Oscar Stew

Of our mountain adventure…

One last try at a fall picture. Oh sure, take Mommy & Daddy out of the picture and we get total cooperation. nice!

We only had a few minutes to snarf our carefully planned picnic. It was a free-for-all fend for yourself kind of deal.

I’m not sure what up with Drew’s sandwich. Maybe he was too afraid to beg the Condiment Nazi for tomatoes, mustard, or even another slice of bread.  In his defense, he had already eaten his turkey.

Brinley added extra protein to her meal with a little help from the woods. Crunchy!

The snake can swallow its prey whole. So can Brinley.

Looks like we got what we came for! I think?

We drove up to the mountains last weekend hoping to see the beautiful fall colors. We make the trip every year to the same sweet spots, and I won’t mention any names, but someone got us lost twice! TWICE!

The trip ended up being a total bust. We spent 3 hours in the car and a half hour in the mountains. By the time we got there the sun was setting and it was getting chilly. I have to give props to Ryan, he was man enough to pull over and ask some very nice firemen for directions. It didn’t help that during this whole adventure we made 645 stops to let the kids go potty; that’s no exaggeration. It was one of those trips when you wonder why you thought this was such a great idea in the first place. We even missed the timing of the leaves, they were more neon yellow/green than the nice deep orange/yellow/red. 

Every year we to try to take a family picture by balancing the camera on a mound of dirt. The kids think its funny to watch me run back and forth trying to beat the timer. The first few frames look like this, the camera slipping down the mount of dirt while I awkwardly try to throw myself into the picture. And look at my dirty jeans, all in the name of a good picture, right?

Brinley had a knack for looking away just as the picture was taken. And Ryan is 9 feet tall.

Nice canned smile I have there.

Drew’s got the picture takin’ thing down to a science, but he had to take a turn looking away.

Trying to keep the kids interested, but still can’t get everyone to look at the camera at the same time.

I think this is the closest we are going to get even though I look like I’m trying to make a quick get-a-way. Maybe I was?

This one would have been perfect, but it was Rowan’s turn for a meltdown. If only my photoshop skillz were up to par, I could do a headswap. Nah, I like the imperfections. It’s our life, and 10 years from now the “outtakes” will mean more than any perfectly posed picture.

I think we will be going back this weekend for another try. And this time Ryan will be taking a map!

Bike Boats Chapter 2: As we were leaving the park we came across an 8-year-old entrepreneur. He was selling crawdads for a dollar. The kids were curious so we dug deep in our pockets and came up with a whopping 38 cents. Drew was able to haggle with the kid and walked away with the biggest baddest crawdad that was for sale. Attaboy Drew, we’ve taught you well!

The kids were both terrified of the little creature. Drew finally worked up the courage to dump him out of the cup and watch him walk away.

After some pretty heavy coaxing Drew finally decided that he wasn’t too much of a threat and started using weeds to tease him. Drew named him Sebastian (think Little Mermaid) in an attempt to get Brinley to warm up to him, but Brinley wanted nothing to do with him.

 Drew even got brave enough to touch him! 

Ooooh, SCARY! Looks like this crawdad is about to open up a can of whoop- …you know the rest.

There goes our thirty-eight cent investment…