Eakright Family Annual Camping Trip

wyatt, claire and eli standing by our site number sign. this is the picture that has to be taken whenever we go camping. we started it with wyatt when he stood by the site sign on the first camping trip! this was claire and eli's first camping experience!

we had such a great time camping!! the weather was PERFECT and the kiddos did great! all 3 of them just LOVED being outside so much...i think that we all did! we didn't go hiking like we did the last time, but we did get to go canoeing! unfortunately the canoeing didn't last long since it was close to nap time...meltdowns were starting to set in. enjoy some of the memories of our weekend! :)

jason cooking breakfast our first morning.

matt cooking bacon.

vati/grandpa and the kids playing and picking up acorns. the acorns will be one of the things that we will remember about this trip...our site was full of chestnut oak trees and they were dropping all around us the entire weekend. it made things funny, exciting and a little scary. matt got hit on the head, mutti on the leg, and vati and mutti's car and our car each received a dent. (there may have been other casualties, but those are the only ones i can remember.) if there was ever a slight breeze everyone would take cover! thankfully they didn't fall too to much at night because they were loud when they hit the tents!! :)

claire collecting acorns!

a view of our site at breakfast time...every one's hungry!

wyatt loves finding big sticks. he probably loved it even more that lucy (our sweet and funny black lab) wasn't around to steal them from him like she does at home.

"look mama, more acorns!"

surprise, surprise!

mutti/grandma and eli resting comfortably in the wonderful shade of the acorn dropping chestnut trees!

claire napping. does she look comfortable or what! :)

peeking through the tent window at the sleeping beauty!

wyatt looks pretty comfortable too! i wish i would have taken a nap!

when claire and wyatt weren't collecting acorns, they were peeling the bark off of the pine trees!

cooking breakfast the second morning. it was pretty chilly, but it warmed up fairly quickly.

my sis, my mutti and me! :)

the gwinns! :)

the eakrights! :)

awww!!

;

the renfrows!!! :)

new bike and trailer!!

first time in the trailer!!

the kids and i carpooled with my sis and eli to their house for the rest of the week. we are excited to get to spend some time with them at their house and explore the state park that they live in with my new bike and bike trailer!! it's my birthday present that i have finally...barely...had time to purchase–that's a whole other story!!

eli, claire and wyatt watching a "show".

we started today playing inside and watching a "show". we wanted to wait until jason got home from work before we went on our bike excursion in the park. we also went to a couple of stores because i still had to get wyatt a helmet.

ready to load up!!

every one's excited!!
(well, except eli...he's been on quite a few bike rides, so he knows what to expect!)

here we go!! :)

we had a fun ride, and my legs were burning when we got back!!! there are some hills in that park and i was pulling my weight plus about 60 more. if i can get into some sort of routine with this, maybe i can get into shape...we'll see!! the kids were a bit squished in the trailer. we had to come back sooner than we wanted because they started pushing and bonking heads a bit. so i may be getting a seat for the bike as well. it was really fun aside from that! ;) looking forward to riding again tomorrow!!!

two too cute in blue

even though i have no photo proof, my sis (ree) and nephew (eli) are here! they have come to visit us for a couple of days and then we are heading to their house for the rest of the week and then hopefully camping the coming up weekend!


this morning ree, the 3 kids and i went to church. i didn't purposely put them in blue, but when i noticed how cute they looked together (and how "eastery" for the end of september...oh well! that's what happens when it's still near 90 degrees!!!), i felt i should take their picture. claire does actually have her easter dress on–that her nana made her!! (love it!)

phone talker

depending on his mood, wyatt enjoys talking on the phone. matt left today for a canada hunting trip with his dad. he called around bedtime in order to get to talk with the kids before they went to bed, in hopes that wyatt would be in a phone talking mood!! thankfully i had talked the phone call up and he was ready and excited to get the call. he looks so grownie talking on the phone!!

our cuties

just thought that they both looked so cute in this picture! :)

claire (20 months old)

horsie mama

horsin' around with my munchkins!
(for the record, claire was smiling,
she and wyatt bonked heads just before this was taken!)

mutti's pre-birthday celebration

happy birthday mutti!! we were so glad that we were all around to be able to get together for your birthday! hope that you have a great day tomorrow, on the actual day! we love you!!! :)

mutti getting ready to blow out the candle on her delicious
molasses cookie with ice cream!

"fort crib"
while we were visiting, all 3 kiddos needed to take naps. since eli had been here a night already, the pack-n-play was spoken for. we didn't bring one, ours doesn't work very well, so we had to compromise...we made her a pillow surrounded area covered by a sheet on the floor...believe it or not, it worked!! she didn't climb out! :) it took her a bit of whining to finally relax and lay down in it, but she did and took a decent nap too! good girl.

