Santa Claus

Our subdivision has a breakfast with Santa every year. Here are some pictures of the kids

Tanner and Avery were showing off their dancing skills so I decided to put it to some music.

Avery

Here are some pictures that Avery insisted I take of her tonight. She was doing her modeling poses.

I HATE COMPUTERS

Our computer's been acting up lately, freezing, randomly shutting off, and anything else that can annoy me. The only thing that saved me from throwing it out the window tonight was the fact that it was frozen on my desktop wallpaper. A picture is worth a thousand words so I say no more...

Bear Grylls I Am Not

So I decided to go out on a real hiking adventure where all you take with you is what you can carry on your back. A friend and I decided to do a 3 day hike up at the Ouachita National Forest in Oklahoma and Arkansas (its pronounced Wah shuh tah by the way). We extensively and meticulously planned for a couple of hours before we had everything loaded up and ready to go. Our first indication that we weren't ready should have been that our packs weighed slightly less than a Volkswagen. But both of us being Eagle Scouts figured its better to carry a couple extra pounds than be stuck in the woods without something.


Its about a 4 hour drive and when we reached the park, it was obvious we were the only ones that were crazy enough to hit the trail in the middle of December. Some bad weather was predicted (little did we know http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316271,00.html), but we figured we'd be alright, we packed plenty of hot chocolate and cold weather gear.


There was a Park Ranger who lived in his RV at the park (picture Cousin Eddie in Christmas Vacation) who was happy to give us maps and a good once over with his eyes. Suddenly trail names such as "Deliverance II", "Squeal Like a Pig", and "Even Burt Reynolds Thinks You're Crazy" started to worry us. He also gave us a warning I didn't expect, watch out for bears.


We started to get our packs on and once we did, we realized we needed to lighten the load a bit. The trail portion we were going to cover the first day had an elevation rise of over 1200 feet. That doesn't sound like much on paper but seeing the mountain in front of us, we had to re-evaluate our packing preparations. We ended up leaving about half our water because we figured we would cross some creeks along the way and I had a water purifier with me. I left some cloths behind because my water bottle leaked in my pack on the way up and soaked them, so that was an easy decision.


We started off about 1:30 in the afternoon and planned to get to our campout 8 miles away about 5 o'clock. About 500 yards from the car, I was finally brave enough to say that my legs were already on fire and my back was killing me. My friend, Jeremy, admittedthat he too was in excrutiating pain already. Suddenly our planned 8 mile first day was looking very far. By the way, it was around 75 degrees and the humidity had to be in the upper 60's. We were sweating like crazy and slowly making our way up the trail. After about an hour and a half, we were so exhausted and wore out we decided to take a break at the top of the hill. When we reached the top of the hill we were greeted with some disheartening information when we saw a sign that said "1 Mile". Plus, we had only climbed 300 feet in elevation and had over 900 to go in the next 2 miles. We were sweating so profusely that we had drank half of our water, but we still weren't worried about that because the map showed we would be crossing some streams.


Fast forward to about 5 o'clock. We were able to pick up the pace and make it about 5 miles, but it was getting dark and we were soaked in sweat, and it was starting to cool down. We quickly made camp, got a fire started and ate our dinner. By 5:45, it was pitch black so we sat around the fire for a few hours and then went to bed. We awoke at about midnight as the rain began pouring down. It would come in waves, slowly raining and then all of a sudden it would come down in massive sheets that were deafening in the tent. We tried to sleep but everytime we would fall asleep another wave would hit.


During one of the quiet moments, Jeremy and I both awoke to the distinct sound of something slowly walking toward us in the leaves outside our tent. We were both freaked out pretty good because we had been fairly careless with storing our food, or at least keeping it away from bears: it was right next to us in our tents. We whistled and clapped and made all sorts of noises but it was clear whatever it wasn't scared away, we could still hear it creaping around our tent. I finally decided to try and sleep because whatever it was, I wasn't going to peak my head out to see what it was so in my mind it was a furry little squirrel out looking for nuts, not a hungry bear looking for human blood or Cousin Eddie looking for human affection.


We both went to sleep finally only to be awaken by what was stalking us; the unmistakable sounds of wolves howling very close to our tent. Not only that but it was now 35 degrees and raining close to an inch an hour. Amazingly enough we were dry in the tent. Oh, and we were out of water. The decesion was unanimous to cut our losses and head home.


