Some summer fun

It always seems that summer goes by quick! Even more since the boys started school. We had a lot of fun just hanging out out home. 

By the time mid-June came around Miss Livvy was getting around pretty well. She was not up on her hands and knees but she had mastered the army crawl. To my surprise the grass didn't seem to bother her. 

Both of the boys love to be outside. They really can find anything to play with, their imagination never ceases to amaze me. The sprinkler this year they actually started to play with this year. 

In the years past the goal they had was to avoid the water or getting wet. So they would watch it and run around the water. But finally this year they decided that it was refreshing to get wet and fun to actually play in the water. 

One of the things we like to do is walk up to Sonic in the evening. Sometimes we get food others we get slushes or milkshakes. 

Our official spy

This summer we thought it would be a good idea to do some summer camps for the boys. Phillip's preschool offered a summer program once a week for eight weeks and for Thomas we enrolled him a a couple of summer camps. 

The first camp was in the middle of June. We gave him the list of camps and let him choose which ones he thought he would like. The camps were offered by the children's museum and had a lot of fun educational activities for the kids to do. 

THe first camp that he went to was spy camp. It was a week long camp and with this camp they had to solve the mystery of the missing Millie the dinosaur. Millie is the mascot for the museum. On Friday the mystery was solved and Millie was found and Thomas became an official Jr. Spy. 

He really had a good time and enjoyed the the activities they had. He made a couple of new friends, learned about some things about being a spy, and some fun memories :)

And she's moving...

It didn't take Olivia very long after rolling to start army crawling. Some might be impressed that an almost 5 month old started to move…as my third baby I was hoping she would be stationary for a little bit longer. She had other plans...

 Even though Mommy and Daddy were not ready for her to be able to get around the house, Livvy was very excited! She now could try and get into whatever she wanted :)

 After a few weeks she was able to get around the whole house I could still keep up with her but we had to start watching what we put on the ground and baby proofing. 

Her most go to item?? Paper. Anything paper, she would want to rip it up and eat it. We found in our primary class we had to watch her pretty closely if anyone in our class put their paper under their chair she would go right for it. 

Her other item of choice, the cords to the xbox along with the controllers. We ended up relocating that to the basement because there was no other way to hide all the cords. 

Hiking in Ky

There are not a whole lot of places to go hiking around where we live, so we take what we can get. Not to far from where we live there are a few trails in neighboring Ky. 

They are all fairly easy trails but they really worked well for the kids and after all the hiking we did in the Smokies they didn't have any trouble at all. 

We did end up seeing some wild life which was nice. By the water we seen a lot of turtles and even a snake, which for me was not so exciting. As well as some fish and tadpoles. 

After a bit we stopped to eat our snacks and Livvy had a chance to look around a little lower ;) She really loves being carried in her backpack. Unfortunately for Eric the older she gets the more he has to carry, so he is happy that she is in the lower percentages for her weight.  

It ended up a really fun and cheap saturday morning activity for our family!

Catching fireflies

Just a few days after we got home we started to see the fireflies come out at dusk. The boys love, love this time of year!

As the years have gone by the boys have come rather good at catching them. So they have a jar outside just to catch them and give them a temporary home. 

This year they were so excited to show Livvy the fireflies. So they set the jar right in front of her turned off the lights, and all three of them had so much fun just watching them blink!

Eating and rolling

After we got back from our trip, it was time to for Olivia to start rice cereal. 

At first she was a little unsure so the first couple times she wore more then she ate. After she got use to the texture and the taste, I think she was enjoying it more. 

She went through a phase for about a month where she liked to put her hand together, like she was praying. We thought it was pretty cute as she was "praying" before, after, and during her meals :)

About the same time she started her cereal she perfected the art of rolling over! She actually was better at rolling from her back to her tummy. But after a while she was a pro going which ever way!

She was pretty impressed with her new trick :)

Abrams Falls

The hike to Abrams Falls ended up being a favorite of everyones. So, even through it was a five mile hike at the end of the trip, we were all happy we did it!

At the beginning of the hike there were two rangers that kinda questioned whether the boys would able to make the hike. At this point we had done a five mile and were not worried, but they politely informed us that we could always turn around and watch out for the bears as they were active today. 

There were three of these little bridges, I was a little worried at first but the boys really did a good job walking on. In fact it was one of their favorite things on the hike :)

Miss Livvy enjoyed the hike as well :) As we got to the falls she was awake and ready to have a snack too. 

The boys couldn't wait to play in the water. It was a nice sunny day so the boys took off there hiking shoes and played in the water. They were playing some kind of mining game and pretended to find all kinds of treasures. It was well worth the trip:) 

We had so much fun on our trip and we ended up hiking 18 miles over the long weekend! 

Last morning at the cabin

Sunday night was our last night at the beautiful cabin. We were able to have a more relaxing time that night and enjoy our time together away in the mountains. 

On Monday morning we had a plan to do a hike but were not sure if we were going to do it. We had already hiked 13 miles since we were there and were not sure everyone would be up to one on the way home. As we got up we were all feeling very well so we decided we would do one more hike over at Cades Cove. 

We enjoyed our last breakfast out on the patio, and it was going to be a beautiful day! We wanted to get a few more pictures before we were off on our last hike for our trip. 

After a few pictures and making sure everything was cleaned up and looking good we headed over to Cades Cove. Our plan was to drive the loop and head over to the trail head to hike Abrams Falls. 

We had seen quite a bit of wildlife while in the park but we were able to stop on a pull off to see our first deer of the trip. We were able to get rather close and the boys thought it was pretty cool :)

Mirror maze and candy

On our way back to the cabin we decided to a few more fun things in Gatlinburg. We had one more pass that we could do either another putt putt course or a mirror maze. 

Since we did one putt putt we decided to go with the mirror maze. I think at first the boys were not sure what to expect. But when we got in they had a lot of fun with it. 

The boys did pretty well with the maze and I think we only took a few wrong turns. It was a little scary seeing all those Thomas's and Phillip's though!

In front of the mirror maze was a candy factory. Here they had all kinds of candy that you could fill up on. This of course was popular with all members of the family. 

With time we didn't have a chance to go to a breakfast place for Eric, so the candy factory ended up being Eric's "restaurant pick" :)