Scenes from Christmas Eve

Disclaimer: Many of these pictures are blurry, because the kids were moving so much!  

On Christmas Eve we went to my moms house to spend the evening with my mom, Art, Ethan, Bryan and Jaime (Ethan's dad and step mom).  Ethan's only here for a couple weeks, over his christmas break so it was great to be able to open gifts with him and let the kids play together.  

We decided to open gifts first, and let the kids play together while we socialized and snacked after presents.  

As you can see from these two photo's, once the gifts were open, the kids were wide open.  

You can see David holding Joshua in the background.  He slept almost the entire, with the only exception being a 15 or 20 minute snack.  

David got a copy of Jurassic Park on Blu Ray, I got a very nice necklace and earring set.  The kids got all kinds of goodies.  Riley got a band in a box, which I'm sure you can imagine how much she loves.  Hannah received some very nice roller skates.  The whole family ventured out to the skating rink this past Saturday.  I'll talk about that in another post.    

A pretty good family photo.  Only missing 3 Bergers in California.  

Both girls were asleep within minutes of leaving Grandma's house.  

Hubbs Corn Maze

I've had these pictures for quite some time.  However, I was waiting for the pictures at the end of this post, before I completed the post.  

So this was about two weeks before Halloween.  We took the girls out to Hubbs Corn Maze.  

That's Hannah, mid jump, over the red stripe.  

You may remember that we took the girls to a corn maze last year, Konow Farms in Illinois.  The girls loved it.  Hannah had a blast navigating the maze with David.  

There's Riley and David.  Riley wanted to jump, of course but she she's so small she had to have help.  Hannah's off to the left.  

Grandma and Grandpa Fox joined us for the maze.  There's Hannah in front, taking the lead.  

Riley wanted to participate, naturally.  The ground was pretty bumpy, which made for lots of stumbling.  

Having a mid maze snack.  

The maze was split into two sections.  After the first section, I took Riley out to let her play on some of the stuff set up for kids, like this dirt and tire mound.  

After Hannah successfully got David and Grandma Fox through the second part of the maze, Hannah and Riley went for a ride together.  

After having a picnic in the parking lot, we decided to go back through the maze.  We didn't make it very far, though, because we had one tired girl.  And two girls that we had to get home.  

These are the pictures I had to wait for.  It's because I had to brag on myself and Becca.  ; )

We went back through the corn maze at night, like a week later.  David and Ryan decided that Becca and I should navigate, while they follow along, only offering advice when necessary.  

We decided that Rebecca would lead while I used the map and told Becca the way to go.  I did use a pen to help me keep track of where I was.  I think Ryan and David offered assistance 3 times, maybe 4.  

At the end of the event, David and Ryan complimented Rebecca and I on how well we navigated the maze.  And I must admit, I was proud of myself!

And now you understand why I had to have these pictures before I completed this post!

The Ale House Cornhole Tournament

I'm doing a little bit of catch up, from October 16th.  This is a cornhole tournament to benefit the wounded warriors program.  I fully support David's cornhole endeavor's, because he does pretty good in them.  He's placed in the top 3 in every tournament he's played in.  Plus, they're fun for all of us!  

Here's all the boards set up in the parking lot before the start of the tournament.  

Our crowd.  At times the entire table was full.  We had friends coming and going throughout the 8 hours we were there.  

Round 1

Analyzing the competition

Riley received LOTS of attention

A little in between, just for fun action

Riley did this most of the day

More analyzing, this time over Redskins/Panthers game tickets

The bearer of good news.  This guy relayed to Bill and Amy that they had won the silent auction for the Redskins football tickets.  The Nam Knights chipped in to help make this happen.  What made it extra special was that Bill was set to deploy in two weeks.  The game was the following weekend.  He took his teen-age son, and I'm told they had a fantastic time.  

Bill running around with little Hannah

Bill running around with big Hannah

Our only complaint were the boards used in the tournament were not American Cornhole Association regulations.  The thickness of the boards used were much thinner than regulation, causing the boards to bow and the bags to bounce off of them.  The boards were made by Creekside Cornhole.  Not only were their boards thinner than regulation but they had their own team in the tournament.  Now first prize got a custom set of Creekside boards.  It just didn't seem right that the people co hosting the tournament were also playing, taking out other teams.  Most of the teams were unhappy with both of these issues and I'm told that first placed actually turned down the boards.  Having said that, we still had a great time.  The Ale House was a great host, though not as good as the Southern Pines VFW, I"m told.  I guess the beer was super cheap there!  David and Jason, his partner, placed 3rd.