Happy Birthday, Bryce!!

My little guy is 11 years old now!!  Here he is as a baby -- just about a month old . . .

and here he is at almost 11 years old!  This picture was at the blueberry farm on Labor Day weekend.

Where does the time go??  This is a big part of the reason we want to get on the road as soon as we can.  We want to capture these last few years we have with our boys, and spend as much quality time together as we can.

Since getting home on Sunday, we haven't done too much.  Back to school and work for a full week this week -- the boys have tests, book reports, and homework, and Tom and I are busy at work, too.  This weekend, we're having a combined birthday party with Tom's family for Bryce, our niece Kathleen (3 days younger than Bryce), and our nephew Joe (his birthday is a week after Bryce's, but he's 4 years younger).  It should be a nice time -- hopefully we'll have good weather.

THE NATIONAL PARKS: My Parks

More shopping and dinner with my family

Today we started the day with haircuts for my three guys, followed by showers, and then we rode our bikes into Shipshewana again.  On the way out of the campground, I tried to call my Mom, but that wasn't going to work . . .

No Phone!!  LOL!!  The lady in the campground office said that the phone company came and took the phone away, but the campground wouldn't let them take the booth -- they wanted it for a conversation piece!  We certainly thought it was cool -- Nick and Bryce wanted to know what a phone booth is!! LOL!!

We checked out all the shops in town, had soft pretzels for a mid-day snack, and then headed back to the campground to switch from bikes to the truck to go to the bulk food store.  The bulk store is right next to our campground, close enough to walk, but I knew I was going to be stocking up for winter, so we took the truck.  I love this store -- we bought sugar, flour, oatmeal, dried fruit for the oatmeal, chocolate for making candy at Christmas time, spices, noodles . . . and all kinds of stuff!!  My mom, three of my sisters, my niece and my brother-in-law (the driver!) we in town too, and we crossed paths several times, and then met up at the bulk store.  They followed us back to our camper, so they could see it in person, and then we all went to dinner at Das Dutchmen Essenhaus in Middlebury to celebrate Bryce's upcoming birthday (Tuesday).

Diane and Danny

Mom and Kelly (my niece)

Tom and Sandi

Tom and Bryce

Nicolas (when I finally got him to hold still for a picture!)

We had a great dinner, and were all completely stuffed when we left there!  They all headed back to "Grandma's Lake", and we decided to walk around a bit.  This is a quilt painted on the side of the quit shop

and here's a horse patiently waiting to take somebody for a buggy ride.

We headed back to our campground then, and took another walk with Casey.  There was a foal and a couple of ponies at the fence next to the campground, so we stopped to pet them for a while.  I didn't have my camera, so I didn't get their picture.  A large group of campers near us had started a fire in one of the community firepits, so we joined them for awhile.  I came back to check in on blogs and to do this post, and Tom followed soon after.  We're going to try to get an early start tomorrow, so I'll finish here and get to bed.  Goodnight!