Summer Fun!

Yep, I said "summer" fun! Easter weekend through today, we've been having some VERY hot weather for April. Upper 80s and breaking 90 once in a while! We went Tuesday and spent the easter egg money (plus a small addition from mom and dad) on some serious water fun! Add a few friends and the water hose, and you've got great "summer" fun in April. The first day we set it up for our friends, the slide kept turning over. It was so annoying and I was getting extremely aggravated since it wasn't a super cheap thing $$ wise. Well, when Corey got home from work we inspected it more closely and discovered some columns made into the bottom for filling with water and weighing it down. Would have been SO NICE to know when the kids were turning it over every time they slid down, ha ha!




We got it out one more time yesterday to try out the new improved weighed down slide and it was awesome! But today, spring has returned with April showers and lower temps, so the slide has been put away until summer returns!

This is Katie the first time she actually went down the slide. She said, "That was awesome!"

We discussed bringing the slide part to the beach! What do you think? ha ha! I picture it on the edge of the water facing the beach...dig a pit at the bottom that will fill up with water when the waves come up! With the water in the slide now it wouldn't float away... what do you think? ha ha!

Soccer in the rain...Tellus in the rain....

Noah posing before his soccer game. It ended up raining again.
Not terribly, but enough to need an umbrella and change of clothes afterward.

You can see his hair is a little wet.
He was actually not "in" during the heaviest rain and was under an umbrella.

Before we left this morning, I got on facebook and saw that a few people had posted that they were going to visit a local museum as part of the Smithsonian's Free Museum Day. All we had to do was fill out a form, print out a pass and it was good for one person plus a guest. I signed both Corey and myself up and we decided to head over for a visit after the game and lunch. This museum opened up this past spring (I believe) and we had not visited yet. I was so glad that my friends posted that they were going because I had totally forgotten that it was free day.

It was VERY soggy when we arrived. They were directing traffic into the hotel parking lot next door because it was so crowded and we hiked across a VERY wet field around mud puddles and water to get to the door. When we got there, a sign on the door told us that only one pass was allowed per family. I was slightly annoyed because we had trudged across the muddy field and would not have come on such a very crowded day if we had known we were going to have to pay for any of us.
Well, as we were standing there calculating how much it would cost, a man came over and said, "If you will come over here we had another line where they are trying to expedite the process."
The man at the end of that line came over and asked for our pass and asked how old our kids were. We told him and he said, "Do you have an extra pass?" And we did, because I had printed one for both Corey and myself. He said, "Each pass is good for two people." And he gave us stickers for all four of us to wear, so we didn't have to pay after all! YAY!!!!!!

The Tellus Museum has a little bit of everything. Our first stop was the dinosaur exhibit.

Katie and Noah enjoyed getting to touch some fossils. Katie even touched what they said was dinosaur poop! lol. She touched it before he told her what it was! Then Noah didn't want anything to do with it!

This was Katie's pose in almost every single photo today. Not sure why....

They also had a room with transportation exhibits, with buggies, a replica of the Wright brothers airplane, a helicopter, and space rockets.

There was also a kid's section with all kinds of interactive displays but it was VERY crowded in there! We were telling ourselves that it really didn't seem that crowded for being free day, and when we got in that part we knew why! Everyone was in there! We didn't get to do the gemstone mining area or the fossil dig..the line to get in those classrooms was EXTREMELY long and not moving! We also didn't do the planetarium. I guess we will have to go again when it isn't free day to do the rest.
UPDATE: I have since heard from a friend who works at the museum that they had 3700 visitors yesterday!!!! She said a typical Saturday runs 900 and a busy day around 1100.
WOW! The great thing is...she invited us to come another day as her guests!!! Yay!

Here is a picture of when we were leaving. Corey had gone to get the car and drive it up because it was POURING rain! But, there was nowhere near the door to park at all, so he just parked in the parking lot this time and brought umbrellas. The umbrellas did NO good though, because it was pouring so hard that they ground was just puddled up with water and our pants and shoes got soaked through! The rain was pouring off the edge of the umbrellas and soaking our sleeves. The parking lot was flooding too and it was just miserable trying to get out! Ugh!
It was a fun visit though...a true value! I am so glad I checked on facebook this morning to see my friends were going so we knew about it.

