumes from last year. I really need to get them proper medieval dresses. Matthew and Erik wore the Knights Tunics I sewed for them. My one good sewing project. It won't fit Matthew next year. 

Ren Fest 2014

The kids

In other news:

1. On our anniversary (Sept. 6) Erik, his Dad, and I ran a 5K for the 9/11 heros and first responders. It was a race sponsored by his parent's chiropractors so we went too. Erik ran it in 27 minutes, his father was 29 minutes and I was 30:50. BUT I won a medal! I won 3rd place in my age group. Yipee! We are thinking of doing a 15K. I'm not as worried about the distance as I am about the cold since it is in November. Brrrrrrr
2. Our book club has decided to read Brent Weeks The Way of Shadows. I really loved the Black Prism and now am in the Blinding Knife (next book in this series). 
3. I'm in the middle of the second Fablehaven book as well. I really love this series. Jenna is in the next series "The Beyonders". Once she finishes that we are giving her the Icewind Dale trilogy. She needs to know about Drizzt.
4. I've also decided to read the Goblet of Fire again. I need to get my Harry Potter nerd on. Jenna is going to be Hermione for Halloween. Maybe I can be Hagrid or something....
5. We have decided to move our Tuesday night Bible study to Sunday nights. More families can attend on Sunday nights and we will also have the study every Sunday night. I'll still make dinner every week. I hope it will work out well.
6. I've also joined a Thursday Morning Women's Bible study doing a Beth Moore study. It is huge (36 women) and I love it.
7. 95 points on Quiddler today

New Viola Player in town

Jenna and her new Viola

At our elementary school, fourth graders can pick a string instrument. Jenna was beyond excited to play an instrument. We went to the Loft Violin shop (which looked like Ollivanders Wand shop) so Jenna could look at the different instruments before making her choice. We also listened to different string instruments playing on youtube to help her narrow it down. Jenna has decided to play the Viola. I'm excited for her to begin playing in the school orchestra. I've also heard that listening to a beginning violin player is a form of auditory torture. I'm hoping that the viola will be less torturous.  

Austin and Matthew walking home from school

Every day we walk home from school and lately Matthew has become friends with our neighbor Austin. Austin is in 3rd grade and is 8 years old but he plays so well with Matthew, better even than younger kids. If you ask Matthew who is friends are, he will always say "Austin".

On Saturday the kids and I went to the Buckeye  Lake beach with Sunshine and her kids. It was fantastic since there were so few people there and we could play in the water and sand. After about 20 minutes I happened to see a sign that said "WARNING High Toxin levels, etc, etc, etc - Don't swim here stupid!" So our trip to the beach was shortened and instead we went to her house to play in the slip-and-slide. The kids kept talking about poison lake too. Not a good thing.

Lately Erik has had a lot of problems with his desktop. He has had to run chkdsk over and over again and still has problems.

It is affecting his gaming.

This is serious.

So I bought him a new desktop.

SHHHHHH..... It is a surprise. Luckily he will not check here. I bought him an iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F875 with 4 cores intel i7 3.7GHz processor, 256GB SSD + 1TB data drives, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB video card, and AVC liquid cooling (to help his geek cred). I'm so excited for him to get his new computer. Of course this is the opposite of trying to spend less, but I wanted to get him an awesome new gaming computer and alienware is way too expensive.

In other news:

• The Black Prism by Brent Weeks was a fabulous read. It was one of those books that I didn't want to end (since I'm on a list at the library for book 2). I really enjoyed this book.
• Fablehaven book 2 by Brandon Mull. I'm following in Jenna's footsteps and reading more of the Fablehaven series. Jenna has read and reread all these books. I can't keep up with her. 
• I turned in my grades and am now entering my unscheduled session. Yipee!! I love teaching and especially teaching online classes, but it is fantastic to just focus on course development and get caught up on emails, meetings, etc without also teaching tons of courses. This used to be my session off where I would do nothing for 8 weeks but since I'm so involved in the course developments and am on just about every committee I have a ton of other duties too. So it is not actually vacation anymore.
• Erik, Erik's Dad and I are running a 5K on Saturday. Erik runs 2 miles every day and I run about 4 times a week. So it should be a fun run. Saturday is also our 17 year anniversary. So we will run to celebrate. 

