Spelunking Adventure . . .

Okay . . . I don't know if you can really call it spelunking when you are walking on a path for a guided tour of a cave, but you get the idea.

This past week in science we studied caves. We had talked about going to Meremac Caverns for a family field trip, then we discovered that is would cost $51 for our family to get in! Yikes! So I decided to research other caves in the area and I found the Fisher Cave in Meremac State Park. It has no claim to Jesse James, but it is definitely less touristy and cost us only $20. (It's actually only 4 miles past Meremac Caverns) Sounds like a plan to me!
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We originally planned to do some hiking first, then tour the cave, but we didn't get there early enough. Our cave tour lasted 1 1/2 hours and was very cool. Afterwards we had to head back home for some rest before the bonfire and hayride at RBC tonight.
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The cave was totally awesome! I couldn't help but to stand in awe of my Creator. There were times when we felt like we were walking through a forest of stalactites, stalagmites and columns. There were times when we had to walk, bent in half, for a long enough distance that I was feeling it in my legs. At the midpoint in the tour they turned off all of the lanterns so we could experience total darkness. It's amazing how that messes with your eyes. They kept trying to find something to focus on, without any luck. But how often do you really experience total darkness? The kids thought it was really cool. I wondered if Meg and Julie would have a hard time with it, but we prepared them and they did fine. Julie kept whispering in my ear, telling me it was dark. Then she started singing "Jesus loves me." I don't know if she was trying to comfort herself, or if it was just random, but it was darn cute!
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As you can imagine, I took tons of pictures. Here are a few . . .

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Here the water has flowed over this stone and created little pools of water - some the size of a bathtub.
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I love this picture!
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Here you can see where the water eroded the stone.
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A massive column in a room that had to be 3 stories high. The picture just doesn't do it justice!
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Flowstone. The white is fresh calcite.
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Okay . . . so, taking pictures of people is difficult to do in a dark cave. In most of my pictures, my flash illuminated my family, but it just looked like they were standing alone in the dark. I had to think strategically to get a picture where I could see the people and the cave formations. Of course, I couldn't see much in my viewfinder, so I had no idea that Meg's back was to me.
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And finally, everyone is looking, etc . . . But this one was actually taken outside of the cave : )
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Overall it was an experience that I would definitely recommend!

Strange Little Girl

Yes, this is my 2 yr old "reading" the dictionary. What can I say? She's a genius!


. . . and darn cute!

I Couldn't Resist

Right now Ali is making sandwiches for lunch. Emma is setting the table. I am down at the computer, and I was greated by this pathetic face and a seriously over-dramatic cry. "Emma won't give me the pinkish-purplish plate!" Oh Meg!

So, what did I do? I grabbed my camera (that happened to be sitting right next to me), snapped a picture and told her to deal with it! : )

Apples!

Apple picking is one of my favorite outings of the year. It's a Patton-Alligood tradition, and makes for tons of great pictures! We had excellent weather this year. What a treat!

Someone was kind enough to offer to take a group picture for us! The last time we had one of these taken was literally years ago . . . we each had only 2 children!
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Family picture! It has also been ages since we've had one of these taken!
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Our four girlies. I took about 30 pics of the four of them and didn't get a single one where they are all looking! Go figure!
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Alligood fam . . . Aren't they cute! (What an awesome photographer they have!)
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Our 4 big kids. This a photo that we have taken every year since we started apple picking together. It's so fun to look back at the old ones!
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What a crew! This is the first apple picking picture that we have with all 7 of them. Last year there was no apple picking (due to a late frost) The year before that Julie was a brand new baby and spent the entire trip in her car seat!
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Jonah and Ali. This is another one that we've been taking for ages! Aren't they sweet!? We'll have to display this one at their wedding (Shhh . . . they don't know that we're planning it already!)
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This is one of my favorites of the whole trip. Karis is seriously photogenic, but Emma . . . not so much. So a rare shot of both of them relaxed and smiling . . . it's quite a treat!
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The littles in their first group shot! The other kids have always been paired up, but these girls are a threesome . . . and an adorable one at that!
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Ali reaching for an apple.
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Emma getting an apple (there weren't a whole lot of these shots b/c the lower branched were pretty picked over. Basically, the daddies picked the apples while the mommies took the pictures, but the kids did manage to get a few.)
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Meg managing to get an apple, with Daddy's help. (She was afraid to let go of Aaron's head to reach for that apple!)
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And finally, Julie got an apple too!

A Haircut for Josefina

When we bought Ali & Emma's first American Girl dolls, I really wasn't thinking. We bought two of the longest haired dolls that they sell (they are also 2 of the prettiest!) I tried to help them with their hair, but let's face it . . . I have better things to do. So, Felicity and Elizabeth are looking a little ratty these days. That's okay, once they are a little older, we can have their heads replaced, and they've still enjoyed lots of playtime with them.

