Recent Pictures

My mom is visiting us for a couple of weeks.  She got here on Tuesday and Rylan decided he wanted to wear his Batman costume to the airport to pick her up.  He said he was going to scare her :)

We got lots of smiles, weird looks, and random comments while waiting for my mom's late plane to arrive.

As soon as we got my mom, we headed downtown to the sprayground at Cumberland Park.

After a couple of hours in the water, we headed over to the Brentwood Library for one of their summer programs.  Before the program the boys turned in their summer reading logs and got their prize bags of goodies.

The program that afternoon was Safari Greg.  We saw him a few weeks ago at the Green Hills Library but only about half the program was the same.  The boys really liked seeing him again.

That evening we went to Chick-fil-A for dinner since it was Kids Night.  The boys are finally back to eating chicken (yeah!) so they actually ate their kids meals (you get one free kids meal for each adult-sized combo).  The cow was also visiting tables and Sean the Balloon Guy.

We waited an hour for balloons and then all the boys wanted were swords.

On Wednesday we went bowling.

We got out water toys that afternoon and played in the yard for awhile.  Carter and I discovered that the sunflower seeds we had planted a week earlier had sprouted!

Brian and I need to finish the cornhole boards but we did get the bags done.  The boys picked out fabric for the bags a couple of weeks ago - golden for Carter and red for Rylan, just like the boards.  Since my mom is much better than I am with a sewing machine, she sewed the bags for us.

On Thursday evening we went to Cheekwood for Family Night Out.  Missy and Heather and their families met us there and we saw the Nashville Ballet perform "Degas and the Little Dancer".  The performance ended up being inside again since there had been a few storms earlier in the afternoon.

The kids were mesmerized by the performance.  They all sat still staring at the dancers (some of them only started getting antsy the last 5 minutes).  At the end, the dancers showed the kids how to do some movements.

Rylan, Carter, Hannah, and Luke:

On Friday morning the kids had gymnastics and then we went with Missy to Pump It Up.  I hate this slide - my stomach drops every time I go down it and I usually end up with a floor burn on my legs.

Yesterday morning my mom and I took the kids to the Adventure Science Center.  The maze exhibit is still there and we made this maze ourselves out of foam blocks.

Brian was out of town for work all week so last night we got to have our first date night since my mom has been here.  We went to McCreary's Irish Pub in downtown Franklin and enjoyed some beer and traditional Irish food.

This morning we went back to Edwin Warner Park and did some fishing on the Little Harpeth River.  We picked up some live bait on the way over there this time and were much more successful.

I got a picture of this fish that Brian caught.

Carter caught two fish - one that was the same as Brian's catch and a small-mouth bass (I was at the car getting more bug spray and unfortunately missed that one!).

After fishing we drove over to another spot on the river so the boys could get in the water where the bottom is less slippery and there are more rocks to throw.  While at this spot, we found this cool looking caterpillar.

"Doing the Rain Thing"

This week's gardening class was about rain and why water is so important for a garden.  After the learning portion of the class, the kids put a rain gauge in the garden and checked on some of their plants.

The kids started the pumpkins off from seeds and the plants have grown a lot over the last 7 weeks.

The flowers are starting to turn into the tiny pumpkins!

The cantaloupes (and some watermelon??? - I didn't know the kids planted them) are doing well.  Ms. Lisa was working on putting a fence up around these because the groundhog that lives under the old house next to the garden loves cantaloupe.  He apparently ate one bite out of each one last year!

After checking out the plants, the kids got to pick blackberries ...

And potatoes (I was late getting pictures of these because I was putting on Rylan's gloves and the potatoes were pulled up in about 2 seconds).

This afternoon Carter and I ate all the blackberries that we hadn't already snacked on.  We sprinkled a little sugar on them and they were super, super yummy!!!

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!