Family BBQ

Wildman’s elementary school hosted a family BBQ a couple of weekends ago.  The PTO held a poster contest to advertise the event.  The photo above is the winning design.  It will be put on next year’s family BBQ t-shirts.

Fun contests and entertainment filled the afternoon from noon to 4 PM.  When we arrived we bought our tickets and headed to the food pavilion to have lunch!

After we had sufficiently stuffed ourselves with everything from hot dogs and pizza to cookies and watermelon, we decided to check out the raffle baskets and silent auction items.  Each grade collected money and put together a themed basket to raffle off.  Tickets were $1 apiece and you could put as many tickets as you wanted into the drawing for the baskets.  Kindergarten did a Lego theme.  It was adorable!  Sadly, we did not win a single thing…

J took the kids to the playground while I went to photograph the watermelon-eating and jump rope contests.  My boys were hot and tired from their morning t-ball game and refused to participate in any of the contests…  Oh, well.  I understand that.

I joined everyone back at the playground after I’d taken a bunch of pictures.  The kids were even more hot and tired by that point so we decided to call it a day.  We ended up taking the boat out for what ended up being one of the most pleasant island trips we’ve ever had.  I so wish I had brought my camera…

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ICE and SNOW

J and I took the boys to ICE and SNOW at the Gaylord Palms Resort on Saturday.  If you’ll recall, J won two adult tickets to the event when he won the pumpkin carving contest back in October.  We were happy that J did not have to be in DC on our ticket date although the friend who gave them to us would have happily traded tickets with us if we found ourselves in a bind.

I took the boys to ICE last year with B and Steph.  While the event was awesome in 2009, I have to report that it has much improved for 2010.  Santa Claus was there, we were treated to steaming cups of hot chocolate, the boys were able to e-mail Santa their Christmas wish at kiosks set up in the hall…  It was all very neat and definitely put us in the Christmas spirit!

Many things were the same like the nifty blue parkas, the ice slides and amazing colored ice displays.  Nine degrees once again proved to be too cold for my camera.  It locked up after an hour or so of below freezing temps.  At least it worked long enough for me to capture some good pictures.

Perhaps the best improvement to the event was the addition of SNOW!  Wildman was thrilled as you can see!  Cutie Pie was feeling a bit under the weather and refused to participate in anything snow related.

That didn’t prevent Wildman from enjoying the powdery stuff with gusto…

It was perhaps the only chance that Wildman will ever get to go tubing on snow in Central Florida!  He had so much fun!

The cherry on top of our wonderful day came when Wildman won the hourly raffle at SNOW!  He played several carnival games for raffle tickets and ended up winning his pick of prizes when they called his number.  The prized husky now has a place of honor on Wildman’s bed.

I think going to ICE and SNOW needs to be a family tradition!