Pictures from This Week

One of Gray's preschool friends (Elyse) sent him a sort of chain letter for a sticker club.  You send the letter on to 6 friends and then you'll get a letter back from their friends with stickers.  Gray got 2 letters in the mail (which is pretty fun).

His favorite is definitely the Baby Yoda sticker!

Wednesday would have been Gray's last day of school.  His school did a wave parade for about half the school that day.  We made a sign that said "Good-Bye Otter Creek".  We totally made Gray's teacher cry since she realized we wouldn't be returning since Gray is our youngest.  I got a picture of Gray with Ms. Melissa (who also taught Rylan too).

Carter and Rylan's school had a wave parade on Thursday since that would have been their last day.  We quickly made a sign that said "Thank You Teachers / Have a Great Summer!".  I asked Gray to take pictures of his brothers with their teachers.  Here is Rylan with Mrs. Miller (his homeroom teacher who teaches ELA) and Mrs. McKeown (who teaches math, science, & social studies).

Gray got a picture of Carter's homeroom teacher, Ms. Guerre (who teaches ELA), but had Rylan in the foreground.

So I took a picture of Carter on our way out :)

The boys have still been killing wood bees.  Carter even made a poster about it.

We spent most of the weekend building a trailer for our kayaks and installing a hitch on my minivan.  We are hoping to go kayaking super soon!

The tomato plants are doing really well!  Our first tomato showed up this weekend!

Window Cliffs

For Mother's Day, we took the boys hiking to a new place.  Window Cliffs State Natural Area opened in 2014 (though I just learned about it a couple of months ago).  It is close to Burgess Falls State Natural Area and about 1.5 hours from home.  The round-trip hike is about 5.5 miles and requires you to cross the Cane Creek 18 times.  And it was awesome.  This may be my favorite hike within 2 hours of our house!

The hike begins with a descent to the river.  The trail was marked exceptionally well.

The water in the creek wasn't flowing too fast, but it was deep in spots (past my knees) and very slippery at times.  There were permanent cables at all the crossing but we were trying our best to avoid using them due to the current pandemic.  Unfortunately this caused a few falls by Rylan.  And he was NOT HAPPY about it.  I somehow caught this picture of his first fall (and as soon as he took another step he fell again).

It was a cool day and the water was freezing.  I was able to convince Rylan to wear my long sleeve instead of his wet sweatshirt.  It took about 10 minutes, but he got over it.  It may have taken me about 3 days to finally be warm again though :)

We hiked in our Chacos and it worked out well.  I think the water may have been higher than usual because we only saw a few other groups of people wearing water shoes.  There was no way to rock hop across the creek on this day and keep your shoes dry.  We didn't see many people the whole hike, but some were wearing jeans and boots and it could not have been fun hiking in those when soaked.

We carried Gray across the creek at some crossings, and he walked at others.

It was really pretty along the creek and the scenery changed a lot during the hike.

All the creek crossings had these nice little signs.

Rylan fell again at some point.  Luckily Carter was willing to give up his sweatshirt.  Rylan didn't get hurt but there were a lot of tears and frustration again.  But, again, he got over it.

A picture with my boys!!!

At about 2 miles in, we got a view of the Window Cliffs (see the two "windows"?).

Then we came to pretty waterfall with multiple tiers. 

After crossing the creek above the falls, we took a short hike up to the Window Cliffs.

The cliffs ...

We ate a snack up here before heading back.

We hiked closer to the waterfall on the way back.

Looking upstream from the falls ...

Luckily no one fell on the hike back and we took our time enjoying some of the creek crossings.

We got back to the car after about 3 hours and 45 minutes and 6 miles of hiking (according to my watch).  It was a great day!

Pictures from This Week

The boys and I did some chalk art drawings for Mother's Day gifts.

We've also been painting some rocks.

Evening walks still happen a few times a week.

And wildflower picking on those walks.

On Wednesday afternoon, elementary schools in the county did bus parades with teachers along the bus routes.  We waited at the bus stop we've never actually used for almost 2 hours but the buses finally came!  It's not like we had another better to do :)

Unfortunately neither of the boys' homeroom teachers were on the buses that came to our neighborhood but they did have some of their other teachers.

On Friday we met Jen's family at Deerwood Arboretum for some walking and geocaching.  Carter also climbed a tree.

Carter and Rylan have been running a mile every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  They do 3 loops to make the mile and plan to add one more loop this week to their runs.

I fixed our wood bee traps at the beginning of the season but there are still tons of wood bees trying to destroy our screened porch and playhouse.  The boys have started used tennis rackets and a wiffle ball bat to take care of them for me.  Apparently Gray took one swing with the bat and decapitated one of the bees.  The boys blocked off the "crime scene" to show us.

Kayaking

Last Sunday we finally got the kayaks out.  And this time we didn't send them flying off the minvan into an intersection or break a windshield :)

Though we did order a trailer and hitch for my van this weekend so that it will take much less time to load and secure the boats.  We are hoping this encourages us to go more often!

We kayaked on Percy Priest Lake up in Nashville.  We launched from Smith Springs Park and then went around Hole in the Wall Island and Pig Island.  I attempted to map our route afterwards and got almost 7 miles.

The wind wasn't horrible but we were going with it on our way out and we knew it was going to be tough on the return.

Carter used Brian's sea kayak and I used mine.

We finally got our new boat on the water (the Feelfree Corona - nice name) for the first time with Brian, Gray, and Rylan in it. 

It was a pretty quiet morning on the lake with enough but not ridiculous boat traffic.

The first island we got to was called Hole in the Rock Island.  We discovered this little passage (which the island is obviously named for) and ventured in.

This quiet little area was peaceful and it gave Rylan a chance to try out Brian's kayak before deciding he'd rather stay on the big boat.

Heading back out ...

The rock walls were tall on this side of the island.

This monster tree was at the end and it's were we stopped and let the boys play in the water for a bit.

After a swim we headed over to Pig Island and started battling the wind.  I ended up attaching a tow rope to Carter's boat to help him out.  It was still easier than maneuvering Brian's 3-man boat.  We took another shorter break at Pig Island to rest up before the long paddle back into the wind.

It was great to finally be back out on the water.  We are hoping to do it a lot more often now that we have open weekends.