Dollywood Fun with Mamaw & Papaw

The girls and I, along with Mamaw & Papaw, decided to go to Dollywood today. When we got there, Katelyn decided that she wanted to ride the Shooting Star. Even though she is big enough, she has never wanted to ride it before. Rachel loves it and has ridden it many times, but we've never been able to get Katelyn to ride it. I wasn't sure if Katelyn would actually ride it - I thought she might change her mind when we actually got to the ride. But she rode it and loved it! She liked it so much that when we got off, she wanted to ride it again - so we did!!! Here are some pictures of Rachel, Katelyn, me, and Papaw riding the Shooting Star.
After the Shooting Star, the girls chose to ride the Scrambler. They thought it was funny because they would squish me when the ride started!

After the Shooting Star, Rachel & Papaw decided to ride the bumper cars while Mamaw & Katelyn went to ride the Flying Elephants. I was able to get a picture of Rachel & Papaw, but Mamaw & Katelyn were finished with their ride before I got there.


Right now it's KidsFest at Dollywood, and they have a variety of special things going on just for kids. One of the things that my girls really enjoy are the little plays they put on. They take books and bring them to life in a play. The three books/plays they're doing are "The Little Engine that Could", "The Gruffalo", and "Hank the Cowdog." These are the same three that they did last year, and we saw them all last year, but the girls wanted to see them again. They really enjoyed them again this year! For two of the plays, Rachel picked us out front row seats!!! Here are some pictures taken in the lobby with the Little Engine that Could.

These are pictures of some sand sculptures they're working on there at Dollywood. These are still a work in progress. There was actually a lady there today working on it. I think it's amazing that they can do this with sand and water. My sand sculptures at the beach never turn out like this!!!

A trip to Dollywood isn't complete without a ride on the carousel. Here's Katelyn on the bunny she picked out to ride. Rachel picked out a horse that was halfway around the other side of the carousel so I didn't get a picture of her.

We had a good time today!!!

Another Busy Week

Well, this past week has been another busy week. Who called it summer "break?" I don't think we've taken too many breaks this summer!!!! Rachel had worship camp at church this week every morning. She absolutely LOVED IT!!!! Tonight the kids will be doing a performance from their week at worship camp. During worship camp, they learned about different instruments, music theory, learned several songs, and did a variety of other things. Katelyn can't wait til next year when she'll be old enough to go to worship camp too!!!

Katelyn was busy herself this week. She got to go to VBS with one of her good friends, Kylee! Kylee came to VBS at our church a couple of weeks ago, and invited Katelyn to come to the VBS at her church this past week. It was every evening. Katelyn had a great time! Friday night was commencement night, and the kids recited their Bible verses from the week and sang a song they learned. The focus of VBS was prayer.

In addition to worship camp every morning, and VBS every night, we managed to squeeze in more fun! We went swimming several times and the girls had their last track practice (as documented in an earlier post).

Yesterday we went to the tennis courts to hit for a while, then headed to Mamaw & Papaw's house to swim! We spent most of the day there - including lunch & supper! Thanks for the food!!! Katelyn did a first in the pool yesterday - she jumped off the diving board and swam all the way to the end of the shallow end - all without ever coming up for a breath and all without any help from anyone or anything (no floaties!)!!! Way to go Katelyn!! She's becoming a little fish just like Rachel! I didn't get a video of that yesterday, but I'm sure I'll get one soon!!!

Katelyn's Harvest

Around the 1st of May, Rachel & Katelyn helped Papaw plant his garden. (You can see the post about that by clicking here.) Katelyn planted a green bean plant in Papaw's garden that she had planted at school. Papaw hasn't had much luck with his garden this year. He even replanted the garden after it looked like he wasn't going to get anything from his first planting. But even after replanting, there's not much growing. However, Katelyn's green bean plant has survived and actually produced one bean pod! So today, Katelyn harvested her green bean and we cooked it (along with other green beans) for supper. Here are some pictures:

Katelyn getting ready to harvest her crop!

