Sunday, September 9, 2012

Spontenaity and Tweetsie Railroad Labor Day 2012

At different times in our lives, Adam and I have been known for being spontaneous people. In fact that was one of the reasons I married him. One night when we were dating he randomly drove me to an overlook in Park City where we could see the big full moon just right. Then the next date we driving somewhere and a good song came on and he stopped the car on a rooftop so we could have our own private swing dance. It drove some of our more planning oriented friends crazy at first, but then they got used to us. 

Over the last 9 years, it has become a little harder to be spontaneous. For one thing, to haul 3 kids, a baby (or 2 depending on how some of us are acting) it takes enough gear to fill up a minivan even for a simple day trip. Cost is another thing that impedes us sometimes. Around here we don't have any free cabins to stay in so any trip usually requires a hotel stay and gas of course. If we want to go to Olive Garden or Target even, it takes an hour of driving so we better really want that olive garden...  Spontenaity is something I've been missing and this weekend we had a chance to renew ourselves. Sunday night Adam asked if I was going to work on Labor Day. (I could have if I wanted to but noone was depending on me to work.) One of the things on our bucket list was to go see tweetsie railroad. It is a small train themed amusement park that had been recommended to us down in North Carolina. We looked it up and it looked pretty fun. We asked some friends to go with us, but they declined and said it looked like it might rain. It's also 3.5 hours away and cost more than we had originally thought.  We thought about it and said, "What the heck, let's just be spontaneous and do it!" So we woke up at the regular time 7:00 because our kids do not ever sleep in and drove down to Boon, NC. We found a little coupon at the grocery store and had a great time.  They had rides and shows.

 This is us ready for action. The park is built on a mountain so Adam and Lilly had taken the ramp and we took the stairs. There were ALOT of stairs.

 Ready for action!!
 Crazy guys on the Tornado.

 Cute girls panning for gold. That was Jack's favorite part. He is really into rocks right now. Especially shiny ones- crystals, gold, and jewels.
 Feeding the goats. They had feed in an ice cream cone but the animals favorite treat was the CONE! They fed llamas, ostridge, deer and lots of goats.
 Following this adventure, the boys were supposed to go with me down the chair lift to the other side of the park but Jack ran ahead and got lost. Then we had a huge downpour. It was raining so hard everyone ran for cover. I called adam and told him jack was lost. He ran through the rain to ask the chair lift man if jack had come down alone and he hadn't. Someone had taken jack to an employee and I tracked him down up by the animals. Whew, that was our first lost child experience and got all our hearts pounding. Needless to say, we had some little chats about staying together and what to do if you find yourself missing.
 The saloon girls we watched their show while we ate our lunchables.
 Cute Lilly riding on the train. i just love taking her pictures.




 The train was heisted by bandits who had a shootout in the wild west town. Then they were attacked by Indians at the next stop. The boys sure dug the shoot outs.  The cowboys were pretty funny. It made us think of cherry hill and made me wish I could have worked at a place like that for my summer jobs.
 Jack behind the wheel- watch out!!
 A real ferris wheel- makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
 Adam and Jack did the crazy big kid rides and Jack wanted to ride them over and over.

 "World famour tweetsie cloggers" or so they called themselves.
 Lilly on the stage coach.
It rained some but for us it was great because it kept the other people away and we had no lines. We could ride the rides as many times as we wanted. We drove home and got back around 10:00 PM with 4 sleepers in the car. It felt a little crazy and a little spontaneous but ahhh, it feels good to be back.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Summer's done now Back to School

The craze that went on all summer at our house was Bey Blades. The boys have been obsessed. They are basically tops that you pull a plastic cord and they spin. They have an arena where they spin several at a time to "battle." Charlie took these pictures of his beys. All our friends have beys, especially the Hodnetts. I even made them special bey blade carrying bags with their initials on them. They came over alost every day and all the boys would sit in a circle and battle for hours. It was good times, but it seems like now that school is starting the fad may be over. That's ok with me because each bey costs up to $12 and Charlie keeps losing every one of his, so on to the next crazy way to waste their parents money...


 This is what hapens when I try and watch a movie and Charlie goes upstairs by himself where we keep cookies and bubbles on top of the fridge.
 FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL! FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!! The boys were very excited to be starting school this year. Charlie's in pre-school and Jack is in 1st grade. They get to ride the school bus home which is Charlie's favorite part. Check out his excited face in this picture. When I asked him what he does at school, he says, "we ate and then we played and then we ate and then we played some more." Sounds like a good school to me.
 Happy Nine Year anniversary to us!! Aug 12 was our anniversary, I can't believe it's been that long. I like looking back at our old pictures. We have changed, put on a few pounds.. but we are still the same, just surrounded by more little people to love and hold. Bring on a new year...

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Happy 24th of July

We were at Mayby mill on the actual 24th which was fitting because we got to look at a house that was built in 1860. Our stake had a fun pioneer celebration and emergency preparedness day. We had lots of fun and had a really good turnout. 

 My little Pioneer girl

 The kids got to pet a chicken
 and milk a pretend cow
 and shave with a butter knife
 Cute Daddy and Lilly

 There was also a waterslide and some baby wading pools. Lilly was quite the modest pioneer.

Grandpas Visit and a Trip to DC


 Uncle Nick came home from his mission and he was such a good sport to sit in the back of the van with the kids. He sure learned alot of patience and good people skills/ manners on his mission.
 We went to Maybry Mill


 The boys doing their manly shooting
 Grandpa in Air and Space museum


 Jack and I read a book where someone had stole Lincolns thumb. We were very glad to see he still had all 10 digits.
DC was a long drive. We had to make a stop off at Adam's favorite speaker store.