On the road again...

We just got back from a week long visit up north to see family.  It is a very long drive.  For the most part, the kids do great.  Each kid has an ipad they can use.  Stian's was loaded up with Myth Busters and Silje's with Yo Gabba Gabba.  We make the trip in two days and make sure to stop at a hotel with a pool!

Here we are on our way up.

It is largely a very long, flat, straight drive.

Fourth of July Weekend

We had a really nice, really full Fourth of July weekend.  It started on the morning of the 4th.  Our neighbor had invited the street over to decorate their bikes and then have a parade down the street.  We had a really nice time and a good turn out considering how many people on the street were out of town.  We had hot dogs, fruit and snacks after the parade.

Later in the afternoon we went out to a country club.  Stian is friends with a set of twins and their parents invited us to go swimming, have dinner and watch fireworks at the club where their grandpa is a member.  It was a really nice afternoon/evening.  Silje didn't much care for the fireworks, but Stian did.  And they both loved the pool and running around with Gray and Caroline.

Kris and I had to work Friday, but on Saturday we drove up to Hardy, Arkansas.  Stian's friend Parker has a cabin up there and her parents invited us over for the day.  It was a really nice day of hanging out, swimming in the river, fishing and canoeing. 

And then we spent the morning at the awesome new playground they just finished by our house.

Summer weekend

It's summer.  It's Memphis.  It's hot.  And humid.  No sense hiding.  The likelihood of having a day where the high is anywhere less than in the 90s is extremely slim until October.

We found a blueberry farm!  Yay!  You may remember from years past that we really enjoyed blueberry picking when we were in Indiana.  See here, here,  and here as evidence.  So it was very exciting to find a blueberry farm here.  And it really wasn't that far away.  And as an added bonus - it's an organic farm!

No, that's not regular Silje, that's Super Silje helping us pick blueberries.  (notice the plastic snake in the bush above heir heads?  We hadn't even noticed it yet when I took this pic.  It gave Kris a startle not too long after this.  We had just been talking about copperheads and cottonmouths.)

I'm pretty sure she ate as many as she picked.  She loved them.  She kept saying "I just eat a couple" and then would take a handful.

This was the first year that Stian was actually very helpful picking blueberries.  It didn't take us long at all to pick a gallon of blueberries.  Which is good, because we head sweat pouring off of us.

After blueberry picking we went to Jerry's Sno Cones, which is a Memphis institution.  This was the kids' and Kris's first experience at Jerry's (I was there several years ago when I visited Carla in Memphis long before we moved here). Stian chose a cotton candy snow cone (of course), Kris a pineapple one, and Silje and I split a pina colada one.  None of us got it "supreme" - which means it has soft serve on top.  No pics as we ate our snow cones in the cool air conditioning of the car.  We were hot!

Today we went to the zoo.  Can you believe our membership at the zoo is about to expire?  That means we've lived here for a year as of July 1st!  We mostly just wanted to take advantage of their water features!

Great Smokey Mountains - the pool!

The kids' favorite thing about our trip was the water park at our hotel.  We got in every afternoon and played for hours.  They both made huge leaps in their swimming abilities on this trip.  I think it's time to get them back into swim lessons!

Great Smokey Mountains - Part 2

We headed back up into the mountains on our second day.  This time to get out and see some nature - go for a scenic drive and a hike and have a picnic.  We attempted the hike up to Rainbow Falls, but it was 2.9 miles one direction, so we didn't make it.  Stian just couldn't/wouldn't go that far.  But the hike that we did do - at least a mile each direction - was still beautiful.

Silje let me wear her some, but mostly she either wanted to walk or ride on Daddy's shoulders.

Stian spotted this cool spiderweb floating over the trail.  He was quite observant of all sorts of interesting small things that we missed.  

Our scenic drive took us past several old homesteads in the mountains.  While it was gorgeous there, I cannot imagine what it must have been like to live there.  On this homestead there was a married couple and their 9 children.