It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Around this household, that means fall, baby!  Cooler weather, football (that's for you, honey), fall food - chili, sweet potato pie, etc - and our annual trip to the mountains of NC to visit my folks!

But first - a sidetrack!

One of Ben's all time favorite bands is (anyone? anyone?) . . . .Chicago.  Ben found out they were performing in a SMALL venue in Anniston, AL and this became a top priority for him. :-)  So, as an early Christmas present Ben got 2 tickets.  However this created a dilemma - who would go with him? After much thought we decided to let Maggie attend.  1) It was a family friendly venue  2) if I had attended the necessary travel plans probably would have caused Abby much stress 3) while I'm always happy to attend things like that with Ben, Maggie really wanted to see Chicago!  She's been listening to their music for years (literally) with Daddy and I figured she had earned it. :-)

Both of them had a GREAT time, and Maggie made it through MOST of the concert - she conked out about 20 minutes from the end. ;-)

The next morning we finished our drive up to NC and had a great time!  Saturday the girls went downtown to the Apple Festival....


where Maggie got to enjoy her very first funnel cake:



Sunday we had a picnic and hike in Joyce Kilmer forest.



You remember Joyce Kilmer, don't you? No?  Well, you probably know the first line of his most famous poem...

          "I think that I shall never see
           a poem as lovely as a tree..."

Everyone went on that hike - even Abby!



Although this is how she traveled most of the way.....



Hiking's not to hard when you get to ride, eh?

Monday we left Abby at home with the Grammy and Grumpa and took Maggie to a hike up Water Rock Knob, a short drive up the parkway from Grammy's house.


We had a GREAT time on this hike - got to talk to lots of interesting people, although it was mostly about football.   The weather was great.  They had a fabulous visitor's center with a real stuffed black bear that you could PET! I was enthralled.  It was an 18 month old cub and was SO soft.  I left my camera in the car ("What could there possibly be to photograph in the Visitor's center??" I thought).  Maggie and I loved it - we touched it's teeth, it's claws, and pet it over and over.

Confession time: when I was younger I frequently daydreamed about owning large wild animals - Siberian tigers, etc.   Getting to put a wild animal, even a stuffed one, is pretty stinkin' cool in my book.    Ok, back to the program....

Maggie's favorite part of that hike was receiving a certificate of accomplishment from the Park Ranger!  It was officially stamped and everything!  It's only a short hike, but they said it's the steepest 1/2 mile hike on the parkway! And our little trooper did it all by herself - I was pretty proud!

The next day we had to book it on home so Maggie wouldn't miss TOO much school.  But even that was ok because then we got to enjoy my FAVORITE thing about coming home from our annual fall trek into the woods:

My whirlwind Florida trip

Last weekend Abby and I took to the road for a visit with friends and family.  The reason for the trip was a family reunion in St. Augustine to honor a family member who is sick.  We made a couple of stops along the way.

First Stop: TALLAHASSEE

We broke our trip by spending the night with our good friends, the Whithaus'.  It was great seeing them all again although their son was QUITE disappointed that Maggie didn't make the trip with me.

Isn't she cute!

Wow - isn't Abby a little carrot lover?
 


Next stop: St. AUGUSTINE - CASTILLO de SAN MARCO


I met my sister Kathy and her family there - we had a great time touring the fort!

We especially enjoyed the firing demonstration.








FUEGO!


Here I am after the canon demonstration with a nice "spanish soldier" holding, um, something that is, um, used to aim the canon.


Give me a break, I was standing all the way on the other side of the fort during the demonstration so Abby's ears wouldn't bust when they fired the thing.  :-) 

Me and my niece, Mina.


Mina was also disappointed that Maggie did not come on the trip.  Sigh.


Next Stop: JACKSONVILLE

I took a quick detour back north a little bit to have dinner with my good friend, Ildi.  Ildi and I are old buddies from my days in Seattle and it's always great to catch up with her!

Next Stop: St. AUGUSTINE - Family Reunion!



I spent all day Saturday hanging with my parents, my mom's siblings, various cousins and other relatives I haven't seen in 10-20 years, if ever. It was great.  Uncle Perry is a videographer and he was making a DVD of the event, so he asked me to help him film as I was able (between taking care of Abby).  It was great - I got to float from room to room filming conversations and listening in on all kinds of stories.  Can't wait to see the finished product!

Because of the filming I didn't get to take many family shots, but here is one of "Queen Mary" - the honoree of the shindig (on the left).

 Everyone was "plum wore out" by Saturday night.

While in Florida my mom gave Abby the little "tutu" swim suit below, so she could dress up like a ballerina with Maggie.  Of course Maggie insisted on them both trying theirs on - getting Abby to sit still for a picture was another matter altogether....

It was a really great trip and now I'm glad to be home!  Tomorrow we celebrate Abby's 1st birthday!  But that's another post for another day.

 THE END!

