A little bit of family fun

 A week ago we took a trip to Silver Lake.  It was stormy on the way up, but great for us while we were at the lake.  It was a beautiful venue for walking and enjoying time together, plus great places for little kids to explore and enjoy nature.  Added bonus......

 MOOSE SIGHTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Seriously, I could not have asked for anything better.  I, Diedre, was hoping to see a moose.  And it worked.  A little too well.  We were walking along the path, came around a corner and Caleb wide eyed and excited comes up to us saying there is a moose eating leaves not far away.  Sure enough, there was a bull and cow moose eating leaves not very far.  In fact, several people were mere feet away from this beautiful, powerful animal taking it's picture.  In fact, my boy was one of those (unknowingly) who got really close.  My boy, name will go unmentioned, was walking down a path and I stopped him a scant few feet from walking head long into a bull moose.  That got my heart racing!  But it was amazing to watch them, at such a close range, and to see them with my kids.  We watched them eat and then at the end of the night they crossed the path right by us and went on their way to a new patch of vegetation.  It was AWESOME!

 We had packed a picnic for the trip and, as I mentioned, I was hoping to see moose.  So, our dessert was moose brownies.  Brownies cut in the shape of a moose head with white frosting antlers!  Kids loved them.  Haley claimed at the end of dinner that she was full of moose (she did eat 4 of them).  Great times!

 So good that we came home and the next day Haley set out on  a little project during school time to make he own Silver lake.  Materials included felt, buttons, glue and sprigs of pine tree.  She is very a very cool girl.

 Fast forward a week to last night and our Gray Family Mini-Carnival.  The kids wanted to know why it was just our family, I told them I did not have enough supplies for a neighborhood carnival.  Small and simple but fun, that was our goal.

 We has the cup knock down game, which included water is some cups.  A fun one.

 We filled some water balloons up and had an "Egg" and spoon race with them.  Good fun times.  Other games included tossing beanbags at buckets to get points for getting them in.  Shooting balloons with darts (which was a nerf gun loaded with a toothpick taped on the end of each nerf dart).  They liked that "carnival" game.

 And their favorite was eating a donut off the string.  Slightly out of reach to make it fun.  Peter got a reeses peanut butter cup because he is anti-mini donut.

There was laughing and fun and running and lego carnival prizes afterward.  It was a success!