Well, the last two weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. Company in town, weekend trip to Louisville, kids to Atlanta with my mom, then me to Atlanta, then everybody home for a couple of days, hosted a Fourth of July get-together at our house, then we took 2 kids to Kamp Kennessee, whew! And we're just getting started! July is our crazy month every summer, and this one is no different.


Kevin and I had a great weekend in Louisville last weekend. Stayed at a beautiful historic B&B in "Old Louiville" for our anniversary, then to my cousin's wedding reception at the Galt House in downtown Louisville Saturday. Had a fun night staying up late and playing cards in the hotel lobby that night with other couples from church in Nashville that had come up for the festivities.

Here's our required "anniversary weekend" shot, outside the fountains at the Galt House:

Mom took our kids to Atlanta for the weekend, and was brave enough to treat all 16 grandkids (everybody was in town that week visiting) to a fun day at the Georgia Aquarium. It sounds like an amazing place! They all had a blast and our kids had a great time hanging out with Papa & Mimi for a few days. I drove down Monday and enjoyed myself tremendously in my old home town (i.e. shopping, shopping, and more shopping!). Here's a picture of Papa and the kiddos:

Tuesday, the girls and I went to see the new American Girl movie, while my mom took the boys to see "Wall-E." She thinks I got the better end of that deal.

We all headed home Thursday afternoon. We had hoped to make it home by dinner, but the highway had other plans for us. A terrible accident on I-24W had us stopped on the interstate for 3 hours, along with lots of other people. We made the best of it...visited with truckers, played football in the median, sweated and grumbled, and finally made it home by bedtime....

Here's Jacob, taking advantage of the

"free time" to play football...

And here's Isaac, not too happy about the delay.

Check out the STUFFED van, full of the fruits of my labors.

(aka: shopping)

Then Friday night, we had a our "group" from church over for a 4th of July celebration. Lots of good food, fun and of course, fireworks. My hubby, the pyro, had his hands full trying not to dash the hopes of 10 or more little ones who were sure they could hold the Roman candles safely in their hands, too, and not put an eye out. They eventually settled for some very tame sparklers and left the heavy duty stuff to the adult male pyros. What is is about guys and fire??? I guess it's like woman and shoes. Here's some of the gang from Friday night, camped out in the back yard during the pyrotechnics.....

Whew! What a week! Yesterday, we dropped Jacob and Mary Rose off in Dickson (about an hour west of Nashville) at Kamp Kennessee. This is Mary Rose's first year to go...she was pretty excited, and not TOO anxious about sleeping in a cabin, going without hand sanitizer or books for a whole week, and using PUBLIC SHOWERS. Despite all that, I know she'll have a great time and Jacob, of course, always loves camp life. Sports competitions every day, all-you-can eat cafeteria bar at every meal (the food is actually very good), and no mom around to nag him about taking showers or practicing piano! Yeah, life is sweet for him this week! But we are missing them already! We will pick them up from camp Friday evening and leave straight from there to go to Dallas for our week in Texas. More on that trip later.....