Summer Part 1

The kids are at my moms, so I finally have time to sit down

and do another post. We started our summer off immediately traveling. Scott was out of town the first week we were out of school. My best friend, Amy, had just moved from Washington, DC to Ft. Campbell, KY. I was so thankful that she was just 4 or 5 hours away. We decided to go up and see her for a few days. Amy and her husband, Jesse, live on base. I love the safe feeling of letting your kids play outside without worrying. Sarah and Ethan constantly went around the block on their scooters.

Amy was really missing DC and one day, she and Jesse were driving around and they saw this monument that looked just like the Washington Monument. She took us to visit it. It is a memorial to a soldier, but was built as a smaller replica of the Washington Monument. There was a playground and picnic area right next to it, so we packed a lunch and let the kids play for awhile.

Amy found a place for us to go horseback riding. They were really ponies, not horses. The kids were very excited about going to ride. They had no fear whatsoever. We had to watch a video before taking them out. They whole gist of the video was not to let the ponies stop and eat and to keep pulling on their reigns. Well, we got one hungry pony. ALL it wanted to do was eat. We kept pulling and pulling and it would just pull back and keep eating. Sarah, being the animal lover that she is, said "just let him eat". The pony was pushing us actually bit Amy on the arm. The kids didn't notice a thing, really, and thought it was the most fun ever. Sarah got my camera while we were out riding and took a picture of herself. She is too funny!!

Two things that the kids loved about this trip were seeing army men and ice cream trucks. Since we were on base, we saw army men in uniforms, training for the field. Sarah calls them soldiers. When we came home, Ethan told everyone about how they had trucks that brought us ice cream. We just don't see ice cream trucks like we did when I was growing up. We let them get ice cream off the truck a couple of times. Amy and Jesse also had a playground right across the street......how exciting is that!!

My Aunt Dena lives in Nashville, which is on the way home from Amy's. We stopped in and spent the night with her before heading home. She took us to the Science Museum. It was very interactive, so the kids loved it. Here is Sarah with her favorite thing.........it was just air blowing the ball up, but she loved it.

Here she is showing her extreme talent on the piano!

Here are me and Aunt Dena, then Sarah coming down the slide. There are no pictures of Ethan because all he wanted to do was play this virtual baseball game. The pictures were too dark.