The Discovery Center

In the past two months we have been to the Discovery Center quite a few times. Every time the kids make something that they want me to take a picture of. So...here are a few of their latest & greatest.


For Dia de Los Reys (The day of the kings) we went to celebrate the wise men's arrival to see Jesus. The kids got to make crowns & have some of the "baby cake". The cake has a baby Jesus in it & if you find it it's good luck among other things. Sadly, no baby Jesus in the cake for us this year.


Eli & his very symmetrical crown.



Adrienne loves playing at the farm area of the water feature with any small animals she can find.


Adrienne & her very tall tower!


A shot of the inside.


The finished tower. She couldn't reach any higher.


Eli & his pirate ship. Remember the kid on Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium? This might not be Abe Lincoln out of Lincoln logs but I was pretty impressed.


Another side view.


The rear view of the ship & the Captain's quarters. Walk the plank matey!


The kids also got to design a quilt square, depicting what they could do to make the world a better place, for a quilt that is hanging up in the Discovery center.
Eli chose recycling as his platform.


"I will recycle!"


Adrienne of course, went with animal preservation as her platform.


"Be nice to animals."


Getting a little exercise.


Eli building another creation. This time it was a castle/fort.


Top view.

Front & interior view.

My kids love to come here & I'm glad they have so many community days that are free. Yea for holidays!!

To post or not to post...

Ok, so here's the deal. When I try to post photos my computer shuts down my internet connection. This is bad if you have a photo blog that desperately needs to be updated! In lieu of photos I guess I will have to actually write to keep you updated on our latest & greatest happenings.

A quick rundown of the rest of last year...

~ In October Nana came for a visit and brought her new knee with her. We tried to wear it out & almost succeeded. We went to the movies, celebrated my birthday, did word searches, went to Lowe's to build things and visited a pumpkin patch, to name a few things we did. The kids really enjoyed their "surprise" visit from Nana for their fall break!

~ Also in October Dan & Charlotte Miller came out for a visit. While they were here we celebrated Eli's birthday ( a few times) at school, at home and at The Rainforest Cafe. I was able to see the Hermitage - President Jackson's home, with Dan & Charlotte; which was something I had never done before. (That's the good thing about visitors, you get to do things you might not do otherwise!) We also went out to eat at lots of fun places and of course we had to go to Miller's Grocery for lunch one day. Dan & Charlotte even made it to the Great Smokey Mountains before it was closed due to snow and ice. Thanks to Dan, I now know where every Harley Davidson shop is in a 100 mile radius! It was a fun visit! :)

~ In November I got to go with Adrienne on her first field trip in kindergarten to the Discovery Center here in town. They still rode the bus even though we didn't travel far and it was a highlight of the trip. Before school let out for Thanksgiving, Tony & I were able to go & have a Thanksgiving lunch with Adrienne & Eli in the cafeteria. It was so cute to see all the little Pilgrims & Indians dressed up in their paper vests & hats. It did make for a noisy lunch however.

~ Esther invited us to their new house in NC to celebrate Thanksgiving & Brandon's safe return from Baghdad. Sadly, Tony could not get off from work to travel that far and I did not feel safe trying to drive it by myself in the snow and stuff. However, a friend here in town told us that we had to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family since we couldn't travel to be with ours. They re-arranged their schedules and celebrated on Wednesday with us so Tony could be there (as he had to work on Thursday). We had an awesome southern style Thanksgiving down in Alabama with Sandi and Randy and their families on Wednesday and the kids and I had a quiet day at home on Thursday.
I can't help but recall our first Thanksgiving here in Tennessee at the all you can eat buffet at Shoney's. It was our first away from our families and I was so sad. Thank goodness I can laugh about it now. While I still miss our families, especially during the holiday season, I am so grateful for the friends God has put into our lives here to fill the gap.

~ December brought me another field trip opportunity, this time with Eli. His class took a trip to Nashville to the Children's Theater for a production of Alexander and the no good, very bad, horrible day. (Or something like that.) It was fun to go to the theater even if it was for children. I really enjoyed it and so did Eli.

~ Adrienne participated in the children's choir at church this year and performed beautifully on the stage despite the child next to her that was determined to make the worst possible faces she could. Adrienne is still singing the songs and even put on a performance for her classmates at school just yesterday with another girl in her class at school who was also in the choir . "I just want to love you Jesus... I just want to praise you Jesus... I just want to love you more and more." I often pray that my children will show God's love to others at school and am amazed at how my prayers are answered through their childlike faith.

~ Speaking of music...Adrienne and I went to a Christmas concert together. It was "Have a Fancy Yancy Christmas". (Yes, Yancy...not Nancy.) I don't know if her cd's are in your local Bible bookstore but if you can find them I would recommend them highly. Rockin' music for kids and enjoyable for parents. www.yancynotnancy.com

~ On a funny !?! note...Tony's patrol car was vandalized by an unidentified vegetable one night. We're pretty sure it was a zucchini. It made quite a mess and broke his mirror. He even had to fill out a police report. (They offered to put some extra patrols on the house in case the villainous vegetable made a return.)