"fort toy box"
eli in the most popular fort of their grandparents house! they all like to get in this thing. this one also requires some supervision when they have first mastered the entry...the exit takes a little more practice (a smooth one anyway), which is why his pretty mommy is on stand-by! :)

yellow "monstert" hands!

claire and wyatt found nana's cleaning gloves!!

today the kids and i arrived at matt's parent's (papa and nana) to visit for about a week. we wanted to do this last summer, during judy's (nana) summer break, but last year was busy enough as it was with fun things like a wedding (john and ash) and a baby (eli)! this year had ended up being much busier than we had thought it would be, but we were still able to make this work! yay! thanks so much for having us!!

watch out for the yellow "monstert" hands!!

Happy Birthday Matt!

happy birthday hubs!! i love you so much! i hope that you had a nice relaxing birthday...the kind you like. (no tricks from me this year! ;) )

Thomas the Tank Engine

wyatt and claire were able to see one of their (mainly wyatt's) favorite characters at the delaware state fair.

demolition derby

we made a third trip to delaware this year!! the purpose of this visit: matt scouting out a possible business venture: a chicken farm; experiencing first hand the life on a chicken farm, by working with his uncle and cousin on their's. too bad i don't have any pictures of that, he was gone before i woke up those mornings! ;)
it was a great visit to delaware, as always! thanks so much or having us again grannie and pop pop!! this time of year is always fun because this is when they have their state fair! we really love the delaware state fair. it's focused more on agriculture and there's room to walk...freely (unlike the nc state fair!!). the main event that we always try to go to is the demolition derby! the very first time i went (6 or 7 years ago), i was very skeptical, but now i holler with the rest of them! i had to get a video of it to share with everyone, and especially anyone who has never been to one. it's definitely hard to capture the atmosphere in this video and the cars look much slower than they seem when you are watching them in person...but hopefully you'll get the idea!! enjoy!

my birthday

do they look like they are having fun or what!? :)

today was my birthday, and it was a sweet relaxing day with the family! just a few pictures to remember the day. :) fun times.

 

 

 

 

my birthday...matt's favorite kind of cake...guess we know who was baking...food lion!! hehe! maybe that explains the expression on my face?? ;)

 

me with my favorite peeps! :)

just a fly

i just thought that claire looked super cute today...i actually got her hair to look nice...in my opinion anyway! :) while i was taking these pictures, this fly kept buzzing around us. normally, i don't think a fly would really bother claire, but i guess the louder buzz noise it made when it hit against the back door made her a bit uneasy. in the little video, notice how the fly keeps getting her attention...it's subtle until the end.

ah, home!

we have had two very fun weeks, but we missed daddy this last week and are so glad to be home in our own beds again! :)

Indiana!

while we were at the beach, i did all our laundry before we left. we got home from the beach saturday early evening, unpacked matt's stuff, then the kids and i headed out sunday morning around 4am to meet my parents, andrea and eli at andrea's house near statesville...we arrived at my cousin michelle's house at 10:15pm that night....long day!! we were exhausted when we got there, but we still stayed up talking for awhile, after we got the kids settled of course.

my slackness in photo taking shines brightly in these random photos i have from the trip, but i still wanted to post the memories!

we visited my grandpa and grandma (mutti's parents) while we were there.

claire and her great grandma nichter

mutt's favorite animal, she told me i needed to get a picture of them...i remembered!!

during our visit we visited the zoo. i remember this zoo from when i was really little. do preschools take field trips? either way, different places triggered old memories here, like the ponys, i remember riding them when i was little...well, probably not the exact same ponys!

eli, the animal lover, said if he saw one more animal he was gonna...zzzzz...
so sweet.

wyatt seems to like zebras and giraffes right now.

our own monkey!

ready to head back to michelle's after a fun day at the zoo.

on the way back, we were hoping the kids would take a nap (it was a little less than a hour drive)...it took a while because claire kept interupting our serenade to get eli to go to sleep. it's almost as if she knew we had hoped it would work on her as well! you can hear her protest as soon as we start singing. the other funny thing about this video, is that i thought i had claire on the video, but i have michelle the whole time, you can hear claire, but you just see michelle giggling!! :)

(...i just realized another funny thing...toward the end of the video, you can hear wyatt saying "cheese" a few times!! because he can see that i have the camera pointing back there!! little ones are too cute and funny!!)

a relaxing morning at michelle's...i think this may have been the only relaxing morning there! otherwise we were always trying to get ready to go somewhere. michelle was so sweet to let us stay with her, and she helped us so much with the kids. thanks michelle!

claire passing the time on the trip to the lake.

this particular day we headed to the lake with michelle, my cousin angie and her two kiddos gracie and austin. we always hear stories about them going to the lake, and were always sad that we never got to do that sort of thing with them, so we are getting to go with them!!!

two lil cuties! (well, ree is too, but she's not quite as small!)

wyatt and austin...playing with something...?

me, claire, eli, ree and gracie. i apparently thought i wasn't going to make it all the way into the picture...
...i was wrong.