Fall Break

We've been on fall break since Friday, and I've realized that since I can't rely on Luke's schedule to help me keep my days straight, I've become very dependent on Patrick's. I feel like I've had five Sundays in a row now. It's back to school tomorrow, but we've all had a good vacation.

Patrick went camping with Ma and Pa on Friday morning, so we had some "just Ben" time over the beautiful weekend. Saturday we went to Mary Kate's birthday party, which was great, except now that it's over, it means I have to start thinking about Ben's. And I hate planning birthday parties. On Sunday, we took the plunge and finally went out and bought a seat for Ben to go on Luke's bike. We've been putting this off for a while now...probably because we really need two seats because Patrick is learning to ride, but he's not really fast enough to ride with the family. And two seats is kind of an investment...besides that, it's not really one I want to make...I'd rather Patrick just keep learning to keep up. Maybe it'll happen faster than I expect. And if not, we'll just ride and make him run alongside us. He'll turn out just fine. I'm sure of it. It builds character.

Anyway, for this weekend, the one seat was great and Ben had a blast. We rode all over downtown and stopped at the park for him to "PLAY!"

On Monday we headed to Tennessee to spend the day with the campers before fetching Patrick to bring him home. It was a fun campsite for the kids, right on the Hiawassee River, which is wide and shallow...this area of it in particular, so the boys could wade almost all the way across.

The water was chilly, but the air was warm, so they spent hours collecting river rocks and looking for crawfish while we skipped rocks until our arms fell off. They were perfect for skipping. My best few were six or seven skips, but Luke had some that were too many to count--probably about fourteen or so. He's really good at that. So we were all having fun until eventually this big guy came and chased us out of the water.

Another kid that was with us practically stepped on him out in the middle of the river, and I guess the only thing that saved him from a trip to the ER was that the snake had a mouthful of fish. I read when I got back home that copperheads are pretty testy and will strike quickly, but they won't inject a lot of poison in defense. Sometimes they won't even bite...they'll just lunge at you. This one was pretty irritated that we were interrupting his meal, but he didn't make any moves. Eventually he just dropped the fish and swam away glaring at us...literally.

The fam...we don't all get in a picture together too often, but I thought this one was a good shot. So our week kinda starts back up tomorrow...hope you all have a great rest of the week!