Splendid Saturday in the vineyard

Hello! (Charlie smirks!)



Today was a wonderful family-fun day. We started Saturday as we always do in the fall- with Marky's flag football game. It was fun- our team won and Marky got the best defense star. Today they had team pictures- Marc's two coaches are recent college grads who just wanted to "give back" to their community- how often do you see that?!





After the game we headed out to Morgan Creek Vineyards to their annual grape stomping festival and wine tasting. I'm pretty sure this will be a new tradition- it was a lot of fun and the weather was perfect. We started by having a full-moon bbq picnic on the grounds while a band played-



Here you can see the band- you'd think maybe they played bluegrass? Or something with an Italian tuscan theme? No- it was smooth-Luther-Vandross-lay-it-down-soul music- hilarious!



Tuck Tuck wondering what James Brown's "superbad" has to do with a harvest festival?


The three big kids made grape-inked footprint art-



Then it was time to do some grape stompin! And no- it's not for drinking- just for stomping!







I LOVE this picture- (Did anybody see the movie "A Walk in the Clouds"? This reminds me of that)



Time to scub off all that grape paint and grape juice!



Tucker says "It's cold!"



After wrangling kids in the heat through a picnic and all that crazy foot stuff- the grown ups were thrilled to get to the wine tasting! :)



Can I just say for the millionth time how much I love this little baby boy- he is such a joy to raise!



Walking in the muscadine vines- their speciality is muscadine wines!



After leaving the festival we found a couple cute shops in Chelsea to shop in and then made our way back to our part of town where we went to the park- Tucker LOVED hanging on the monkey bars-



And here is proof that Charlie was with us all day (although he did sleep almost the entire time) P.S. I think he and Sissy are going to end up looking a lot alike-



We left the park- had dinner at a Mexican restaurant and then came home and got everyone bathed and jammied and then proceeded with a playroom purge I decided we needed to have more peace in our home!

I decided this after I went and heard Dr. Ray Guarendi speak on Thursday night and got reinspired to be a better parent- more consistent, more structured. He said, "if you want a one in a hundred kid you need to be a one in a hundred parent- which will likely be met with scorn from the world." And he is so right! The world today so often takes the kids side instead of respecing the parent- "Oh- you are too tough on him- oh- let him have the cookie even though he didn't say thank you- oh- let him get a treat everywhere you go- oh- all kids fight with their siblings- oh- all kids watch this show- oh- all kids are dating in middle school now- you guys are so strict!" We have to swim against the current to maintain standards. He kept saying that in his clinical practice people come in and say "Is it normal...blah, blah, blah..." and he says, "yes, it's normal- SIN is normal- but is it RIGHT?" I answer to God alone in the raising of my children- and if He impresses on me that I need to protect them from something or someone I shouldn't worry about what other people think about that. That's easier said than done for a Southern girl who doesn't ever want to offend anyone.

Well, this post has taken a turn hasn't it! I need to get to the laundry (and to ironing patches on Marky's brand new CUB SCOUT uniform! We are so excited!) I leave you with precious punkinface who is just smiling all the time and sleeping all night- I couldn't ask for a sweeter baby-



Bye bye Ya'll!!