East Tennessee Awesomeness

Matt and I decided to take advantage of the 3 day weekend and spend a couple of days in the Smoky Mountains. What could be better than a weekend of hiking, football, and all the Pigeon Forge tackiness your heart could desire?

Here is our cute cabin...


Game day munchies...



The 8 mile hike in the rain that kicked. my. butt...



Nice to have little reminders of our babies (who were living it up with Nana and Papa)...


OK, here is the actual sign...


And I can't leave out the beautiful sights of Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg. Matt called it Myrtle Beach in the mountains...



My favorite part? You can get your picture made Wild West style AND GET MARRIED IN THE SAME PLACE! Brilliant!


Sorry for the blurry photos. Matt wasn't real excited about actually stopping at these establishments, so these were taken from a moving vehicle. IF you call going 5 mph all the way down the Pigeon Forge strip "moving."

The letter "H"

There are plenty of milestones in kids' lives that you learn about from books, doctors, and good old experience. Crawling, walking, talking, toilet training. But I've been observing some of the minor but more unique milestones in Holly that mark a definite transition from one stage of her life to the next.

Which brings me to... the letter "H". My little girl can write letters! She's been able to identify some letters for about a year, but has shown no interest in putting that to paper. It was just a few weeks ago that she drew her first intentional drawing - a smiley face. Then a few days ago she brings us her chalkboard and proudly displays her first written letter. No help, no coaching.

In the picture, her first "H" is on the right. When she realized how much praise and excitement that created, she went on to write another one on the left side and then a big "O" in the middle.

On a similar note, I was talking with her the other day about the letter "B" which she's learning in pre-school. I was giving some examples of words that start with a "B" and she said, "and bouncy balls!"

Little milestone perhaps, but big deal. Our days of spelling words (should we go to the p-o-o-l today?) are numbered.