Busy September

After a boring July and August, we had a rather busy September! Early in the month we took a trip to Chattanooga, where we use to live. We got to show Keziah the house she was born in and visit with Michael Paul's parents. We also took the kids to our very favorite playground, The Pumpkin Patch. It has the most awesome slide.

If you are ever in Chattanooga, you should definitely take the trip up Signal Mountain to this hidden little treasure. It is not just another playground!

Reuel freaked out a bit on his first trip down the slide but after a while he was going by himself and loving it.

Among the other standard playground stuff, there is a nice zipline that Keziah really loved.

After a nice dinner and overnight visit with the grandparents, we headed north to Nashville where Michael Paul was eager to check out the Art Deco car exhibit, "Sensuous Steel" that was going on at the Frist. If you missed it, I'm sorry. It was really great!

In Nashville, we got to visit with my dear friend Summer who was recovering from a car wreck and had a wired jaw. If you haven't read her story, you should! (You can find it here) It was a great visit and unfortunately I didn't get a picture. But Keziah and Reuel had a great time playing with her boys. For weeks Keziah talked about Daniel and all his legos and how much he liked Angry Birds!  That 6-year old boy made quite an impression on her. It was cute. 

Then we headed home, recovered from our mini vacation for a little more than a week, and crazily enough, headed back to Nashville! So yeah, two trips to Nashville in one month. And no we're not that close. It's about a 5 hour drive which means it's about 6-7 hours with kids. But there was more fun to be had. This time we met up with my folks. We took the kids to The Aquarium Restaurant in Opry Mills.(let's all pause again to reflect on the death of Opryland)

Michael Paul had never been to Opry Mills. Even he noticed as we entered the parking lot that it still kind of looked like the entrance to an amusement park. And then he saw the ridiculously huge mall that they built in its place. He looked at me and said, "wow, I get it now. I imagine a little bit of you dies whenever you come here." Yes! yes it does.

Ahhhh, but the kids still had fun. Keziah was very proud of her shark hat from the restaurant. And the restaurant is pretty cool, even though I could totally do without the mall.

The next day we headed to the TN titan game. This little football fan had not been to a game yet and he was very excited. And very cute in his little jersey!

My mom is the one with the season tickets. She takes different people to each game but having all of us there was extra special. She traded tickets with her seat neighbors so we could all go and sit together.

That's one excited CiCi. 

Keziah is a veteran fan. This was actually her third game (4th if you count the one where she was in utero)!

Michael Paul is more of a Bengals and Packers fan since those are the teams he grew up watching. But he still had fun and even sported the extra jersey my mom brought for him!

Home again and the weather turned crisp very quickly. We couldn't wait to start our fall bonfires.

It's scary how much this budding pyro loves fires and all things associated with fire.

We also got the canoe out and headed up to Lake Lure. It was beautiful.

Keziah's favorite part was the tunnel.

How cute is this?!

September was an exciting month.

Our Summer?

It was good, thanks for asking. ;) Hold on as I rewind all the way back to June! 

We had all of Michael Paul's family over for a weekend. It was great. Keziah loves her cousins so much and unfortunately we don't get to see them very often. So this weekend was great.

the trampoline was the biggest hit

and we enjoyed having a bonfire, roasting marshmallows, and just hanging out.

Later in June we met up with my parents and sister in Pigeon Forge and took a trip to Dollywood! It was the first theme park visit for Keziah and Reuel and we were pleased as punch that our kidlets loved every minute of it. They are definitely theme park goers!  Michael Paul and I share a love for theme parks. Michael Paul grew up in Cincinnati where he frequented King's Island. And I grew up spending several days each summer at Opryland. (All Tennesseans may now take a moment of silence to reflect on the death of Opryland)

Anyway, so Dollywood is the next best theme park in TN and it's closer to us. I have to say I was very impressed. It was very clean, and friendly and we are considering season passes when the kids are older.

Don't let the scowls deceive you. Most of the time we were all smiling or squealing. For some reason the camera didn't quite capture it

Theme park lessons were handed on to our children. Important lessons, like wearing shoes that make you taller and standing up extra tall for the measuring sticks. And of course running from ride to ride so as not to waste any of the day. If you need to rest, well, you can rest in line.

I'm drenched in this picture thanks to the river ride (I don't remember what it is called at Dollywood, but we ex-oprylanders call it the Grizzly River Rampage)

Reuel even managed a nap, amazingly enough.

And we were pleasantly surprised at how much there is for even little kids to ride. Reuel actually got to do a lot, and Keziah even more so.

You can barely see her on the other side of Michael Paul! This ride was awesome and we couldn't believe she was tall enough to ride it.

Both kids did amazing considering all the stimulation. I was fully expecting huge melt downs by 2:00. But they were fine! Keziah's only complaint the whole day was that the rides weren't fast enough or high enough and they didn't go upside down like the grown-up rides. That was music to my ears! Music to my ears!

Those were the highlights of June. On to July and August. This part of my long update is easy. It rained. Then it rained some more. We broke every rainfall and flooding record on the books. Thankfully we live on the side of a mountain and there is plenty of valley below for water to drain. But several of our friends had major flooding problems. I don't have a single picture to share from July and August because we didn't go anywhere. We sat inside and watched it rain. And we watched this

literally everyday. The Muppets were my sanity saver this summer. And now Keziah can quote the whole movie and sing all the songs. And she has added all kinds of new phrases to her conversations that she doesn't quite understand. Now we have conversations like:

Me: "If you don't eat some more broccoli, you won't get desert"

Keziah: "Oh, that's just an internet rumor"

True story. (In case you're wondering, that's a line from the muppet movie). So everyone who doesn't have this brilliant movie memorized will eventually think my daughter is both odd and hilarious. But she's just quoting the movie. Although now that I think about it, the muppets are themselves odd and hilarious. If she's going to be obsessed with something, she picked a good one.

