First Days of School

I can't believe school has started. Kyler is in the first grade and Avery started preschool.

Avery was so excited to wear her twinkle toe shoes and her favorite outfit.

Kyler could care less what he wears,

but did comment on the fact he was wearing his favorite color (orange).

On the second day of school Avery wanted me to take some more pictures because she only went for orientation the first day and therefore didn't get to take her snack bag. You notice she also has a stuffed animal, that's because the first day another girl had brought one.

The kids have finished two weeks of school now and we finally seem to be in a good routine.

Kyler seems to have matured overnight, he is a lot more responsible about his things and his work. He is in a class that is really two classes where the teachers team teach and I am really impressed with both of them and Kyler really likes them. He really likes that they go to music twice a week and says he's been playing with a lot of kids, but as is usual with Kyler he can't remember any of their names. He is such a sweet boy and kids always like him but he has no desire to be mister social.

Avery did pretty good the first couple days, though she kept saying she only wanted to go a little while like she did on the first day (she only went for an hour that day, not three hours). By the third day she was having a hard time and would cry on and off all day, but was fine when I dropped her off. The beginning of this week she would cry when I dropped her off but they said she would stop quicker each day. Finally the last two days she happily reported to me that she "didn't cry one little bit". She has made a best friend and the two of them run across the playground holding hands and always have to sit together. She is the social butterfly of the family.

End of Summer Vacation Fun

I can't believe that summer vacation is over. We tried to make the most of the last couple of days, and though we did have a lot of fun it seemed like things just kept going a little wrong.

All summer Avery has been asking to go to this park called Kids Campus. It is a large park that includes little plastic buildings to look like a town, a splash park and a nice playground. We went to this park twice last summer and Avery loved it so I told her we would make it there before school started. The park is about 30 minutes from our house and is located next to the river downtown. They have been doing a lot of construction and since I was downtown last time they switched the traffic pattern and I ended up on the wrong side of the river. I was happy that I did find my way to the bridge that crosses the river downtown so we didn't have to backtrack but the kids did realize we were going a different way and were worried we were lost. They were very happy when we pulled up to the park but we quickly realized that something was wrong because there were no cars in the parking lot and a large fence had been put up around a large part of the park. On the new fence hung a large sign that said CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS. Kyler, Mr Emotional, got all upset and said he knew it was going to be a bad day. Avery always amazes me when things like this happen, she is so like her Dad and just makes the best of things. I told her how sorry I was that the park was closed and she said "that's okay Mommy I'll be happy to just play in the other part of the park, I don't mind". I pointed out to Kyler that Avery had a good attitude and we should follow her example (I really felt the same way Kyler did!). So we did play in the part of the park that wasn't fenced off and we did have a great time.

After leaving the park we went to the pool and the bad luck continued. We'd been swimming for a little while and had the pool nearly all to ourselves when they found POOP in the pool and had to close it. Luckily there are two pools so we just moved to clean one, but I just kept thinking what else is going to go wrong today.

On Friday the kids and I went to the mall and they had a great time playing at the indoor play area and then had their favorite mall treat of a pretzel and lemonade. We then headed to Wal-Mart to get school supplies. After nearly an hour in the store trying to get everything on the two lists in the right quantity and colors we headed out only to find a terrible rain storm in full swing. The kids had been really good in the store but it was past lunch time and the home bodies that they are started begging me to just go out in the rain so we could leave. I of course gave in and off we raced through the rain. Luckily we were in the row right in front of the door and only 12 or so cars down. The problem is it was raining much harder than I thought. Half way to the car Kyler said "I'm so sorry Mom you were right, we should have listened to you and stayed inside". Once we got to the van and everyone and everything was inside we got a good laugh at how wet we were. The happiness ended when I had Kyler get a roll of paper towels out of the back (good thing they were on Avery's list) and when he was getting them out of the bag I saw that everything in the bags was soaked. I climbed in the back to check out the damage and was soooo upset to find boxes of crayons, pencils, tissues, paints, etc were falling appart due to being completely saturated. At the time I was terribly upset but now I realize it seems like something out of a sitcom. When Corey got home we tried to turn the day around with dinner and Five Guys and a trip to Target to replace the ruined items. We were going to top it off with a trip to the kids favorite ice cream shop. But when we left Target it was raining again and the ice cream shop is all outdoors. The weather was not my friend that day!!

On Saturday it was Kyler's turn to choose what we do, and I was really hoping it went better than Avery's choice. We went to a place we'd heard about that is like Chuck E Cheese, but I am very happy to say that Monkey Jungle Fun Time Pizza was much better. It was very clean and the staff were super nice. The kids favorite thing was RollerBall. It is a miniture version of Bowling with shorter lanes and lighter/smaller pins and balls. Avery loved the room for the small kids and some of the arcade games and Kyler liked the air hocky and winning tickets (they actually go onto the card thats used to replace tokens so no need to carry all those tickets or tokens).

It was a great summer with a lot of fun!

Family Vacation to North Carolina

The last week of July we went on a family vacation to the North Carolina. This trip was a first for us in many ways.

