Georgia Mountain Camping!

Our close friends, the Smiths, invited us to their 'secret camping spot' in the Georgia mountains.  It's in a National Forest in the middle of nowhere, there are no signs to get to it, and it can't be found by your GPS or in an online search.  Bonus: it's also FREE!  We got there Friday afternoon and were lucky to grab the very last spot (out of 7 spots).  We were right along a creek for the kids to play in basically the entire time.  The men gathered firewood, and the women talked about Revenge season finale theories. :)  

Mmmmm tin foil dinners!  I just learned some Georgia folk call them "Silver Turtles".

A guy from the neighboring campsite was there by himself and had his guitar along.  He offered to play and sing for us during our dinner.  It was somewhere between incredibly sweet and incredibly creepy (we imagined it was a great start to a murder-in-the-woods movie)...

Sawyer and Sierra.  We've already arranged them to be married.

We went on a beautiful hike down the river.  I really love Georgia!!

We stopped at a really cool spot with a bigger waterfall and a deep swimming hole at the bottom of it.  Someone had put up a rope swing which was a ton of fun!

Kindergarten is OVER

It's very hard to believe my first little baby, Sawyer, is finished with kindergarten!  On Tuesday they held an "awards ceremony" to celebrate each child & something wonderful about them.  Sawyer received the "Starburst Award" (with Starburst candy attached of course) for being a "star" student in all areas of his work.  He was so proud (and so were we)!

Sawyer had a really good kindergarten experience.  It was good for us as parents, too.  He's always been the perfect kid at church (so polite, plus knows all the answers), and the star player for soccer, etc., so it was a bit of a wake-up call when he went to kindergarten and wasn't a picture-perfect student.  He is incredibly smart (teacher says he was the best reader she's ever seen, and one of the smartest kids she's ever taught in her five years), but he had quite a bit of behavorial problems.  He just looooves to talk and play with everyone, and couldn't stop himself with the wrestling and silliness (always happy stuff, nothing actually naughty).  We had to have teacher conferences and everything.  So it was a good intro-to-big-kid-parenting, just learning that our kid is just a regular kid, that he won't be perfect at everything, and learning to deal with problems at school.  We were lucky to have such a fantastic teacher for our first school experience.  Mrs. Bruce always went above and beyond to stay in close contact with us, schedule meetings with us, help implement programs to help Sawyer's behavior, and even had him sitting at her desk to do his work for quite awhile (so he couldn't finish his work quickly then talk to everyone).  :)  It was a great school year, and he loves his school! 

Mexican Anniversary!

Joe planned and booked a surprise anniversary trip for us!  It was a given that it'd be somewhere tropical, since we'd talked for years of our next big trip together being a tropical one, so I was able to do some preparation clothes shopping;  BUT he didn't tell me WHERE we were going until the morning we left, while we were packing!  He'd made up a sealed envelope full of pictures of where we were going:  Playa del Carmen, Mexico!  Just down the coast from Cancun, where we could do all the tropical stuff, plus see many Mayan ruins (our first pictures are there at Tulum).

 MONKEY!

Our hotel suite at The Royal, Playa del Carmen:



 Scuba diving!!!  Well, I did the training videos and water training, but freaked out completely.  I kinda hated it:  only breathing through my mouth, feeling the compression of the water, being weighed down, trying to remember all the buttons & what they did, and rules to 'not die'... it was OVERLOAD and I had a panic attack during the training in the 5 feet of water.  BLAH!  Oh well.  I went along on the boat while Joe did the deep dive at the reef, and, even though I was crazy seasick, I still have no regrets about bailing on the scuba.

My favorite day was definitely the dolphins!  I wish we had more pictures, but we couldn't use our own cameras, and they were charging an insane amount ($150!!!) to get all the pictures they took of us (or $25 per picture- so we opted for the two best pictures, since we weren't that crazy about a lot of them).  We got to ride the dolphins (holding their fins, dolphins on either side of us), do the dolphin foot push (you float on your tummy, lock your knees, and two dolphins push the middle of your feet... you get to superman across the top of the water- my favorite!!!).  Plus lots of dolphin time: dolphin kisses, 'dancing', petting, etc.  It was awesome.

We also got to swim and play with the manatees!  It was spectacular!  This is my manatee kiss (don't worry, it's a girl... her name is Juliet).  :)

Walking around town, some men had panther and leopard cubs!  SO CUTE!  He took our picture with them.  They were so so soft!

The Mayan temple at Coba:  117 steps.  We climbed it!

Joe at the top, laying down (steps behind him, down to the ground):

 At the top!