summer fun...swimming and vbs

molly started her 2nd year of swim lessons and is doing great!

she's never had a fear of water and so i hope after these lessons she will be able to manuever in deep-er water (where she can't touch the ground)

i'll feel more confident

 i have some really cute summer outfits i've had for a while

this one is a cutie...with the back open

oh man, me and little girl clothes are a bad combination

 we had our vbs this week

it was molly's first time and my first time to teach in many many years

we had a good week!

 this little girl, miriam, is adopted from china

they were so cute together!

 my hydrangeas are blooming and are so pretty!

 molly's vbs teacher and classmates

 this is miriam's older sister lydia

lydia is from molly's province in china!  jiangxi province!

i loved that!  i taught lydia's age group and loved having her in my class!

 saturday night we went to have dinner at the spaghetti factory downtown and then to the children's theater to see the golden dragon acrobats and they were amazing!!

 finally, all the kids performed this morning in the worship service and it was so cute

i loved watching molly sing and sign all the songs

she loved the music part of vbs!

random summer pics

we are over 2 full weeks into summer and so much is going on!

i'm in the midst of lots of big changes i will blog about soon

but for now, i'm just catching up...

 molly bought the "maximus" from the disney store in pigeon forge and insisted on taking him to the dentist this week...she thought the dentist could fix his "neigh" apparently, it's not working! ha!

 she's always done so well at the dentist, kind of amazes me really

her dentist is always so good to molly!

 they put maximus in a separate chair until the dentist could work on him

 molly was a finalist in a photo contest for Parent Magazine, but didn't get enough votes :(

 we've been to the pool lots of times, this was at a friends house and the deep end went to 9 ft.

this was the first time she's seen a diving board and had no fear in jumping off it!

i was afraid, but she wasn't!

 we've done a little shopping, here she is with the old navy models!

she cracked us up on this day by standing in all of the windows and freezing like a model...this kid cracks us up!

Summer Vacation

Molly and I headed out right after school on my last day to start our summer vacation

We went to Dollywood, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg again this year

It was a great vacation getaway!

 here's ms. molly when we first arrived at dollywood

it was the bluegrass & bbq festival and when we entered the gate this is what we saw:

 kind of hard to explain to a 4 year old!!

here is molly ready for her first ride, the river rampage!

 just to prove i was there! ha!

 we both got so wet , but it felt good!

 this is her absolutely favorite ride...the cars!  

she says they are better than disney (not as hard to steer)

 we stopped over to get a little hand painting done

 the carousel and the ducks

 the bee ride

 we had one free day and we played in the pool all day

it was wonderful!

 we went into the gatlinburg aquarium one day

this was our first time there and it was good

 while in gatlinburg we went on the sky lift

 the mountains are so beautiful!

 molly's first air brushed tshirt...i just had to do it!  it's such a gatlinburg thing!

 we went into smoky mountain national park and hiked one of the trails

it was so nice!

then we went on up the mountain to clingman's dome

 it was gorgeous!  but we were both really tired at this point!

the scenery was beautiful and the air was cool, crisp, and so fresh

 on our last day i had to stop into my favorite place for breakfast, the log cabin pancake house!

it's so charming and the food is yummy!

 of course, we went in to see santa claus at the christmas palace

he's there year round!

 and, maybe our favorite part (because she loves horses so much right now) was the dixie stampede!

the food is great ( a little messy, but yummy) and the entertainment is wonderful!