Who Needs a Campout?

For weeks now, Ali and Emma have been looking forward to last night. The big Father-Daughter camp out, organized by the Men's Ministry at church. They started to fret when Gustav did its thing, but we told them that even if the camp out was cancelled, Daddy would still set up the tents in the basement for then, roast hot dogs, marshmallows, etc . . . Well, Gustav was no longer pouring on us, but the ground was too mushy and the camp out had to be rescheduled.

Time to shift to plan B:

After many different phone calls, etc . . . plans were set: the Younces were all coming over over and staying the night. Jim and Aaron were going to do the "camp out" stuff with the big girls, while Jess and I took Meg, Julie and Maddux out for dinner and a Wal-Mart trip. Maddux and Meg would get to have a "camp out" in Meg's room.

Jess and I enjoyed our dinner out. We wandered around Wal-Mart for a while, looked at paint, bought some paint (more on that later), picked up a movie for the girls (The Little Mermaid 3 - a BIG hit!) then headed home. We walked into the kitchen to find a pitch black house, and screaming girls. We were apparently interrupting a game of "Monster hide and seek" - the Daddies being the monsters and the girls finding them using their flashlights. As you can imagine, that game was a huge success and has labeled Aaron and Jim as the coolest dads ever! They had also enjoyed some American Girl playtime, roasting hot dogs, and roasting marshmallows. When we got home it was movie time and then bedtime.

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Ready for the movie!

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Not a very good picture, but they thought it was awesome!

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Meg and Maddux enjoyed their tent and flashlights.

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Jim snapped this one after they fell asleep:

Yes, Maddux is sleeping with his arm underneath her. It reminded my of a bumper sticker that Amber recently shared with me: "Guns don't kill people, Daddy's with beautiful girls kill people." I love it!
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Now onto the grown up fun!

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I've had a bug in my head here lately that I want to paint my front door red and my shutters black - this started when I was actually looking for paint colors for Amber, but I hadn't done it yet. (There must be something about being with Jess that makes me want to do home improvements!) From Wal-Mart I called Aaron to see if I could buy the paint and if Jess and I could work on the door together. It was the perfect weather for it! Nice and cool, we could take the door off and paint it in the garage with out sweating ourselves out of the house - if anything we were too cold! It was awesome.

I have to say, I was shocked at how quickly it went and I'm really please with the results. We just used spray paint (3 1/2 cans) and it looks great (hopefully it holds up well - the good news is that our door is sheltered enough that it gets no sun, rain, etc . . . ) By 10:30 we had the door back on and we were all freezing cold! (Side note: Most of you are aware of the fact that I have Forest Green shutters - so yes . . . my house was looking rather Christmassy. As I type, my shutters are drying from their first coat of black paint, and pictures of the finished product are soon to come!)
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The fellas hanging the door
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The finished product

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During one of our painting breaks we enjoyed roasting our own marshmallows (over a fire that the guys enjoyed making out of pieces of our old headboard!)

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Jess, I knew you'd be sad if I didn't post this one! Yummy!

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We also enjoyed Pina Coladas once we were done painting (not exactly a good choice when you've just had your door off for a few hours on a chilly night - but they were sure yummy!)

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Bedtime for the grown ups was about midnight, and the kids had us up just before 7:00 . . . really that's not bad!

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And finally . . . cinnamon rolls, strawberries and bananas for breakfast!

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So yes . . . Gustav ruined our original plans . . . but we had a blast anyway!