~ Our Christmas was pretty low key. We went to the Christmas eve service at church in the new sanctuary and wow, it was amazing! The music was great and sharing in communion as a family with the kids almost brought tears to my eyes.
After church we went home to find that Santa had come while we were at church so we could have Christmas together before Tony went to work. The kids had so much fun opening up their gifts from us and from their extended family. It was also neat to see how excited they were to give us the presents they bought by themselves at school with their own money. They did a pretty good job too at picking out gifts that would mean something to the other person. It was so sweet to see the hug Eli gave Adrienne after he opened up his #1 Brother key chain from her.
Christmas Day Tony was working, but was able to be home for a few hours in the morning to eat breakfast with us. Thankfully most everyone else was at home too so it was a fairly quiet day at work for him.

~ New Years Eve the kids and I stayed up to yell "Happy New Year" to each other and watch the ball drop in Times Square. It was a fun beginning to the year and the kids have bragging rights at school from staying up so late. :)

~ So far this year things have been going smoothly. We're trying to get back into the school routine after being off for Christmas break only to come back to school and have two more days off for "snow". I think we managed to get two inches. They're calling it the "blizzard of 2010". It was mighty cold though, for Tennessee. Things are just starting to thaw out and I actually saw buds forming on some tree branches today as I was waiting to pick the kids up from school.

I'm looking forward to seeing what this new year brings and hopefully I will keep you updated!

Rebecca's visit

Rebecca came out to visit on her way to a conference in Nashville. This was deemed to be the vacation of fried foods so we decided to start at the Waffle House on our way home from the airport.


The next morning we went to church where we got to see the new sanctuary in progress & have a Baptism service. It was awesome.


On to more fried foods at Famous Dave's for dinner. Yummy!


We went for a walk & this cat adopted us & started following us. Needless to say Adrienne was thrilled & wanted to keep it. I was less than enthusiastic.


We're trying to find the dead people buried by our pool. It's thought that they were slaves buried in unmarked graves. When the bodies were found during construction they were moved to our common area & given numbered markers.


While the kids were in school we went to get pampered. I loved that chair & did not want to get up...ever!


Here we are all relaxed.


Without realizing it we both picked almost the same color. Pretty toes.


Rebecca brought presents for Eli & I for our birthday & some just because for Adrienne. Here's Adrienne with her outfit from Grandma. Cousin Larissa has a matching outfit. I bet they'd be cute together!


Eli with his prehistoric shark tooth.


Tissue, tissue everywhere.


We also got to go & visit with some friends & meet Mike's new bride Jessie.


My dress that Rebecca made me buy & wear.




The next day we visited the Jack Daniel's Distillery.


This is the safe that caused Jack's demise. He kicked it & then died from complications from blood poisoning in the wound.

Here we are with Jack. He was a wee little man. (So they made this a little bigger than life size.)

Bellying up to the bar for some lemonade. The distillery is in a dry county so they can't sell or give out samples of any alcohol.

Tony, just hanging out, waiting for us girls to take all our photos.

What visit with Rebecca would be complete without a hair cut?

I offered to take Eli to the salon/barbershop to get a haircut but he really wanted to wait for an Auntie Becky haircut.

Lunch at the Miller's Grocery. More fried food. The corn nuggets are sooo good! What's not to love about deep fried bites of creamed corn?

We also took a trip to the Arrington Vineyards & sampled the wines. They are not in a dry county & can give samples. This raspberry dessert wine was very decadent especially when paired with the raspberry & dark chocolate truffle it was served with.

It's a big barrel.

Some of the vines.

We were told they were doing no tours so we just wandered down to where they they were sorting the grapes & watched the process from the car at first & then got out to watch from the sidewalk.

The grapes being hand sorted before being squished.

As we were standing there watching the process the manager of wine making started talking to us. He explained what they were doing & gave us a bunch of grapes to try. Then he gave us some of the freshly pressed juice to taste. I can see where the sweetness comes from. It was very tasty & I would have enjoyed drinking the juice (once it was filtered).

He also let us go into the holding room for the juice. A lot of shiny stuff in there.

When Rebecca's conference was over we picked her up & then all too soon it was time for her to go home. E & A helping get Rebecca's bags to curbside check in.

Smiling through the tears.

The kids both held out till we got to the car to start bawling. We love having family & friends visit but we're always sad when they leave.

Our neighborhood party

They had a parade for the kids. They got to follow a police car down the street & back with sirens & lights. Adrienne thought it was fun.

There was also a fire truck for the kids to climb in & look around.

Adrienne took a photo of me in the really heavy hat!!

The kids trying on some of the gear.

They also had games & food & balloons. What more could you ask for?

School Lunches

I went to have lunch with the kids. Adrienne has lunch around 10 am & Eli has lunch around 11 am. I was not hungry yet for lunch at 10 am but as you can see Adrienne was. :)

Say Cheese!