Our Anniversary

We celebrated our 5th anniversary this last weekend. After dropping off the wee one at a friend's house (thank you!), we came back home and whipped up some steaks, baked potatoes, and sauteed squash. We couldn't forget a little sparkling goodness of course, and finished with some red velvet cake.  We didn't take any pictures of the food because it didn't look very good in the candlelight, but it tasted fantastic. 

Happy birthday to our marriage. 

We have had some great experiences so far and are excited for the future. 

Father's Day

For Father's Day, Emerson helped make a cute candy caddy.  It was one of the millions of ideas I found online and wouldn't be too expensive to put together.  I covered the box while E was napping, and after his nap, he helped me fill the bottles with candy.

He also made some wrapping paper for the main gift.  It's hard to see in these pics, but he just used some markers to slightly color some lines.

Here is the Father's Day picture right before heading to church.  Don't they look so handsome?  This was the last Sunday before Emerson gets to has to go to nursery (is our baby really 18 months already?!), so Will especially enjoyed his day with Emerson.  We teach the five-year-old primary class, but Emerson doesn't sit through sharing time very well which means Will usually chases E through the halls.  After this week, no more chasing him around the halls or trying to keep him contained during class. 

Happy Father's Day to the amazing fathers who guide and shape us into what we eventually become.

Vacation: day 3

Our trip left off at the aquarium.  We pick it up after traveling to Charlotte, NC, where we spent the day at the Nascar Hall of Fame.  We love how the windows of the building reflect the ground giving the appearance of a waving checkered flag.  Somebody was thinkin'. 

This was truly cool, but definitely geared towards the male population (no pun intended :)

Evidence:

We watched a video before starting our hall of fame experience.  E especially loved watching, but didn't love the seats that folded him in half.

After the show, we were able to visit different attractions within the hall.  Along the outside walls of the building were a bunch of cars lined up on a gradual incline.  Here is a collage of some of the cars on the incline as well as throughout the hall.  The top middle photo shows how the cars on the incline were displayed. 

We walked along the incline and then took a picture of the steepness.  Will looks like he is on his toes, but his feet are flat on the suface.  The surface is at a 33 degree incline and it represents the super speedway tracks and the incline they race on.

A collage to sum up the experience:

Some of the neat features of the hall of fame were the stations where we could practice being in the pits.  After receiving instruction, Will was timed on his own pitstop.  Here's a video for ya (at the end I forgot that I was still in video mode and went to take a pic of his time so it goes sideways for a sec - sorry):

Will had the highest time and his name was put on the time board.  The times listed below his are faster; however, they were done with 2 and 3 people on a team.  Will flew solo.

We were able to do the same thing with driving.  We practiced for a while on some arcade-type drives.  Then we got into a car and had a simulated driving experience.  E was able to sit on my lap during the simulation, and he fell asleep during the 5 minute drive. 

Some other gems.

 We tried to capture Emerson giving her a pound, but he was so timid and fast that we only got the withdraw.  Sidenote: Will doesn't like the M&M car so he refused to be in these pictures. 

After spending lots and lots of time at the hall, we booked it to Asheville, NC.  We mostly rested here and took in the scenery.  Look closely at the collage and you'll see the ritziest McDonald's you'll ever see.  It was located right outside the main entrance to the Biltmore Estate, which we only drove up to instead of toured.  The Biltmore was just slightly out of our budget (ahem over $50/ea just to tour the estate!) so we just drove around the area and oohed and ahhed at all the wealth. We also drove on Blueridge Parkway for a few miles.  This is "America's Favorite Drive" and is 469 miles connecting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.  We wish we could've spent more time driving it, but we would've had to go out of our way quite a bit.  We only spent a few hours in Asheville, but it was nice and we would love to go back. 

the Cold War

For whatever reason, we have all had our fair share of sickness here in Mississippi.  Emerson got sick a few weeks after we got here and I got whatever he had.  Then a couple weeks later, Will got super sick and E got minorly sick, too.  Now Emerson is sick again and has strep throat. 

Raise your hand if you hate strep throat. 

