deer

Family of deer that we see just about every day. Well, we call them a family. We've watched the two littlest ones grow over the last few months. They're both in the middle of the others on the bottom picture and one is on the left on the top picture. These pictures are on our land out by the basketball court.

baby shower

Emily and Tiffany in Courtney's room opening up surprise gifts from mammaw!

the girls with mammaw

opening gifts

Emily's gift to me at the baby shower. She made this several days before the shower and hid it in an envelope. She couldn't wait to give it to me. :-) It's a picture of the baby with a bow in her hair.

baby shower cont'd

Pappaw at the baby shower.

Curtis and Emily at Camren's wedding reception.

Emily and Brooklyn at Brooklyn's parents wedding reception, which happened later in the day after our shower.

Emily playing her new slide whistle, which is a very interesting little instrument. She likes to do sound effects for us when we are doing things around the house.

Durham, NC day trip

Day trip to Durham, NC. We drove through Duke University and picked up info about some hiking trails in the area and visited the N.C. Museum of Math and Science. We also stopped and had eastern style barbeque for lunch. The museum was pretty big with an outdoor zoo-like area that included bears (which we never did see any), lemurs and wolves. They also had a dinosaur trail outdoors. A link to the museum: http://www.ncmls.org/

Emily on a 911 call. She had to answer the questions from the operator on the other end.

Curtis in the aeronautics area of the museum.

In the butterfly/insect museum. Lots of creepy crawlies in there.

cont'd...

This creek was at the end of the 1 mile hiking trail we walked on.

WNC / Western N.C. Nature Center

Western North Carolina Nature Center ( http://www.wildwnc.org/ ). Another place we've gone quite a few times since Curtis was little. It's just like a zoo, only smaller and located in the mountains. It's our favorite zoo.

Asheville/Black Mountain

Montreat, NC conference center ( http://www.montreat.org/ )

Montreat Park

very rare...a picture of me...very pregnant (8 months) Neal insisted on taking it. Seems I haven't had any pictures taken of me this whole pregnancy (gee...I wonder why ;-) )

Montreat Park is a lot of fun. I remember us taking Curtis there when we was really little. It's a regular park spread out with a creek running through it. Children can play on the swings and slides and then run and play in the creek.

back to school

We started back to school on July 27th. We wanted to get started a little earlier this year - before the baby arrives, so we won't feel guilty if we need to take a few days (or a couple weeks) off. Curtis is 8th grade this year and Emily is 2nd. Hard to believe!!

Emily also starts back to gymnastics this week and is thrilled about that. Nothing else they do starts back until late in September but it's nice to be getting back in to a routine.

park visit

Triad Park

Triad Park

lounging around