Indiana Reece and the Temple of Doom

It seems that Reece has transitional phases like that of the moon or maybe more like the coming of Haley's comet. He will be sooo obsessed with a certain toy( ex: star wars or Transformers) then he won't touch the toy for months, while a different favorite takes it's place. Only to have the comet return months later and those toys are again dug out from under the bed or off shelves. As you can see, we are in the Indiana Jones phase. Yes, I know, his birthday was actually 3 months ago, we're top notch parents.

Rick and I paired off to both create a cool game for the kids. Mine was the Tunnel of Doom, made from 4 giant refrigerator boxes, snakes, a strobe light, and a brown spray painted styrofoam cooler filled with spiders, candy and gold.

The line awaiting certain doom, but apparently doom =boredom in Adeline's world and excitement for Jake

Rick's game was a little more complex. Actually he spent the better part of a day, rigging, building, and using physics to create Indiana's dangerous route back out of the temple holding the golden idol, while being chased by the giant boulder. The boulder was a 60 inch beach ball spray painted black and red and the idol was a glass head from Pier One Imports. The line for the adventure begins

Indiana Emma wearing the hat, jumps over the fences with poisoned tips, grabs, the idol and makes it back before the ball knocks her down or the bag of "rocks" came down a zip line to take her down sideways.

The temple of Akator and the cake of doom, complete with crushed

Skor toffee bits for rocks, don't bite into a snake

Happy Birthday Reece, next year just realize, you'll be lucky if we even buy you a balloon, let alone recreate a jungle in our backyard. But, you are soo worth it, little guy. Anything for my only son and sweet boy

Gobble Gobble

Girl Scouts is still having fun and have flown up from brownies to Juniors. Therefore, as Junior scouts we can start some advanced fun, like using floral wire to create these fabulous topiaries. Haley threw down the gauntlet when she came up with the T-Rex in the front topiary, so not to be outdone, the girls created rabbits, stars and jellyfish.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I had to spend countless hours surfing the Internet coming up with cute turkey snacks and found this. That's a chocolate covered cherry as his body. Yum-o

Adeline's preschool has a Thanksgiving Feast every year, where they come dressed as Indians, pilgrims and this year Mac & Cheese. I guess that's something brought to the 1st Thanksgiving feast by the very 1st redneck pilgrim. The kids place mats had a hand print in a turkey shape and what they were thankful for. Adeline was thankful for her mom and dad, while one little girl was thankful for Brandon in their class. I guess cute boys trump mom and dad.

This is the 1 yr old class and on their shirts they had Indian names painted like " Princess eats no corn" and " Chief Running Water" we later found out that boy washes his hands continuously thru the day.

The following day at NB Cook, since Wednesday was the day the cafeteria served turkey and mashed potatoes, why not have their Thanksgiving Feast that day too. Here are Reece's team teachers Miss. Harrington(the Indian) and Mrs. Cebula(pilgrim) with Imperial Eagle Reece, yes I had to cut alllll those strips on his shirt and hand bead the sleeves and bottom myself.

Who loves their big brother to pieces and who is tolerating the Bear Hug by his little sister?

Reece's best friend Jake is in a different kindergarten class at NB Cook, but they still managed to both have Eagle Indian names. Here are Bald Eagle and Imperial Eagle

Haunting Halloween 2010

Alright Rick and I needed to recreate a facebook picture that someone had taken last year, only picture the skirt non-existent and the girl much younger and not a mother of three. OK, so can you tell who we are? Hansel and Gretal, only there's no trail of breadcrumbs and no gingerbread house

Reece was sooo excited for his costume of Robin to come in the mail from ebay, only it arrived 3 weeks later from Bangkok and came equipped with puffy muscles. He took one look at it and said " Just put it in my closet." I forced him into it 5 minutes before this picture. Once Adeline's Jasmine costume came from ebay, Emma had to find one in her size cause it was just too pretty to pass up.

Wear your costume to school day, parade down the hall for the church staff to see, then knock door to door to the preschool classes and get candy- yippee- notice the pretty Jasmine shoes that were on for school, but off when we actually trick or treated. She hid them in her drawer and we didn't figure out she was ONLY wearing socks, until 10 minutes away from the house

Half way through with candy getting, and the Parrish's poop out in someones front yard to dig in their treat bags

Post Halloween craziness and Emma has already dumped her bag, formed a circle around herself and sorted her candy into piles.

Gillification October 2010

Rick and Chad have been friends for 17 years now, since becoming roommates their sophomore year at Virginia Military Institute. Even though he lives in Richmond with his wife Ginny, and 4 Gillets, we haven't let distance affect our friendship. We went to Disney with them 2 years ago and have managed to see them at least once a year since college. Here is the Parrish-Gill clan on Halloween with all pieces of their costume on, I won't be able to say this in about 3 houses, when Barrett lost the mask, Cooper didn't feel like the Disco hat and we figured out that Adeline never left the house with shoes, just Cinderella socks.

We took the Gills out on Sea Monkey( our pontoon boat) both sunny days they were there and let the Dads take the kids on a simulated Indiana Jones adventure, here are the kids ready to enter the temple of doom

7:00am morning number two, all the girls are cozied up watching Scooby

Taking the Gills to the Sand Dune, yea the rope swing has been cut down now too many times to count, but the kids still request this place every time we go out on the water. While the Dad's tried to build a fire, cook hot dogs and play frisbee, Ginny and I made sure the boat cushions didn't get too much sun and that the BudLight Lime's stayed cold

Awwww Dad's and little ones,

Reece, Parker, Cooper and Adeline at Flounder's

Flounders is a local restaurant on the water that has a huge outside seating area and playground and is a must visit when having guests. We sat in the open air part of the restaurant that had remove able walls for the warm weather months. But, it still had a glass door that looked odd, when there were no walls next to it. We kept teasing about other people's kids who kept using the door, when our kids just ran out the open spaces like any normal human. Then right after dinner, Adeline started using the door, which made me question her gene pool, then I realized I am her parent and it all made sense.

You can't come to Pensacola and not get Bushwhacked- I think Ginny approved