A Full Weekend

Friday afternoon was the Fall Festival at Madison's school. It was a fun event filled with face painting, bounce houses, carnival style games, prizes, food, and tons of candy!! Madison was not the only one who had a blast. Hudson enjoyed following Madison around and acting like one of the big kids! We even got to enjoy a nice chill in the air. It's really feeling like Fall now!

The next morning her school put on a Relay for Life 5k run and 1 mile Fun Run. We all went and participated. I ran the 5k, and the entire family ran in the fun run. Hudson rode most of the time, although he really wanted to run himself. Madison did great. We let her set the pace and we followed. She ran a little, walked a little, and finished the race!
It was fun to participate as a family!

This weekend also involved transitioning Hudson into his new bed. After about a month and a half long project with a friend, I completed his new toddler bed. Let me share a short story about this bed! When we found out we would be moving last month, we wanted to do something for the kids' rooms to make them seem new and special. We thought this would be a good time to make the change for Hudson into a big boy bed. He had developed a liking of pirates, so I thought we would get him a pirate bed set. After looking on-line at ideas, I came across a picture of a toddler pirate ship bed that I would have loved to have gotten him, had it not been $450 plus shipping. Although I had never built anything before, I didn't think it looked too difficult to put together, so I decided I was going to make this bed myself! I enlisted the advise and help from Mr. Morgan, the gentlemen from our church who helped Brian build our backyard swing set. He explained the basic frame of the bed was easy, the decorating would be the time consuming part, but if I was up for the challenge, he would be happy to help me with it. He agreed to cut the four pieces of the frame for me, along with a few other pieces, if I could handle the decorative elements. So after gathering materials, sanding wood, priming and painting a few times over the course of several weeks, we were finally ready to put it together. I explained to him that I truly wanted to do as much of the work as I could myself, so Thursday he guided me for 4 hours as I put this bed together. I used real tools, glue, a power drill, a little elbow grease and a lot of patience. It was a lot of fun to finally get this project complete and surprise Hudson with his new pirate themed room. He absolutely loved it. He kept saying, "Boat, please, boat, please, night-night!" The first day, I was worried that he would be trying to get in and out of it rather then sleeping, so I patted him to sleep for his nap. At bed time the first night, Brian and I just explained that once he climbed in bed for the night that he was not allowed out, and to our surprise that is all it took! All we have to do at nap or bedtime is ask him if he's ready to get in his boat. He says yes, climbs in and he goes to sleep. It's amazing!

I guess a captain stays with his ship!