A Couple of Birthday Pics

The kids and I are leaving for Pecos early in the morning, so I don't have time to do a whole birthday post, but here are a couple of pictures from Robert's race car birthday party last night.

Renaissance Festival

Jason wanted to go to RenFest while he was in town so we loaded everyone up and headed over on Sunday. I was a little worried that there would be a lot of scary costumes since it was Halloween weekend, but thankfully it wasn't bad. We had lots of fun. I love seeing all of the costumes. There are fairies, pirates, vikings, barbarians, wenches and princesses galore and a very good looking Shrek and Fiona this year. I felt kind of bad for them because they were stopped every few feet by people wanting to take a picture with them.


Remember how I said JDog was a good sport? He wore his custom made necklace with "JDog" spelled out in wooden letters all weekend.





She was dancing up a storm here. Chris tried to get her to go up front and dance, but she preferred being off to the side where she had more room to boogie.


She tried her hand at archery.



And then did the bungee bouncing thing for the first time. She had a terrified look on her face on the first bounce, but she loosened up and enjoyed herself. The guy tried to get her to do a flip but she never was able to get all the way over.


I was super smart and brought short sleeve shirts in case it got too warm, so here they are after their wardrobe change.



After much contemplation, Clara purchased this fan with her money.


We hung out in the jousting arena so Clara could rest her legs for a bit. The timing wasn't right to see the jousting though, so we just snacked on our kettle corn for awhile and then called it a day and made the long trek back to the car.

Trick or Treat

We invited ourselves to go trick or treating with the Couringtons this year. Their neighborhood is more festive than ours. Predator rode behind us for a few minutes on the interstate. I thought it was just a mask he was wearing, but it was a real helmet. It was decked out all the way around and was very realistic. He must've spent a pretty penny on that thing.

We enjoyed some pre-candy collecting coloring and pizza.

And then they donned their costumes. Here's Leia and Leah.

And Obi Wan showed up.

And a rascally little uncooperative ewok.

That's better. Once we got the show on the road and he realized he would be getting candy, he forgot all about the hood and allowed it to remain on his head.

Here is Robert at his first house. It didn't take long at all for him to figure out this trick-or-treating thing. Ewoks are smart. He walked up to houses all by himself and waited patiently for his turn. I had to escort him away several times because he would just stand there not exactly knowing what he should do next. And he would tell the people "bye byes" as he walked away.

We had loads of fun and the kids got way too much candy. There was one house that was awesome. We could hear people screaming from a block away. There was a smoke machine, strobe lights, scary sounds, the whole nine yards. There were some fake bodies on the ground and others were real, waiting to jump out at trick-or-treaters and there was a ghost on a zip line and someone on the roof throwing a body off the roof. I couldn't believe Jason actually talked Clara into walking up to the door (they went easy on little kids), but it was still very scary with the lighting and smoke. The walk up the driveway was very slow, but she did it and was so proud of herself. Kate put Obi Wan to good use a little later when we came to another scary house. At first she wanted nothing to do with it but Jason said, "Come on", and that's all she needed. Having a jedi around goes a long way to helping one conquer ones fears.