When it was time to go to Chicago and get doll #2, I told them they had to get short haired dolls. I learned my lesson. But then, not long before we left, they started doing much better with their dolls. I changed my mind. I let them choose whatever dolls they wanted. I don't know what kind of drugs I was on. Stupid!

Ali did choose a short haired doll, but not Emma. She wanted Josefina who is a Mexican-American. Long, long, long, black hair. Within a week, we had a mess on our hands. She tried to do her hair nicely, she just couldn't handle it. She would hardly play with Josefina b/c her hair was such a mess. She came to me yesterday asking for help and I wanted to scream! This brand new doll with a rat's nest on her head. Then I made an executive decision: Josefina was getting a haircut!

I expected Emma to be upset by that, but when I told her she smiled and said, "I was hoping we could do that!" Thankfully my friend, Jessica (who is our family hair-lady) was coming over last night anyway, and she agreed to cut Josefina's hair. The jokes between us during her cut were pretty endless (i.e. Josefina, if you'd just hold still!) so we had fun and I'm glad we did it!

Jess - what a sport!


Much better!

Is There Anything Cuter?

Okay, so there are plenty of things that are cuter that our kitties . . . but I just couldn't resist this pic! I love seeing them when they sleep in the Yin and Yang position. There was a time when I thought they'd never be able to stand each other. Thankfully that didn't last and they are fast friends!

Go Fish

One of my kids' favorite pastimes at my parents' house is playing go fish. Usually Julie isn't interested. Ali and Emma play by themselves, while Meg sits on Grandma's lap and "plays" with her. This weekend Julie wanted very badly to join in. Emma was very sweet and invited her to share her chair. Unfortunately, Julie is no idiot. She wanted to play cards, and just sitting at the table wasn't enough. She was quickly pacified when Emma let her hold one of her matches!

I love how she is watching my mom as if waiting to be asked for a card.
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Julie, very proud of her cards!

Thank You Ike!

Here is what we woke up to in our backyard, courtesy of Ike.

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Here is my pathetic map to explain what happened and what should have happened:

The blue is the creek in its normal route. Our neighbors basically have a moat around them. The green line shows the drain pipe that goes under their driveway. The red line shows the drain pipe that USED to go under our road. Our builder had to hire an engineer to draw up plans for pushing our road through (it used to be a dead end) and for rerouting the creek (which used to run right through our property). When that happened, the county made Ray (our builder) remove the pipe from under the road. (Idiots!) The black arrows show the path that the creek ended up taking with the downpour that we had last night. The black "X" shows where the creek was kind of blocked - it was flowing a bit, but not like it should have. Where the creek turns to go under our neighbor's driveway (green line) is where the problem was. The one drainage pipe wasn't nearly enough, so the water just washed out the road.

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This creek is actually lined with large white rocks, none of which are visible due to the high water.

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This one is from our front porch. You can see that the water has risen to the neighbor's driveway. It did get into their garage a bit. Thankfully, nothing got into their basement. At one point their driveway was covered, and they were completely surrounded by water.

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Here's where the "traffic jam" took place, and then washed out the road.

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Our builder was here almost immediately when called. Thankfully, he is building another house on our street and all of his equipment is on site. He scooped out the back corner so it would flow better (black "X") then dug a 2 foot deep trench across our road (hmm . . . didn't we have drainage there before?) That took care of the problem very quickly. I was shocked at how fast the water went down.

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As you can imagine, Ray will have a few choice word for our county officials, as well as the engineer (who was paid $4000 for his wonderful plans!) As of now, we still have that trench, and Ray's scoop is still sitting there!

I'm on a Roll!

More home improving has been happening today. I love it!

It didn't take long after we moved in for us to realize that builder grade flat paint doesn't do so well in a bathroom! Within a few days we had drip marks down the walls from the humidity, and there's no washing those (or anything else) off! So when we got our $50 gift card to Home Depot (Thank you Boeing!) we decided it was time.

I only changed the color slightly. It was a khaki color, and I changed it to off-white. (Really, you can hardly notice the color difference in the pictures) Most importantly, I changed it to a nice, washable flat-enamel paint! Yeah!!

So, here's some more pictures! Enjoy!

Last But Not Least

Finally some pics of Meg & Julie's Room:

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A Little Facelift

I mentioned previously that I decided to paint my front door and shutters. Certainly, some of you are wondering, "Isn't your house like 3 months old?" Yes it is . . . the only response that I can offer you is that I don't know my own mind.

