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.

Catching up

Due to popular demand, everyone wants to see pictures of the kids, not my Halo screenshots; weird.

Anyways, here are some different pictures from over the summer. We inherited a stray cat last spring that was a pretty good cat because it was borderline feral. It wanted nothing to do with us and that was fine with me.


Well one day Abby tried to take ride in the fan of my truck and didn't fare so well. The kids were devastated. Tanner missed a day and a half of school because he was pretty attached to Abby. So I found a free cat off of Craigslist and now we have Katie.


She's also a pretty good cat except that I think she's going to run away because she looks like an article of clothing on the floor in the middle of the night and frequently gets kicked and/or stepped on.


That and Avery thinks Katie is her baby and tries to feed her, put her to bed, spank her, etc.

Halo 3 is the debil

Some of the crazyiness I mention below has been alleviated by the arrival of The Greatest Game to Ever Grace this Planet - Halo 3. Dustin and I have spent many a late night into the morning wreaking havoc and destruction upon our enemies. We've become quite adept at the "Warthog", and typically bring fear into the other players hearts once we board our favorite weapon. Here's a screenshot of me driving and Dustin laying waste to all that oppose us...

Mid Fall Crisis?

Well I have once again reached the time of year what I think I'm going to go crazy and run away if I don't find some 1.) Mountains, 2.) Snow, 3.) Snowy Mountains, 4.) some crazy adventure. Training for a triathlon helped contain me through the summer, but when I wasn't able to compete in it, I stopped training and have been itching some other adventure.

A friend and I decided two weeks ago that were going to go camping somewhere that had some sort of mountains if it killed us. But we only had one day to go, and we wanted to keep it within 3.5 hours of Dallas. I searched all over the internet and finally found a place in Oklahoma called the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge. There are very few pictures of it anywhere, but we decided to give it a shot.

My friend is a pilot, so he's gone a couple days a week, home a couple days, etc. We set out very early on a Friday morning to make the drive up there. Considering we weren't really expecting to be there much longer than 36 hours, the amount of gear we brought was quite ridiculous; it filled the back of the truck, and I had to fold up one of the back seats to get the rest in.

We hadn't gone more than 10 miles before my friend started feeling cramps in his stomach. By about two hours in, he said we needed to stop and get some medicine because he wasn't feeling well at all. When we were about 20 miles from the mountains (more about the mountains later), he suddenly said, "Pull over now!" which everyone knows means throw-up time. After tossing a cookies for awhile he decided he was fine and we should continue on... he wasn't. To make a long story short, we got there, he was so dizzy and sick he could barely stand so I had to haul the enormous amount of gear from the truck to the campsite, and set everything up.

He was alternating between chills and fever so he decided to go lay down in the tent. I was able to set out and do a little of bit of hiking around and took a few pictures. The mountians were really incredible. Imagine the City of Rocks sitting in the middle of the Oklahoma plains and you get the picture. There are wild elk, bison, and tons of praire dogs. We're hoping to go back with the family in a couple of weeks if it doesn't get too cold. Here are a few pictures I was able to take.

I don't know what to say...

So after reading everyone else's blogs, I once again feel guilty about our lack of communication with the outside world. I have failed to find an easy method to update everyone, so I may try this again. Previously, I was having problems uploading pictures, so I went to the Flickr site. Then I found out the Flickr site only would take so many of my pictures. Then I paid for a membership on SmugMug, which I did because it has tools built in so that people could buy my pictures if they wanted. But it doesn't really allow for any type of blogging features... so anywho, I'll give this a try again and I should be able to link to my pictures from the other site.

More Muddin' pics

Okay, here are some small videos from us climbing in the Samurai the other night, as well as pictures of us all covered in poop mud after I discovered a sewage drain field.

Try it once again

Okay, I've tried a million different things to get pictures up and nothing seems to work very well, but I'll try again. Here are some pictures from the last week. I've got the Samurai #1 running good and we've been taking it to an abandoned golf course by our house. I found out that there are sink holes hidden throught the golf course and had to have another friend in his Samurai come pull me out.

Here's a neat map that shows all the states you've visited. Here's mine:



create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide