We spent the long weekend away on a mini-vacation. We joked that we ran away to play as a family. Robby has been putting in a lot of hours at work and he hasn’t gotten much of a chance to play with the girls lately. He has also missed out on all of the swimming the girls have done so far this year. So, we found a hotel with a fun pool and stayed the weekend.

I thought the photo of Emily was pretty cute with her next to the depth marker of 3. She is more than happy to inform people that she is three years old when asked.

Julia loved floating around in the pool on her own with her floaties. She still isn’t using words, so she invented a sign for swimming. It consists of bending her arm away from her body and pointing at the spot where her floaties go. She has been so fearless in the pool, we felt that she would have more fun, and we would worry less about her with them on. She still loves to put her face in the water and floating on her belly. She discovered that she could lay her head back into the water. After she got used to it, she would float on her back in the pool and just relax.

Joy, joy, joy – Blueberries!

Blueberries are little round blue wonders of so much joy. These four girls just ate and ate blueberries. They ate them from their buckets, from the bushes, and probably from the ground. They also picked a few blackberries. Emily had blackberry juice stains on her chin, shirt, fingers, and legs. The pig-tailed girls all enjoyed being out in the sun on a pleasant sunny afternoon and being together.

The girls and I visited Dollywood again. This time we tried to drive up during naptime and then visit the park in the afternoon and evening. The schedule worked great and we had a great time. The only problem with this schedule is that the park closes at the girls bedtime and by the time we get home it is rather late.

Again I set low expectations for what we would try to do, so that we could just be free to have a good time. This time the new things we did were ride the steam locomotive train, eat dinner, play in the splash pad, and explore the children’s rope course. We also did the things we did last time. If I was to guess, I would think Julia’s favorite thing was riding the carousel twice. She spotted it from the train car and pointed it out for our next activity. Emily started to learn this visit that she could ask to do things and to ask what a ride was. All rides fall into one of two categories, an Emily ride or a Mommy ride. She informed me that we needed to bring Daddy back with us so that I could ride some of the Mommy rides.

Both girls enjoyed playing at the splash pad. Julia was very unsure of the water that sometimes came out and then stopped. She watched for a while, but after she was willing to venture close and try to grab the water she had a blast. Emily was willing to run in right away, but got a little chilly as she got wet.

Emily loved reading the map as we would go around the park. I would show her where we were and where we were going. She followed our trip around the park and enjoyed looking at all of the symbols. She can recognize the restroom symbol and enjoyed looking to see where they were. I guess instead of ‘Where’s Waldo’ she was playing ‘Where’s the Potty’. I love to see this trait in her because both of her parents love looking at maps too.