Aquarium Visit #2

We are very much enjoying our aquarium passes! This was just the second time we have been, but I can't say enough how nice it is to not have to spend all day and completely tire ourselves out by trying to see and do every single little thing every time! Here are some photos from our second visit...it was the day before Katie got her haircut...8/2/09

This next one is my absolute favorite! Someone get this girl some acting classes!!!!! ha ha!

Noah had made up his mind when he got home from our last visit that he was going to be brave enough to pet the stingrays this time. He didn't want to pet the sharks, but when he stuck his hand in both swam by really quickly so he got to pet them both anyway!

I love the lighting in this photo....

Noah inside the "crawl under" tank. Katie still hasn't done this. Maybe by the time our year membership is over....

Another shot with the penguins...

Noah was "poser" of the day.

Mini-Vacation

What a fantastic weekend! We enjoyed a fun and relaxing weekend in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg with our best friends! Andy (Corey's best friend since kindergarten) just got back from a 5 month deployment in Afghanistan with the air force. When his leave started we decided to take a grown-ups only getaway together...something we have actually never done in the 8+ years we have been married and been friends. We stayed in two lovely cabins through Cabins For You, a rental company owned by some other friends of ours. One was in Pigeon Forge and one was in Gatlinburg, so we got to stay in and see those two different areas of the towns and just have lots of fun!

Our very first stop on the way into town was of course, The Apple Barn! Here we are waiting for our table.


We enjoyed wonderful home-cooked food and the famous apple fritters with apple butter!

This was the view looking out from the first cabin we stayed in. It was BEAUTIFUL! Our hot tub was on a screened porch overlooking this view! Ahhhh!!!!!! So relaxing!
A short photo session before leaving that cabin and heading to Gatlinburg. We stayed in Over the Top (as you can see).



After getting to Gatlinburg I didn't really take many more photos...well just a few but not many of them came out to my approval for the blog! ha ha! We had another great cabin with a hot tub on the porch and a pool table. It was called Jessica's Jewel and sadly I did not get any photos of the view :( I just got busy having fun and relaxing I guess! We walked around, shopped, ate at Hard Rock cafe, sat in the hot tub, played board games, talked, danced (at the cabin the first night..it was so silly but fun!), talked some more, watched tv...and just had fun being friends!

I greatly enjoyed our weekend and we vowed to make it a more than once every 10 years event! MAYBE next time we'll bring the kids! ha ha ha!!!! Well..besides the two we brought this time, right Bethany?!

Eight Years

Today my wonderful crazy husband and I are celebrating eight years of marriage!
Happy Anniversary Corey!

It is so fun to be your wife, and I look forward to many more anniversaries together!

A Tree Like This One...

Have you ever sat under and looked up at tree like this one before? As I was doing that today I was thinking about many other very similar trees and similar weather days yet very different circumstances surrounding the occasion. Many different ages, stages, places, settings. I don't know, it just made me think and remember and it made me so thankful for the occasion that brought me under this tree on this very day of July 3rd, 2009.

Not too many years ago this week I was hastily putting together a wedding! If you have read the story on my blog before you know that Corey and I moved our wedding up and decided the weekend before July 7th that we were going to go ahead and get married! So, this week is a sentimental one for me even if not already because of the holiday. (Today is also the 90 day milestone in our Disney trip countdown, so you can click here to read more about that!)

This week, 8 years later, we are enjoying a sunny afternoon at the park with our two beautiful and sweet children! Here is Katie with her umbrella "to keep the sun away."

Our two kids, tree-hugging!

Goofing around...doing "absodutely nothing" (Katie's words)
That's Corey sitting under the tree.

Sweet.

Tonight, getting a ride on Daddy's back to their bedrooms for bedtime. Doesn't everyone have a picture like this? They have done this so many times, but I finally got a picture tonight. That's 111 pounds of cuteness on his back! (yeah, it only happens about once every couple of weeks! ha!)

Sweet day and priceless moments!