It's awful, huh?  Poor little E has had quite the time trying to survive it.  He has never been more snuggly, or somber, or silent, or blah.  I'll admit I love the snuggling, but that's it.  Oh, and we have an excuse to turn down the air a smidge since he's so hot from his fever.  He hasn't eaten hardly anything for three days now, and he doesn't even want to have a bath.  That's major in his book.

A few picks of the little sickie:

He has fallen asleep almost everywhere in the house this weekend, including on the changing table during a diaper change.  Today alone he has had 6 naps, all about an hour each.  Poor thing.  We don't like this at all, but hopefully the antibiotics will work their magic goodness and take the strep outta here. 

Despite all our illnesses, we feel so blessed to have such fantastic health other than the occasional cold.  Could we really ask for any more?  And we feel even more blessed to have the priesthood in our home.  Through all the sickness, our testimonies of relying on Christ's atonement and seeing His hand in our lives have been strengthened. 

Vacation: days 1-2

As I mentioned before, we decided to take ourselves on a tour of the south so that we could visit all the fun places while we're here.  We managed to find great deals on hotel rooms and saved on food by sharing our meals which saved money and prevented leftovers (no fridge/microwave in some rooms).  Most of our plans were set in stone, but a few were given some breathing room to accomodate Emerson's napping schedule and our pace.  If we needed to take a break, we gave ourselves some down time to be able to do it.  Also, we took almost 1000 pictures.  Yikes.  How does one pick only a few to post?  It's hard, so I've included a few collages in order to show a bunch of photos in a little amount of space.

We started our trip by driving.  And driving some more.  Pom poms and a muffin tin were the favorite toy of the trip. 

After the poms wore him out, he rested and blew some bubbles.

We drove through Talladega and stopped to get out for a little break.  There was a hall of fame there which gave track tours.  For a measly $6 we quickly hopped on the empty bus and rode with the old man driver through the longest racetrack.  The stadiums seat 175,000.  For a reference, the LaVell Edwards stadium holds almost 65,000, which means Dega is huge.  The sweet little bus driver even let us get out at victory lane for a few minutes to snap a picture.  We learned a lot from the tour guide, but the most surprising fact was that from the grass to the top of the track was 4 stories high.  What?!  It's a 33% incline and requires 90 mph just to stay on the track.  We barely missed the race which was the weekend before we came, but the stripes on the wall will be gone before the next race.

This is Emerson finding all the balloons in the book. He loves finding Franklin in the Franklin series books, but in the birthday party book, he just points to all the balloons.

 After Talladega, we drove a couple more hours to Atlanta. We drove to the temple after dinner in order to escape the hustle and bustle of downtown Atlanta.  We prefer being away from the city so a 20 minute drive to the temple was nice and relaxing.

Emerson especially loved Moroni.

The next morning, we popped out of bed and raced to the World of Coca-Cola.  On the way we breezed past Turner Field.  Hello Braves; goodbye Braves.   

At the World of Coca-Cola we were given a tour highlighting the history of coke which ended with a variety of attractions to experience.  Cool for Will and me, but not so cool for E.  He preferred running around and touching all the displays.

I don't know how to describe the next few photos.  Pretty much the screen in front of us turned our image into something fun and cool.  Just take a look yourself:

We met the Coca-Cola bear whom Emerson loved and gave a high five to.  Didn't catch the high five in a pic, but got a family shot. 

After we were done doing all our Coca-Cola adventuring, we visited the tasting zone.  They had a station for each continent of cola products sold in that continent's countries.  In this pic I look as though I've had a little too much :)  We didn't stay to taste for very long, but our feet were sticking to the floor after just a few minutes.

 

After the sticky World of Coca-Cola, we walked around the block to the Georgia Aquarium.  This is the world's largest aquarium.  We spent a few hours seeing all the exhibits they had and ended our trip with a fantastic (& free!) dolphin show.  The show was so well done and lasted about 45 minutes.  We took way too many pictures so a collage of our favorites is especially aprapos for the aquarium day.

In sum, I loved the jellyfish, Will loved the dophins, and Emerson loved it all.  He wanted to touch everything and just stared and stared.  I got to touch a hammerhead shark, a sting ray, a star fish, and an anenome.  We loved our visit to the aquarium and can't wait to visit again.