A successful harvest!

Katelyn proudly showing off her green bean!

Look at this wonderful bean!!

Track Season

The girls participated in a developmental track program that helps introduce kids to track & field. They got to run, jump "hurdles," long jump, high jump, shot put, and javelin! Tuesday night was the last night of actual track practice, so the coach put together a little track meet for the kids. They ran several short races, jumped hurdles, did the long jump, and did the high jump. For the high jump, there is no bar involved! The goal is to just actually jump onto the mat and use correct form! Katelyn is quite comical to watch when she tries the long jump - she almost turns it into the triple jump!!! The girls really enjoyed track! I think Rachel is ready to move up to the bigger kids group next year.

Katelyn says: "Hey Mom! This hurdle is taller than I am!"

Rachel is taller than the hurdle, but not by much!

Do you think we can just run under the hurdles?!?!

Rachel doing the long jump

Katelyn doing the long jump

Katelyn doing the high jump with some help!

All the kids with their trophies

Rachel and Katelyn with their trophies

Swimming Videos

Swimming Time

Since Mamaw & Papaw have a pool, we tend to spend quite a bit of our time during the summer over at their house. Rachel has picked up right where she left off last summer, and is a fish in the water. She goes wherever she wants to in the pool and has a blast playing all sorts of games with Lloyd. She can dive and swim the entire length of the pool without even having to come up for a breath. Unfortunately, I haven't recorded that on video yet! Rachel loves to play with the torpedo and diving rings in the deep end. We take turns having to go get them off the bottom. She has even learned to do a good handstand in the shallow end this year. Rachel is a super swimmer!!!

Here's a picture of Rachel after diving into the water:
Katelyn can finally stand up in the shallow end!!! She has to tiptoe and tilt her head up, but she can stand up now!! Katelyn is a good swimmer too! She can swim from side to side without needing a breath! She can dive with a little help from Daddy! She likes to jump off the diving board and swim to the side. She has had fun playing games in the pool too! She can get the diving rings off the bottom in the shallow end, but she hasn't quite been able to get them from the deep end. She improves each day, so I'm sure she'll be doing even more "tricks" by the end of the summer!!!

Katelyn showing off her swimming style!
Evidently, there's a lizard that has decided to make his home at Mamaw & Papaw's house! We've seen him several times now. The girls look for him when we go over there! As you can tell by the picture, he's a healthy lizard!

Our Tuesday

Tuesday was quite a busy day around here. It started out with me having a dentist appointment at 8:00! The girls were SO GOOD watching me get my teeth cleaned! The hygienist even asked me if they were always this good because they were SUPER!!! After the dentist appointment, we headed home for a short time. The girls played dress-up (she previous posts) and I did some work around here. Soon it was time to get ready to leave again. This time, I was headed to play tennis and the girls got to stay with Wendy (my sister-in-law) while I played. They had a blast at Wendy's house! After tennis was over, I headed to Wendy's to get the girls and then we went straight over to Mamaw & Papaw's house to see them and swim! They had just returned home from a vacation to Hawaii!!! We had a good time visiting with them and swimming in the pool. Soon it was time to dry off so that we could run home, change clothes, pick up Robert, and go to track practice! The girls participate in a developmental track program here twice a week and love it!!! Anyway, it was off to track practice! The girls wanted me to call Lloyd & Wendy to see if they wanted to come and watch track practice. Lloyd & Wendy were nice and came and sat in the hot sun to watch the girls "run track." Afterwards, we all went out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants. Needless to say, after eating, it was time to hustle home and take baths and get in bed!!! It was a fun day, but pretty exhausting for the girls!

Here's a picture of Lloyd with the girls after eating.

Silly Katelyn

Katelyn had some fun on Tuesday morning playing with the dress-up clothes. She said she was a queen, but then she also said she was a fairy godmother. Not sure what you'd actually call her other than a silly girl!!!

