The Renaissance Festival

This past Saturday we went to the Renaissance Festival. This place was awesome! Here's a little description from their website:

The Renaissance Festival is a 16th century European style art and entertainment festival combining outdoor theater, circus entertainment, arts and crafts marketplace, a jousting tournament, a feast fit for royalty, and much much more. The event has grown into a twenty acre theme park filled with charming cottages and castles, kitchens and pubs, and a most unusual collection of people powered rides and games of skill.

I've never been to anything like this before.

You'll notice in the pictures that some interesting people come to the festival. The people who work there obviously dress up and are cool. They are in character and call you either Lord or Lady. It's the other ones I worry about.

I loved all of the buildings/stores. This one says Dragon Lore and had a variety of dragons to buy. There were tons of things to buy like shields, swords, costumes, toy catapults, jewelry, etc.

They had some man powered rides that were fun. I was proud of Colin. This was his first ride and he wasn't nervous at all. I was nervous for him, wondering what I'd do if he started freaking out, but he really liked it.

There was so much to look at and do, but sadly we were only there for a few hours and didn't even make a dent. They had knife throwing, archery, catapulting frogs and a bunch of other games.

I wanted to make sure we saw the jousting tournament. This was Colin saying it was too loud because the crowd was cheering/booing. And this is Steve's skeptical face saying we shouldn't have brought our two little kids to see jousting.

They were both fine once they were given snacks and drinks. You know Cora's ok if she's got her feet propped up!

This is where the "royalty" sat for the tournament.

We had to keep telling Colin that it was pretend and that no one was actually getting hurt.

I think he was still slightly concerned.

They had elephant and camel rides that sounded cool, but the line was too long. I definitely want to do that next year. Colin was mesmerized by the women dancers.

And he really loved these guys singing songs. He didn't want to leave.

This is another ride Colin and I rode. Again, he wasn't nervous at all.

In fact, he got upset beause he wanted to stay up on the horse.

We did as much as we could with two little kids. We want to go back next year, but it'll definitely be a great place to take our kids when they're older and they can participate in the games. I think next year we'll go in the morning instead of the evening and hope not as many crazies are there in the morning. It was alot of fun!!

Pumpkins & Trick-or-Treating

Colin and I carved a pumpkin on Halloween. I love how in this first picture, he's trying not to get his hands too dirty.

And now he's diving in.

I know this doesn't look good, but the knife is pretty dull. It's not even serated. I would cut the pumpkin and then Colin would "finish" it with his knife.

He took his pumpkin carving pretty seriously.

We went to our church because they were having a Halloween party, but the games were over by the time we got there, so we just went trick-or-treating.

This was Colin's first year trick-or-treating. Last year he handed out candy -- poor kid, we probably should have taken him, but he had fun and he had a blast this year.

Cora was fabulous in her stroller, she just hung out and babbled. Steve was a good sport to wear that costume two nights in a row! Colin went to more houses than I thought he would.

Then at one point he said he was done, so Steve carried him home. It was a great night, a great Halloween!

Second star to the right & straight on till morning

Last year I was in "survival mode" since I had just had Cora so we didn't even dress up for Halloween. This year I decided I was going to have a Halloween party and all of us were going to dress up. As everyone saw in my previous post, my parent's anniversary is on Oct. 30th and my mom always planned the BEST Halloween parties for us kids. I've decided that I want to carry on that tradition with my kids and thought I'd start this year. Colin & I made sugar cookies for our party.

As you've guessed from the post's title, we dressed up as characters from Peter Pan. Steve was Captain Hook, Colin was Peter Pan, Cora was Tinkerbell and I was Tiger Lily. There weren't any good Wendy costumes out there and I can't sew, so Tiger Lily it was. Colin was hesitant to wear his costume for some reason, but once I convinced him to wear it, he was soo excited and was in character the rest of the night. He wouldn't refer to himself as Colin, he was Peter Pan and we weren't mommy, daddy & Cora, but our character names ALL night. It was adorable!

I had four games for us to play. The first was a bean bag toss into Jack, our pumpkin-head decoration.

The second was a scavenger hunt in the back yard. Colin collecting a leaf for the hunt.

Checking out a skeleton.

Captain Hook checking his list.

Colin found his goodie bag!

Cora was attached to one of the baby pumpkins.

The third game was pin the eye on the monster. I knew Colin wouldn't wear a blindfold so I thought he could close his eyes, but he didn't even want to do that. He just placed the eyes on! Whatever works, right?

Tinkerbell taking her turn.

And the last game was Halloween bingo.

Colin got pretty excited when I said he could eat the candy corns. He'd never had them before.

I didn't do the mystery dinner this year because Colin won't eat anything that I make and I didn't want Mac & Cheese for dinner. I always love squash and meatloaf for my Halloween dinner. Maybe next year I'll do the mystery dinner.

I think my first party was quite a success. Colin had a great time and loved all of the games. Yay!!

On October 30, 1969 . . .

my lovely parents said I Do and were married in the Logan Temple. Aside from the Logan Temple being beautiful, they are the reason I wanted to get married there. After 40 years of being together, they're still in love and enjoy spending time together. Why wouldn't I want to follow in their footsteps?

Happy 40th Anniversary to my wonderful mom & dad who are spending thier 40th in their new dream home back in Utah, right where their story first began.

Beauty

I'm trying to stay up-to-date on my blog since we've been doing so much in October, well alot for us anyway. This weekend we went to DuPont State Forest to do some hiking and check out a few waterfalls. There are about 7 waterfalls in the park and three of them were filmed in The Last of the Mohicans, which is one of my favorite movies. So of course, I was very excited! Luckily Steve didn't mind the 2 1/2 hour drive to get there, hiking for a few hours and then driving all the way back. It was an all-day event, but the kids were great, it was a fun day and you couldn't ask for a more beautiful place to visit. This first two pictures are just on the drive into the Blue Ridge Mountains. I LOVE fall!

This first waterfall is called Triple Falls. Colin was already tired and was sitting on a bench "resting" and didn't want to get up while we took this picture. Aren't the falls lovely?

Going to get a closer look at Triple Falls.

It was absolutely gorgeous!!

My boy likes his snacks!

Look at that face ~ so cute!

Hiking.

This one is called High falls.

At the top of High Falls is this bridge that reminded me of Sleepy Hollow ~ "Once you cross that bridge my friend, the ghost is through, his power ends!" So perfect for our fall hike.

The entire day I kept saying how beautiful everything was, isn't it breathtaking?!

There were a lot of people riding horses on the trails and I wish I could have rode one through this bridge, galloping like the Headless Horseman was chasing me. I know, I'm crazy!

Cora's on the bridge looking at the water. She had such a great day! She babbled & giggled all day and loved being outside. We couldn't have asked for a better baby hiker!

Colin throwing rocks.

I really wanted to go to the bottom of High Falls. We started down the trail and the bottom of it was steep, wet and slippery. This is us deciding if we should keep going or not. We decided it wasn't safe for the kids, so I just went.

I had someone take my picture, but they didn't get the entire waterfall. Oh well.

I know, I'm a broken record, but look at how gorgeous! I could have stayed there all day.

Colin was pretty tired, so Steve and I took turns carrying him.

This is the river at the bottom of Triple Falls. I REALLY wanted to check out more waterfalls, but the kids were hungry & tired. As it was, we spent about 2 hours hiking, which is pretty good for a 3 and a 1 yr old, so I can't complain. And I'm positive we'll go back.

It was a perfect day for hiking in the crisp, cool mountains and fall is my favorite time of year. We love living in NC!