Groovy!

So Julian wanted a good picture for his profile...After a long photography session.....I finally got a shot that he liked!!!

Children's Museum

If you have never brought your kids to a children's museum, find the one nearest you and go! They are so much fun for kids of all ages and they are cheap!!! This is the 3rd one we have been to.
They are divided up into different themed areas...this was "A Trip To Mexico"...there was a boarding area for the kids to get on a plane. A lot of the smaller kids just wanted to stay on the plane. There's something for every age group. There was a Mexican "restaurant " with a table and chairs, bowls, fake food, etc. The best part is there are dress-up clothes in each station. LOL This was in the grocery store. They had fully stocked shelves of fake food for the kids to "buy" at the check out counter.... Emily got to be a news anchor in the "Be a STAR" section. the kids could dress up, change the lighting, work one of the cameras, and everything.
Here Emily took over the job of "Florist" and organized all of the flowers.

Day trippers

Today we took off to gulfport, MS to the children's museum. First we went to Waffle House.
the food was actually pretty decent. I hadn't seen the Mississippi gulf coast in a while. It's still pretty sad just to see that everything's GONE, but they are re-building big time. I wanted to get some pictures of us on the beach but RIGHT when we left Waffle House it started pouring buckets.

Nauvoo Pageant

The pageant was wonderful. I can't even describe it. The music was awesome, I have to get the CD. This was the best part- when suddenly the REAL temple was lit up in the background, and President Hinckley's voice came over the speakers as he talked about the temple. Yep, I cried.

Our trip to Nauvoo,IL

Joshua is the Stake YM Pres. and they had a Youth trip to Nauvoo,Illinois. I was so happy to be able to tag along, I can't even begin to describe it. My AWESOME Mom offered to watch the kids for us so we could go. I can not even begin to thank her. It was such a spiritual experience for both of us. We had a wonderful time. I just can't wait to go back and bring Julian and Emily!!! They will LOVE that place.
These are some hilarious BEFORE and AFTER pictures:
Before the 16 and 1/2 hour bus ride:::: (don't we look fresh-faced and happy?) And the AFTER:::: Look closely for the differences, LOL. Josh doesn't look quite as worn out as I do. I got ZERO sleep on the bus!!! The trip should have been 14 hours but the driver got lost a few times. We showed up late, but it turned out fine.

Abram's Falls

This was just a wonderful time together as a family. We really enjoyed ourselves. Look at Emily's face!!!! LOL
Julian loved getting in the creeks!!

5 mile hike

We got up early the next morning and took off on a 5 mile hike (round trip) to Abram's Falls. That was a gorgeous hike! the trail was just stunning. I have so many pictures of it. Julian and Emily did an awesome job! They had their "Camelbacs" on, which are water-filled back packs with a straw attached to drink out of. Can you even believe this? So we're just walking along and there was a deer in the creek. She wasn't even the least bit concerned about us either. We stood and watched her for a little while til she ran off.
I stopped to look for rocks a few times on the way. I LOVE ROCKS. I brought Emily's back pack...it got heavier and heavier as I collected more and more rocks. I have enough for a small rock garden somewhere in my yard now. I'm excited about that.

Cade's Cove

Cade's Cove was definitely the highlight of our whole trip. This has got to be one of the most beautiful places in the whole world. We can't wait to go back. There were so many old, historical buildings to explore and read about. We got to learn all about the first settlers in the Smoky mountains. There's a camp ground there too, so we set up our tent then took off to look around.
There was a long road that you could just drive down and see the animals within arms' length!! We saw wild deer and turkey and even a black bear cub...but by the time we saw the cub it was getting dark and I couldn't get a good picture of him. He was up in a tree. He was so darn cute. There were SEVERAL old buildings right off of the road too, so you could park and go inside of them.

White water rafting

Here we ar in the back of the truck, all geared up for rafting. This crazy driver took us up the mountain and dropped us off with our raft. It was a self-guided trip! We had so much fun.
The man who dropped us off told us "Any time you come to an island in the river, choose the left"...We were singing "Choose the left" and laughing. Julian sat in front and was a good rower! Emily sat back and enjoyed the ride! She sang "row row row your boat...." to us while we paddled for about 3 hours straight. LOL
Josh sat in tha back and did the steering. We didn't fall out of the raft once even though lots of other people around us did!!!

