September Visitors

Jason's brother Cade and his wife Kelsie came to visit. Cade had an interview at SCO and got accepted. Wahoo Cade! It was fun to have them out but my camera didn't make it past their cute boy:

It was fun having them and we're glad they were able to come stay!

The next week my Dad and Step-Mom came for a quick trip. We did lots of eating out, eating ice-cream, and cheesecake. We did find time to explore in between all of the eating. The first day we went to the zoo and this was the face Javen had the entire time:

The petting zoo-we were trying to get him a little closer:

Isn't this guy great?

We discovered what Javen would look like as a china baby..what do you think?

We obviously thought it was hillarious:


But this guy was pretty serious, I think he was scouting out which person was going to be his next meal. Seriously look at those creepy eyes!

Colettle hadn't seen Beale Street yet so we thought she needed the experience of watching people eat BBQ and inhale all of their second hand smoke.

It really was fun, aside from the second hand smoke. Javen even thought about dancing to the blues band, until it got so loud our brains were vibrating.

We love all ya'll! haha. Thanks for coming and we miss you!

Want one??

Last Thanksgiving I did a post with Javen wearing these awesome hats...and here they are again! Aren't they cute? Go here to buy some. They have some darling girl ones too.

Doing something I told myself I would never do

I let my baby swim in the ocean for the first time. Naked. With lots of people (who were not naked)

We forgot his swimming suit so we let him walk in a little.

And it quickly turned into this. He was loving it so much we had to let him get in. This is the face he made every time a wave hit him.

And then his diaper started doing this and the poor kid could hardly walk. We had no choice, the diaper had to come off.

Just so you know, we now have some really good photos to bribe Javen with one day. hehe. He did make one cute naked baby at the beach though!

We tried to squeeze in as much of Charleston in 5 hours as possible. The result was not a lot of pictures and future plans to go back. (It's been added to my list of places to visit that one day we will get to.)

The custom house..one of the only tourist pics we got besides the beach. We did have an amazing lunch and drove by Fort Sumter of course, but no photos.

We went to a few football games and Javen got a little too excited over the cheerleaders...but we'll just pretend he was this into the game.

And just for fun here are a few more pics from Gatlinburg. We hiked 4 miles one way to get to this one:

Ramsey Cascades

This was the view from our cabin:

I love vacations, especially when they involve the mountains and the ocean.

Gatlinburg

Jason had a week off between semesters and luckily we have in-laws who love to travel as much as we do. We met them in Nashville and took off to the Smokey Moutains for a few days.

I don't have the photos yet of all of us together, but here's a little family pic.

Javen spent most of his trip in this carrier. Which thanks goodness he loved it. And if your looking for an extra good workout carry 20+ lbs. on your back!

See? He loved it.

He even fell asleep, I don't know how but he did.

We also had our 4 year anniversay while we were there. Wahoo! Here's to us, four years later and it keeps getting better and better.

This really doesn't do the scenery any justice. It was amazing. We mostly hiked to waterfalls, but I don't have those pics yet either.

The next few are my up-close and personals with nature...I got to borrow my mother-in-laws macro lens and had way too much fun.

This little guy has a story..we called him the alien. We looked and there seriously was nothing holding him in mid-air, which is why we concluded that he must be an alien. He followed us back to the cabin too by riding on our car. crazy. Just look at him. Alien, right?

I know this one is a little blurry but I've never actually seen a centipede. He did this cool little curl up in a ball thing when you touched him with your foot. we tried to get a photo of it....but lets just say we were a little too forceful and this little centipede is no longer. whoops.

Maybe if my eyes were this big I'd be able to see better.

Sue braved this one. I was too big of a chicken, but she got a great pic.

The last stop of our trip was this site. I don't remember the name, but it's the highest point of the smokey mountains. They say this is what it looks like pretty much every day...which I assume is the reason for their name.

The trip was amazing and hopefully I'll get around to puting up some waterfall photos. We spent the rest of our trip in Charlotte, NC and Charleston, and those places need thier own post.

Am I the only one that does this?

I was looking through some photos from our recent trip and came across these. We went skiing with Jason's parents while we were visiting. We didn't ski at all last summer so it's been a little while but Jason still managed to look like a pro:

And then there's me, who obviously by my face, does not look so much like a pro:

and another one...


and again. This one isn't too bad, but maybe next time I will try to look like I know what I'm doing

The reason for our vacation.

These two lovely people tied the knot.

This is thier engagment photo-it's the only good pic I have of both of them together

The Bride:

The newly announced Mr. and Mrs. Tufts:

A few (very few..should've taken more) photos from the party:

We hadn't seen him in a long time! Isn't he cute? (My nephew)

The 2nd best part about the day was putting Javen in a bow tie. I was way more excited about it than I probably should have been! (this pic is only to show you the bowtie...I look horrible)

A lot of firsts

We just got back from visiting family for my sisters wedding. (I'll post about that a little later) We had a great time as usual with family. Javen had a few new experiences:

First time on the piano. He went wild.

He decided his hands weren't enough.

First time on a four-wheeler with Pa. I think he thought he was driving.

And of course he had is first birthday party! Well, three of them. We did one at home before we left to see family. He got a little shy.



party #2 at grandma's. Not quite so shy.



party #3 at the Ogden Tree House. I wasn't there but from what I heard it's an awesome place for kids!

I seriously can't believe he is one! Well, mostly it's just wierd to say I have a one year old. I do have to say though how much fun I have had with him in the last year. I never thought it was possible to find so much joy in your child. (Sorry for the mushiness..just had a reflecting moment)