Week Ending 8-2-15

 All of the kids sleeping on the trampoline the night before we left California.

 Makenna and Samuel on the flight home.

 Alexis, Aunt Lori, Kylie. It was so great to have my sister on our flight home. She did all the work with the kids and I mostly worked on a needlepoint stocking.

 We landed at 1am Thursday morning, July 30th. We slept in until 10 and then went swimming. After lunch Lori gave us a tour of Gaylord Opryland Hotel where she works. It is so huge and beautiful. I should have taken more pictures, but we had a lot of fun.

 Reaching out the window to touch a waterfall that was pouring down. We were in some kind of tunnel with the water flowing over it. It was pretty neat.

 Friday, July 31 we drove all day to Waynesboro, VA to meet up with our good friends whom we haven't seen in years. They generously used their Marriott points to get us 2 beautiful hotel rooms. When I went to bed Spencer and Makenna were sleeping in this couch bed the right way with Spencer on the left and Makenna on the right. When I got up Saturday morning this is how they looked. 

 Thomas chose the chair to sleep in. 

 Kaitlyn, Samuel, and I tried many times to wake them up. They were still on CA time, so it was hard to get up.

 It had a gorgeous full kitchen. I wish we could have stayed longer. 

 A separate bedroom where Kaitlyn, Samuel and I slept. Kylie, Madalyn, and Alexis slept in the other room with our friend's 2 girls.

 Saturday we found a little visitor center on the Blue Ridge Parkway and had a picnic lunch. The weather was perfect and it was so fun to be with our friends again. We met when I only had 2 children and she had 1. Now I have 8, almost 9, and she has 5.

After eating we had a neat little tour of this old farm, garden, and original log cabin.

Then we hiked for a couple of hours and saw amazing views, but our camera battery was dead. I'll have to get pictures from our friends. We had a delicious picnic dinner and left Virginia at 8 pm to drive back to North Carolina, getting here at midnight after being gone for 5 weeks and 2 days. It's good to be home!

California Fun July 21-25

Tuesday, July 21 was a busy day. First up was family photo shoot.

(You may want to click on the pictures to see them bigger.)

My whole entire family minus Nathan.

My parents with all of their 15 grandchildren 

My parents with their 6 children. 

Me and my 8 children.

My older brother Ben and his wife, Janet.

 My younger brother, Brady and his wife and kids.

My mom and her 4 girls. 

Samuel and Spencer being silly afterward. 

My 3 boys

Kylie

Samuel ready to go to the next event: the temple.

Hanging out after the temple sessions.

The 5 teen grandchildren did baptisms for the dead and then the adults did sealings. My family does this every Christmas and summer but this is the first time I've been here for it. It was so special!

Next we went to a Sacramento Rivercats game. It was so much fun!

Wednesday we stayed home again and worked on the horse corral floor and making a walking trail in the morning followed by games after lunch.

First Brady and Chase pulled boards off of a chunk of our old deck.

Next Thomas scraped the boards clean.

Then the boards get passed to Dad and Misty holds them while he cuts them to the right size.

Brandyn and Spencer were in the shed nailing the new boards in.

The old horse corral under remodel.

Digging tree roots out of the way of the trail. 

Getting ready to cut a tree down.

Spencer and Brady play ping pong. Horseshoes are in the background.

Yummy snacks to munch on while we play games at the table on the side deck.

Nertz tournament in the living room.

Right before dinner we went to the neighbor's farm to see their chickens, goats, and horse.

Dad and Ben use the log splitter and Brady, Kylie, Alexis, and Chase stack the chopped wood.

Thomas got to be the operator of the machine. I'm glad nobody got their fingers cut off!

Samuel wanting to go for a walk down our road.

He's saying, "Tum on, Mom!"

Thursday night we roasted marshmallows. Yum!

Friday we helped haul away logs, branches and sticks from a tree my dad cut down. Samuel got so dirty!

The kids built forts and played Nephites and Lamanites. This was their bank where they kept their rocks they used as money to buy food and weapons

Lexi's store she's showing me. It's hard to see, but there were pine needles, and assorted pine cones and fun nature things like that.

Tom's store was similar: piles of pine needles, berries, moss, leaves, etc.  They all had a great time for hours on Friday and Saturday.

The view of the back of the house on the way down the hill from the forts.