Halloween!

Tonight we got to go Trick or Treating!  I love halloween, and we got a ton of candy.

Babysitting Charlie

James loves his friend Charlie from church.  Today we helped out her parents by watching her this morning.  They played so well together!

School Halloween party

Tonight we joined our friends at the school for some classroom to classroom trick or treating.

Carving the pumpkins

Tonight was pumpkin carving time!  The big kids each got a pumpkin and chose the face they wanted to do and the grownups helped bring them to life.  James loves watching videos of turtles, his favorite is one of turtles eating pumpkins, so he spent the night pretending to eat the pumpkin tops and saying Turtles!  Yummy!  It was so cute.

Ward Halloween Party!

Tonight we had so much fun at the ward Halloween party!

http://s1232.photobucket.com/user/ShannonCarlson/media/2013/PA232836web_zpsbs4eqgaa.jpg.html

Karate at Activity days

This year for Activity days they are giving each of the girls a night to showcase their talent.  Ella wanted to share Karate with the girls, so we invited one of the teachers from our Karate school to come do a demo for the girls.  It went great!  Mr. Barret was wonderful with the girls and Elinor had such a great time being the assistant teacher.  The girls especially loved breaking the boards.

Halloween door

Today James and I helped the other room mom decorate Wesley's teacher's door for Halloween.  It turned out so cute!

Last day in Orange beach- with Dolphins!

Today was the last day of our mini-vacation.  Jon's meeting started at 9, so after getting up and packing almost everything up we loaded the car so we would have less to do this afternoon.  I planned on taking James to a nearby arcade to play games, but it turns out that it didn't open until 10 so we went back to the hotel and jumped in the pool to hang out for a while.  We were only in the pool for a little bit when Jon showed up!  His meeting today ended after only about 30min, instead of lasting until 12.  Since we had so much more time, we changed our plans and Jamie and I got out of the pool and walked down to the beach with Jon.  He hadn't had a chance to go yet, so we went on a little walk.  The ocean was very very still, almost no waves so we didn't stay a whole long time.  When we were done with our walk, we headed back to the room to change and pack up the last of our things.  ( I didn't bring my camera to the pool or beach so we don't have any pictures of that) We checked out of the hotel around 10:45 or so and went out to have some fun!  Since James got up so early, and was all tired out from swimming and the beach, we decided to give him some "quiet time" and take him to a movie so he could rest a bit.  He was so tired he fell asleep on the way to the movie theater!  I put him in the pouch and he stayed asleep while we grabbed some more Gelato. This time I got coconut and chocolate/hazelnut and Jon got salted caramel and Maple Bacon (yech).  After we ate, we headed over to the theater and got tickets for Hotel Transylvania 2.  James woke up just and we were sitting down to watch and he sat quietly for most of the movie.  It was a great rest time for him.  Especially important because we had a very busy afternoon planned.  After the movie, when we came out James saw the Ferris Wheel from Wednesday night and was so excited!  We watched it go around and then we let him take another ride.  He just loved going around and around.  After the wheel, we went to one of the restaurants and had a quick lunch before trying out the arcade.  If we had been alone, we could have tried out their lazer tag or bazooka ball, but with Jamie we just played a few games.  He loved the basket ball game the best.  After we ran out of quarters, we decided to head out for our last hurrah.  I had booked us seats on a dolphin watching boat tour at 4pm.  We got there a bit early to register.  I stopped at the tikki bar for a virgin pinacolada. and we got our seats and waited to get going.  James was acting pretty grumpy about sitting around but he really liked it once we got going.  After about 30 mins of driving around we found a small pod of dolphins.  They weren't doing much, just hanging around, but another boat showed up and our two boats zoomed off together and created an awesome wake wave for the dolphins to surf.  We got to see them do a few jumps, but it wasn't until a bit later, when we found a different pod of dolphins and another boat to help that we got a really good show.  The dolphins loved surfing the wake wave and we trolled up and down for 3 or 4 passes taking them on a ride.  James just LOVED watching them jump.  Jon said he was just laughing, squeeling and clapping every time they jumped.  After our "show" we took a nice ride back to the dock.  By the time we disembarked, it was just after 6 and time for us to head home.  James watched a movie or 2 and then fell asleep for the rest of the trip.  We got home around 1 and it was good to be home.  It was such a fun vacation!