Ohio Outdoor Water Woman

This is my third year attending an Ohio Outdoor Woman weekend and I've loved every time! This year the Ohio Outdoor woman weekend was sponsored by the ODNR Division of Watercraft. So it focused mostly on water sports and boating and had no hunting or guns. I love the water and really loved this!

Action shot of me driving the boat

 This year the outdoor adventure weekend was held at Burr Oak Lodge. This was by far, I mean by light years far better than the other places we went. Rather than a huge room with tons of bunk beds for 50+ women, we had a room equivalent to a hotel room that walked out onto a patio for just the four of us. Previous years the food was rubbery hot dots and soggy buns (yummy!) and this year we had fantastic food like barbecued chicken and pasta with meat sauce. And we always got dessert! The accommodations and food far exceeded my expectations.

Susan and I in our orienteering class. Where am I??

 I went with Susan, Nicole, and Virginia. We missed Michelle since she was busy the weekend before at GenCon. I made lots of friends and got to be outdoors and enjoy the beautiful weather with other outdoorsy women.

Me on the power boat

Barbara, Me, and Jen - a watercraft selfie

 On Friday afternoon all four of us did archery. I pretty much always pick archery because I love it. There were several different bows to try and I picked one with more tension. It was easier for me to control since I have tons and tons of upper body strength. After shooting for awhile and practicing we had an archery contest. The bulls eye was 5 points, the red ring around was 4 points and so on. Guess who won?? Yours truly! I had the highest score of all the 10 participants with 23. Right after that I shot even better with 4 out of 5 arrows in the bulls eye. I heard the instructor behind me say "wow". Go Gina..it's your birthday (picture me doing the cabbage patch dance....on second thought...)

Virginia and Nicole in kayaks

 Friday evening we went canoeing until about 10pm. It was a beautiful canoe ride. I was in the canoe with Nicole paddling along just fine until we realized we were backwards. So we gracefully turned around without tipping the boat. It was too dark to get pictures, we even had flashlights on our canoe trip.

Me in a kayak

 Saturday and Sunday mornings they offered yoga at 6am. Normally I do not get up at 6am and normally I do not do yoga, but this was a weekend for new things.  Saturday morning I took a power boating course. So I had an opportunity to drive a boat and dock it as well as learning some knots. This was a lot of fun and made me realize how little I know about boating rules. Before renting a boat I want to take an OBEC course.

This is the view from my kayak

 Saturday afternoon I went kayaking. This was relaxing with beautiful scenery. I learned the proper technique to paddle a kayak by using your core not your shoulders. After two hours of kayaking my shoulders didn't feel tired at all. Apparently I was using my core properly however last I checked I didn't have a six pack. Maybe next time.

Saturday evening a professor from Ohio University came with his telescope to talk a little about astronomy. I got to see Saturn (rings and all!) and he pointed out several constellations. That was very interesting.

Virginia, Nicole, me and Susan doing archery

Susan and Virginia did pretty well

Archery champion!

Even better!

 Sunday morning Susan and I were hoping to take geocaching but they had orienteering instead. This also looked like fun and I'm glad I did this. While I am poor with intuitive directions, I'm good at math and angles so I was able to figure out the direction we should go and orient myself that way. I thought this was very interesting.

The rooms were amazing!

Overall this weekend was fantastic. I loved getting away and trying new things. I'm hoping to do this every year.

A new school year

The beginning of the school year is always filled with so much hope and excitement. The kids are excited to meet their new teachers, new friends in class, be back in a routine, and learn. Yes learn. They are itching to get back to school by the end of summer.

Jenna has Mrs. Dominy as her teacher for fourth grade. Mrs. Dominy goes to our church and we've known her for years. I requested her as a teacher for Jenna even though I wasn't sure they would honor that request. Well it turns out they did! Jenna is beyond excited to have Mrs. Dominy who is fun and dances during class :). Sarah has a new teacher to the school named Mrs. Moore. She is sweet and has named their class "Awesome Town." They even have a secret handshake for their class. Sarah really loves first grade. Matthew has moved into an integrated class for preschool. This class has peer role models as well as kids with IEPs (Matthew has an IEP). His two teachers are Mrs. Brady and Mrs. Norris. Mrs. Norris remembered Matthew from last year and gave him a big hug the first day - he had no problem going to school after that!

