Staycation Part Two

Our second day of our "staycation" was a hike. The word hike here is a bit of a misnomer because my toddler was walking - but none the less we headed on a woods outing that including walking up big hills and playing in water. We went to Dupont Forest where there are falls rather close to a parking area and brought a picnic. It was great. I must say though, doing fun things is rather exhausting. Today has been a lot of around house time just to catch up!

Preparing to head out

Getting ready to "swim" at a nice place in the river



Triple Falls


Hooker Falls


The non-toddler section of the hiking party did a lot of this.... looking back and waiting.



Snacking - there weren't a lot of pictures taken in the actual water portion.... with Sam's leaping history mixed with a current... I was not so keen on taking my eyes off of either of them for one second. Not to mention our snake encounter!

Staycation Part One

Well - we have been doing lots since our last post. Steven Edward is in the process of taking swim lessons (which I'm sure I'll post on later). While at swim lessons Sam tried to attempt toddler suicide by jumping into the pool when no one was close and doing a dead man float face down, until I jumped in to rescue him..... um.... yea. But that is not what this post is about either.

Due to many different circumstances we didn't really get our traditional summer vacations (the lake and the beach) this year. So in lieu of that, we decided to do some day trips around here! Today we ventured out to Gatlinburg TN to the Ripley's Aquarium. It was great and the kids had a great time. The aquarium was superb, the gawking drive at all the kitschy stores and tourists was sublime, and our lunch was quite enjoyable. We went with some of our good friends, and they even came back for some pizza and slip and slide action after our nap on the way home. It was a very fun day. Here are some great pictures from the aquarium.

There was a slow moving conveyor belt that took you on a tunnel through the sharks tank (which was huge). The sharks swam all around us and the boys loved it!

There was also a tunnel you could crawl through in the penguin exhibit. Every time we took our eyes off Steven he darted back inside!

Sam is angry at me here. He is refusing to pose.

Hope you enjoyed our tour! We did!

This post is going to have very little in the way of words. Quite the opposite of the last one I suppose. We have been doing a lot of traveling and are finally home for a long stay. The boys have had a great time in many different places. We went to Richmond/DC while my husband was at a conference in Williamsburg (man it was hot up there). Then we came home for a couple days and off we went again to Chapel Hill to spend time with Nanna Sally and Papa. We didn't get any pictures there but we had an amazing time. The following are random photos from the summer so far.

Here we have Steven feeding Sam. A very effective strategy when we can't get him to eat! My how he loves his brother!

Sam LOVED the sweet peas from the garden. Our garden has produced wonderfully and the boys love to help Daddy with the harvest!

The above 3 pictures are from today when we went to the pool with our friends Jenny and Ryan. They boys had a blast and Steven Edward is totally ready to learn to swim! He was putting his head under, jumping to me and kicking... I was really amazed! Swim lessons here we come.

This is a great picture from my Nanny's house. She spoiled the boys in EVERY respect. I think she got them at least 2 milkshakes a day... and here we have the last morning where she insisted that we watch the Jungle Book while having breakfast in bed. As you can see... the bed was pretty full. I pulled up a chair beside it.

What fun water brings. When water is involved... everyone is happy really!