Visiting with Grandpa Bob

Since my mom was working the first week we were in Washington, my Dad drove out to her house where we were staying to spend some time with me and the girls. They had so much fun playing under the blanket and looking at books. The girls really do love their Grandpa Bob! 

Dad and Karen had to go out of town for about a week or so while I was in Washington, but we also got to see him again at my brother's birthday party in Seattle. Also, after Jeff got here, we stopped by his house for a day and went to McDonalds for lunch together. 

 

Trip to Washington

The girls and I flew out June 18 to Washington to visit. It was my 10 year reunion, and since we had already used up too much of our travel budget for Jeff to fly to Washington for a job interview, I just planned on not going. My Mom really wanted me to be able to go, because she knew I had really looked forward to it for a while. She offered to fly us out there. I was originally only going to stay a week, but the week before I was going to go, Jeff was going to be gone a lot at a football camp, so I thought I might as well go that week too and then the next week after was Jeff's spring break, and Jeff made enough money at his football camp to pay for his ticket back. 

Anyway, so the girls and I left June 18 and Cheyenne especially was soooo excited. This was the first time I think that she really understood the concept that we were flying in the sky across the whole country. She would ask me over and over again. Show me where is Georgia and where is Washington (on the map). My sweet friend Wendi let us park our van at her house and drove me to the airport. It was so nice of her and pretty much the only way we were going to be able to go out early, because parking at the airport that long would have been way too expensive.

We got there extra early which is the way to go with kids. I am doing this from now on. It was so relaxing and I got to point things out to the girls instead of being frustrated and flustered and trying to hurry them along. We stopped at chic-fil-a and got dinner then sat at our gate to eat it. Cheyenne still remembers our gate was "D2." I only checked one bag with all of our luggage, then I just had a backpack, and Berkeley in the stroller and Cheyenne with the monkey backpack on. The girls were so good the whole time.

When we got on the plane it wasn't a full flight so we thankfully had the whole row to ourselves. I don't  think I would have survived otherwise. The first hour the girls were super excited so we watched out the window, ate treats and played with some coloring books and stuff I brought. Berkeley started to get tired first and kept saying "nigh, nigh." Which means she must have been really really tired to actually request to go to bed. She was getting really frustrated and kept trying to lay down, but couldn't get comfortable. We tried so many things. I brought a bunch of new books we got at garage sales, so I tried laying down on the bench with both girls on my chest and we read the books about 5 times, but they couldn't fall asleep. I only had one blanket and no pillows. The flight was freezing. I feel like if I would have had pillows and another blanket they could have gotten comfy. Anyway, finally, with about an hour and a half left, they each laid across the row, which left no room for me, so I sat on the floor between the seats for the last hour and a half. It was the longest flight EVER. But, the girls really were well behaved and it could have been much worse. My mom picked us up from the airport and I tried my best to stay awake on the drive home, but by the time we got home it was 4 am Georgia time and I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before so I was exhausted!

Braves Game

 So our awesome friends, Robyn and Steve, took us to a Braves game before we left for Washington. It was my first Braves game since we moved here. We had such a good time! I didn't have anything Braves, and my roots were really bad, so since the Braves were playing the Yankees, I wore a Red Sox hat... except I totally forgot that Steve is a HUGE Yankees fan and that's even why he wanted us to go to the game with them! Once he saw it I felt bad, but I thought I was cheering for the Braves, therefore cheering against the Yankees and the most against the Yankees team is the Red Sox... that was my train of thought, but even the guys checking the tickets didn't appreciate my hat. I got a lot of crap and even some Yankees fans yelling at me from a few rows up, "Take that hat off!!!" Haha... next time I go to a game I will borrow someone's braves shirt unless I can find a good one for myself before then:)

Good times:) Here is a picture of Cheyenne and Berkeley before church about a month ago:

By the way, Jeff and I are the nursery leaders. I like the calling, and Jeff is great in there, but I don't really know how he feels about it:)

Callaway Gardens Getaway

Warning... longest post ever.

My friend, Lindsey, found this great deal on travelzoo for a place called Callaway Gardens, which is in South Georgia, right next to Alabama. The deal was for two nights at the resort plus canoe rental, bike rental, an hour of tennis time, and a zipline ropes course thing all for only $179. She kept talking about it and how she wanted to swap with another couple watching each other's kids. We already had a few little family vacations planned, so I wasn't really too interested at first, but then when she told me the deal and I thought about getting away with just Jeff for the weekend, we decided to make it work! 

