I thought I’d post a few picts of the family (minus the oldest boy, Yishai) from Sukkot. That way you can see that we REALLY are people and we REALLY did venture out into the beautiful and DRY outside this year for Sukkot. 
This is DH and the kids: Clockwise we have DH, Reuven, Shalom, Shumela, Sara, Miriam, Eliezer.
Then a similar picture with me. See our Yeshua in a Succah wall hanging behind me in the corner.
We had gifts for the kids on the first night of Sukkot. We try to do small gifts ($1 or so) for the kids on the first night of holidays, just for fun. We decided to do this a while ago because we didn’t want the gifts to be the primary focus of the holy day and we didn’t want to omit gift giving or reserve it just for Hanukkah and end up with Hanukkah being a replacement of Christmas. This year there were a few yo-yos, a gell-tube thingy, a rubber tipped dart-board (that we attached to the outside of the succah for the kids to play with during the week) and a Tumbling Towers game. We kept the toys and games in a harvest style basket inside the succah all week (well, until it rained).
We also brought our Tabernacle model kit out with us so we could look at it as we were studying about the Tabernacle.
Dh and I slept outside as a family only once but the kids slept outside a few times. They had fun. DH spent a few years working on ranches in northern Canada where he slept in the barns. Camping is not something he’s fond of and sleeping on the ground is something he’s also not fond of, saying “I’ve done my time sleeping on the ground and in the hay. My body can’t do that anymore.” But he did sleep one night outside and boy was it COLD! At least it was dry.
The week was good and we enjoyed our first and eighth day Shabbats with family and friends. The 8th day was an extra special blessing with so many friends coming to our house to share with us, we were so blessed!