Our Summer Vacation

Last week we had one of our annual Tour D' Parents. We usually go up to my folks place in Western NC sometime around early July (escape the heat!) and hit Opelika coming and going. This time we dropped Maggie off with Ben's folks early for about 5 extra days of spoilage - I mean quality time with Grandmom, Granddad and Aunt Peg. :-) They all had a blast!

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!

San Antonio visit

Last week we drove out to Texas to visit our good friends, the Whithaus' and the Turmans. We had a great time just hanging out and doing some sightseeing as well.

Maggie and Will at the Riverwalk in San Antonio

Us and The Turmans

To view the full web album of pics, click here.

There is also a short video I shot at Ken and Joy's showing some interactions with the kids....click on the link at the right.

Fall Vacation 2008

We just got back from our annual Tour d' Parents and Leaf Peeping! It was a lot of fun and very relaxing.

First we went to Ben's parents where we were able to take an a football game, which was fun. . . would have been more fun if they had won. har har. ;-)

Then we spent 5 days with my parents. We drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway, hiked up to Sam Knob, and took long walks around the mountain neighborhood. It was lovely and relaxing.

Then we back through Opelika and Montomgery, stopping at the Montgomery Zoo which was very interesting. Maggie loved it - her favorite animal was the "elfan!" (elephant).

I'm trying to get a slide show of those pics posted.. . if that doesn't work I'll do it the old fashioned way. :-)

Fall Vacation '07

Well, it's that time of year again! Each fall we like to go visit my parents in Western North Carolina to see the beautiful fall color in the mountains. This year we began our trip by visiting Florence and had fun visiting with friends.

We took Maggie to the park we used to frequent. She loved swinging!

We had a fun visit with Daniel and Abbe and their sweet kids! We also got to attend the wedding of a friend from church and see many of our Woodmont friends at the reception.

Then it was off to NC!

Maggie had fun visiting with Grammy and Grumpa (pictured here). Grammy has a broken arm unfortunately so we had to limit our play a little bit but we still had fun. The weather was kind of rainy most of the trip, but we managed to get out some!

One of the best places to see color is at "Max Patch". There's a huge field on the top of a mountain surrounded by trees. Maggie could just roam around - she loved it!

My dad took Ben on a wonderful hike up to the top of a Lynn Lowry, a mountain named after a teenage girl who died from leukemia. She loved these mountains so much that her parents bought the top of the mountain, erected a huge cross and put lights on it. At night you can see this cross for miles up in the sky! It's a difficult hike to make it to the top of this mountain but Dad and Ben had fun hiking it. (that's Ben at the bottom of that picture . . . see? Huge cross. . . )

Our last day in NC it really cleared up and got beautiful so we spent some time just relaxing in the yard - it was fun to let Maggie run around and explore.

We ended our vacation by going through Opelika to see Ben's family. Ben was fortunate enough to get tickets to Saturday's game from a friend (War Eagle!) but for Maggie's first introduction to Auburn, we decided to take it easy. So we took her to campus early in the day and just walked around.

The End! :-)

5th Anniversary

In February we took a trip to the beach to celebrate our 5th Anniversary. We stayed in a beautiful condo for 3 nights while Grandmother and Grandaddy stayed at our house with Maggie. I don't know what was my favorite part - the beautiful scenery, the great local seafood, or getting to sleep in for 3 mornings in a row!

We got to do some of our favorite things at the beach - Ben went with Heather to do some shopping. Heather went with Ben to the Naval Air Museum. We both enjoyed a trip to the zoo (ok, that was mostly for Heather) and a night of putt-putt. . . not to mention the fresh beignets every morning. Here, I am pictured with 2 baby camels at the Gulf Coast Zoo (the one featured on "the Little Zoo That Could" on the Animal Planet). Their names are Mac and Maggie. Of course I couldn't resist saying hi to Maggie.

Fall Vacation

The week of Oct. 20th – 27th, we took a much anticipated vacation.

On Friday, we drove to Florence via Birmingham. We had a fun time at lunch with Aunt Peggy and her friends Sue & Charles.


Then it was on to Florence where we got to spend the evening with Daniel, Abbe, Jonah, and their new baby Maddie. It was great to meet Maddie. She’s so tiny!!

Jonah kept Maggie entertained and as you can see, they got along quite well.

Saturday morning, we each had lunch with friends, and then we attended the wedding of Sandra, one of our dear friends from Ben’s work in Florence. That night we had a nice dinner with some of our Woodmont friends and then gave Maggie some chill time (which we ALL needed!). Sunday, we attended church and had lunch at Woodmont, and then it was off to Grammy & Grumpa’s house.

The weather at Grammy & Grumpa’s was wonderful! The highs were in the 50s and the lows in the 20s and 30s; perfect fall weather! The color was past peak, but there were still a lot of leaves. We spent Tuesday riding on the Blue Ridge Parkway and hiking at Deep Creek.






There was ice in several places on the Parkway, and we saw some beautiful waterfalls at Deep Creek. Wednesday we spent relaxing and then we got to have a nice dinner out sans Maggie! All in all, it was a great week, we just wish it had lasted longer!