Swinging in the backyard

 Even though school has ushered in the end of summer, we still have a lot of fun ahead of us. The kids have been playing a lot and Jenna has been reading a lot. She has found a new series called Fablehaven by Brandon Mull. She is in book 3 and I just finished book 1. Mrs. Dominy recommended the book for Jenna and apparently she knows what Jenna likes since Jenna has refused playdates so she could read! The apple doesn't fall far from the tree....

Ever since my trip to Sacramento a few years ago I've visited some bubble tea shops near the Columbus Asian Market (CAM) and discovered that we all love bubble tea. At one tea shop I saw this interesting postcard. Based on the postcard I am now Asian since I tried the snacks they listed.

????

The Warrior Dash posted pictures from the weekend and Erik and I made an appearance! We are muddy and yucky and having fun. Erik runs 2 miles every day and you can tell. Look at his amazing leg muscles in this picture!

In other news:

1. I am very sad that Wheel of Time did not win a Hugo award. I was really hoping!! Sometimes the books that win these awards are not actually the fan favorites, or the best books (ie the Windup Girl)
2. Our book club finished  City of Fiends by Michael Jecks. It was a medieval mystery and a different genre from what we normally read. I enjoyed the book and it provided good discussion. We kept wondering "who did it?". I guessed wrong.
3. As I said before I just finished Fablehaven book 1. I recommend this book to anyone who likes Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. It was a fun read. I'm sure I'll like the rest of the books but I have to pry them out of Jenna's hands first.
4. I'm also reading Brent Weeks' book The Black Prism. This book has a lot of action and is a great read. I read a review about the book that said "if you like action and epic fantasy you will like this". Check.
5. I finished 7 and Interrupted by Jen Hatmaker. They were books to get you moving and doing and I'm making changes. I'm hoping to see the world through different eyes. I have some big plans this year for service. Let's just hope I can do it all!

82 on Quiddler today. They also let me play iOS. That was pretty cool.

The last hurrah of summer in the middle of August

I know it may seem that every post I write after the last one will make me sound like a hypocrite. And I am. But I'm working on it. I'm trying to move away from a consumer Christian. So you will have to bear with me - hypocrisy and all!

The kids start school this week. Yes - in the middle of August. It seems early but they are ready. Jenna practiced her math facts (which she has not practiced for the past several months) and knew all of them except 8*6. Pretty impressive I'd have to say.

So for our last hurrah of summer Erik took a vacation day last Friday and we all went to the zoo to just ride the rides. Everyone had a blast! We packed a picnic lunch and rode rides for 5 hours. We rarely had a line for any of the rides. Erik avoided the rides but the rest of us had a great time (yay for the tilt-a-whirl!)

Jenna on the Merry Go Round

Matthew and I riding on the bench (see Sarah in the background)

Sarah on the Merry Go Round

Sarah and Matthew in the teacup ride

 Jenna and I rode on the roller coaster which meant that Sarah wanted to ride. I looked at the height requirement and to my surprise both Sarah and Matthew were tall enough. So we all went on the roller coaster. Yes - I took a 4 year old on a roller coaster. He LOVED it! The girls did too. I guess we are are ready for the Harry Potter rollercoaster. Jenna only talks about this EVERY DAY.

Sarah, Me and Matthew on the roller coaster  - Matthew is wearing a bright orange shirt

On Saturday Erik and I ran the Warrior Dash. Last year I ran it with Amanda. It was a fun course, a bright sunny day, and we had a great time. Unfortunately Amanda was sick this year so she couldn't go with us. Someone is always sick! Afterwards we went to Panera for lunch covered in mud. My parents watched the kids on Saturday while we were at the dash. This was a great date!

Erik and I after the Warrior Dash -Look I took a selfie!

78 points on quiddler today

Excess Stuff

I mentioned in a previous post that I was reading 7 by Jen Hatmaker. This book detailed her desire to move away from excess. She labeled herself as a comfortable, consumer Christian. Jesus spent his time with the least and the lost. Where do I spend my time?

This rang true for me. Last Christmas we had over 100 gifts and had a drawing to see which gift would be opened. Is this what Jesus would want? Much of the rest of the world does not have our luxuries yet what should we do with them?  Hatmaker writes "Excess has impaired perspective in America; we are the richest people on earth, praying to get richer". I know I want to change my perspective and I'm working on it.

