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Road Trip Day 11

Happy 13th birthday, Layla! We woke up to another hot day, after a hot night. We left our trailer at the campground and headed into town to visit the Louisville Slugger museum. We were all pretty excited about this. That's Micah at the bottom of the bat. It's gigantic!Inside, we the guided tour and saw them making all the bats and learned all about that process. You're not allowed to take pictures in that part, but there's plenty else to do outside of that part, and we took pictures of all that.I got my picture with Ken Griffey, Jr. (sort of), Micah practiced his pitching, and we all got to hold the actual bats of current or former major leaguers. I went for Edgar Martinez's bat, Shane did Ken Griffey, Jr's, Dave and Micah both held Willie McCovey's, and Layla went for Evan Longoria's.Our official report on this one: Do it. Totally worth it. We then went back to camp, ate some lunch, shut down the trailer, and hooked up to head to our next destination, the Smoky Mountains. We went to the Cumberland Gap side of things so we could see some views AND cross into Virginia. And so, Dave tried to kill us all by blatantly ignoring THIS sign:No, we did not unhitch our trailer and yes, we were longer than 20 ft. And so, we wound up this skinny mountain road, all the while, I was taking mental notes of all the places we were going to either get stuck or fall off the road on the way back down. While up there, the view was quite impressive. There were some rocks off the trail that the kids wanted to climb. They found a lizard and Layla blew out her flip flop.Then it was time to wind back down the road. I'll put your anxiety to rest and let you know that we did, in fact, make it down alive. From there, we went in to Pigeon Forge, TN to have Layla's birthday dinner at Cracker Barrel. Then we went to our campground. This time it was "real" camping. No hookups, no showers. [wpvideo Uq7MclUU ]But we did see an owl swooping around and lots of fireflies. Our final celebration of the day was in Gatlinburg. We road the mountain coaster, which was super fun, and then spent some time poking around town. Total tourist trap! Also, it was Shane's last day as an 18 year old. He was thrilled. What's going on here is that he doesn't have enough fingers to make this happen, so Micah is loaning the 1 and he's got the 8. License plate stats: still 48 states, 6 provinces.States visited: 13.

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Road Trip Day 6

Yesterday was our last full day in Milwaukee. Shane arrived in the morning, but promptly went to bed and slept most of the day, since he had caught a flight at midnight to get out here. Matt took the kids fishing for a little while in the afternoon. Layla caught 1, Lauren caught 1, and Micah caught 4. They also did a little canoeing. Then there was some swimming, where Lauren, Madeline, Micah, and Layla were all trying to flip Dave out of his donut floatie. It took them like 20 minutes and was pretty funny to watch. Also, his toenails were stupid-long and some kids got mauled. Later Melissa, Doug, and Josh came over. We played corn hole, basketball, badminton, and an epically terrible game of kickball at the park. Until Josh kicked the ball over the fence and lost it. Good times. We brought Matt some Woodinville Whiskey from home. And then we impressed everybody with our $2 Harbor Freight tennis racket bug zapper. And Simon decided that Shane was a good enough human. License plate stat...

Road Trip Day 8

We've been a full week on the road now. 2 more to go. We started our Sunday in church at St. Paul's, where Dave worked (and the reason we ever lived here in the first place) from 2004-2006. Then it was lunch at Hill's, a bit more driving around, and discussions of various places (the fairgrounds, the bridge that got blown up, etc.). Then we went to visit Fred and Brenda, and wound up riding around on 4 wheelers all afternoon. Then, back to Danny's for steak dinner - so yummy! And then over to the Lange's for some puppy time! And we finished off with soft serve in a baseball helmet at Frosty Boy. It was a great day. So awesome to see so many friends and visit important places. License plate and state stats are the same as yesterday.

week 46 in pictures

sunday: when dave went in to wake up layla, this is how he found her. face, essentially, smooshed between the bunk bed rail and the mattress, and the covers pulled up over her head. monday: roscoe, chilling on the pooh couch. dakota figured out how to get it to open up to make a nice little doggy bed. roscoe just took advantage when it was vacated. tuesday: my 2 pages of allergy test results . the red ones have to go! wednesday: micah fell asleep during quiet time, snuggling a domino. he had been pretending it was a phone or a video game and insisted on taking it in with him for quiet time. thursday: the missing lug nut . friday: crazy busy day. kids had half days at school because of conferences. I has my workout in the morning, then came home and tidied up because tina was coming over at 11:30 to cut my hair, shane’s hair, and my mom’s hair. I even went to the bus stop w/ part of my hair clipped up because she wasn’t done drying it! then I had to run off to do back-to-back ...

how to cook a turkey–by layla, age 6

“you get the turkey from the wild, where the wild turkeys are. you catch it with a net. to prepare it, you cut off the legs and the bones, and the beak and the eyes, too. you can stuff it with stuffing that is made of chicken. then, you put it in a big pan and stick it in the oven. you cook it at 4 to 5 degrees for 11 minutes. then you serve it by taking it out of the oven, cutting it up a little, and putting some spices on it. then you put it on plates and people can dish up all the other food, too.”