Happy Father’s Day!

Since we get up and go to an 8:30 service (that’s 30 minutes away) each Sunday, our morning Father’s Day celebrating was a bit rushed, but fun nonetheless. We celebrated Classic Style... wake Daddy up in the bed with his gifts! Classic Style also includes breakfast in bed but we opted to eat at the table since no one wants syrup from 20 sticky fingers on their bedding. The girls and I snuck around and got Dan a bike jersey from a local cycling shop. But they were the most excited about giving him some twizzler mini’s they picked out for him at Target - and eating them for him, of course. Ellie and Julia gave him special cards they picked out (each with an animal on it).

Donald Miller spoke at our church that day and delivered a fabulous message. Honestly, it was incredible. Dan bought his newest book and is looking forward to reading it. Update: since this summer he has just about finished it.

We went to lunch, I think. And there were naps involved. All in all, it was a nice and relaxing day.
Doesn’t Ellie look just like Dan??

Bike Lexington

Back at the end of May our family participated in Bike Lexington! I suppose you could say it's an annual 10 mile bike ride celebrating bike riding. Very fun and very family friendly. The highlight of the girls day was after the ride was over. Ellie watched the big kids getting wet in the fountain and sort of tiptoed around the fountain for a bit before jumping completely in. Julia was rather content to just watch - though she wanted to play soooo badly. We had an absolute BLAST.

Backpost: Gatlinburg

We went to see Pop & Tudi over in Gatlinburg (as listed on that blog about why I haven't been posting much) April 1st - 3rd... well over a month ago! It was fun to get out in nature a bit and take a hike. Levi got to tag along and was the happiest dog on the planet for a few days. Somewhere (I think on Dan's iPad) there are many more pictures, but these are all I have.

Sunday Funday

One thing I can't believe I forgot to put on the blog is a picnic we took back in April. One particularly lovely Sunday afternoon, we thought it prudent to take our little fam on a spectacular picnic! Since it was windy we thought it would be fun to take our kite along, however it didn't want to cooperate and we deemed this kite a piece of junk that will go on our next garage sale tables. :)

Fish & other pets

We went to a pet store the week before Christmas just for kicks - it was Dan's idea... kudos for Dad for thinking of something so fun. Julia really enjoyed terrorizing the fish. She found if she would strike the tank the fish would scatter and thought it was great fun. Almost at fun as running off with Ellie's current toy. Of course they had dog, cat, and rabbit adoptions (we almost left with a dog but decided since we'll be moving in just 6 months that would be a bad idea). I think the funniest event was the Santa pictures they were taking with the pets. Santa and the dog... funny times.

Hiking Family

The hiking outfit she selected.

The super-old pack turned out to fit Ellie better than Julia. Plus, it was purple!

NOT happy.

For real.

Not for real.

Dan actually had a day off this week (though he's working all weekend, blah) and we went hiking! I bought a reaaaaaallly old pack at a garage sale for $3 the other day and we decided to try it out. When we got out of the car and put the girls in their packs, Julia was NOT happy. But after a few minutes she warmed up to hiking and had a really good time. This was Julia's official first time to go hiking and Ellie's first time to actually hike! I think Ellie talked the entire time she was walking, she was so excited to be hiking, like the big people. Funny.

Park Fun

We hopped on our bikes a few evenings ago and took the girls up to the school playground that's in our neighborhood. Julia particularly enjoyed going down the yellow spiral slide all by herself, Ellie loved that she was big enough to climb a few things that had been too difficult before. Dan and I just enjoyed our girls and being outdoors in the crisp Fall air.