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! :-)

Today was one of the first cool days of the fall . . . and by cool I mean not stifling. :-) So we decided to take advantage of something a friend had told us about and we got a season pass at the local garden. This was the first time for us to go during the day - we usually only go at Christmas to see the lights. Maggie loved it! She loved getting to walk around and look at the plants.

We spent several minutes just wandering around the rose garden. Ben was showing her how to sniff the flowers, but she couldn't quite get it. She kept blowing instead. It was so funny - she would walk up to a flower and ::ffhhhh:: into the rose.

As we wandered around the Garden I couldn't help but reflect on what a difference Maggie made in our experience. As we followed her through the different gardens, we would linger here and there, get excited over things like bugs and beetles and butterflies. We looked longer at some flowers and sat down on the ground to watch and wait. It took us 15 minutes to get through the rose garden when it usually takes us 30 seconds. I enjoyed the new perspective and look forward to many more trips where we can linger in different areas.

My favorite part of the garden was the butterfly area - there were SO many butterflies! I could have sat and watched them for an hour. But I think Maggie was frustrated at not being able to touch one -they kept flying away every time she got close -imagine that!

Our happy girl!

After we got through in the Garden we had a picnic lunch which included a new experience for Maggie - a "juicebox" of milk. (Does that make it a milkbox? I don't know). Maggie was very excited about this and got the hang of it pretty quickly. She still has to master the technique but it was pretty fun to watch.

Searching for the Great Pumpkin. . .

We heard about a great pumpkin sale that a local church does and decided to stop by. Maggie had a great time, but she thought those orange things on the ground were balls and kept trying to throw them. :-)

Play time

A friend loaned us this tunnel for Maggie to play with - she's having a ball. On a side note - this picture shows just how very badly she needs a haircut. We'll be taking care of that soon. :-)

To the Park

The weather FINALLY cooled down enough so we could all go to the park. We are very excited for the fact that fall is here and we can now spend more time outdoors. Maggie loves to be outdoors and she had such a good time at the park, even though she was so tired it wore her out! Just thought you might like to see these though. . . :-)

I was very impressed that Maggie would go down the big slides. . .for some reason it always surprises me to see all the things that she can do. I guess I ought to raise my expectations. :-)

Maggie Tries on Shoes

On a recent visit to Grandmother's and Grandaddy's, Maggie pulled a pair of shoes out of Grandmother's closet - her old work shoes. Maggie had a blast trying them on and we had a lot of fun watching. Click here to see a short video.

Summer Time has come and gone. . .

And nary a post to our blog. I guess we've been having a busy summer! Hopefully I can start keeping this updated again. The main reason this blog has been so neglected lately is probably the fact that I have two good friends in my life now that I enjoy spending a lot of time with. One is a neighbor who recently moved to the area. She has 3 young kids who Maggie enjoys spending time with. They also have a dog who Maggie refers to as "woo woo" - it's really cute. The other friend is a lady I met at church in our Bizzy Moms ministry. She has a son that is just 3 months older than Maggie and they are very good friends. It's nice to have some close friends here - Mobile is starting to feel more like home.