Ducks, Views and Gems

We started the morning feeding the ducks. (Mackenzie and I had taken a practice round the evening before, but as 38 ducks were getting closer I was getting more nervous because the food was gone and I'm leery of birds anyway. We took reinforcements with us for the morning feeding.)

We set out on the Blueridge Parkway. The views were breath taking. I loved hearing the girls get excited over the beauty of God's creation. They have fallen in love with autumn and seeing the leaves show off their vibrant colors. We stopped at Blowing Rock to take in the views. (I think the girls would have been satisfied to stay there and climb on this one big rock all day!)

Our next stop (after lunch of coarse) was at Emerald City. We took a tour of their "museum" displays and then headed down to mine for gems. We still have to sort through the bags of treasures and identify which rocks are true keepers. (I figure they will all be labeled keepers if we leave it up to the girls :)

Another full day of fun and exploring ended with three very sleepy gals, 2 exhausted parents, and two grandparents with a plan of sleeping in late and catching up with us at noon the next day.



misc. funnies from the day...

When we arrived at our hotel it was a corner room and had two different views. As Mark and I were admiring the mountain view we heard Haleigh from the other window. "Oh yeah! Look at that, we can see McDonalds!!"

During the car trip the girls were making up stories for their monkeys to act out. We overheard Sophie's intro, "according to legend..." It was a blast for Mark and me to just listen at the stories unfold in the back seat.

The final posting of our trip will follow once I get the pics from Mark's phone, my battery died in the camera and I didn't pack the charger.
toy store,"grossology" exhibit, apple orchard and boat tour

Meeps and Gran's 50 Anniversary Trip

This past weekend we set out on a trip to celebrate Mark's parents' 50th anniversary. Our plan was to head to Tweetsie Railroad to start the celebration. (What good sports to pick this to be the beginning of their celebration :) As we drove closer and closer the clouds got darker and darker. We decided to head to lunch and see if the rain would pass while we were filling out tummies. Sophie was in continuous prayer that the rain would quit. Upon God saying "yes, the down pours will be stopping now" celebration broke out at the table.

As we entered the park the train was loading and we jumped on for the adventure to begin.

As we traveled through the cowboy and indian scenes a battle broke out. One indian jumped on our train car whoopin' and hollarin' to escape. (I had warned the girls this was a possibility as the ride began.) Leave it to Sophie to try to strike up a conversation with the indian on the run. Of coarse the indian stopped, smile and said hi as he jumped off the train and went back to his hollarin'.

Speaking of conversations, Sophie also took advantage of the quiet times on the train to speak with the "tour guide"/ announcer. Her main questioning involved the petting zoo area. Sophie was asking if the Emu at this petting zoo had good vision "because apparently the one at the last petting zoo I visited didn't. It thought my finger was a carrot and bit me!" The announcer told her to be careful of the Emu they all made him a little nervous.

The rides were exciting! All three girls had their first farriswheel rides. Mackenzie's ride (and everyone else on the ride with her) was cut short because Mackenzie only thought it was great fun before she got on it :(

Driving the cars was great fun (at least for the kids.)


Then there were the shows... and you know who about jumped out of their skins when they asked for volunteers. Yep both shows, both older gals on the stages.

Mackenzie preferred to stick with Daddy and watch the craziness.

The petting zoo was fun, I was the only one to get nibbled on. I guess the lamas are the vision impaired ones at this petting zoo.

...we mined for gems...








we stood in a giant teepee...

This isn't a great picture, just proof that I was actually part of all the fun. However, Haleigh did say that the chairlift was her favorite part of the day. That is where this pic was taken.




Can you tell who loves her daddy? They stuck together most of day. Both of them lovin' it :)

The day ended with a huge piece of chocolate cake for the girls and really great blackberry cobbler for me and Mark!

to be continued...

feeding the ducks, Blowing Rock, mining for gems!

Happy Birthday to Me :)

Sophie has been counting down to my birthday the last 2 weeks. The closer we got the more excited she became. Everytime we went to the store she would seek out the cake decorating isle. I postponed buying all the fanciful decorations because I knew once they were in the house the girls wouldn't be able to wait to start baking. This past week we stocked up and Sophie began to design the cake in her mind. She wanted to have a garden theme for my special day. To carry out the theme Sophie and Haleigh picked out a miniture rose plant for me from the floral department.

