Tired of sick and sick of tired

Wow, thought Carter, this blog post is going to be cornier than usual!

The family took an outing to a pick your pumpkin patch at Red Wolf Farms a week ago, and Carter had fun running around in the pumpkins and powering through the corn maze. Not pictured: me. I probably looked pretty terrible because I survived on my morning coffee until 2 in the afternoon. By the time we got out of there and found somewhere to eat I was ravenous and had a headache.

This pic is from after our big Halloween party, which turned out to be a lot of fun. Carter was too scared to put on his Elmo costume, so he got to dress up as a horse during the party. Once everybody was gone, he got braver and lent me his horse hat.

Arden dressed up as a pumpkin for Halloween. Our longtime readers may remember Carter in this outfit 2 years ago. Just one of the benefits of having your kids' birthdays closer together than sardines in the can.

We've had so much going on! For Cierra's birthday, we took a jaunt down to the shore for a couple of days in Myrtle Beach, SC. There was a clinic on the NC side of the strand that Cierra had wanted to tour for a couple of years and finally set something up with the owner. What a great excuse to go to the beach! The locals pointed us to a great seafood restaurant off the beaten trail for our farewell lunch. Above, Carter contemplates his fork. He had the shrimp platter, and when the chef came out to ask him personally how his food was, he had this look of revulsion on his face. Seconds later, out came a partially chewed shrimp by way of an answer. The chef took it well, and we quickly figured out that it wasn't the shrimp but the cocktail sauce that caused the rejection.

Sibling bath after a sandy day at the beach!

We also took the time to make a quick visit to Wilmington, NC. We wandered through Airlie Gardens and took a look at one of the biggest oaks in the Carolinas. 500 years old and it's only about halfway through its expected life span. Kind of blows your mind.

The gardens were really beautiful. We never got to actually admire this fountain because Carter discovered a different path at this point and took off.

... And here he is on the beach. Carter is really good at throwing sand, playing with his own shadow, and wandering off. But if he had to pick one thing, it would be sandcastle destruction. Daddy's sandcastles, stranger's sandcastles... his leveling skills are only matched by the ocean itself.

Cierra's been a little stir crazy on the weekends lately. Here are some pictures of a different fall festival we went to at some point. I lose track.

Carter loved the hay bale maze. Kids were jumping from bale to bale and flying all around and through the chaos Carter strolled calmly, like a Western hero through a storm of bullets. Just out of frame... me chewing my fingernails off.

And referring to the title... yes, we've all been sick again. Cierra and the kids went through a horrible sore throat and runny nose sickness that we've started to recover from. So far I've been spared the full experience, but Arden did remove her finger from her mouth and jam it directly into my eye and eyelid, giving me instant pinkeye and a nice stye. It's been far from a pretty picture around here lately, so that's good reason to look back at the past few weeks and see us looking a little better.