Ruby Falls

So the next day we got up and we didn't stop driving til we made it to TN. On the way we saw about a million sigs that said "Ruby Falls" so we decided to check it out. We went deep down inside a mountain into caves where there's a huge underground waterfall. It was cool. There were a lot of weird formations all over the place like this one Julian is standing by:

Dunn's Falls

Saturday we took off for a vacation to Tennessee. We decided to camp out in Meridian, MS...right before we got there, we saw a sign for Dunn's Falls. I love water falls, so we decided to check it out. This placed turned out to be a little piece of American history. It was a working grist mill in the 1800's We were even able to go inside and explore...there were so many cool old tools inside.
There were a lot of people tubing and playing in the creek below.

We decided to take a walk down the nature trail while we were there. It was very pretty. Look at that. I love history.

new park

A dragon made of tires!!!! We all tried this. It's not easy!!! I used to kick butt on that when I was a kid. Now I just land on my butt.

They just built a new park in our town. It's awesome. We had to go check it out. I don't know who had more fun playing- me and Josh or Julian and Emily. LOL

CUSTARD

Keli took this picture. I LOVE IT. there's a place we simply HAVE to go every time we're at the camp- that's the frozen custard stand. It is so DIVINELY delicious. See me on the left in the blue T-shirt? I don't even notice that someone is taking a picture because I am so intent on my cone, LOL. My Mom's face is the BEST!!! She's the one in the camo shorts. How many Grammas are that AWESOME???? (((and you have to say the word awesome in a high pitched voice for emphasis, by the way. read that sentence again the right way)))And there's pretty Christy in her tie dye. She is too cool.

snakes at the creek

So yeah, we were down at the creek and we saw 2 snakes. I do not like snakes but we have become a lot more accepting of them lately. Hey, as long as they stay away from us, we will allow them to live. Here Emily was trying to catch minnows with that bag. LOL... She has been begging me for a pet fish so last night I went to Walmart and bought one of those pretty little red bettas. She loves it. Here's Julian with a boogie board. he loves to ride it down stream.
Julian and his friend had a blast at the creek, that's for sure. Running from snakes is a grand adventure for them. The first one we saw was really small and brown. It got carried down stream so I wasn't worried about it. They can't swim against that current...
but then later we saw another one on the rocks of the dam. It was orange and white patterned. YUCK. It came out and stood up, looking around at us. I was like "Okay time to go!"
Then these 3 teenager boys decided to try to kill it by throwing huge stones at it. But I never saw the actual body so I think it got away. I was OUTTA there.

PINK robes and RED Bluff

SO one night my dad brought Josh, my brother Cori, and my sister's husband Randy out to Red Bluff and they had decided that they were going to jump off the cliff, slide down the bluff to the bottom, walk the creek to the river (Pearl River) and SWIM to the camp....
4 hours later Carrie and I took off to go find them and got the whole story.....
there was basically no current in the river that night so it was slow going. after about 3 hours of swimming in the river, a guy in a boat offered to give them a ride...his boat broke down and they had to use their boogie boards as oars to get to the guy's house.
they got in the back of his truck and he was bringing them home when carrie and i passed them on the road.
cori and josh had no extra clothes, since they hadn't planned on swimming in their clothes...so they ended up wearing those pink robes til their clothes got washed.
of course this was a Kodak moment!!!
there's a glimpse of the bluff, with emily and julian posing. i'll post some better pictures if i can find any.

catfish

yeah! keli posted some cool pictures so i snagged them. these were taken the night we caught catfish on the trot line. the top one is me and the bottom one is my big sis keli. i love her so much. she looks so pretty in this picture.it was so much fun, i will never forget that night. as you can see, i had a little light hanging around my neck- that light was strapped to my forehead so we could see the line as we were checking the hooks at about 10pm in the pitch dark. the funniest part was that my dad parked on the shore and shined his headlights at us, which attracted every gnat in the state of mississippi. we were SWARMED. keli and i were laughing so hard and choking on the bugs at the same time, which made us laugh even harder.