Friday, Ben and I drove up with Abby and helped to celebrate Grandmom's birthday. Maggie "decorated the cake all by myself" as she proudly pointed out multiple times. :-)
We ended up heading on up to my parents a day earlier than we had planned to take advantage of an opportunity to cross paths with my sister Jenny and her husband Don at my parents. We were looking forward to this, not only because we hadn't seen them since their wedding last year, but also because they had not met Abby. It was great to see them but unfortunately Abby ended up coming down with a fever Sunday so my time was mostly spent nursing her. Thankfully she perked up quickly and was back to normal the next day.
Here's a shot with my folks:
Ben got a special treat on Sunday - a chance to meet one of his heroes, Oliver North! Turns out he was speaking at a church not too far from where my folks live so he got to enjoy that. Later that day, my dad took Don and Ben on a drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway - always a treat!
One of the highlights for me on this trip was taking Maggie on a canoe trip on Lake Junaluska with my dad.
Back when I was growing up in Wisconsin, this was something our family did frequently so I was excited to introduce her to it. She did GREAT! I gave her a disposable camera and let her be the trip photographer. I'll post those later.
Of course what trip to NC would be complete without a family hiking trip? Maggie insisted on going back to Craggy Gardens.
This makes the third time in a row. We agreed only with the understanding that next time we were going someplace else! But this is a great hike - except for the fact that I forgot the bug spray! Mommy ended up with nine bug bites on the back of one knee. Ouch.
This is one of their favorite spots on the trail:
We got the privilege of watching Fireworks in both locations - in Opelika on the first and in NC on the 4th! Both shows were a big hit! Maggie liked the NC one better though, I think because it was a smaller setting. They do their fireworks over Lake Junaluska and my parents have friends with a house near the lake. So we got to hang out in their front yard, enjoying the lovely sunset -
and catching fireflies before the fireworks started. It was great!Maggie started a hummingbird tally in Opelika and kept track of each sighting. She got to around 30 or 40 and stopped counting. :-) She loved watching them though and we had several in NC too:
On the way back down to AL, Ben got to meet another hero. Gene Chizik was doing a book signing at the LifeWay in Kennesaw, GA and the manager there is a friend of Ben's and fellow Aburn Alum so he asked Ben to "come help".
I'm not sure how much "help" he really needed - everything went very smoothly - but Ben was excited to get a chance to get a picture with the coach that made his dreams come true! ;-) Not to mention, the autographed book.
Abby was working on her skills this trip. New skills like crawling up stairs, and practicing standing up by letting go after she has pulled up:
She'll be walking before we know it!
We had a LOT of fun with our family on this trip and it was hard to come back to Mobile - it's so HOT! Ben's already counting down the days till the next trip up North!
