Road Trip 2015 Days 1-3

We left for our yearly road trip on Staurday. We missed last year, so we have really been looking forward to it.  The boys were ready to go!

It didn't take long for everyone to make their own "space" in the car.

We drove for about 8 hours on Saturday.  We stayed the night in West Memphis, TN.  The next day we stopped in Nashville at Antique Archeaology (if you aren't familiar, it's a show on TV with two guys that go around and buy stuff from people and then sell it in their stores). We stopped because it was barely off the highway and didn't interfere with our schedule too much. It was smaller than we expected, but the boys were glad we stopped. 

We finished the drive to the cabin and and were very glad to be there.  We rented a cabin between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.  The roads were very windy and confusing, but we got there.  We unloaded the car and headed back out to have some dinner and pick up groceries.  This is a view from  the deck.

The boys at dinner. Cheese. :)

On Monday morning, we slept a little late and then packed up and headed out to see the park.  It was also our anniversary, so happy 13th to us! :)

It was so nice- 82 degrees at 11:00 in the morning!  I think it was over 100 back home.

Our traditional park entrance pic-

We stopped at the Sugarlands Visitors Center and watched a little informational movie.  There there was a short hike (1 mile round trip) that took us to a little waterfall. 

On the way back it started to rain and everybody got a little wet- it's a memory, right? :)

As we were driving on to our next location, there were a ton of people stopped on the side of the road and I thought it had to be animals... It was bears!! There was a momma and two babies up in a tree.  We were so excited. 

We stopped to eat lunch at a beautiful little picnic area with a river running beside it.  There aren't any food vendors in the park, so the night before I had cut up some sausage and cheese and also threw in some grapes, strawberries and crackers. 

After lunch, the boys all decided to jump from rock to rock in the river.  I'm not gonna lie- made me nervous.  Some of these rocks were pretty wet and slippery.

Sure enough, Brian fell in.  

Hudson also fell in and he was done after that.  But they played around on those rocks for a good 30 minutes. 

I love this picture. 

Next we headed to Clingmans Dome.  It's an observatory type tower up in the mountains.  When we got up to the parking lot,we had climbed pretty high up in the mountains and the temp had dropped to 66 degrees, so we broke out the jackets.  

The trail up to it the tower was STEEP.  It was only 1/2 a mile, but seemed SO much longer.  It was rough and soon the jackets came off. (This picture is not on the steep part- we are almost at the top here).

We did some of this on the way up... :)

We're almost there! 

It was a cloudy day, so the view wasn't as good as it could've been, but I'm glad we went.  It had to be another 8-10 degrees cooler at the top of the tower!

Hudson holding Dad's hand on the way back down.

One of my pictures from a random overlook.  So pretty!

On the way to the next place we saw an elk. 

Our last stop for the day was Mingus Mill.  It's a working mill from the 1800s. It was closed by the time we got there, but was really cool to explore the outside.

We headed back to the cabin and it started pouring rain.  Brian was driving on these tiny, twisty roads in the pouring rain and it was pretty dark... He was not a fan.  We got home and had chicken tacos (I had put in the crockpot before we left).  We hung out and enjoyed the rest of the evening.  A good first day.

My new nieces

Last Thursday, the 23rd, I was blessed with two new nieces! I was on my way to a dental cleaning and my mom called and said that Becky's water broke and they were on the way to the hospital.  She was about 4 1/2 weeks early at this point and was scheduled to have them on the 10th, but when your water breaks, there's no delaying that!  So they boys and I ran back home, packed up games and stuff to do and headed to the hospital.  Here are the soon-to-be momma and daddy...

The bottom baby wasn't in a head down position, so they had to do a c-section.  In a couple of hours, we got to go back and meet them - Makenzie weighing in at 4 lbs., 6 oz. and Ryleigh at 5 lbs., 7 oz.  Makenzie was in and out of the warmer a bit because she was having trouble keeping her temp up, but neither had to spend time in the NICU which we are very thankful for!  They were so precious and tiny!  Here are my babies holding their baby cousins.

And me with my new little nieces!

Becky and Brandon asked me to take some newborn pictures for them.  I have a teensy bit of photography experience, but am by no means a professional.  I did a lot of research and reading in preparation so I could get some good shots.  I was thinking that I would be pleased if  got 2 or 3 really good ones, and I ended up being very pleased. ( Of course looking back, I see little things that I would do differently, but I still think they turned out pretty good.)  It helped that my subjects were SO sweet!

Becky brought over her doll beds from when she was little and we set up a cute little shot.

I had this bowl I bought at Canton a couple of years ago and thought it would be so cute with them in it.  Just to give you an idea, the diameter of it is 16 inches. :)

This is by far my favorite.  The lighting was really good and they look so sweet with their little floral headbands.  Swoon.