Yes, we did get to choose all of the colors for our house, including the shutters. I had a horrible time deciding. I am no good at visualizing how things are going to look - usually what happens is that I see something I like and want to duplicate it. For years I imagined a house with tan siding and dark red shutters . . . but, go figure, we are building a house right next to people who have that exact same color scheme . . . so I had to figure out plan b. Another problem with me is that I have to let decisions like that cook in my brain for an obscene amount of time (ask Amber what it's like shopping for shoes with me!) Anyways . . . to make a short story long, I chose forest green shutters and I just wasn't crazy about them. They weren't horrible by any means . . . I just didn't LOVE them. Not big deal . . . I love my house regardless.

Well, then I was glancing at paint colors for Amber (who is putting on new front doors) and I found a paint chip that had three coordinating colors on a house with pretty much the same color siding I have. I loved it . . . if only I had chosen black shutters! : ) Oh well . . . $30 and a few hours worth of work were worth it to me. Now I LOVE the exterior of my house!


Child labor (still alive and well in the good old USA) they loved it and were thrilled to help!


Shutters drying after their first coat of paint


The finished product (Of course my door doesn't look red in this pic, but it is!)

Now on to our next project . . . actually getting some grass to grow!

Who Needs a Campout?

For weeks now, Ali and Emma have been looking forward to last night. The big Father-Daughter camp out, organized by the Men's Ministry at church. They started to fret when Gustav did its thing, but we told them that even if the camp out was cancelled, Daddy would still set up the tents in the basement for then, roast hot dogs, marshmallows, etc . . . Well, Gustav was no longer pouring on us, but the ground was too mushy and the camp out had to be rescheduled.

Time to shift to plan B:

After many different phone calls, etc . . . plans were set: the Younces were all coming over over and staying the night. Jim and Aaron were going to do the "camp out" stuff with the big girls, while Jess and I took Meg, Julie and Maddux out for dinner and a Wal-Mart trip. Maddux and Meg would get to have a "camp out" in Meg's room.

Jess and I enjoyed our dinner out. We wandered around Wal-Mart for a while, looked at paint, bought some paint (more on that later), picked up a movie for the girls (The Little Mermaid 3 - a BIG hit!) then headed home. We walked into the kitchen to find a pitch black house, and screaming girls. We were apparently interrupting a game of "Monster hide and seek" - the Daddies being the monsters and the girls finding them using their flashlights. As you can imagine, that game was a huge success and has labeled Aaron and Jim as the coolest dads ever! They had also enjoyed some American Girl playtime, roasting hot dogs, and roasting marshmallows. When we got home it was movie time and then bedtime.

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Ready for the movie!

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Not a very good picture, but they thought it was awesome!

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Meg and Maddux enjoyed their tent and flashlights.

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Jim snapped this one after they fell asleep:

Yes, Maddux is sleeping with his arm underneath her. It reminded my of a bumper sticker that Amber recently shared with me: "Guns don't kill people, Daddy's with beautiful girls kill people." I love it!
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Now onto the grown up fun!

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I've had a bug in my head here lately that I want to paint my front door red and my shutters black - this started when I was actually looking for paint colors for Amber, but I hadn't done it yet. (There must be something about being with Jess that makes me want to do home improvements!) From Wal-Mart I called Aaron to see if I could buy the paint and if Jess and I could work on the door together. It was the perfect weather for it! Nice and cool, we could take the door off and paint it in the garage with out sweating ourselves out of the house - if anything we were too cold! It was awesome.

I have to say, I was shocked at how quickly it went and I'm really please with the results. We just used spray paint (3 1/2 cans) and it looks great (hopefully it holds up well - the good news is that our door is sheltered enough that it gets no sun, rain, etc . . . ) By 10:30 we had the door back on and we were all freezing cold! (Side note: Most of you are aware of the fact that I have Forest Green shutters - so yes . . . my house was looking rather Christmassy. As I type, my shutters are drying from their first coat of black paint, and pictures of the finished product are soon to come!)
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The fellas hanging the door
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The finished product

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During one of our painting breaks we enjoyed roasting our own marshmallows (over a fire that the guys enjoyed making out of pieces of our old headboard!)

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Jess, I knew you'd be sad if I didn't post this one! Yummy!

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We also enjoyed Pina Coladas once we were done painting (not exactly a good choice when you've just had your door off for a few hours on a chilly night - but they were sure yummy!)

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Bedtime for the grown ups was about midnight, and the kids had us up just before 7:00 . . . really that's not bad!

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And finally . . . cinnamon rolls, strawberries and bananas for breakfast!

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So yes . . . Gustav ruined our original plans . . . but we had a blast anyway!

So Much for That

Okay . . . I missed the black. Call be boring . . . I like how my pictures look on the black background. It was a nice idea!