Nashville July 22, 2013

After spending some time with our friends we headed to Nashville Monday night.  It was early and we were looking for something easy to do so we went to explore the Opryland Hotel.  Can you tell how happy Jeremy is to be touring a hotel?

This hotel is BEAUTIFUL!  The center of the hotel is an atrium with plants, waterfalls and a boat tour!

Rob and I have been here before we had kids and stayed one night as a birthday present to me.  It is big, beautiful and expensive.

We explored almost every nook and crannie of the place with out any one trying to stop us.  We never did find the front desk.

We were looking for a place to have dinner here but everything was over priced so we went to the food court in the mall behind the hotel.

Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge July 21-22, 2013

We decided to take a trip south this year and since Tennessee is only 10 hours from home we headed there.  There are few reasons we spent the night in Pigeon Forge. #1 our favorite Bubba Gumps is there and seeing that they totally screwed up in New York, dinner in Tennessee was on them!

After dinner we walk around Gatlinburg and saw this sign. I guess they must have a problem with this.

#2 On Monday morning we went to one of Jeremy's favorite places, the Aquarium.  We spent most of the morning here.  I took lots of pictures but I am only posting a few.

Shark!!

Jellyfish

Octopus

Rob's not scared of the dinosaur.

Sting Ray. Click on the pic and see their smiles :)

In case you didn't know Jeremy wants to be a Marine Biologist.  He was half balancing on step up for little kids and stretching his chin out to make this photo work.  The things this boy does for his mom.

We found a tank of Dori's and Nemo's.

#3 These fine folks are our friends Dave and Judy.  We met them when we lived in our first home in Lincoln Park, Michigan.  They have known Emily since the day she was born.  They retired a few years ago in Tennessee and we try to see them as often as we can.  They are like grandparents to our kids.

Minor changes...Major happiness

So, we bought our dining room set the year I was pregnant with Emily.  These chairs have been through a lot over the past 18 1/2 years and I finally put my foot down and put them on my "must fix" list.  I found some really nice upholstery fabric on sale, 50% off.

Last night Rob was home and said "Let's get this done."  He pulled out the staples of the old fabric.

We covered the seats with more batting to make them fluffy again.  I forgot to take a picture of us putting the new fabric on but it really took both of us to get it on there right.

This is the end result.  For some reason the camera didn't pick up the very light green color of the new fabric but it is beautiful.  Stop by and check them out.

Since Rob was on a roll with the chairs he also put up the new lights outside of the house.  I did a happy dance to be rid of the old gold ones that were there since we built the house in 1998.  I am super excited that both of these projects are done.  Now on to re-doing our bedroom.

44! Shut the front door!

Yup, I turned 44 this year.  I asked Jeremy to take a picture of me and Rob and this is the best one he got.  I knew it was time to retire the quilt my grandmother made me for our wedding.  The blanket was one of our families favorites but after 21 years it had seen better days.  So I washed it and put it in my cedar chest.  Seeing the lack of a great blanket in the living room Rob and the kids went and picked this one out for my birthday.  It is just as warm and I'm sure it will be a family favorite before long.

Sweet idea

I must say that I stole this idea from a truly amazing woman at church named Ellen.  She gave Emily one of these for graduation and I made 8 of them to give to Emily's friends.

Super easy to make: the sundae cup,shredded paper, and plastic spoon are from the dollar store.  I had to buy the paper because my shredder is a cross cut so it just gives you confetti.  The gift card is for $10.00 to the Dairy Queen.  You wrap it up in a clear gift bag that you can get just about any where.  The total per gift is under $12.00.

Wrap up

Our trip to Pennsylvania was really fun.  We got to see some historical things in Philadelphia and amazing things in New York City.  The purpose of the trip was to visit with my rockin awesome cousin Carolyn and her family.  Her husband Eric got us out of a pickle on the way there when Rob was so very sick.  Her three daughters were so fun and made the trip all that much more fun.  We were able to drive my aunt Jeanette, who is from Utah, from Detroit to visit with her daughter and grand kids.  I was enjoying myself so much that I forgot to snap a bunch of pictures while we stayed with them.  This is Rob and Eva watching cartoons early one morning while they waited for the rest of us to get moving.  She called him grandpa all week.  We sure love them all and can't wait to see them next summer in Utah when their oldest is baptized.

Philadelphia :(

We spent a day in Philadelphia and I was sorta disappointed.  We knew the things we wanted to do and the order we wanted to do them in.  We only have ourselves to blame because we didn't do one last check online to verify our information.  We started at Betsy Ross' house that charges a "recommended donation" of $5.00 per person.  When we found out that you had to make the donation to enter we left.  We then went over to the U.S. Mint.  I will say that this was the most interesting part of our day.  You are not allowed to take pictures inside but this place was full of information and fun facts that we took over an hour to get through it.  You actually get to see coins being made.

We also went to the Federal Reserve for a Money Matters exhibit that was OK.  We thought it was interesting that at one of these two places Emily showed them her insulin pump and she was waved around the metal detector and the other place made her take it off and then wanded her.  Crazy.

We finally made our way over to Independence Square and quickly found out that if you didn't get your ticket for Independence Hall at the crack of dawn you don't get one.  What the what!!!  So this picture is all we have of it.  We wanted to see the Liberty Bell but you have to wait in an hour long line to get in.  The line never did go down even at closing time there was a long line.  If you look in the above picture to the right you can see the line for the Liberty Bell.  What we found out is that you have to weave through a bunch of exhibits before getting to see the bell and if people take forever doing this everyone else has to wait.  They only allow so many people in the building at a time.  I found a solution to our problem.  I pulled a trick out of the bag of tricks Rob's dad used on family vacations, "Hey kids, Look!"  We were able to see the bell through the side window.

I have no clue who's butt that is but I am glad he moved just enough that I could get this picture.

The only thing we were able to do was to see these guys act out a declaration and that was while we were waiting to go in Congress Hall.

This is in Congress Hall and that chair is the chair that Thomas Jefferson sat in.  I took other pictures but I won't bore you with them.  Go waste your own day learning. :p

Emily took this picture from our parking space.  I like it!  We also went to the B. Free Post Office which is supposedly a landmark and found that it was just a real working post office.  How lame!