Long Overdue Visit

Last week our good friends James and Cara and their three girls came to our house for a visit. It was a long over due visit, that's for sure. We all became friends when we lived in Columbia SC. Once we both moved away we would at least see each other once a year, but this time it was almost 2 and 1/2 years later that we finally got to spend sometime together. The Reneau's were excited to have their friends coming our way for a few days. The house was full of girls, 2 six year olds, 2 four year olds and 1 two year old, plus the momma's, so Chris, James and Samson were completely out numbered this week. :) But they handled it like champs.

We had a fun filled week......

A couple of beach trips....that is a given and we all had a blast!

Katie and Anna working on a sand castle

Silly Bree posing with her PB and J sandwich as she giggles at herself for being silly.

Strike a pose girls!



Me and little Leah.....the last time I saw Cara and James, this little one was in Cara's belly. This was the first time I got to meet her. She was my buddy all week.

My little fighter

Lots of playing in the sand
Daddy and his girls

Me and Cara enjoying the beach the way we like it....sitting in our chairs. :)

The fam

Besides beach and pool time we did some other things during the week.

Movie Night...everyone in their PJ's with some popcorn ready to relax.

Cara and I took the bigger girls to see the Smurf Movie one afternoon, while James took Leah to the mall to play. The movie by the way was really cute. The girls really enjoyed it. After the movie we met up with Chris and had some dinner. Little photo shoot to pass the time while waiting on the food.

Katie and Becca...they said they had to sit together because they were BFF's. :)

Anna and Bree. Love this picture of them. Two sweet little girls.

We let the girls paint some pottery at the Turtle Factory. This is Katie's favorite place and she wanted to show Becca and Anna.

Bree and Anna concentrating hard to create their master piece.

Becca and Katie working hard.

The times that we would hang around the house and relax you could bet that you would find Bree and James playing headbanzs.

Snagged a self portrait of me and this cutie. I just fell in love with her this week.

Saturday was the last night that the Morgan's where here and it was also Chris' birthday, so we went out to eat for his bday. In order to not have to wait we decided to have two tables instead of one. We put all the big girls at one table right beside up. They thought they were hot stuff sitting all by themselves with no parents at the table. They did really well, and the adults and Leah actually had a nice time talking and eating.

Me and the birthday boy

After dinner we headed home for birthday cake. The girls wanted to make his cake instead of buying it. Katie, Bree, Becca and Anna all helped decorate it and as we were decorating they all thought they should put their Smurf figurines on the cake since the icing was Smurf blue. So Chris ended up with a Smurf cake for his birthday.

They were all so excited for Chris to see his cake that he had to sit with is back to me as I lite the candles and walked it over to him.

The girls helping daddy blow out his candles. We had 35 on their and they were melting fast.

As soon as the candles were out all the girls were reclaiming their smurf figurines. :) They had lent them out long enough. HA!

Enjoying the cake....especially Leah. She walked around all day saying "cake, cake". She wanted a piece so bad. She was one happy girl to get her cake. :)

Sunday Morning it was time for them to pack up and head home. I had to get one more photo of this sweet face before she left. Loving her yogurt.

The girls playing one last game before they all had to give hugs good bye. :(

I really can't express how much fun we had this week. I know my girls loved having friends here to play with. Since we moved here they made some friends but haven't had any real play dates. They had so much fun having girls their own age here to play with. Chris and I both loved catching up with Cara and James. They both have been great friends to us and we love hanging out with them. It was one of the best weeks we have had since we have moved here. Hopefully, this can be an annual thing and not be so long in between our visits. Thanks Cara and James for making the trek out to see us. We love you guys!

Tennessee in July

The girls were pretty much gone the entire month of July. They spent three weeks with their Nana and Papaw in Tennessee. They have all sorts of fun when they are there. Lots of play time with both Nana and Papaw, plus evening visit from Uncle Kevin and Aunt Brandy and usually sometime with Matthew when he is home during the summer. They also had trips to Chuck E Cheese, went to a kids Dinosaur Museum, Chick-fil-a lunches and of course shopping. Needless to say they get pretty spoiled when they are there. I went up for a week of their visit to see the girls and spend time with the rest of my family. We a couple of things planned the week I was there.

This week was Fun Fest week. If you don't know what that it is, it is a week of activities planned all around Kingsport. They have a kid center place at one of the local elementary schools and it is was three days that week. We took the girls over there one day.

They had games to play

A lady was doing face painting....which we waited in line for an hour. There was just one lady who was painting. She did an amazing job as you can see below....it was hot, but the girls wanted to do this so we waited. They were so happy to have their faces painted.



On Friday night we were heading over to eat at Taste of Tri-Cities (fun fest event that brings lots of local restaurants to one place so you can have a taste of different places) and to watch the Balloon Glow, but on are way over it started to rain. :( Boo! So we had to settle with eating at Braeden's BBQ, which is really good, and then since we couldn't go see the Balloon Glow we took the girls to a place call The Ugly Cupcake. They have ginormous cupcakes with about 3 inches of icing on the top.

Katie digging in to hers....I believe she got Banana Pudding cupcake

Bree got the Happy Birthday cupcake...she didn't like the icing at all, I didn't even like it. If it was suppose to be chocolate icing but didn't taste like that at all. So she at the cupcake part and that was it. I got a Key Lime cupcake and it was actually really good. Way big, but really good!

Saturday morning the girls were up early enough for us to head back down to see the hot air balloons that didn't get to glow on Friday night, but got to see them take off on Saturday morning. We got to see this one get blown up from the ground and then take off. Poor Bree kept covering her ears. She thought it was going to pop because it was called a balloon. :) We kept telling her it wasn't going to pop....she finally believed us and put her hands down.

