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.