Busy times

So, it has been a busy week and it seems like time just flies by. Last weekend Kyle and I had our first youth group outing. We are being scouted to be the leaders of the 4th, 5th and 6th grade youth group at church. Before we agreed to anything we wanted to spend some time with them to see what it was like. We were very hesitant to agree to such an undertaking, wondering if we were actually right for the job. After much discussion and prayer, we decided to give it a shot.

What started out as us tagging along on an outing turned in to us actually chaperoning the entire thing due to the Christian Ed. Director being called to Texas to help with Hurricane Ike relief - but we survived and so did the kids. We all went to Bounce Party, which is a huge warehouse type building full of giant inflatable toys to climb and slide and bounce on.

We had a blast and I think the kids did too. My poor husband found at that he is too old to partake in such activities, he was unable to sit or walk for a couple of days until Dr. Jason was able to fix him.

We brought Brayden with us and he had a lot of fun playing and the other kids were great with him, which helped us decide that maybe this is the right thing to do right now.

This is me jousting against one of the kids - I won and didn't even cheat!

This is one of the pieces there, you crawled in through the yellow hole and it was an obstacle course/maze inside. Very easy for the smaller kids, very difficult for the adults. I have a bunch of pictures that show the place better, but they include the other kids and I don't want to post their pictures without permission, so just picture this thing times about 10 others like it, but with other activities.

Another thing that was much easier for the kids were these stinkin rock wall things. The just collapsed under our weight, but the kids thought it was very amusing that I couldn't climb it. (I did finally make it by cheating and taking off my socks so I could have some traction. I sure wasn't going to let the kids show me up on our first event together, they will have plenty of time for that!)

One of the girls took this video of Kyle and Brayden bouncing. Isn't he just the cutest thing!

Then last week Wednesday I took a much needed day off from work and Brayden and I went to my Mom and Dad's house to make applesauce. Since I had no idea what I was doing, Mom and Grandma were there to help. And thankfully they were because it is a lot of work to peel and cut all those apples.

Of course we had the biggest helper in the world helping us cut apples. I seriously think he could eat them faster than we could cut them.

In all we ended up with 14 jars and 5 zip-lock bags worth of applesauce (we ran out of matching jars and lids). I kept a couple of apples out because I wanted to try my Betty Crocker hand at some apple dumplings. Well... those didn't turn out nearly as good as the applesauce, and I am sure it was because Mom wasn't around. I guess there are some things you will never be able to do without your mom and I think baking is one of those things for me. And if you ask her, I am sure she has much more she could add to the list.

This past weekend, we took Brayden to Klackle's Orchard in Greenville. They had a bunch of activities set up for the kids along with wagons that pulled wagons out into the orchard so you could pick your own apples.

It was an absolutely beautiful day and we all had a great time. Brayden loved the apples, I think he ate five that day. At least he got in his servings of fruit, I guess. The place was packed and Brayden got tired so we didn't get to do everything that we wanted, but I don't think he really cared by that time.

Sorry for such a long post, but I wanted to include everything that we have been up to.