Carowinds Winterfest

So Carowinds has a Winterfest now.  You don't get to ride all the rides, but we figured it was a cheap way to see some Christmas lights and see Santa.  However, it turned out really awesome and the kids had a lot of fun.  Hopefully we can squeeze in another visit or two before it ends for the year.

On the way to see Santa, we ran into some characters.  It is always good to see how excited Carter gets about some of these things rather than being afraid of them.

Meeting Santa!!!

  Two kids smiling, sitting on Santa's lap!  Not too bad!

After seeing Santa, we got to go see a live musical show staring the Peanuts characters.

The kids were mesmerized (along with the adults in the background)

 We met a polar bear!  Carter kept trying to talk to the blowup Santa, telling him that he was happy.  I don't know why he says "I'm happy!" instead of "I am being good", but we will take it.

 The lights were pretty impressive as well.

We got to do some rides as well!

November Catchup

What did we do in November?  Good question.

We went to the grocery store!

 We went to dance class and Laura took the kids out to eat on Tuesdays!

We got Christmas portraits taken!  (Look for cards in the mail.  Not soon, but probably before Christmas.  They are sitting on our counter, so we must be going for a  pickup option rather than us mail them to you option)

 The kids watched TV together!

 They pretended to be superheros!

 We went to Vass for Thanksgiving!

 Carter made a new buddy!

 Jude and Stephanie came to a football game with us!

 Avery gave me all her red M&M's!

 We cheered on the Wolfpack!

 We closed another successful football season with all of our friends by beating that blue team!  (Uncle David had to work, but Papa tried his best to fill in in the "spoil Avery" department)

 We got our Christmas Tree decorated!  (He was much, much higher; but I wasn't comfortable taking a picture until he climbed down to a lower level)

Other Fall Stuff

A few more October pictures to catch up on...

We took advantage of not having too many football games at home in October to do some fun stuff with the kids and some fun stuff as adults.  First up was a few trips to Carowinds

Carter now has his own pass!  Not that it means anything as it was still free, but he was pretty excited about it now that he is big enough to do a bunch of the rides.  On this trip Laura was at the beach with her friends, so it was just me taking both of the kids.

 We did have fun even if Avery didn't get to do all of her big kid rides.

 3 thumbs up for the scrambler!

 Avery and I also got to go to the first Hornets game.  As you can see from the pictures, our seats were not great, but Avery loved it.  I tried to convince her to sneak down to the lower level, but she wouldn't go for it.

 She got so excited when they scored 100 points in the game.  It was a really good game that the Hornets were down ~15 and came back to win by ~15 points.  She got to practice math figuring out during the comeback how much we were behind, then how much we were ahead.

We may have gone to Carowinds at least one more time...  Carter has so much fun now that he gets to ride the roller coasters and rides with Avery.

They both have a blast and I am glad we only live 15 minutes away.

We may have also gone to Cancun without the kids, so thanks to my parents for watching the kids!

Halloween

Sorry, for the lack of updates.  We had the hard drive that we store all our pictures on go bad (Thankfully, I had purchased a backup machine to save everything.)

Carter had a couple of choices for his costume.  He tried on his sister's minion outfit for fun and also a dragon costume that Gigi got for him.

He ultimately decided on being Elmo along with Avery repeating her performance as a Minion from last year.  The kids ended up having a blast running around the neighborhood and collecting at least 3 gallons worth of candy.  I am not sure if that is the proper measurement, but let's go with it.

 "Strike a pose"  I think this is Avery's go to sassy pose.

We met our neighbor Max very shortly after we started.

 We had to remind Carter about the concept of trick or treating with some starter candy, but it didn't take him long to pick the concept up.  Later on in the week he asked if we could go trick or treating again.

Football Season (so far)

Sorry for the lack of posts, but I think this upcoming weekend will be the last of a 15 out of 17 weekends on the road stretch dating back to early August including 2 trips out of the country (more to come).  The good news is that we have lots of pics to post.  

These are from the first few football games.  Avery of course has been reading "The Wolfpacker" magazines very closely and has our football schedule memorized.  She knows the names and dates of all of our opponents, so not bringing her to a game is not an option.

She even made the highlights show.  You can see her reading the plaque in front of the fountain.  We are off to the side (I promise) waiting to go back to the tailgate, but our little girl loves her Wolfpack.

We even decided to take Carter to a game.  I am not sure if he was quite as stoked as Avery was for her first game (go back and take a look at these pics), but he had a great time.

Still working on the Wolfpack hand sign.

 Family at the game!

Carter loved the fireworks, the flyover, and the players running out of the tunnel; but spent most of the second half being a crazy little boy.  Climbing the seats, using a pom-pom to sweep, etc.

They did enjoy going down lower at the end of the game and a closer view.  Yes, Carter did try to climb over the wall and get onto the field, but we didn't get a picture.  

Avery of course has been to a few more games and always loves getting pictures with the cheerleaders.  However, when you ask; she would rather be in the band than a cheerleader.

 
 Meeting the players and Mr. Wuf!

Of course, being spoiled by Uncle David with funnel cakes.