After a sweet AM2PM meeting this morning we came home with lunch, put Mackenzie down for her nap and the party started...

mixing ingredients...

always some tasting. . .

we learned how to "marble"...

The cake was baked, cooled and Mackenzie was up and ready to help decorate!!

Thanks girls for making my day so special!!

I am blessed to have such loving girls who

get excited to make me smile!!

I will always remember this beautiful cake and even more the fun we had making it!!

Did I say a PJ weekend?

Perhaps we would have been better off to stick with the PJ plan for Saturday! Instead we decided to head out to the zoo and take the chance that the misty overcast day would stay that way until we made a quick trip to visit the animals. Let's just say it didn't work out that way, but did we laugh! We acutally laughed as hard as it rained - and that my friends was hard :) (I never knew you could make a "rooster tail" with the wheel of a stroller.)

Our long time elephant friend, Joy provided us some rewarding entertianment. She responded well to us looking like we were completely crazy to any on-lookers as we stood in front of her display and yelled, "Trunk up Joy!" raising our own hands to our foreheads as if they were our trunks. Here is one of the results that always makes us cheer, laugh and frisbee crackers to our friend.

By the way, I did find my check card in the girls' hair bow box Sunday evening?! Yep, I had it cancelled on Friday :( oh well my new one will be here next week sometime.

Just the Basics

It has just been one of those weeks. Lots going on, lots on the "to do" list that isn't getting done, not sure I even cooked one dinner the week because we weren't here to eat it. SO, today we just did the basics and left it at that. A few necessary errands were run, school was completed, and not one more thing was done -- aahhh!

Let's see, what was crazy about this week? Well, Mackenzie started on enzymes that didn't agree with her, this overshadowed the full week. Sunday we had our community group at the house for the evening. Monday, we had our co-op during the day. We headed to group violin lesson where the teacher didn't make it because she had locked her keys in her car. Mark was late getting home, but for great reasons. He had been nominated to receive an award for being a compassionate doc - yeah to my man :) He didn't "win" the award at the hospital, but

he always gets the award for compassionate husband! (He did win the door prize of a free stay at a swanky hotel in Charleston:) Tuesday, ants invaded Mark's truck due to constant rain that drove them to look for higher ground. That higher ground happened to be the tire of Mark's truck and then the inside of Mark's truck. In case you were wondering, if you set off a bug bomb in a truck it won't damage the upholstery but it will kill 200- 300 ants. Another fact, car outlets don't produce enough voltage to run a shop vac. Wednesday, regular things happened like AWANA for the big girls, and Mackenie's weekly date with Daddy. Thursday, we opened our doors to about 30 folks for a CMDS meeting that needed a place to meet. It was a sweet time with students, residents and a few community docs that have a heart for serving Him as they serve their patients. (Our girls had fun with the kids that came, they also enjoyed entertaining the adults as the meeting numbers began to dwindle.) And that brings us to just basic today!!

Mackenzie is feeling better and very happy to see that our first and most important errand was to pick up her "powder" from the peds. office. Our second errand was to go by the bank and cancel my check card that has been missing all week- talk about overshadowing :( Then home for school. The girls are happily playing and I am chilling at the computer and listening to even more rain - tomorrow we start on the ark! Hopefully Mark will be done with work sooner rather than later and decide he would love to pick up his dinner on his way home. Here's to a better week next week! (and perhaps a weekend in PJs!)

Mice on Main...2

What a sweet day!!!

Mice On Main ... 1

Its seems like forever ago, but I still want to get our memories of such a sweet day put together. In late July, we made an after church trip to Barnes and Noble. I saw the book Mice on Main. I knew of the scavenger hunt of mice throughout Greenville's Main Street, but had never taken time to make an occasion of it and hunt them all.
Daddy read the story of how the mice "picked their chosen spots" and the girls learned the personalities of each little mouse in the story. Monday morning came and we headed to Main Street to hunt our mice. Sophie was in charge of the book, Haleigh was in charge of the stickers to mark which mice we had spotted, and Mackenzie was in charge of eating her peas and staying happy. Here is what the day looked like: