Giant City

We took our last camping trip of the year with the Trapp family to Giant City, IL. It is a really neat park with tons of hiking trails and rock outcroppings. The weather was fantastic- in the low 80's in the afternoons. The kids had a great time hiking and climbing all over the rocks. We also got in some yummy food both cooked over the campfire on Saturday and the next day with a fried chicken dinner at the lodge. Thanks to Nikki for the pictures since I forgot my camera!

Ready to hike one of the trails:

Elise

Climbing around on the rocks

Chloe- this girl loves to get dirty when we're camping. This picture is probably the cleanest she was all weekend.

Chloe and Sofie- 2 peas in a pod

Group picture: Noah, Sofia, Rylan, Elise, Emilie, Claire, and Chloe

The kids set up stand selling chunks of cedar that Eric and Wade cut up when getting firewood. They were evidently cute enough that a few campers actually came and bought some from them :-P

Ready for the hot lava cakes (brownies cooked in a pie iron over the campfire)

Preschool Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

Chloe's preschool took a trip to the pumpkin patch. Since Elise is in PM Kindergarten, she got to come along too. The girls had a great time- we went on a wagon ride, played in "Pumpkinland"- the big pumpkin-themed playground, and picked up a couple of pumpkins to carve at home.

This was a creepy looking horse, but the girls thought it was really neat!

Tractor tire swing

They climbed to the top of the pyramid of hay

Climbing up to one of the slides

Sitting on a pile of giant pumpkins

Cards game

Eric took Claire, Emilie, and Elise to the Cardinals game in September. He finally got the pictures to me, so I figured I would put them up on the blog :-) The girls had a great time with their dad:

Piano Lessons

Claire and Emilie wanted me to share what they've been learning in piano lessons. Emilie started lessons a month ago and Claire is in her 2nd year of private lessons. Please excuse my piano, it is desperately in need of being tuned!

Emilie's purple room

Now that I've finished training for my marathon, the girls are insisting its time to paint their bedrooms. So they went to Grandma Linda's house this Saturday and I painted Emilie's room. Her choice of paint color: purple. Hopefully I will get to Claire's in the next week or two. Her color choice is orange- should be interesting! Then Elise and Chloe want pink. Should be a colorful couple of weeks! So here is Emilie with her new purple bedroom. (I apologize for the picture quality. It was getting dark and my phone doesn't have a flash!)

Apple picking

Following our usual tradition, a few weeks ago we took the girls to Eckerts to pick apples. They want to do the same things each time: Pick apples first, buy and drink apple cider next, and then look around the store. They start asking every year in the summer when we're going to pick apples. We did it every year when I was growing up, so its fun to continue the tradition with them. And of course then we eat amazing amounts of apples for the next few weeks :-) Yum!

Pine Lakes

Earlier in October, we went camping with the Trapp family to Pine Lakes Campground in Illinois. We found this campground last year when we decided to go to Springfield and see the Abe Lincoln sites. We enjoyed our trip to Pine Lakes so much that we decided to go back there this year and then hit Hannibal, MO on our way home. They have a bunch of Halloween activities during the month of October. The kids love it:

First, they have a pumpkin patch. All the kids get to go and pick one when their number is called out:

Claire with her pumpkin

Emilie and Noah

All the girls back at our campsite with our silly face suckers :-)
Elise, Chloe, Sofia, Emilie, and Claire

We brought paint and other crafty things to decorate our pumpkins with:
From left: Sofia, Claire, Noah, Rylan, Elise, Emilie, Chloe

Later there was a costume contest. Emilie won her age group for her Hermione (from Harry Potter) costume:

Chloe opted to be a kitty cat again this year. Sofia's in the background with her frog costume

Claire in her Katie Bell (Harry Potter quidditch player) costume

Elise as Sleeping Beauty

After the costume contest was Camper trick or treating (the kids favorite part)

The whole gang: Claire, Noah, Elise, Sofia, Chloe, Rylan, and Emilie

In Hannibal, Emilie's getting in touch with her inner-Tom Sawyer

200 year old oak tree- it took all 7 of the kids holding hands to stretch around it

Inside Mark Twain Cave- the kids thought that was really neat:
Chloe, Emilie, Sofia, Elise, Claire, Noah, Rylan

Chloe panning for gold (and other rocks)

Emilie holding up her find

Claire's Choir field trip

Claire's church choir puts on a musical each spring. So they try to take a field trip together for team building and to learn something about their community service mission (which they try to tie into the theme of the musical). This year the musical is "We Like Sheep" based on the story of the Good Shepherd. And they are donating proceeds to Heifer International. So they went to a sheep/alpaca farm for a day. Claire had a great time and took tons of pictures to show us. Here are a few:

Self portrait on the bus. She loved riding the bus :-)

Who needs fancy souvenirs when you can bring home a bag of alpaca wool? She loves this.

Some of the alpacas. She took tons of pictures of them-LOL! Ugly, aren't they?!

Some of the choir kids checking out the animals.

Eureka Days

Every fall the city of Eureka puts on Eureka Days. They have a parade, rides, bands, contests, etc. over the course of the weekend. The girls got to march in the parade with their school. They had never been that up close and personal with a parade before and they thought it was pretty neat for a while. Then it was "How much further do we have to walk?... When is this over?) After the parade we walked around the booths and then went over to check out the rides. Unfortunately, it had rained a lot for a few days prior and the entire ride area was a soupy, muddy mess. Between the outrageous price of the rides and the fact that their new school tennis shoes were getting covered in mud, everyone quickly lost interest in Eureka Days and we decided to go out to lunch :-P Later that night as we were driving home from a friends' we got to see the fireworks show from the highway. It was really neat and long. So if we try it again next year, we may go for the evening part of the day. Anyway, here's a few pictures of the girls right before the parade:

Chloe and Elise wore banners showing the schools "character kids" traits. Chloe's said "I'm courageous"

Elise was "I'm Strong"

Getting their faces made up to show "Tiger Pride"

Gateway Cup

Anyone who knows Eric knows how much he loves anything to do with bicycles. One of his favorite things to do is go to the Gateway Cup to watch the races. He's hoping to ride next year, but for this year he took Claire to the race. She just got her first nice bicycle for her birthday this year and Eric's doing his best to promote anything bike related :-) She had a fun day out with her daddy!

Rend Lake

Also in August, we went on a camping trip with the Tokos family to Rend Lake. We had a great time swimming and took a pontoon boat out all day on Sunday. The kids really enjoyed riding around the lake.