Here are a couple of pictures. Most of the pictures were ruined by the rain because the camera got wet.

Pictures from Camping Trip

Here are some pictures from our camping trip last weekend. We went to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. There are buffalo, elk, deer, bobcats, and lots and lots of prairie dogs that roam freely throughout the park. I really wanted to try and find some elk, and thanks to the watchful eye of Lesli, she spotted some out on the prairie early one morning so I was able to get some pictures. There will be more on my photo site, http://www.paulmoyes.smugmug.com later.
We hiked to the top of a mountain one morning and Avery was pretty proud of herself. She's the king of the world...
The trees were all changing so it was really pretty.

Tanner wan't to test out his "Survirorman" skills so we took a pretty long hike. I think I about killed him because we dropped down in this canyon and I almost had to pack him on my back on the way back to camp.
Here's a couple bull Rocky Mountain elk (living in Oklahoma) we spotted.






Avery was content to play in whatever dirtpile she could find the whole weekend.
We didn't get a chance to wash her face before this pick..

Catching up

It's been awhile since I posted, I've been pretty busy. We went on a family camping trip last week to Oklahoma for 3 days. I was a little worried about being that far from home for that long, but everything turned out real good. The weather was perfect, about 60 degrees and night and high 70's during the day. I'll try to get some pictures up as soon as possible. I've finally come to terms with my computer, and I think its time to upgrade. I've been fighting it all day long and I still can't get it to format the pictures so I can upload them to the photo site and then post them on here. I'll try to get some done by tomorrow.

Some Halloween pictures

Here are the pictures we have from Halloween. We went with some friends but we got very few pictures of the actual trick or treating because of the last picture. Avery was so excited that she took off running, tripped on her candy bag and bit the dust in the concrete. She took quite a bit of skin off her nose so she was pretty upset the rest of the night

Camping!

It finally cooled down enough to go do some camping with the kids. We went to Erwin Park in McKinney. Its only 10 miles or so from out house and even though you're still in the city, it at least feels like you've left. That night it got bitter cold, or at least cold for us. I bought a nice sleeping bag from REI a couple of months ago and I was all excited to try it out. I was afraid I would be the only one warm and the kids in their $9 Walmart bag would be freezing. Exact opposite. They slept all through the night and were completely warm, and here I am in my expensive sleeping bag freezing to death. Oh well... Here are some pictures.

Making breafass in the morning.



Daddy and Avery



Avery was extremely excited to get up and help me make sausage and eggs in the morning.



Avery waking up in her sleeping bag.



Tanner cooking smores



Avery cooking smores



Tanner's never met a camera we wouldn't pose for.



Avery and her sunglasses at 7:30 in the morning. By the way, if anyone knows where they are, please let Avery know because we've shed a lot of tears when they went missing.



Tanner and Avery playing Chubby Bunny

Tanner and Avery


Paul and Les

More Trunk or Treat Pictures

Here are some more pictures from tonight's Trunk or Treat

Trunk or Treat

Tonight was the ward Trunk or Treat. The wards out here are huge, they typically are lasting about 18 months before they have to split. Right now we are waiting for two new buildings to be built so they can split some more wards. Anyways, my point of that is that our ward combined with another ward for the trunk or treat and there were massive amounts of people there. Unless you rob a candy store or take out a home equity loan to buy some candy, you'll run out in about 5 minutes as the hoardes of princesses, ghost, goblins and Napolean Dynamites descend on your car. Avery for once wasn't a Disney princess, she was Tinker Bell.
Tanner was Shrek because that's what was left at Target on the way to the church. Every year I swear I'll get costumes before the last minute, as I'm buying costumes at the last minute.


I'll post more pictures later, and if I can figure out how to, a video of Tanner doing the robot in his Shrek costume

Enjoying a summer day at the ballpark

Here are some pictures I took of the kids this summer on a day where you didn't feel like you were getting cooked alive. Actually this summer was quite mild, way better than last year.

More pictures of the kids

Here are some pictures from a couple of Saturday's ago. Avery and I were attempting to make mom's cheesecake. I think I finally have it down.

Tanner wasn't too interested, he enjoys playing on the computer too much.