Trying to find the weekends to swap was kind of hard, because we all had different, busy schedules, and there were also black out dates for the voucher. I had decided I wanted it to be a surprise for Jeff so that made the scheduling even harder. We had Father's Day weekend set, so I bought the voucher and then Jeff came home one day and said he had to work a football camp and he had to leave on the morning of Father's Day and be gone for 4 days. He already had a ton of other football or basketball stuff on every other available weekend so I was so frustrated. He got paid extra for the camp though, so I wanted him to do that still. I decided I would contact Jeff's boss (the Head Football Coach and Athletic Director). I got his email and told him the situation and told him how it had been since before Cheyenne was born that we had ever been able to spend the night away from our kids alone together (that is almost 4 years). He was super nice about it and said it was no problem for Jeff to miss Thursday weightlifting and 7 on 7 game. I was so nervous that Jeff would be mad about missing the 7 on 7 game. He is the qb coach and they have a new quarterback and Jeff was supposed to be calling the plays, etc. Anyway, so I packed all the girls stuff up and all of Jeff and my stuff up and loaded it the night before (Wednesday). I had it all in the trunk and I was worried Jeff would look in there (especially when he couldn't find his shoes and a couple of other things I had already packed), so I hid the keys for the car and pretended like I had no idea what he was talking about when he was looking for the things I had already packed! It was pretty funny, I think he thought he was going crazy not being able to find anything. I had to prep Cheyenne for spending the night away from us, so I got her excited about spending the night with her friends, Brielle and Savannah. I told her not to tell Daddy and she did a pretty good job, except the night before she said "I am going to stay the night at Brielle's house." Jeff was like, "What is she talking about? She keeps talking about that?" I was like, "Oh she got to spend the night at Layla's house and the Nelson's house so she is probably just wishing she could stay at Brielle's too." 

In the morning, I woke up early and got all dressed up. Then I went to get Jeff. I said, "Wake up and put your suit on, you aren't going to football today." He was so confused. He said, "What?" I told him I already talked to Coach Fritts and he didn't have to go. He asked me a few times if I was sure that Coach Fritts knew and if I was sure he remembered. He put his suit on and then I got the girls ready and we took them to the Watne's to stay. The girls were all super excited which made it easier to leave. We went to Wal-Mart and got some breakfast foods and chips. Then we hit the road. Jeff saw our temple bags in the trunk so he knew we were going to the temple, but I wouldn't tell him where we were going after. He was guessing places like the waterslides in Atlanta or the beach. It was funny watching him try to figure out where we were going, because I knew he didn't even know this place existed, so I knew he would never guess it. We did a session at the temple and then went to Outback for lunch. It was perfect because I got to use my gift card I got for coaching. At lunch I told him where we were going, just because I didn't want him to think it was somewhere like the florida gulf coast in a five star resort and then be disappointed when we got there. When we finally got there, we pulled up to a hotel, and we have this thing we always find the junkiest hotels and be like, "Oh look there is our hotel." We were joking and said that.... but it actually was! We were so nervous looking at the outside, but once we went inside the lobby it was awesome. It was this older building, but inside was nice (still old, but nice) and it had a lot of Southern Charm. The rooms were clean and nice and ours was right by the pool! 

It was kind of crazy trying to fit everything we wanted to do in, because there was so much to do! When we got there we were so tired and it was pouring rain, so we took a nap. Then we went to eat at this little Mexican place called San Marcos. Every place we went to eat, the food was awesome! That is one of my pet peeves about touristy places is that the food is usually crappy and overpriced and you still leave hungry, but this was not the case! We ordered fajitas which were amazing and then Jeff told them it was my birthday (in Spanish, so I had no idea). All the little mexican guys came and sang to me and put this giant sombrero on my head. We also got fried ice cream which was sooooo good! 

The next morning we woke up early and ate our little breakfast we packed. Then we rented the bikes and rode around for 2 hours... here is where the pictures start. We rode past the beautiful golf course and then to the lake to check it out:

They had ping pong tables at the beach so we stopped and played best out of 5, and I just have to document that I won all 3 because I am really competitive and sometimes I get frustrated that I can never beat Jeff in any sport, so that is why I love ping pong! When we dated we used to play all the time and we had super competitive matches. He does beat me a lot in ping pong too, so this was a great day for me! I grew up with a ping pong table in my basement trying for hours and hours to beat my mom, and he had one too, so we just like ping pong:) Anyway... the trails were super confusing and the map sucked so we barely made it back in time to return our bike rentals! After that we grabbed subway for lunch and ate it by the pool with the chips we had got at the store. I also bought some peaches at a stand on the side of the road and they were amazing! We laid by the pool in the sun and took naps! It was amazing! That is what I miss about my pre kid life is being able to sleep when I go to the pool or not have to make sure someone isn't drowning. Then we drove over to the lake to swim there. It was so beautiful. After swimming and laying out by the lake, they had set up a little farmer's market, so we walked around there.

