They Hang with the Halls

We spent a lot of time with the Mankles this summer. The kids get along really well, which is good, because they are stuck seeing each other as often as possible for the rest of their lives. They came to our house in June, then we went to their house last week.
They were here on James' birthday. We went to a park in Mt. Gilead. We call it castle park, and this is why:


It even has a pirate ship inside, it's that cool. It has another name, something historically pertinent I'm sure, but to us it's castle park.

This is my favorite part of castle park. Only the people I have tortured with my completed romance novel will get why, but here it is ladies, the tower! (Oh, and the Birthday boy!)


While we were there I made each of the kids hang from the bars so I could get a picture with my phone:





Here's the "cake." It's really two layers of ice-cream sandwiches that I decorated. We had cake the day before for the Mankle's youngest's birthday, so it was ice-cream for James, mmmmm.


I didn't realize that I had accidentally grabbed trick candles, so he had a little trouble... okay a lot of trouble blowing them out. We finally dunked them, however it did make it easy to get pics of the lit-up cake!

We also went to Carrowinds while Bobbi and Aaron were here. I didn't get a lot of pics, but here's one.

When we were in Mississippi visiting them we went to a place called Kangarooz, which the kids were delighted to find had a karaoke stage in addition to all the blow up playgrounds.
Sorry the pics are so bad, but they are all off my phone and I think I got my finger in every shot.