Jennifer's tent

Jennifer and Sarah and the tent! It has been raining off and on all day, but so far no leaks!!

Another shot of Jennifer and her tent. Notice the school in the background?...that is the school that all three of our kids went to and the one that I work at! Pretty close, eh?

Dizzy Disc ride at Dollywood

Allen, Sarah, Nathan, and Greg are on this ride. Allen is the first person to the left of the opening on the ride and the kids are to the right. See if you can pick them out!!

Home from vacation

Kids on rock

area where we like to spend one day just climbing around on the rocks inside the Smoky Mountain Park

Names written with a rock on a rock

The water is very cold...just ask Nathan...yep he fell in, up to his chest...surprise, surprise, surprise!!!!

In front of the chalet

Picture of everyone that was in Gatlinburg this year in my family

Back row: Greg, Allen, Brett, Andrew, Bryan, Kelvin.

Middle row: Me, Mom, Dad, Heather, Holli.

Front row: Nathan, Sarah, Mason, Morgan, Lizzie

Nathan and Caleb celebrating their birthdays together again this year. They are only one day apart. Caleb is my cousin Julie's son, so he and Nathan would be second cousins.

The kids have fun every year hunting crawdads in the stream in front of the chalet. They always release them after they are done catching them!!

Uncle Carl showing the kids how to pick up a crawdad without getting pinched!

Dollywood Pictures

Sarah and Nathan 0n the scrambler

Greg on the Dizzy Disc (he is in the tan shirt and jean shorts)

Allen, Sarah and Nathan on the Dizzy Disc

The kids really don't like stopping and posing for pictures anymore...hard to get a serious picture!!

They had a man at Dollywood who was doing sand sculptures. He will be there all summer. This was what he was working on when we were there!!

Sarah in the pool

Nathan in the pool



Greg in the pool...they were playing with a beach ball



Sarah and Nathan at Dollywood



Nathan having an intelligent conversation with a clay pot kid!


Hi all,
We are back from vacation! Had a really good time, but nice to be back home too. Now comes all the unpacking and laundry! Jeanette F. and Jennifer B. came over on Tuesday. Jennifer took the 3 kids with her up to Clint and Dawn's for the day. Sounds like they had a good time. Went fishing and then ate what they caught for supper! Since it was just the three of us here we went out for supper. Went to a little Mexican restaurant here in town. Dave, Melanie, Bill and Bev met us there. We all got something different for dessert so that Jeanette could try them all. Had Sopapillas, fried ice cream and flan. They have gmtg here in town tonight. Jennifer's parents bought her a tent and she has been sleeping in it! I will have to get a picture of it and post it later.

Whitewater rafting

We all went whitewater rafting on Tuesday. These are some of the pictures that the company we went with took of us on the river. They turned out really good! We had a really great time!! The trip lasted a little over 2 hours.

vacation news

Hi everyone...didn't think we would be able to get Internet access way up here in the mountains, but our computer hopped right on when we turned it on! Nice surprise! Sometimes it is really slow, but oh well. Didn't bring the dock for our camera, so will not be able to post pictures until we get home, but I can let you all know what we are doing anyway...
Saturday was a slow day. We went and bought groceries in the morning. We had thunderstorms off and on during the day so didn't plan anything too big. We did go down town (Gatlinburg) and walk around for a while and then ate at this little Italian restaurant that we love! This morning we ended up having meeting in our chalet since there were so many of us. The meeting that we normally would go to is about an hours drive away, and they don't have a lot of room for extras. We had 19 here, with 15 to speak. So it was plenty big! Gerald and Gay were here, as well as Carl and Janet and their grandson, Caleb. Jeanette Meyers was up with her three kids and 3 girls from Ohio (Rebecca, Emily and Maria Freeman from Cincinnati). Of course my parents were also here. We just got back from eatting and are waiting to go over to the pool. All for now.

Birthday Party!

Nate, Bev and Bill
Jeanette
Jennifer
Nate

We leave for vacation today...we are headed for Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains! Will be back in a week and I will post some pictures then of the trip. We had a little birthday party Wednesday night after gmtg. We were celebrating Bill and Bev's birthdays as well as Nate's.

closeup of the expression

I decided to add another picture of the expression...I noticed that the other one was hard to read from that distance.