Then we headed over to the canoes. I was really worried with the travel vouchers that this place would be super crowded but it wasn't at all. We got in our canoe and we were planning on swimming out of the canoe, but they told us it wasn't allowed and people had tipped the canoe before trying to get back in, so we decided we better not risk it. Plus this was a different lake than the one we had swam at and it was for fishing and he said there were fishing lines you could get caught up in.

So we just paddled as far and as hard as we could, then relaxed, and soaked up more sun:)

It was so cute where they stored the canoes, it reminded me of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, but obviously not so fancy. After the canoes, we went into town to find something to eat. We found this cute little Southern looking 50's ish diner. It was called 27th street grill or something and it looked like it used to be a gas station. We ordered something called Darrell's cheeseburgers to go. It was the biggest burger ever and pretty much amazing. It had jalepenos on it and like 10 different kinds of cheeses. We took it over to where the Florida State trapeze team performs and we were the first ones there so we got the best seats! We ate our burgers on the bleachers while we waited for the show to start.
The show was AMAZING!! I love anything that has to do with gymnastics and it was like a little circus type thing. It was so sweet! They had flying trapeze, regular trapeze, tightrope and all sorts of acts. Here are some pics before the show:

During the show:

This was hilarious... they called a volunteer up from the audience. They chose this guy. They had another guy out there and also this girl who was his assistant. They said he was the world champion knife thrower. I totally believed them, because they had all sorts of crazy talented people. Anyway, they put the guy against this board with his hands tied down. They told him they would blindfold him for his safety, my stomach was so nervous, I couldn't believe they were going to throw a knife at this guy. All of the sudden after he is blindfolded, he hands the knife to his assistant, the announcer says "1,2,3!"  and she just sticks it in the board, right next to his head. It was the funniest thing ever, she takes off his blindfold and he looks at the knife and he was freaking out, he totally thought he was getting knives thrown at him. They proceed to do it to the other side of his head, and then they blindfold the knife thrower and he throws it between his legs. The guy was totally freaking out and when he walked by us back to his seat he was all sweaty and looked totally relieved. Jeff and I laughed sooo hard and it was by far the best part of the already amazing show! I wish I would have video taped the whole thing. It was awesome.

After the FSU circus show, we headed over and played an hour of tennis under the lights on a clay court where you can see where the ball hits. It was so cool! It really was my weekend because I won at tennis too! To Jeff's defense he had a really sore neck, but tennis is another sport we can compete pretty evenly in. The next day we were soooo tired, so we were so close to sleeping through our tree top mountain adventure appointment. Luckily the pillows were too fluffy, so our necks hurt and we decided we wouldn't get much rest in bed anyway. We made it to the course and we were so so glad we came! This was by far the most fun part of the trip! I was so nervous at first and then after a few little stations, I felt so comfortable, it was so much fun! I happened to be standing in the perfect spot when we started and we got to go first, which was awesome, because we could go as fast as we wanted. We were like 8 stations in front of everyone else, so we felt like we were the only ones there. The guides just kind of stand on the bottom and check up on everyone and make sure you are doing it right. So fun!

On the way out of town we got waffle cones at this cute little cafe and they were also amazing. It was the best trip and we kept saying it felt like we were on our honeymoon again! It was so great to just be able to focus on each other and have fun together without having other responsibilities to tend to. On the way home we stopped at our favorite Red Robin for a late lunch/early dinner. I got my free birthday burger- Whiskey River BBQ chicken burger of course... can't go wrong there! I of course got sang to and the free ice cream again, even though I had just eaten ice cream like 3 hours earlier... needless to say, I was really full! Then we walked around some shops and headed home to get the girls. It was so nice to not have to worry about our girls while we were gone! Cheyenne and Berkeley really love Brielle and "Baby Hannah" (Savannah). So they didn't even want to leave when we picked them up. Hopefully we can do another trip again, hopefully we don't wait 4 years this time.

