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.

I have to compromise the big fancy camera a lot more theses days and just make do with the camera phone, but this one was so sweet I will take a poor photo over no photo. We had a playdate at the free summer movie today with Elena, Maeve, and their cousin Lincoln. Before the movie started, Ashley took the big girls to the bathroom and the little girls came to hang out with me and the popcorn. We didn’t have the booster seats yet, so I thought that maybe Julia and Maeve would weight enough to hold the seat down together. They loved sitting together on the seat chowing down on their popcorn. It was really sweet.

The other morning when I went in to get Julia up she was standing and waiting for me with one sleeve off of her jammies. I suddenly had a flashback of a little Emily excitedly waiting for me to get her up from a nap and having one arm pulled out of her shirt. Just another sign that Julia is growing up.

This morning when I went in to get Julia up she had thrown all of her blankets and animal friends from her bed and removed her pj bottoms. I guess she was bored. The game of undressing is a lot of fun and it makes me wonder what I will find tomorrow when I get her up from bed.

I would have loved a photo with the girls looking at camera, but that never is a guarantee these days. They were very facinated with all the little clover flowers hidden in the grass. It was sweet to watch their discovery of the blooming treasures.

This is a classic and wonderful story, enjoy! On our way home from Cades Cove, we stopped at Cracker Barrel for dinner. Our first stop inside was the restroom. On the way I gave Emily some verbal directions to the bathroom. I told her to find the flashing stoplight on the back wall and the bathroom door would be below it. Half way back to the bathroom, Emily stopped walking and I asked her why, after all, we were staring right at the entrance and she knew where she was going. She told me the stoplight was red and that meant we had to stop. Everyone standing around up had huge smiles! Because the light was never going to change to green, I gave her permission to continue on. I’m glad our first lesson on the rules of the road have taken so well.