Makenzie

Ryleigh

Also a favorite - so sweet and simple.  Love mom and dad's hands in this one.

The new family of four

I'm so thankful that they are healthy and doing great.  God is good. 

Summer is here!

Well, it's been a while.  We've been quite busy and I haven't had much downtime.  The boys played soccer for a couple of months and didn't like it.  They made the commitment, so they finished, but I'm pretty sure neither will ever play soccer again.  Soccer was over in mid-May, so we had some downtime between sports and I think that helped us to finish out the last of the year.  My oldest finished up 6th grade and my youngest 1st.  They won't ever be at the same school again and that makes me sad. :(  Reed is now in the youth group at church and I think he's excited about that.  

We finished up the house and moved in over Mother's Day weekend.  The first night, all we had were beds and the TV (you know, priorities.) :)  We had pizza and watched a movie in lawn chairs.

It took a couple of days to get the couches over, so the boys ate breakfast before school in their lawn chairs.  While wearing their robes. 

Then the rain came.  We had a RIDICULOUS amount of rain in May.  I think it rained something like 27 days out of the month and it wasn't a soft rain either. We would have full on downpours!  The water never came in the house, but was a little to close for comfort.  Our tank definitely filled up.

I was glad when it finally quit and dried up because I was scheduled to have my brother & sister-in-laws baby shower here at the first of June.  The rain has really messed up the road and Brian had to get quite a few loads of dirt to fix it.  They would bring 3 or 4 loads a day and he would get home after work and get on the skid steer and work on smoothing it all out until after dark. He really busted his hiney getting stuff ready for the shower.  It was a really pretty shower... too bad I didn't take ANY pictures! :(

So we've been in a little over a month and we love it.  They boys love the stairs and Nerf gun wars are a regular occurrence... I find Nerf bullets all over the place.  The boys started SEALS practice last week.  Reed has moved up in age groups, so his practice is at 7:00 am. So we leave the house at 6:45 and I've been running while he swims.  Hudson's practice isn't until 8:45, so Brian brings him to the pool a little later.  We leave at 9:45, so that's a full 3 hours at the pool for me and Reed 4 days a week.  I can see that wearing thin by the end of the season. I can tell he is growing, because he eats a LOT and there has been a lot of this...

We finished up our church VBS last night, so we are just worn out.  I was a group leader and Reed helped out with crafts. It was a long week and we are looking forward to free days next week... with rain/thunderstorms in the forecast, SEALS may get cancelled and we may get to sleep late. :) 

We have SEALS until mid-July and then not much planned after that.  We have our road trip in August which the boys and I are really looking forward to.  We didn't go anywhere last year because of the building of the house, so we are ready for vacation. We will be hitting Hot Springs National Park and Great Smoky Mountain National Park.  Hopefully before we leave for our trip Makenzie and Ryleigh (my twin nieces) will be born.  Becky is due at the end of August, but I don't see anyway she will make it that long.  She is a tiny little woman (about as tall as Reed), and I don't see how those two babies will fit in there very much longer.  Aside from that, lots of plans for swimming, snow cones, lazy days of TV and games with some water parks and other fun things thrown in.  Yay for summer!

Soccer and Musical Instruments

We had our first soccer game today.  

They've only had two practices, so I wasn't really expecting much.

This kid is a mess.  :)

He spent a lot of his time on the outskirts and wouldn't really get in there to get the ball.  He told me he was afraid to go after the ball because he thought he would get hurt, so there was lots of spinning in circles and feigned exhaustion after small snippets of jogging.  Then at another point in the game, he ran over to me (while everyone is playing) and told me that "in case I wanted something cold, but not to drink, there was a Sno-cone stand right over there."  I guess the temptation of the sno-cone stand was too hard to resist even if a soccer game was going on.  I think he had fun and he was definitely fun to watch. :)

This one however...

Was a beast!  He was all over the field giving it everything he had.  One of the coaches was on him quite a bit, but I think it was because he sees potential in him.  Reed isn't good with criticism (constructive or not), so he was beat down.  It really warmed up today and by the end of the game, all of the kids were exhausted - they run back and forth the entire hour!  He was so hot and tired, but he never complained.  I was so proud of him!

We went to lunch and then over to the middle school.  Kids going into middle school have to choose from 3 electives - art, choir or band.  He chose band, so we had to go to the "instrument fitting".  He picked the top three instruments that he was interested in playing and then they worked with him on the mouthpieces to see how they did.  

                                               

She was very impressed with how he did with the bassoon, but he also tried the trumpet and tuba (Brian played trombone in high school for a few years, so I think Reed wanted to try out something in the brass section also).  The tuba also seemed to be a good fit, but in the end he decided to go with the bassoon.  There aren't many that will play that, so he'll have better instruction because he'll be in a lot smaller class.  I think he's really looking forward to it.  :)