Garage Sale Finds # ??

I have been to a few garage sales this summer, although not many, since we are keeping pretty busy. Here are some of the latest awesome finds!

Dora the Explorer Phonics book to help Cheyenne learn to read, and the Playful Ponies book with a different puzzle on every page (which is perfect to keep her quiet and busy in sacrament meeting) these were 50 cents to a dollar each (its been too long now, I am forgetting):

 This is the 2nd pair of underarmour shoes I have found her in size 11 (this is Jeff's favorite) $1:

 Different books are always nice (that $1 one I gave 50 cents for):

 My girls love the divided plates! Now Cheyenne choses this one and they don't have to fight over the bear one I had when I was a kid!

 This game is AWESOME!! There are all these different inserts and it has different questions or puzzles it asks you and then you put the color of the question around the answer. Then the bottom part pulls down to reveal the correct answers. I love it. $1

 Cheyenne and I have been reading a story from this every night. I love that she has an attention span for long stories with not as many pictures now. It is so fun to read with her and it brings back memories of my mom and I reading in bed together. We just read Snow White tonight, but she asks to read Puss in Boots every night. That one is her favorite.

 Three tennis rackets that were $1-$2 each. I had to get that top one because it is for kids and it is Dora, and lets face it, it makes me so happy when Cheyenne lets me teach her any sport. The two adult rackets are in case anyone ever wants to play tennis with us or we can have some we can let people borrow and don't have to worry about ruining our new ones!

 Benjamin Franklin picture book, Big Sister Dora book and a Toy Story 3 magna doodle book. The magna doodle part is in pretty bad shape, but I have wanted to get the girls a magna doodle forever and this is the first one I have found at a garage sale. They must go bad pretty easily. Cheyenne still loves it, so maybe I will get her a good, big one for her birthday. Berkeley actually loves it too, so its perfect:) Don't remember how much these were, but they were all under a dollar each.

Happy Garage Sailing Folks!

Blackberries!

Ever since we moved here, every August I would dream of Washington Blackberries and be so sad that I couldn't just go outside and pick them anymore! One thing that I love about our house is that in the summer, our backyard looks just like Washington. I look out our sliding glass door into the woods and it feels like I am in Bellingham, maybe even the Grandparents are within driving distance! Anyway, it you look closely in the picture with Cheyenne and I you will see what popped up right in our backyard!! Blackberry bushes!!! I suspected that's what it was from the white flowers the first year we were here, but never any berries. Last year there were a couple tiny ones, but very bitter. This year the bush is just a little taller than me and produced many many berries! They are still less sweet than Washington ones, but with just a little sugar, taste just the same. Some of them were even good enough without sugar. I really think next year they will bigger and tastier! I consider this a tender mercy from the Lord. A little piece of my hometown to have with me here in Georgia. Hopefully next year we will have enough for a pie!

About a month ago...

I am soo behind in my blogging! I love having our blog as a little journal of our life, so I hate when I get behind, because I feel like I can't skip anything or it will get erased from my memory!

We had a really beautiful May and June. We spent so much time either at the pool, Sandy Creek Park, or playing in the sprinklers/kiddie pool. I also had to document their adorable matching swimsuits. I love when my girls match, but since I buy almost all their clothes at garage sales they hardly ever do:) Although a few times I have randomly found something at a g-sale for Berkeley that I already had in Cheyenne's size or vice versa... we spend so much time in the water I always buy them an actual new (as in not used) swimsuit every year. They just get so worn out to rely solely on garage sale finds. Even Cheyenne's leftover ones I am hesitant to have Berkeley wear again. Most of them have sand in the bum:) 

 Berkeley's model shot (or trying to protect her eyes from the sun, you decide):

 sidewalk chalk is a daily activity around here. Cheyenne is doing really well writing all of her letters upper and lower case and loves all the practice she can get:

 I walked in my room to find Berkeley with my cell phone in my bed like this. Honest. I didn't place her here and no one is on the other end of that call:) She loves pretending to talk on the phone.

 Sisters AND best friends!

 This was the cutest thing ever. Cheyenne put together this puzzle and then she went and found an animal to match each character in the puzzle. i was impressed at the ones she found for the animals we didn't have. I totally see how her mind was working:) It was super cute.

 Every summer the girls get so close to their daddy and this one is no different. They just adore him. 

 Berkeley practicing wearing the monkey backpack for the trip to Washington.