I'm finally posting about our semester break. Better late than never right?
(btw as you will see below, I have put watermarks on my pictures, I keep hearing scary stories about internet safety with family pictures. I always try to post low res files, avoid using their names but I thought adding a watermark would add some more safety so their pictures don't get used inappropriately.)
Semester break lasts for a total of about a week and a half. So we wanted to make every second of it count.
The World's Biggest Fish Fry marked the beginning of the break! We traded baby sitting with our friends so we could go to the rodeo without the baby. We went to some rides and the catfish fry before the rodeo started. All you can eat catfish, fries and hushpuppies. We didn't know what hushpuppies were and the lady serving them said, "where are you from, the moon!?" we answered, "yeah pretty much, we're from Utah".
Anyway, we're glad we did the rides first, because if not there might have been a lot of upchucked deep fried food at the fair. Brent and I don't have the iron stomachs we used to have!
We felt like the worst parents of the year when we sent the boys on the first ride. Griz and Chico were both tall enough for this ride so they went running up and got in, we wanted to save on tickets so we had them go without us. I don't think any of us had ANY idea how fast this ride actually went because we hadn't watched it going before we got there. As it sped up the looks of terror appeared on their faces, hysterical terror. Griz was sliding down his seat (no seat belts, just a dumb metal bar) and we were so worried how he would react without us there. We thought the terror was finally over .... and then the ride started going in reverse, once again, really fast. I was so scared that he would try to climb out and bail from the ride and die. It was the worst feeling in the world watching how terrified he was and not being able to do anything about it.
We learned our lesson and so Brent went on the next ride with them... You can't really tell too well from the picture but he's making a nauseous face...
He was too nauseous after that ride so I went on this teacups type of ride with the boys. It was low key but fun for them...
This next ride (pictured below) looked pretty cool, both boys wanted to go, so we all went on it together. It wasn't one that made you too nauseous, it was more that weightless falling feeling. It was fun! Chico was freaked out the first time he felt it, he was like, "Save me mommy!!!!". Once he realized we weren't actually in danger he was laughing and screaming his head off with me. That was definitely my favorite ride.
I had so much fun on the previous ride that I went into the next ride with Chico a little too confidently. It was a high speed spinning ride. I thought I was going to puke. I have never felt so motion sick. It was terrible and I hated every minute of it. Chico thought it was SO much fun and LOVED it.
After that I went and sat down to recover for a while and the boys stood in line with Brent for the fish. Luckily I got my stomach back in time to eat and then we had a great time watching the rodeo. The kids were pretty dang tired by the end.
The next day (with our camera this time) we went back because we had a few ride tickets left over. Unfortunately, the rides were quadruple the cost per ticket that day so we were only able to go on two rides. The planes and the little dragon roller coaster.
I just LOVE when they hold hands with their sister...
Sanna got to go on the dragon roller coaster. She and Griz weren't huge fans of it but still enjoyed it I think.
The next day after church we had dinner with some other friends we've wanted to get together with for a long time but hadn't been able to swing it with Brent's school schedule! I wanted to make them my delicious pizza but our place isn't great for entertaining so we took the pizza to their place and I assembled the pizzas there. It's great to have friends here in Tennessee, I don't know what I would have done if there weren't other young families in our branch or neighborhood! The kids love playing with friends too so that makes it really nice. We went and chatted in the backyard while the kids played. Brent took this awful picture of a wolf spider in their yard nearer to the road. He didn't even tell me about it while we were there. I found the picture on his phone and nearly died. Living in the south may take some getting used to for me. In my opinion spiders like that should not exist.
Anyway, the next morning we headed off for Nashville, first to stop at the apple store and then continued on to South Cumberland State Park. We had found a nice 1.6 mile backpacking trail to a backcountry campsite. (Most backcountry campsite trails are quite a bit longer than this so we were glad to have found one that would work for our kids).
Griz brought his binoculars and was scouting out the trail for us telling us how many miles we had left.
Sanna was literally running for the first 1/8th of a mile or so. She tripped on the roots pretty constantly but she always got right back up and kept on going. We weren't the ones making her wear a backpack. We just knew that if the boys had one she'd need on too. Sure enough that was indeed the case.
This picture is of her right before tripping.
There were a few cable bridges. That was a new experience for us.
Once again Brent's pack is massive.
We set up camp and hung out. The pic above and below show how emotional Sanna can be. One second she is happy and having fun, a second later the world has just come to and end.
One kid eating a stick... one kid eating a sandwich. We promise we didn't make her eat the stick!
Savage Falls was quite beautiful.
In love with this pic...
Brent shot this beauty...
When the boys need to go they pull down their pants and just go. Sanna didn't quite understand what the pulling down of the pants was for and she was trying it too...
Getting the campfire ready for the roasting of the marshmallows and the drying off of the shoes.
I felt like we had a really good time. Apparently I was really grumpy though and yelling at the kids a lot. And I laid in the tent for a few hours resting. So I appeared to not be the happiest of campers. I really was having fun though.
We captured this hilarious pic on one of our cell phones whilst tucking in the kids for bed, Chico loves getting all squished in tight into his sleeping bag. I love his cute little face in this picture laughing his head off.
We hiked out of there Wednesday morning. We made good time even though Sanna was acting a wee bit grumpy to say the least. Brent described hiking back with her like trying to get a grumpy cat to hike on the trail when all she wanted to do was explore OFF the trail in the opposite direction.
Some other friends in our ward invited us to camp with them at Rock Island State park starting on Wednesday afternoon. It was only an hour away from the place we were at so it worked out perfect. We got there and showered and started playing on the playground they had. Look at our strong kids!
Pringles make kids strong I think.
We had pulled Chico out of school so we tried to keep up on the math spelling and reading with him throughout the week. We were doing some reading with him in this pic..
whilst Griz and Sanna played with the water spicket...
Griz got Brent playing phones with the cups...
Feeling oh so fine with my hair clean and clean clothes. And our friends had just arrived with our food bin we had left with them. You better believe the chips were the first things we opened!
The rest of the day was spent playing on the playground, ping ponging, eating yummy tinfoil dinners and peach cobbler.
The next morning after a delicious breakfast burrito (with bacon, I love bacon) we drove to some falls. Tennessee sure is full of water falls!
then we went fishing...
and Brent swam in the cold water. I was somewhat tempted to join him but too lazy to go get my swimsuit on.
We went back to camp and ate some lunch then finished packing up our car and headed home. We were pretty tuckered out which is why we left earlier than planned but perhaps it was inspiration because Sanna developed quite the fever soon after we left and she was not a happy girl.
By Saturday Sanna was feeling well enough for us to leave her with a babysitter and we got to go see Avengers 2. It was so very awesome. So awesome in fact that Brent took the boys to see it that night. Those crazy boys were out pretty late but they LOVED it too! I think it was a fun way for Brent to end his semester break.
