Beautiful sunny morning in Port Lavaca! We chilled out this morning. Amelia tested out the facepaint on daddy, then it was pool time for Jonathan, Ollie and Meems while I sat outside on our little patio trying to catch up on some blogging (I'm always writing these days later from my scratchy notes).
Hung out at the games room for awhile and tried to get the massage chair to work for Jonathan, but no luck. Kids are quite fascinated by the massage loungers ever since they fumbled upon a free test of one in a desolate mall a few months back.
We met our neighbours, Jen and Todd, Texans from the N.E. who pulled their trailer into the site beside us. They had two adorable dogs, Finn and Jeffy. I was making tuna sandwiches inside when I looked out the doorway and saw the bigger dog, Finn, at the end of his tie-down sniffing madly at the air in our direction. So cute. When I came outside, the couple were sat in their deck chairs and I commented on how cute their dog was. From then on, we had some great chats with them, and met Jeffy their sweet little scruffy shy dog. They have done tons of rv'ing around the state of Texas visiting as many state parks as they can. Lots of great advice.
Jonathan came back with the kids saying he booked another night here at the KOA because tonight they were having Halloween festivities for the kids! Perfect!! a chance to test their costumes and have some guaranteed Halloween fun since we had no idea how our actual Oct 31st would look.
Meems and went and played some bocce at the playground and we also walked the fishing dock and discovered the cutest little fuzzy spider on one of the posts. I didn't have my phone to take a photo, and we took Daddy and Ollie back there but it was hidden away and wouldn't come out of his hidey hole.
Meems did some more art and weaving. Jonathan was excited that Oliver could do some fishing off the bottom of our campsite (a few other men had been down there fishing). He got their kit set up in the rod holder and no sooner had he put it in the water, Ollie had walked up to the rig for something... Jonathan yelled "Ollieeeeee!!!!" there was a fish on the line! Ollie ran down and grabbed the rod and reeled in a fiesty 25" red drum!! very exciting. Our neighbours were entertained, as Ollie hauled it in and Jonathan was falling over himself to get a net and pliers, etc. Very comical and exciting. What a beauty it was! I did the new-found google image search and took a photo to verify it was a Red Drum. Great eating fish apparently. Jonathan gave Ollie the choice to keep it and eat it or put it back and he chose to release it. It was a rushed decision in the heat of the moment. Ollie loves catching and eating fish, but the in-between process of killing it is understandably less desirable.
It was getting close to Halloween festivities time, but Meems wanted to have a swim, so in an uncharacteristic move, I said, "Let's go!" and she and I donned out swim suits and rushed over to the pool (again had it to ourselves) and set a time for 11 minutes and swam our little hearts out, then hustled back to get into clothes to walk over to the communal office for the 5pm hayride!
The hayride was a legit little trailer with haybales pulled by a tractor. We rode as a family with another couple of girls from the big family also staying in the campground, and a sweet older texan couple. After the hayride, I took the kids to the community lounge to paint pumpkins.
Once the pumpkins were painted and put on display with the other two for the "contest" we hustled back to the rig to get into costumes and gather our decor for making a spooky table display. Amelia did her own facepaint for her spooky clown costume and Ollie's unbrushed hair made for the perfect "wig" with his scary mask. He had been wearing his orange jacket on and off for much of the day... he loves it. When we got back to the main communal area, we set up the spooky table with our fog machine, drapery and skeletons/ghouls and brought a small bowl of candies to share. They held a costume competition, and the little girl from the Mexican family participated in her cute Harry Potter ensemble. There was also an older couple that had been camping at this KOA for a few weeks and had a huge bag of candy to give away. The little girl won the costume competition because her entire family voted for her and there were a lot of them (aunts/uncles, grandparents, etc). Very cute! It was all very sweet and everyone got a special prize for one thing or another. Ours was the only table decorated, haha, and we "won" that competition. Each kid received a fun monster bag with candies in it as a prize and then they "trick or treated" in the small crowd and got candies from the couple staying there, the KOA staff and our candy bowl. Super sweet.
We went back to the rig for blankets and hoodies and then returned to watch the outdoor set up for a movie night with lemonade and popcorn. They were showing Hocus Pocus 2 on a big white screen outside, with Adirondack chairs gathered around. I watched with the kids while Jonathan went and watched some of the baseball game on the big screen inside. One of the little boys from the bigger family was sat beside me for awhile...he was so cute, maybe 8yrs old?. Like a little man. He kept leaning over and asking me questions. Then when a song came on in the movie, he said, "oh man, I love this song!!" and seconds later, he jumped up and just started dancing away to it like he couldn't help but move his body. Love it.
When the movie was done, Jonathan had walked over and checked it out for a bit. We went back to the rig and got the kids ready for bed. Very tired after a fun evening jam-packed with halloween fun. Facepaint removed and costumes put away, I tucked the kids in and Jonathan went over to visit with his new fishing friend he'd been chatting with early by our fishing spot. They sat around the fire at his site, drinking whisky and telling stories. He was quite the character.
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