Rachel the Cowgirl

Tuesday morning the girls were having some fun with their dress-up clothes. Rachel decided she wanted to be a cowgirl. After these videos were taken, she went and found some jeans and a more cowgirl looking top! But she was cracking me up in these videos! What do you think?

Happy Father's Day!

A great big Happy Father's Day to Robert today! He is such a wonderful father to our girls! The girls absolutely adore him and are both daddy's girls! Here are a few shots from our morning before heading to church. (And yes - that's the same dresses they wore on Mother's Day - Robert pointed that out as we were taking pictures this morning. Oh well!!)

Daddy and his two girls

Katelyn with Daddy

Rachel with Daddy

We love our daddy!!!

Sisters

Aren't we sweet?!?!
Rachel

Katelyn

Outrigger Island - VBS

Here's a video from VBS this past week - it's the Outrigger Island theme song.

Rachel on the EuroBungy

So What Have We Been Up To?

I noticed that my last post was over a week ago - Wednesday, June 4th. So what have we been doing since then? LOTS!!! Here's a not so brief recap of our past week and a half:


June 5th: Robert & I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary!!! We didn't do anything exciting though, because I spent most of the day at church decorating for VBS, and then the girls had track practice that night!

Here we are on our wedding day - June 5, 1993
And this is now. Have we changed at all?


June 6th: Robert celebrated his 40th birthday! I must say he's the best looking 40 year old I know!!! We celebrated by going to Robert's last softball game of the year, and then out to eat after the game. We did make him a cake and we came home and had cake and ice cream after going out to eat.

June 7th & 8th: The girls went to spend Saturday and Sunday with Puddin & Papa (Robert's parents). I had our local tennis playoffs all week-end in the 90+ degree heat! The top 2 teams from the weekday league and the top 2 teams from the week-end league came together for the playoffs. This year our league gets a wildcard to the state tournament, so that means the top 2 teams from our playoffs advance. We were the 1st place team from the weekday league, and we played the 1st place team from the week-end league the first match on Saturday. We won it 3-2!!! We were pretty pumped up about that! Saturday evening we played the 2nd place team from our league - we had already beaten them 3 times this season, so it shouldn't be a problem - right?!?! WRONG! We ended up losing to them 2-3! I think it was a combination of several things, but mainly I think we overlooked them. They played great! I did win my match 6-4, 6-1, so that was good, but I would rather our team had won!!! So after Saturday, all 4 teams were 1-1! Whoever won the matches on Sunday afternoon would be headed to the state tournament, and whoever lost was finished for the season. Well, our team won our match 3-2, but we ended up coming in 2nd place to the team we beat on Saturday! We had the same win-loss record, but they had won 1 more court than us, so they claimed 1st place. Oh well, we both go to the state tournament!!!

June 9th-13th: VBS week at church!! For the past several years I've been in charge of preschool crafts, so I volunteered to do that again this year. I've spend the past several weeks buying supplies, planning crafts, and getting everything ready for the kids. For preschool crafts, we have kids ages 2 years old through completed kindergarten. That's a HUGE range in their ability to do things like cut, glue, etc. So I do a lot of pre-work like getting things already cut up before the week starts. I had a good group of helpers this year! They made things go as smoothly as possible! Thanks to all of you who helped me, and a BIG thanks to my sister-in-law Wendy who was my right hand man all week!! We had around 120 kids come to us in preschool crafts each day. We have the kids for 15 minutes, then have 5 minutes to get ready for the next group! It's a fast-paced day for sure!!! This year we decorated visors, made turtle visors, made leis, decorated gigantic sunglasses, and made a message in a bottle. The kids seemed to enjoy their crafts and the teachers were complimentary, so I think everything went well. And I stayed well under budget!!


During the worship rally, the kid's praise team goes on stage to help lead with the music. The praise team is for kids in kindergarten through 5th grade. Even though Katelyn isn't in kindergarten yet, one of the workers "kidnapped" Katelyn and brought her over early to be on stage with the praise team! Since Rachel is in praise team, Katelyn does know all the words and motions, but she knows she's not officially a praise team member.


