Eli's Arcade

We have been making an effort to have "fun Friday's".   This past week, Eli set up his arcade in the garage and we spent the afternoon playing. 

 

At his concessions stand with the prizes behind him:

He gave us each a marble and a snack and then we were free to play the games.  When you won a game, he would hand you tickets to turn in for a prize.

A close up of some of the games:

After all the games were played, the boys took turns putting on a puppet show.  Ben even jumped in and put on a show for us all!

Colin watching dad's show, eating his concession snack:

 About the time we finished our family time, Luke and Sam showed up and were able to play in the arcade with Eli and Colin.  It was a fun afternoon to celebrate all of Eli's creative work.

Happy Fall!

We celebrated the first day of fall with a special symposium.  I bought us all new fall mugs and filled them with pumpkin cider, which was surprisingly more delicious than I expected.  We had caramel waffers on our pumpkin plates.  We lit our fall candle for the first time this season and put on George Winstons Autumn.

 

 We read and worked on our geography, although I'm not sure Alison needs to work on it considering she filled out her entire state worksheet on her own while I was reading about Nebraska.

One of my favorites

 While I was unpacking from our Mammoth trip, Colin was playing a game he made up to see how few steps he could take to get from one place to another.  The result was one of my favorite videos.

Eli's creativity

It's been a long time since the boys have dressed up and it was fun to see them at it again.  They are Five Night at Freddy's characters.

Eli has been writing comic books galore!  So much so, that he started his own comic book writing club with the neighbor kids.  What better way to start the day, than sourdough pancakes, Yoda and some writing???

His work station has moved around the school room, but his drawer is now his book store.  He has made several copies of each book and knows how much each costs.

 

 

Maya's favorite spot to be while Eli writes...

 

 

He also made this really fun game!

Mammoth Lakes, Day 3

We woke up the next morning to intense smoke from a wildfire that was about 15 miles away.  Again, our plans had to change, as it was almost impossible to be outside.  We stopped in little thrift shop and Alison found some awesome jeans and the boys each got a comic book.

Then we played some ping pong.

 

 

We decided to drive north where the air would be clearer.  First stop, Schatt's Bakery.

Eli chose coke flavored gummies instead of a donut.  The orange tint of the sky is from the fires.

  

 Then we walked around the ski town.  It was a strange time to be there; in the off season and during a pandemic, made it like a ghost town.  It's even more strange that signs like this are a normal sighting now.

Ben really wants to plan a ski trip for this winter, but Colin says he will absolutely not ride a real ski lift.  This one was okay to take a picture on.

 Speaking of ghost towns, that was our next stop.

Bodie Ghost Town

 

 On our way back to Mammoth, we found that Mono lake was open and decided to pull over for a minute. 

Unfortunately, the closer to Mammoth we got, the smokier it got.  It was so smoky that our eyes were burning in the car and we quickly decided that it was time to cut our trip short, pack up and head home right then.  It was a late night, but everyone handled all the changes amazingly.

Mammoth Lakes, Day 2

 

The next morning, Ben and I each went on a little run.

We had an early lunch, watched some Looney Tunes and were off for our adventure.

 

There were two things we were told we could do.

#1. Obsidian Dome

 And then we completely off-roaded (it's not an adventure if you don't off-road 😉) to #2. Grant Lake, aka the only lake around that isn't in the national park.  There were a few other people there who had been rebels like us, but it was nice to pretty much have the place to ourselves.

 

 

We set up our "camp" for the afternoon and got ready to paddle board!

This was the first time that we ALL went out on the paddle boards and it was so much fun!

We ended our day with ice cream at the local toy store.