Another day we went to see a play of Beauty and the Beast at the Barter Theater in Abington VA. My parents and Brandy and Kevin have seen several plays at this theater and they all say it is well worth the money and time to go. The girls were super excited about seeing the play. The play was awesome!!!! It was 2 hours and 45 mins long with a 15 min intermission....so I was a little worried that they would get squirmy before it was over but they sat through the entire thing. They both talked about this play the rest of the week. We will definitely have to find time to go back for another play soon!

As if all of this excitement wasn't enough, I had one more thing planned for the girls. Kevin, Brandy and I took the girls to Wetlands over in Jonesbourgh for an afternoon. It is a small water park that is geared more for smaller kids. They had a blast going down the water slides, swimming in the lazy river and playing in the splash areas. Brandy, Kevin and I also has some fun taking turns going downs some of the bigger water slides. Big kids have to have fun too....right???

Here is a short video of the girls going down one of the slides.

July was a fun filled month for the girls, they love spending time with their Nana and Papaw and I know Nana and Papaw love it just as much. I love the fact that my girls want to go and spend time with them, even though we miss them, it is great that they have such a good relationship with them. Bree even cried for the first few nights back at home with us that she wanted to go back to Nana's.

A Whole Bunch of Randomness

I have a bunch of photos that are just from things we did here and there and never blogged about, so I am throwing it all into one. Just quick pics I took and wanted to share.

When we were in Texas back in May the family and I had a extra day before the rest of our family arrived so we decided to take the girls to an aquarium they had in downtown Dallas. When we got there we the only ones there so one of the guys that worked there spent lots of time with Katie and Bree showing them all sorts of water creatures in this tank. Telling them all the details and letting them touch them. Bree didn't really want to touch but Katie was very interesting in them. This guy was super nice to them.

The aquarium was not very big it took us all of an hour to go through it, which surprised me, I would have thought Dallas' aquarium would have been really big. Maybe there is another we just didn't know about. Anyway, as we were leaving we walked by another place called The Butterfly House. Katie begged us to go in because they have been learning about butterflies at school and have a butterfly net in their class room so they can watch all the stages from a caterpillar to a butterfly. We went in and it was really pretty neat. The girls kept trying to get the butterflies to land on their fingers.

Chris and Bree inside the Butterfly House

Papaw and Katie playing checkers. This is Katie's favorite new game to play. They played lots of games when they were here for a visit.

There is always a trip to CEC when Nana and Papaw are here. Nana riding the virtual rollercoaster with Bree. Love Bree's expression.

One Saturday we went over to Wilmington to check out their mall. Wilmington is about 35 mins away so we don't go there often. We when walked in the girls saw a carousel....well it was actually a double decker carousel which I had never seen before. Of course they wanted to ride on the top deck.

A day in the life of Samson....poor guy just can't get away from the tutu's and bows. You can see the bow that is in one of his ears. He had on in the other but managed to knock it out.

He gets his rewards for being a good sport and dealing with the girls. He gets his beach time. He loves the beach.

Bree's class at school had Pirate Day. She came home with a pirate hat and eye patch she made. She cracked me up wearing this around and saying "Errrrr Matey". She is one cute pirate.

The girls and I went by a shop called "The Turtle Factory". Most of the shops around our house are one a tourist shop for all the beach goers or they are shops that sell all of the beach decor items or very unique things. We went into this shop and got a nice surprise. They have a pottery painting place in the back. Kids paint for free all you have to do is buy the pottery piece. Most of the ones for kids are 5 bucks or less. The lady who runs this part of the shop is very kid friendly. She took the girls and showed them how to paint them, helped them the entire time. Whats cool about this place is you don't have to leave the pottery and let them fire it before you can take it home. They have a spray they put on it and it just has to dry a few minutes and then it is good to go. They loved it and have been back one more time. Katie ask to go a lot....she is big into the arts and craft stuff.

My two cuties waiting for some fireworks to start on July 4th, while they wait they enjoyed their snow cones.

Family Visit

This post is a little overdue...a few weeks ago Uncle Kevin, Aunt Brandy and Matthew came to our house for a visit. We were excited to have them come to our house and get to spend some good quality time with them. We didn't have much planned for the week, which was nice. We enjoyed spending time just hanging out together and of course hitting the beach a few times.

Most of the evenings we would spend some time outside. . Uncle Kevin brought some kites. One of the evenings we had lots of wind so we took advantage and let the girls fly some kites.

The girls love their cousin Matthew and are always so excited to see him. One day after we got home from the beach I found them all cuddled together on the couch watching a movie. Love this photo of the three of them..

Group photo

A little sunbathing is a must when at the beach



Bree taking a stroll with Kevin and Brandy.

Katie riding the waves

Fun in the sand. Matthew was working hard to dig a pool of water to put his feet in. Somehow it ended up he made a pool for Katie and Bree to play in.

One evening after dinner we all ended up playing Katie's Just Dance for Kids Wii game. It was beyond comical. Brandy and I danced to "Everybody Dance Now". Kevin took video but I threatened his life if he showed anyone. I realized just how uncoordinated I really am and also how aerobic this game really was. Kevin and Matthew gave it a try. They picked a hard one....YMCA....don't hurt yourself guys.

On their last night there we went to get some seafood at a little restaurant on the water by our house. The food is so good. We had a great dinner and enjoyed our last night together that week.

We had a great week together. Lots of fun spending sometime with the family. So nice to be back closer to family and get to see everyone more often.