She spent 7 months and each month she cut back on an area of excess in her life. It was her way to "fight back against the modern-day diseases of greed, materialism, and overindulgence." This deeply reduced life led to the discovery of a greatly increased God. 

Here is the breakdown and how I'm trying to incorporate this in my life. 

• Month 1: food- eat only 7 foods (note: peanut butter would be one of my foods). We are working on buying local/organic foods.
• Month 2: clothes - wear only 7 articles of clothing (I could dig this)
• Month 3: possessions - give 7 things away every day for a month (210 items). Do socks count? I have lots of those. We donated a ton of clothes and we still have so much more! I'm a sweater girl. My armoire is filled with warm, comfy sweaters but I donated many of them. I don't need SO much! Now I'm down to 5 sweaters. Shoes too. I always said I didn't understand why so many people love shoes. I'm an engineer not a shoe lover. But when I went into my closet, I had 35 pairs of shoes!!!! Several of which I had only worn once for a wedding. I donated 13 pairs. 
• Month 4: media - no TV, gaming, facebook, apps, radio, texting or internet unless needed for work. Yikes!! I could give up TV - in fact, we turned the TV on only once this week to watch a movie. We don't watch much TV (why are we still paying for it? This is a question I ask Erik ALL the time. We are paying for football season basically). I could NOT give up the internet. I am an online teacher! 
• Month 5: waste - conserving, recycling, driving only one car, buying local. We are working on this - getting better but we have a long way to go (see below)
• Month 6: spending - only spending money in 7 places in the month. I could just spend money at Amazon and Kroger and would probably be fine for a month. However she is concerned about buying local. I need to work on that. Erik thinks this is hokey (actual word he used)



My first day of class sweater circa 1993-1998

• Month 7: stress - In her book, she pauses and prays seven times a day and observes the Sabbath. I think observing the Sabbath is excellent. Ever since my friend Lynn passed away we have stopped buying things on Sunday and taking it as a day of rest. It is glorious. The beauty of fasting or just taking a Sabbath is in that you are resting from your normal routine, making space for God to move in your life. For example, I LOVE food and cooking and baking and the food channel....you get it. I think about it a lot (what I'm going to make, what should I buy to make such and such dish). However when I fast - I don't think about food because I can't have it. It is removed from my thoughts. The same with Sundays. I can't think about shopping or picking this or that up because I can't. It is a self-imposed break and it is wonderful (note: we have broken this Sunday rule a few times like when we were in Paris, or had my friend Nicole's 40th birthday party).

How we are trying to become "green" and waste less (note - this has been in the works for several years)

• Using cloth napkins instead of paper napkins
• Using a wood stove to heat our house
• Using cloths instead of paper towels to clean
• Reusable grocery bags at the grocery store
• Dryer balls instead of dryer sheets
• Less air conditioning (we've turned on the air conditioner maybe 5 times this summer. It has been a cool summer and I like fresh air anyway!)
• Recycling
• Gardening
• Rain barrel
• LED lights in many of the light fixtures
• No plastic baggies in the kids lunch 
• Making our own soap, dishwasher detergent, and bread
• Avoiding disposable plates and silverware when the Bible study group comes (we bought a few sets of corelle plates we will use for the small group dinner instead of using paper plates)
• There is a lot more we could do - this is just our start! At some point we want to get solar panels too.

Yea for old books!

Working on donating our excess stuff has also been freeing. I finally gave away my "first day of school" sweater. I wore this sweater on the first day of class my entire college career (Bachelors and Masters degree). Every first day of every quarter I wore this sweater. Sheldon takes lessons from me on how to be OCD. I won't talk about how I ate tuna fish sandwiches every day for lunch either....

Our basement is also filled with tons of pointless stuff. I have an entire shelf filled with mechanical engineering books and notes. I'm sure to use this often! I donated everything on this shelf so some person at Goodwill can read about Tool Design and Differential Equations with Boundary conditions. Yipee!

In addition to reducing we are also increasing our giving. I've been working as a volunteer for a free store in Delaware called Common Ground on Wednesdays and am hoping to work more with those in need. 

