Happy Christmas Eve.

All of our Christmas cards have been enveloped, addressed and delivered(to the mailbox). 

Now I can officially share our Christmas greetings with our virtual friends.

Thank you for reading, and Merry christmas!

Trick or Treat: The Princess & The Pea

 In case anyone didn't know, I LOVE dressing up. Which means that naturally I'm going to love all the dressing up and Halloweenie fun there is to be had o n October 31. 

This has and will continue to manifest itself through family costumes. 

"Why?" You ask, because it's awesome.

Here's my tribute to last year's costumes

Batman, Cat Woman, Robin and even Chewie got in on the action as the Joker.

This year the dogs were not invited to Trick or Treat but I think Grayson and I kept the tradition alive as the Princess and the Pea.

G did awesome. He'd hold my hand and hobble his best up to doors.

Thankfully we were with friends so he had his buddy to show him how tick or treating is done. G was a very selective candy picker, he even put a few pieces back (LOL).

All in all I'd say it was a VERY productive Halloween.

Now I guess I just have to do what every good parent does, eat all of the candy!

Welcome To Old Abilene Town ( Fort Riley, KS)

Uh, hello there! Remember me? I used to write on this blog and give updates about our life and fun stuff. 

Well, I'm finally back from my in-definite and accidental hiatus. 

We have been seriously busy and crazy excited about something big that we will be announcing to the general public on Friday. 

Alright, let's get down to business...
So, like most good ideas this one came in the shower. I decided that our blog should do something besides exist. It should help people. And who better to help than people we can connect with through similar circumstances. Military families.

Alex decided that he liked this idea so we've set out to help military families get to know an area/ base before they move there.

When we were informed that we'd be moving to the Fort Riley area of Kansas we were hopeful, but just a little dumbfounded. What is in Kansas, I had never thought about it before. So, like most military people do, I turned toward google to find out about the new place I'd call home and here inlies the problem. I read a number of online forums and online group boards about Fort Riley and other bases and the common theme throughout them all was the irrelevant answers and opinions the everyone gave.  A general response on the boards sounded something like....

" I hate fort ____ because it's so hot. It's just stupid and the target is 10 miles away! And the only thing to do there is go shopping or hike nature trails or go to the beach, so there isn't anything you can do with kids."

I'm not even joking, that was someone's answer about a certain base.

Let's just be real honest, when the Military tells you that you get to move somewhere, hearing everyone's negative opinions about that place isn't exactly helpful.

So because of this, we are going to be a family that documents all the fun to be had at every base we have the privilege of being stationed at.   

So please, Enjoy Old Abilene Town....

Old Abilene Town is a recreation of the historic Abilene.

The story is, Abilene was a really rough cow town until the town hired Wild Bill Hickok as their sheriff. And Hickok cleaned up the town and drove off the riff-raff. 

Every Saturday and  Sunday in the summer  from 10am-3:30pm there are funny reenactments of Wild Bill and the "Riff-Raff" by The Gunfighters.

  

You can ride the passenger train (Train information).

On certain weekends a Steam train takes guest out and they are served dinner aboard (Dinner Train Information).

 This historic carriage house was moved from another location in Abilene to be part of Old Abilene Town. 

Old Abilene Town is just one of the many unique places in this area but it's a go-to spot when we have visitors. 

Happy Easter

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

LOVE, 

The Tompkins'

I Got My Mind On My Bunny, My Bunny On My Mind.....

G-Man is obviously pretty chill with the Bun-Bun up there. We had a FABULOUS time at the Eisenhower center for the Easter Egg Roll. Enjoy the pictures!

We Go To Wichita.

We have had a busy Easter weekend and it is only Saturday. We kicked off the weekend by spending the afternoon and evening in Wichita for Winter Jam, a concert featuring 10 bands. We brought the boy along and he had a blast listening to the music and dancing.

This boy was SOOOO excited.

Our seats were actually better than the pictures let on, above 35mm cameras were not allowed in to the concert however they let me be an exception as long as I used the zoom under 35mm.

We had a really fun night, Baby Boy crashed out before Toby Mac performed, so in my opinion he missed the best performance but we'll be sure to tell him about it when he is older ;)