This was our first long road trip, it took about 8 hours to get to the cabin we stayed at near the town of Sylva NC. The farthest our kids have ever gone in the car is Orlando which even with heavy traffic has never taken more than 3 hours. I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderful they did. Other than needing quite a few potty stops and Avery being miss jabber jaws, all was great.

The second first of this trip was that we went with another family, our good friends the Gaineys - Jeff and Marchelle and their kids Cody (13) and Catelyn (9). We spend a lot of time with these friends and always have a great time so it was no surprise that all went as well as things can with 8 people traveling together. We even all went in one car (suburban) and besides the long trip up and back we also spent a lot of time driving each day to see the sights. Though at times we had to do some seat swapping, to keep all the kids liking each other, it went well.

Another first of this trip is that the kids and I had never been to "the mountains" before. When I first moved to Florida I was confused when I would hear many many people say they were going to "the mountains" and everyone else knew what they were referring to. I quickly learned that in the completely flat state of Florida people love to go the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. When people say "the mountains" they are referring to the area just north of Georgia on the North Carolina/Tennessee border that is made up of the Great Smokey Mountains.

This is the view from the porch of the cabin we stayed in.

This is Kyler sweeping off the porch (don't know why!)

Those little green lights are fire flies . The kids were so excited to see them!

This is Kyler, Catelyn, and Avery glad to be out of the car the night we got there. They ran around chasing the fire flies, throwing rocks into the creek in front of the cabin and crossing the street to the barn to pet the donkey and horse that lived there.

This is Kyler and then Avery (she's always the last one up) eating breakfast on the porch. It was so nice to sit out there. Especially in the morning and evening when it was cool and not humid, a very welcome change from the hot sticky weather of home.

This is why they call them the Smokey Mountains. It is so amazing to see the clouds hang on the mountains, you see it the most in the morning and evening but sometimes they look "smokey" in the middle of the day.

We went to the town of Cherokee NC, which is actually an Indian Reservation. The first stop was this place where you can feed bears. Don't really know what that has to do with NC or Indians but the kids LOVED it and asked to go back every day. They give you little trays that have bread, lettuce and apple slices.

This is Kyler throwing down some lettuce ...

... and this is the bear trying to catch it.

The bears would wave.

They did a little dance.


I loved this guy, he would grab his feet and then rock back and forth.

The bears would also clap if you made them wait to long for food. Though I didn't get a picture of it, if you would wave the food in a circle the bears would spin in a circle.

After visiting the bears we walked through some shops looking for Kyler a Indian flute, he was dying to get one. Then we went and had a picnic. The park was so beautiful and had a creek that ran all through it. We were also intrigued by an area of bamboo. We had never seen bamboo growing like that.

This is so funny to me because Avery is doing all the work of lifting but Kyler looks like he is really working so hard.

The bamboo was really beautiful!!!

The kids quickly realized that if they shook the bamboo

water would fall down on them like rain.

This is Kyler playing his new Indian flute when we stopped at an overlook.

This is on overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was beautiful!

The last stop of the day was at a place where you can "mine" for precious gems. This is something that Kyler really wanted to do and it was a lot of fun. Each of the kids got about five precious stones that are in raw form. Of course when the guy went through the stones identifying them they of course offer a service where they will break the stones down to a usable form. Kyler and Avery were more than happy with the rock form.

In front of the cabin there was a small stream, though it was surprisingly loud for its small size and we enjoyed listening to it from the porch. Since it wasn't large enough for the kids to play in we went down the mountain a little ways and the kids loved playing in the large section of water.

We drove over the mountains into Tennessee to an area called Cades Cove. This is a large valley that is beautiful and was once a settlement so there are some historic buildings to visit. At the entrance to this area is a horse stable that offers horse back riding. Avery wasn't old enough to ride the horses so she and I took a horse drawn carriage ride. This place was very popular and we had to wait for nearly two hours, but the kids were so great and patient. The carriage ride was half an hour and the horse back ride was one hour. Somehow Avery and I went out and back before the others left, but that turned out to be a good thing because I got some good pictures of them leaving and coming back.

This is Kyler with his horse, Cinder.

He looked a little nervous as they set out!

When they came back he looked much more relaxed and happy. Corey said Kyler did wonderful and that is all Kyler could talk about for days.

This is Cade's Cove

One of these deer jumped across the road to join the other right in front of us and then we stopped and got this picture.

Kyler and Catelyn look like little twins,

but are much nicer to each other than most brother and sister.

Our last day we went to Bryson City NC to take a train ride through the mountains. We just happened to be there on the weekend the Thomas the Train was visiting.

This is the train we rode. It was a four and half hour ride which was nice,

but a little to long for the kids.

I'm not sure if Avery was stomping her foot because she didn't want her picture taken or because she was tired of Kyler blowing his train whistle.

After the long train ride we thought the kids should work off a little energy,

so we played some putt-putt.

This was a stop we made on the way home at Tallulah Gorge in Georgia.

Our "mountain" trip was busy and to short but we had a great time. The kids have asked many times since we got home when we can go back, so I guess it was a success.