Well, that's the highlights of our summer. We made up for a boring July/August with a busy, exciting September which I will try to post on soon.

Good to be back Blog-world!

First Day of Ballet

 After a year of begging to "go to ballet school" this little ballerina officially started ballet yesterday. Was she excited? Oh my, there are no words to adequately express her joy. Here she is before we left for her first class.

And of course she had to show off her dance moves!

Watch me twirl!

7 days is a long time to wait for the next class. She keeps asking me why she can't go to ballet every day. She 'practiced' (i.e. danced around like a crazy person) all morning today.

So when she is the prima ballerina in the NYC ballet, you can all say you knew her when...

Wordless Wednesday: Gymnastics Team 1990

Wordless Wednesday: Chocolate Pudding

I know it's cheating to use words on Wordless Wednesday. But I couldn't share our chocolate pudding pictures without sharing my recipe! Because it rocks. This is the dessert my kids request the most and scarf down. And it's so full of nutrition and healthy fats, it's practically a health food! So easy too.

1/2 cup whole milk (raw is best)

1/4 cup raw honey (local is best)

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla

1 ripe avocado

Place all ingredients and the meat of the avocado in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into glass bowls and refrigerate for a couple of hours. Or I usually make it as I'm making dinner and put in the freezer. Then it's perfect by the time we are done eating dinner. Or sometimes I leave it in the freezer and it turns into chocolatey sorbet frozen deliciousness!

Reuel's Placenta Tree

My beloved Placenta has gone to its final resting place beneath a beautiful Japanese maple tree! 

So if you were following my blog when Keziah was born you might remember my love for my placenta and my desire to honor it. (You can read all about Keziah's placenta tree here). We had been planning to do the same with Reuel's placenta but the time just kept getting away from us. It's been hanging out in my freezer between breakfast sausage and frozen fruit for well over a year now. Every time I opened the freezer I'd think, ugh, we really need to get a tree for Reuel. Well we finally got it done today. The best part of waiting so long was that Reuel got to help! 

He had a blast helping daddy dig.

And then it was time for me to add the special fertilizer!

Saying goodbye to my awesome placenta - that my body created, and then used to nourish a baby for nine months growing him from a tiny spec to an 8 pound healthy baby boy. (seriously, how cool are placentas!)

Keziah insisted on helping a little bit too.

The tree is in!

 We chose a Japanese maple because we've always loved them and they seem to convey a nice balance of beauty and strength. We looked at several trees at the nursery today and this one just seemed perfect the moment we saw it.

Reuel was equally excited about playing with the now empty pot.

A few buckets of water and this little tree is on its way to growing up along with Reuel.

We ended the evening with a prayer and little dedication of our baby boy to the Lord.

God bless you my little Reuel. May you grow up strong and live a beautiful life!

Wordless Wednesday: Puddles

Wordless Wedneday: Peacock Show

Easter Pictures!

Ahh the lovely Easter tradition of family pictures. I hated it as a child. You come home from church and all you want to do is change into play clothes and get on with the easter egg hunt and eat yummy bar-b-q. But nooooo, you have to pose by the big oak tree for a million pictures first. Well, as much as I would like to not put my kids through this yearly torture, I totally get why adults insist on it. It's basically the only day of the year when all four of us look our best. Any other Sunday, and I'm at church in my jeans or yoga pants, no make up, and my hair pulled back. And my kids get to wear what they want which means, well, anything goes. And lets face it, if it's not Sunday, or errand day, I'm probably still in my pajamas, or at least one of the kids still is. So Easter... yes, we need to get a family picture to replace last year's pretty pitiful one. (Look to the right at the scowling child and sleeping baby). I was very much anticipating a fabulous pic to update my very outdated sidebar here in my bloggy space. Well, not fabulous but probably an improvement. After several shots, here's the top three. You can help me decide the winner for this year's family photo. 

Ok, not too bad except the kids are clearly not interested and looking down.

Almost perfect, Reuel is adorable. except we have Keziah doing her forced smile. Michael Paul calls this her Elise face because her cousin Elise use to make a similar face when she was this age. It's cute but not really what I was going for here.

And then we have the 'bribe the child with candy' picture because they were so over it by this point. Again, not exactly what I was hoping for.

Oh well. I'll spare you the 20 shots that were just insanely bad.

Michael Paul and I got a decent one together!

OK, enough of the formal shots. We changed into play clothes and got on with the fun. Here are the pics you probably care more about:

Reuel was only 5 weeks old last Easter and slept through most of it. So this was his first real fun Easter. We weren't sure how he would do with the egg hunt. He did not grasp the concept of "mark, set, go!" and took off ahead of his sister.

But he did grasp the concept of hunting eggs pretty well and started putting eggs in his basket.

Of course he found all of three eggs by the time Keziah had found almost all of them.

She was very proud of herself!

time to check out the goods!

true to my food snobbery self, our kids' eggs were stuffed with organic lolly pops, organic fruit snacks and fruit leathers, and coins for their piggy banks. But in the spirit of the 80/20 rule, I did get Keziah one Reese's peanut butter egg! :)

And my favorite picture is Keziah's reaction upon realizing that some of the loot was for Reuel! She started grabbing everything while screaming no. Too funny. Reuel, true to his laid back self, was just happy to be outside.

Happy Easter, everyone!