4th of July

We had a very, very soggy Fourth of July this year.  It rained all day (and for the two next days).  All the fireworks in the area except for the downtown Nashville show were canceled.  Even Nashville had to change some things (like no live music) to accommodate the weather.

The 3rd was still nice though and as Brian drove back from Knoxville that afternoon, he stopped by one of the fireworks stores and bought a $6 kit of poppers, sparklers, etc.  I'm surprised the store didn't just give him the small kit because Brian saw most people buying hundreds or thousands of dollars of fireworks :)

When Brian got home, we went ahead and tried out a few things.

These shot out streamers ...

These were called snake-somethings???  You light the little pellets and they grow turning into "snakes".

The boys tried out a few sparklers too.  These changed colors as they burned down but were super difficult to keep lit.

Unfortunately this is what the 4th looked like all day.  We ended up staying home and just relaxing all day.

We did try out some pop-its in the garage at one point (after adding one more coat of paint to the cornhole boards Brian made).

In the evening we ventured out for a walk in the rain.  We were finally getting a break for an hour or two with only some drizzle.

There were plenty of puddles for jumping.

Because it was the driest it had been all day, we decided to go ahead and finish up all the sparklers and small fireworks we had.

Listen to Carter say, "Wow, that is beautiful." :)

The boys went to bed a little later than normal but we decided to not keep them up too late because we figured everyone would save their fireworks for the weekend since we hadn't heard any yet.

We were so wrong.  The boys had skipped naps and fell asleep as soon as they were in bed.  About 5 minutes later a family behind us started shooting off giant fireworks in the alley behind our house.  They were so close and right over our house that you had to walk into the yard to see them.  My ears were ringing from how loud they were too.  Amazingly, the boys slept through the noise!

Wilmington Trip - Day 4

The fourth day of our Wilmington trip was Tuesday, June 18th.  I am so slow at getting this trip posted!  We need to stop doing things so I don't have other things to blog about too :)

Anyway, we had another semi-sunny day (at least there was no rain).  It was never really hot at the beach during our trip.  If anything, it was too cool sometimes to really want to only wear a bathing suit.  As was becoming our routine, we went to the beach in the morning and stayed until after lunch.

We built a sand castle with a moat and bridge (and shells to block the bridge from bad guys).

I dug a super deep hole for Carter.  I had hit water at this depth and it got difficult to make it any deeper.

Rylan got his legs buried by my mom.

(I stopped taking so many pictures at the beach at this point because they were all starting to look the same. :) )

After dinner that night we went down to Kure Beach.  First we walked out on the fishing pier.

There was a single pelican walking around.

Apparently he likes to catch his food the easy way (by getting fish that the fisherman don't want).

We watched anytime a fisherman looked like he was reeling something in.  We saw one guy catch a baby shark.  He was nice enough when we saw us to bring the shark over so the boys could touch it.

So Carter touched two sharks in two days!

Next we drove down to Fort Fisher to walk around near the fort.  We started off on the ocean side.

And then crossed the street to the fort.

The museum was closed but we walked around by the anchor and canon.

And then back to the ocean side where I wanted to get some pictures on these cool trees.  Getting a nice smile from silly boys is hard sometimes!

I could not get both boys to cooperate at the same time to get a good picture with my mom!

A few sunset pictures ...

Developmental Screening

Rylan's speech is much better than Carter's at this age but I still don't think it's as clear as it should be.  Now that Carter has been in speech therapy for over a year, I can identify some things that both kids are doing wrong instead of just basically saying I can't understand them (such as sound substitutions and constant deletions).

At the end of the school year I asked Rylan's teachers what they thought since they are around a group of 12 kids all within a couple of months of age.  One of them said that she believed Rylan was a little behind and recommended that I get him tested, as I was hoping to do.

Anyway, Rylan had his screening yesterday.  The only appointment we could get for the summer was at 2:15 pm yesterday - right in the middle of Rylan's normal nap time.  So we just skipped nap because trying to wake him up from a very short one usually makes him extremely grumpy.  We went swimming in the morning with Radnor and stayed until 1 pm so I was pushing it a little.

Luckily Rylan did great during his screening.  In was in a separate room and was fine going in without me.  Afterward he told me the ladies were really nice.  I got to answer two questionnaires while waiting and Carter got to play with the toys in the classroom.

When the tester was done she said Rylan did great.  Her only concern was his articulation.  I will get an official letter with results in a couple of weeks but she said she's going to recommend him for further speech testing.  At that session, a speech pathologist will see if he qualifies for the program after doing more exercises with Rylan.  Otherwise she said Rylan was testing far above his age and seemed very smart.

Now we just have to wait again :)  I'm so glad we have this free service available but it takes a very long time to qualify which makes it a little frustrating.

On a related note, I got a call from Carter's speech teacher last week.  She has decided to go private and no longer teach in the school system.  So Carter will have a new teacher this year.  We really loved Ms. Judy so we are going to miss her but hopefully the new teacher will be just as great!

Marathon Training

I have signed up for a marathon.  The last one I did was the Richmond Marathon in 2004.  I've done several half marathons since then but hadn't wanted to commit to serious training until now.  This time I'm doing a local race - the Nashville Marathon.  It is much smaller than the Country Music Marathon held in the spring and also in Nashville - this one is capped at 1,000 participants.

The race is on November 9th and my training schedule started this past week.  I'm following the Hal Higdon beginners training program again.  Last time I followed it exactly.  This time I'm going to do the suggested long runs on the weekends but mix in Insanity during the week to replace some of the shorter runs.

One week of training down - 17 more to go!

Fishing the Little Harpeth River

We had planned on going fishing on our canoe trip on Saturday but when we saw the crowds, we left the gear in the car.  Carter had been looking forward to fishing so we took the boys yesterday.

We got out a little late and it was already almost lunch time so we didn't stop for any live bait this time and just used tackle we had.

We drove up to Edwin Warner Park and tried out the Little Harpeth River.  We thought we'd just stand on the river bank to fish but the water was crystal clear with a rocky bottom which just asked to be waded in to.  Unfortunately I hadn't brought anyone a change of clothes and Carter got soaked up to his belly button - the boys ended up riding home in just a diaper and underwear with a beach towel to cover up :)

The last time we went fishing was at the Westhaven pond and every time you put a hook in the water, a fished got on it within seconds.  So Carter was a little frustrated that he wasn't catching anything.  If we had live bait we probably would have caught something though.  I saw at least 5 fish in one little area with a large one that stayed there for several minutes.  He wasn't interested in the tackle though.  Plus, with Rylan tossing rocks in the water just a few yards away, we didn't have a chance :)

However, the boys did awesome and we stuck around in this private little section of the river for over an hour.  It was gorgeous!