Tweetsie Railroad

We had some friends that  gave us some tickets to Tweetsie Railroad. The kids had so much fun.

woot woot

first stop is the train ride

the show along the train ride

can you tell Madison loves rides

ikkky...i hate rides that spin, but Zander and Madison love them. So, guess who "gets" to ride with them. :)

Zander asking his 1,000 question of the day. :)

I love Madison's face

South Mountain State Park

Ok, with all the internet issues on my computer, I'm WAY behind on blogging. (and I took 800 pics on our trip to Oregon/California that I still have to go through :) )

We love taking the kids hiking (and they seem to have fun and like it) so we decided to go back to South Mountain State Park. We decided to hike up to the falls. OH.MY.WORD! What a hike! What seemed like hundreds of VERY steep stairs on a very HOT day. I was waiting for all the whining and complaining to start, but the kids did great!

The start of our hike

starting up the stairs

Connor

more stairs

and more stairs

A brief stop to view the falls

after even more stairs, a little rest

and goofyness

then back to more stairs

and more stairs

made it to the top of the falls and now for some cooling off and playing

looking for little fish

Madison is just worn out and relaxing while cooling off. :)

then she sees the fish...oh wow!

trying to keep that head cool :)

Zander

daddy playing around

Ellie helping everyone stay cool :)

This was only the first half of the hike. I have no pictures after this so I think I must have been just too hot and tired to take any more. :) It was a fun but very exhausting day. We hope the kids grow up to really love the outdoors and enjoy what God created for us. (They'll probably hate hiking after all this :) )

21 years married, 24 years together

In the last 24 years God has had us on a journey that neither one of us could have predicted. And I'm SO glad I get to be on that journey with my best friend! 

This was our very first date. This was my sophomore end of year banquet. ( I went to a private school so we didn't have dances.) From that very first date we stayed together. Our very first movie together was "Willow" :)

We lived in Alaska when we met. Nice snow suit and boots. :)

We got married August 3, 1991 in Anchorage, Alaska

outside our first apartment

Graduation from Oregon State. 

After Oregon state it was on to Syracuse, New York for law school. 

Graduation from Syracuse Law School

After law school we moved south to North Carolina. 

Then, after 13 years of marriage we had our first child. When we got married I never ever wanted kids. God changed my heart BIG time. :)

First pregnancy with our precious little Ellie girl.

Second pregnancy with twin boys

Then, God called us to adopt a precious little girl from Uganda. I recall telling Tim when we were younger that he never had to worry about taking me to Africa because I never had any desire to go there. Now I want to go all the time! 

Our wonderful crazy family that God has blessed us with.

 Starting out our lives together in Alaska, we would never have guessed we would end up in North Carolina! God has a sense of humor, that is for sure! I never wanted kids, never wanted to go to Africa, never wanted to drive a mini van, never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, and certainly didn't want 4 kids. I'm sure there was a lot more that I said "never" about and God just laughed and said "we'll see." :)