Uppercase Living

I had an Uppercase Living party in our home a couple of weeks ago. Really cool stuff. It's like stickers for your walls. Allen and I just put up one this afternoon. I was waiting to paint the wall before I put it up. Allen had to stand up on a ladder to place it on the wall. I should have taken a picture of that, but I was helping to steady the ladder! I will post the rest of them as we get them on the walls.

Allen painting the wall on Saturday (I did the trim)

finished walls

My uppercase living expression

Wildlife in our yard

Thought I would post this video that we have of the squirrel in our yard that will eat from our hands. We have named her Hammie. This was taken last summer, she is much less timid this year and she has a baby that will come up on the deck to get nuts now! It is a little long and I apologize for Allen's feet! He was doing the filming!







We also feed some bluebirds that come in our yard. This is one taking a worm from Allen's hand! And, yes, we still live in town!!!

storms

It's a quiet morning this morning, but last night was not so quiet. Allen and I noticed the color of the sky first. You know that weird greenish orange color that tells you something is not right? We went outside to get a better look. The sky looked really bad to the south of us. We started talking to our neighbor across the street. We could hear very loud thunder and see lightening to the south of us. Then we heard it...the tornado siren went off in town. I ran to the house and got the boys downstairs. Allen brought the laptop down so that we could watch the progress of the storm online. It looked like the eye of the storm was going to miss us, but it also looked like it was going to go right over where Sarah was with her 4H group that was camping. She is camping at Milford which is about a 45 minute drive from us. I wanted to get in the car and go get her! I was pacing the floor not knowing what to do. I had no phone number for the camp. There were 17 school bus loads of kids at this camp and I could not see where they were going to put all of them! They were listing the towns that the storm was going to hit, and it was projected to hit Milford at 10:22pm. I finally called another mom that had a son at the camp. She was on another phone line with her oldest son talking to him about where the kids would go in case of a tornado. Her oldest had gone to that camp a couple of times when he was younger. He told her that they have a big barn there that they have renovated and it has a basement and that they take all the kids there. Well, I was a little more relieved when I heard that, but still anxious! I felt so bad for her being there by herself (no mom or dad) during such a bad storm. That storm ended up missing us altogether, but then around 2am another storm came through. We had very strong winds, lots of lightening and it sounded like hail against the windows. I have no idea it Sarah's camp got hit by that storm ...if so...I wonder if they would have taken them all to the basement in the middle of the night? I just hope that everything is OK. I'm sure if it wasn't that they would be calling. I just hate that I don't have a phone number to call them! They did not want the kids taking cell phones, but I think in this case it would have been a good thing. I know I would have felt better talking to Sarah and hearing her voice. I'm sure she feels the same! She comes home Friday night, but they are predicting another stormy day for Friday afternoon! I'll be glad when she is home!

weekend news

Friday was awards day and picnic day at Nathan's (and my) school. I went to the awards program. I'm glad I did....Nathan received the Presidential Academic award. It came framed and it even has George Bush's signature on it! The kids thought that was great! He also got a pin. After the all school picnic at the park, we came back to the room and the kids had a chance to meet their next year teacher. They all switched rooms for 30 minutes. Since the 4th graders (Nathan's class) will be going to a different school next year and weren't able to do the switch, so they all went down and visited with the Kindergarten teachers (since their students were all in the 1st grade rooms). Nathan had his last soccer game on Saturday. They ended up winning 6-1. Today we had union meeting here and then Greg had to go do a test launch on the rocket that he has built for 4-H. The boys and Allen are getting ready to go outside and play some soccer now. I think I will just sit back, relax, and read my paper on the deck! It's a beautiful day!

Mrs. Green (Nathan's teacher), Nathan (with award), and Mr. Remenih (the Principal)

Nathan with his award
Nathan and his friends swinging on the "baby swings" at the park after eating their picnic lunch

Ian going up the curly slide at the park. Ian is one of the students that I work with.

Group picture

Back row: Courtney (OT), Amanda (Aide) holding onto Travis (student), Penny (our teacher), Cassie (Aide) holding onto Gaia (student), Tonya (Aide), Wendy (Aide)

front row: Ricky (student in black), Gage (student sitting down with a frown), Me, Darlene (Aide) holding onto Ian (student)