Sweet Friends

After the chocolate factory we met at the park and played and then walked the trails. This is such a candid and sweet moment that I caught on camera.
We are so blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with our friends from church and small group. Our children are friends - and a lot like family.
So thankful for the body of Christ.

We were able to go to an amazing place for the 2nd time to celebrate the 11th birthday of our very special friend, Zachary. If you haven't been to Go Play Outside Now yet in Garner, NC. Make a point to go there soon! It's so much fun! They have even started a Friday special for homeschoolers starting Friday the 21st of March. 12:45-3:45 PM every Friday $5 per person. Children under 2 are free!

They have an awesome laser tag area - and yes that is Rich you seen in the picture trying to take down all the young kiddos playing. Even the adults get to have fun!

We are so thankful for our dear friends!
Happy Birthday to our sweet friend, Zachary. My boys love him like a brother. Zachary and his family are blessing to our family!

Go Play Outside Now

We love this place! It's called Go Play Outside Now and we had so much fun! We went with a group of good friends and had a blast! 

They have a beach area with pools of water and tons of water guns and barriers for fun water gun battles. They have 2 big slides and they hook one of the slides up with water and make an incredibly fun water slide!

Rosalie wouldn't go down the waterside, but she had fun going down the slide without the water.

The chickens came begging for some lunch.

They also have a huge area set up for laser tag. They had so much fun playing laser tag! 

If you haven't had the chance to visit this great place. You'll have to make your way down there. We were there for more than 5 hours and my children still didn't want to leave when it was time to go!

More Fun with Friends

We met our dear friends, the McDaniel's(from our living on campus days) at Blue Jay Park last week. I am so thankful for this sweet family! Shannon will always be very special to me and I love her sweet children too! We spent many hours outside together watching our children, talking, and encouraging each other. She has always been a great encouragement to me and I always wish that I had more time to spend with her. She is a busy homeschooling mom, just like me, and she doesn't live a few houses down from me anymore. So, we have to carefully plan out time to get together.

These two have been BFFXL's since they were 2 years old!!
(Best Friends Forever Extra Large)

It was a chilly day at the park - but it was a great day of reconnecting with special friends. We'll have to do it again very soon!

A Play Date at the Farm

We have gotten to know a wonderful family not too far from us that run a very small family farm. They have 2 boys that are around the ages of Martin and Aaron and we love getting together with them especially when we can go to their farm and enjoy the farm life with them! They have several goats, a calf that was just born in December, a couple of dogs, and chickens. We finally got to meet their sweet little calf, Cinnamon, last week. Oh, how sweet she is!

She was a little timid at first, but she warmed up quickly and began to follow Rosalie around.

While Rosalie and I were getting acquainted with Cinnamon, the boys were setting up their bases for their war game. 

For awhile, Rosalie had no idea that Cinnamon was following her around ... she was surprised when she turned around and saw the calf right behind her!

We are so thankful to have these wonderful friends and are so thankful we get to roam among their chickens, goats, and calf while we are there. It's so much fun!

(I wish I had a picture to share of the boys ... but they scattered almost immediately upon arriving and stayed busy until we left)

Neighborhood cookout

On Memorial Day, we gathered with our neighbors and had a big cookout. We all brought our own meat, brought side dishes and desserts to share. Oh, yeah ... chocolate cake.  (I also made whole grain pasta salad ... no picture, though)

I made homemade whole grain hot dog and hamburger buns ... and figured out an awesome trick to make them shiny and give them a great texture on the top. I brushed buttermilk on each of the buns before the rise, and then baked them. We all loved how they turned out!

Here is a picture of many of those gathered. We moved the chairs around all afternoon to stay in the shade.

They children played on a slip and slide and in the small baby pools. It was a fun day and we had the opportunity to get better acquainted with our neighbors. I hope we can do it again soon! 

Visiting Belmont

There is no way that I could make the 10 hour trip to Nashville  and not pay a visit to the very place where I met all of these wonderful friends!  Duffy and I ventured out to our alma mater and were stunned at how different it is today than it was then.  It has grown by leaps and bounds.  We were thankful, though that the middle of campus still had the same familiar look.  Building upon buildings have been added to our campus.  The improvements are amazing!

We had all of our children (plus Duffy's niece) lined up on the steps of our college, and commented on how we never could have imagined that we would be back almost 20 years later with this many children between the 2 of us!

Duffy and I stopped here at these steps to pose for a picture ... the same exact place we posed so many years ago.  (I'll have to try and dig that picture up for a comparison!)

Zoo Trip

A couple of weeks ago (or so), we went to the zoo with our dear friends, the Dew family!
It's hard to believe there are 8 children among our two families!

I tried to get a shot of them looking at the camera, but it didn't quite work out.  I like how it turned out anyway!
I especially love Nathan's sweet smile in this picture!

My carefree girl!

What is she thinking?

Love this sweet picture of Aaron!

Monkey see ... Monkey do!

Martin was helping this fellow to read a map!

Rosalie is patting Samantha!!  LOVE this!

I love this sweet picture of Rosalie, Natalie, Jonathan, and Nathan holding hands!

Ta-da!

I love this shot of Rosalie and Natalie trying their hardest to keep up with the boys!

Aaron with his favorite animal!!
We had a wonderful time checking out all the animals at the zoo while also spending some time with our friends!  We stayed a little bit longer than our friends did ... and took the children to the play area ...

Having a little fun in the playground area at the zoo!

Rosalie loves having her picture taken!

Can ya tell?

My boys are caught in a spider web!

Hanging on a bug's leg!

Weeeeee!!