A New Tradition

Our new tradition is the zoo with Aunt Teeny.
We all love the zoo so much!
It was fun seeing Evan there this year compared with October.
This time around he was much more interested and seemed
to get it more. He impressed us with some monkey sounds
at the monkeys and other various animal noises during
our time together. Mostly it was fun to get to spend time
with Teeny!

Here's Evan having a "Rhino Encounter". Its hard to tell
from the picture, but we were really really close to this
massive animal!

In the monkey house. We love the zoo!

If it weren't for naps, we could have been there all afternoon!


Evan with a 50 year old tortoise!

Road Trip Continued...

We stayed with Grandmother and Granddaddy during
our visit and it was perfect. We all adore them!
This was the scene...
Grandmother playing with Evan! He was so excited to see
her every time he woke up...and I think the feeling was mutual!

Exploring with Grandmother

Evan just loves talking and playing with Granddaddy.
Here they are, both up to no good!

Evan loves his Great Granddaddy... again wearing his heart on his sleeve!

Road Trip!

Anyone who checks in on Schmidtville knows my love
for breaking up an adventure into several posts. So here
we go again!

Recently we went on a Road Trip to Birmingham to visit
friends and family. We saw lots of folks.

Here's a picture of our time with dad.

Then we saw our dear friends Tricia and Ellen and their kids.
This is sweet Davis and precious Rosie. It was wonderful
to share the chaos of kids together in Tricia's perfectly kid
friendly house!

I think Evan likes Rosie. He kind of wears his heart on his sleeve!

All of us together at lunch. This was the calmest time that we had.
I thought, "Strap 'em in and we can talk!" It was great!
Isaac is in the high chair and was napping during the chair picture.

Final mountain review...

Andy took this nighttime picture...

An attempt to get a picture of Andy & I.
We look a little worn out... but I promise we were relaxed!

On the way home we stopped in Blowing Rock
to have a picnic lunch in the park. I love Blowing Rock.
I love having Evan... it makes us slow down and
have picnic lunches instead of our previous race home
seeing how few stops we can possibly make!
This is a nice pace...

I caught a quick snuggle as Evan watched the ducks.
His hair is soft and it smells so good!

More mountains...

I am still reliving the mountain weekend...
bear with me... just a little longer!

Love Auntie Em!

Evan doing his usual heart stopping exploration.
Note: reflection of concerned mother in glass...

The guys and Grandfather Mountain.

Favorite

Me: "Evan, where is your belly button?"
Evan: "Beeeeellllllllll"

Ahhh the mountains...

We had such a great celebratory weekend in the mountains.

We had a lot to celebrate:
Andy & my 30th birthdays
Emily's 28th birthday
Mike and Margie's 32nd anniversary
Gus' 6th birthday
My graduation
and Mothers Day...
so we did it up right and found a great cabin
overlooking Grandfather mountain...
...and celebrate we did!

Here is the first set of pictures from the weekend
that I wish could have been a week!

Evan learning about different clubs from Grandpa.
(I learned a few things too)

Testing out the baby back pack (thank you Janelle).
It was fun for a bit...but no big surprise he wanted
to get down and walk... glad we borrowed it!

This is about as close as we can get to a picture
together!

Truthfully... here's the dad and son shot...
Evan is moving as fast as he can as usual!

More fun to come...