This is just a start and we are all "works in progress." Of course I started reading this after we started our kitchen remodel! But we are moving forward. I would like to use this book in our Bible study starting in fall - we will see!  

Autumn Lakes in the rain

Last weekend we went camping at Autumn Lakes Campground. We hadn't been to this campground before but it looked really fun (according to the website) so we ventured there. We had a fabulous time - rain and all!

On Friday, Erik went home to work while we went to tour the Velvet Ice Cream mill with the Masts. We couldn't really go into the factory but we could watch through the window. After the tour we all got ice cream (obviously!). I got Extreme Mousse Tracks - very chocolaty. Sarah had cookies and cream, Jenna had birthday cake and Matthew had raspberry cordial. It was all delicious - ice cream for lunch is always good. I forgot to get ice cream for Erik (oops!).

Jenna, Sarah and me in a canoe

 Autumn Lakes had canoes you could take out on their little pond. The kids LOVED the canoes. Jenna said it was her favorite part of the trip. The picture shows us canoeing in the rain - we are hard core canoers (canoe-ers? canoeing people?)

Our camper was right next to the lake and it was such a nice view. I loved sitting by the fire at night and looking out over the water.

Matthew loves ice cream

Maddie, Jenna, and Nicholas eating ice cream on tires

On Saturday night we had planned to cook hot dogs and corn on the fire. Tricia and family had come to visit us at the campsite as well. Unfortunately we were stuck in a downpour. So we went to a Chinese buffet. I love Chinese buffets so I wasn't complaining. As soon as we left the buffet the sun was shining. Apparently God wanted us to go to a Chinese buffet.

On Sunday afternoon we had a tornado watch.  Tornado sirens were blaring which scared Sarah such that she was hiding in the basement the whole time. After the rain, we saw beautiful double rainbows. I had a lot of pictures from this weekend and the rainbows but the SD card on my phone decided to die. I was able to salvage some pictures but mostly they are gone or corrupted. Bummer.

We really enjoyed this camping trip and definitely want to go back to Autumn Lakes. 

Girl Scout Camp

We sent the girls to their first overnight camp at the Girl Scouts Molly Lauman camp. This camp was about 2 hours away and they had a fabulous time. It was a 3 day 2 night camp (and they went alone!) and did really well. Some things they got to experience were: non-flushing toilets (Jenna said she does not like latrines), lots of crafts, slingshots, swimming, camp food, sleeping outdoors and watching a movie (the Lorax), sleeping in a cabin, and camp life. Jenna and Sarah also went with a set of sisters: Kate and Jill. We went camping with them last month. 

 While Jenna and Sarah went to Girl Scout camp, Matthew went to a day camp through the highbanks Metropark. 

We also recently finished the Letterbox adventure with the Delaware County Preservation Parks. One of our favorite parks was Shale Hollow Preserve. It is smaller and practically no one is there (really it's empty at most of these parks) and we could walk on the water and all around the trails through the woods.

Jenna at Shale Hollow Preserve

Matthew at camp - this is a spider hat

Kate, Jenna, Sarah, and Jill

This week the girls went to VBS at Linworth United Methodist Church. They have an excellent VBS with 250 kids in the elementary school session. The theme was Weird Animals this year.

Their cabin

The girl scout camp

Books I'm reading/read:

1. Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. I loved the twists and turns in this book and I couldn't stop reading it. 
2. City of Fiends by Michael Jecks. This is our book club book. It is ok. Joel described it as "neat". I'm about halfway through but am not really into the book yet.
3. 7 by Jen Hatmaker. I just started this book and it is AMAZING. It is one of those books that will change your life. 
4. The Black Prism by Brent Weeks. I've heard so much good about this author I'm excited about this book. 
5. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen. This books just makes you want to only buy food at farmers markets. It's good and somewhat scary.

83 points on Quiddler today

The Birthday of Cakes

My birthday was filled with cakes! The cakes I had were:

1. Giant Eagle chocolate cake with white frosting. This cake my Mom bought with a picture of Thomas on it. Now Matthew thinks all cakes should have Thomas on them.
2. A turtle ice cream cake at Jen's house. She bought me an ice cream cake - because she knows I love ice cream cakes. So when we went over to play board games I got more cake
3. A chocolate peanut butter cake that I can only describe to my fellow peanut butter lovers (Dan, Joel I'm talking to you) as taste perfection. I have actually achieved taste perfection with this cake. The chocolate cake was very moist. The peanut butter buttercream was not too sweet but very peanut buttery and I poured chocolate ganache on top just for extra yumminess. This cake is peerless. 