Thursday night was Family Night for VBS. They had some fun things set up outside for the kids to do. Rachel decided she would try the EuroBungy. It took her a few jumps to figure out how to do a flip, but once she figured it out, she did flips over & over & over!!! Katelyn has decided that she wants to do it next time!


Katelyn invited her best bud Kylee to VBS this year, and she was so excited to see Kylee Monday morning in her class! However, Tuesday Kylee wasn't there and Katelyn was disappointed. Turns out Kylee got some kind of virus and started running a very high fever. She missed the middle of the week but was able to come back on Friday!


June 13th-14th: We went to Mamaw & Papaw's house and swam, grilled out, and spent the night. On Saturday we got up and headed to the tennis courts so that I could practice a bit, then went back to their house to swim some more. We took a break to eat lunch, let the girls rest a bit while we mowed the yard, and then we swam some more!!!

In addition to all this, Robert, Rachel, and Katelyn all had dentist appointments too! And NO CAVITIES for anyone!!! I go to the dentist this next week!

So as you can see, it's been a pretty busy past week or so!

Happy Father's Day tomorrow to all the fathers out there, especially Robert, Papaw, and Papa!

Dollywood Fun with Friends

Monday we went to Dollywood with some friends of ours. Julie is my friend from church that sells Uppercase Living, which are vinyl expressions for your home. I've posted about that several times before. Anyway, she has two daughters. Olivia is 11 and Anna is 3. My girls just love playing with both Olivia and Anna. We had a wonderful time at Dollywood! Olivia was such a sweet girl helping to take care of the younger girls. And since the two youngest girls aren't tall enough to ride most rides without an adult, Olivia was a big helper riding the rides with Rachel while I could ride with Katelyn and Julie could ride with Anna.

Shortly after we arrived, me, Rachel, and Olivia rode the River Rampage and I GOT SOAKED!!! And of course, I had worn denim shorts, so I walked around all day with wet shorts! And what was really funny is that the shorts were new and had only been washed once, so instead of just having water dripping down my legs, I had blue water dripping down my legs from where the shorts were fading!!

Here are all 4 girls at the start of our adventure! The two big sisters are the red heads, and the two little sisters are the blondes!
Olivia and Rachel had a good time riding the airplanes.

Olivia & Rachel riding the elephants to dry off after our River Rampage ride! (They got wet, but not near as wet as I did!!!)

All 6 of us rode the carousel right before lunch. Katelyn & Anna had already ridden it while Rachel & Olivia were riding bigger rides. When we met back up with them at the carousel, Anna and Katelyn were wanting to ride it again, so we all hopped on!

Rachel riding with Anna and Katelyn on the ducks.

Katelyn driving a car.

Anna experienced a first that day - her first piece of chewing gum!! Katelyn had asked me for a piece of gum, so I gave her the pack and she shared with everyone. When she came to Anna, Katelyn looked at Anna, Anna looked at Julie, Katelyn looked at Julie, and Julie said okay! After all, with those 2 cute little blonde girls looking up at you, who can refuse?!?!? This is a picture of Anna right after she started chewing her gum. She LOVED it! And she did very well with it. She didn't swallow it, drop it, or get it stuck in her hair! When she was finished with it, she threw it in the trash. Good job Anna!

Rachel on the VeggieTales roller coaster.

Anna's favorite ride - the bees!!!

Anna, Katelyn, and I hung out together while Julie, Olivia, and Rachel went to ride the River Rampage before we left. Here are Anna & Katelyn being so cute together!


Julie, Olivia, and Rachel on the River Rampage.

Four pretty girls in a convertible! Watch out - young driver on the road!

This was Rachel's idea - she wanted the big girls peeking out from behind the tree, and the little girls to hug the tree. The other 3 girls complied with Rachel's request and here's the resulting picture.