Birthday at my parents house with a "Thomas" cake

Turtle cake at Tim and Jen's house

Matthew <3 trains

The birthday cake I made for myself - taste perfection!

I got lots of great presents including macarons from Duane and Joy. This was to celebrate our time in France!

French Macarons from Duane and Joy!

Most importantly I got a new netbook. Erik bought me an Asus transformer with Windows 8.1. Ever since Matthew destroyed my Windows 8 tablet I've had difficulty finding someone to repair the screen. Honestly - I thought this would be big business! Nope. 

So instead my wonderful husband bought me a new machine. It is charging as I write this!

Sarah's cinnamon muffins

This week has been break week for me. In between sessions I have had no grading, no discussions, no nightly lectures, no students calling and emailing at all hours. It has been *somewhat* relaxing. Next session we roll out a new course and I'm one of the developers on the course. Actually for the next few sessions we will roll out courses I have been developing. It will be an interesting time and very busy! Then in September I will have my session off. Yay!

Me and Matthew from our camping trip - he looks so happy

 Now that Sarah can read I thought it was about time that she started cooking. Today Sarah made cinnamon muffins. She made a whole lot more than were pictured but we already ate them ;). I put them in the oven and took them out but she did everything else (well I had to reach the eggs in the refrigerator for her since she doesn't have my excessive height).

Sarah's muffins came out great - I see future iron chef competitions between her and Jenna and Matthew once he starts cooking too!

Sarah's muffins

 We finished cat-sitting Theo the fluffy, lovable, silver, pure-bred cat and now we are cat-sitting Six. She is sleek, black, and lithe and looks almost like a black panther. Six is my old college roommate Kathy's cat. She is 17 years old and the last time we cat-sit her it was in our old house with Scruffles. She is not terribly friendly. She hisses at Twinkles and Panda and really only likes Erik. She always sits on his desk.

Six pic 1

Six pic 2

The girls went to a science camp at Inventure science. They did a potions class and Jenna was hoping Snape would not be the teacher (he wasn't - it was Gilderoy Lockhart).
Here are two videos of some of the things they did:
http://youtu.be/KFFmUQtjw7w
http://youtu.be/ihhjHEHs0jU
I'm going to put them in more science camps. They really loved it and learned a lot.

Celebrating 4 with 12 kids!

Last year we went camping to celebrate Matthew's birthday with 11 kids. This year we had 12! We went to the Lazy River at Granville with the Masts, Mabrys, and Brubakers again. We love this campground since it backs up to a little creek with rocks and fish. This creek occupied the kids for hours. They ended up muddy and dirty and wet but they had a great time.

Friends

All the kids

 We camped from Thursday - Sunday and had a fun, relaxing time. We now have 12 kids with us since Duane and Joy added baby Lucas. He is 4 months old and was a sweet little baby.

Friday morning Duane cooked us all pancakes and bacon using his new chuck box he made. The Masts got a new camper which looked amazing yet I managed to forget to get a picture. It had two slide outs which really made a difference inside. It didn't seem cramped at all.

Playing in the creek

 Friday night we celebrated Matthew's birthday. His request was white cupcakes with white frosting. I asked him what flavor and he kept saying "white". Finally the girls gave him a list of flavors and he picked lemon. He got several presents like tractors, trains, and a fire truck. He loved them all!

Happy Birthday Matthew

Duane and his chuck box

 On Saturday the campground had ziplining. Jenna watched the zipliners for awhile then decided she wanted to do it. She had a blast and apparently is not afraid of heights. She also said she wanted to do it again!

Jenna gearing up to do the zip line

An action shot

When we got home, we gave Matthew the rest of his presents. He got several new train tracks and the Thomas Roundhouse. This is a little house for the trains. He also got the Henry and James trains from Thomas. He will spend hours building track across our living room.

Matthew's new train tracks

We had a wonderful time camping for Matthew's birthday and being with friends all weekend. I hope we can continue this tradition every year. Happy 4th birthday Matthew!