Camping with the Meeks

We spent the first weekend in May camping with the Meeks family. Will and I stayed with them in Jelico, TN back in the fall. They spend their time ministering to and serving the families in the community. Before they moved to Jelico, they were missionaries in Africa for 15 years. Needless to say, they are very inspiring to Will and I, and we just completely try to soak in all their advice for the ministry and child training. They are amazing parents and great servants in the Kingdom. We hope to share a lot of these camping trips with them in the future. We are taking our youth group to stay with them in Jelico the third week in June. I know all our kids will greatly benefit from the experience! We are so thankful that the Lord has blessed us with these new friends. This is a picture of Gaines in the tent. He thought the whole tent experience was the greatest thing ever! He especially loved wrestling in the tent. The funniest thing of the whole trip was Friday night when I brought him into the tent to put on his PJs. After I changed him he said, "mommy, you go out there and I'll sleep in here." I repeated what he said to make sure I was hearing him right. He said , "yeah." So, I gave him a flashlight and told him to turn it off when he was ready to go to sleep. I walked over to the camp fire and told Will what happened. We couldn't keep from laughing as we continued to look over at the tent for the next 10 minutes or so watching the light of the flashlight wind around the tent. We checked on him a few times, but before long the glowing light slowed down and eventually stopped. He was asleep! Our two year old put himself to sleep in a tent by himself in the dark...in the middle of the woods. Does this seem strange to anyone?!

This is Hannah and Donna fixing the veggies for dinner...everything taste 10x better roasted over a camp fire. They were delicious!

Our little fisherman.

Thursday night we ate steaks, drank Chai and chated around the campfire. Everything was great until the drizzle set in. I love camping, BUT I DON'T KNOW WHY IT ALWAYS HAS TO RAIN WHEN I GO!!!

This is Josh and Ben...our firewood collectors. They were quite the outdoorsmen.

Here is a picture of the Elk. We camping in Cataloochee. It's about an hour and 15 minutes from us. They reintroduced elk back into the area several years ago and now they roam around nearly like pets.

The boys watching the elk.

Here we are roasting "snake biscuits." A new camping treat we learned from the Meeks. Wrap biscuits around a stick, roast 'em and then sprinkle powdered sugar on 'em...mmmm!

Josh and Gaines were "fishing" in the puddles, Gaines would pull up his stick and say, "got a big one!"

Josh tought Gaines how fun puddles can be!

Yah gotta love the comfort of wet sweat pants...cozy.

Nashville

At the end of April we went to Nashville for the weekend. Andrew and Erin had flown in as well. (By the way...they just found out that they are having a boy! She's due September 26...yeah!!!) Anyway, we got to see those two and the whole Tucker, Cromwell, Townsend clan. The highlights of the trip were Tucker and Karley's soccer games. If you haven't ever seen three year old playing soccer- you are really missing out! Below is a picture of Molly ( who wasn't feeling so hot). She has really grown since our last visit...she's walking all over the place.

Charlie and Gaines

The joy of Potty Training...
The park...our second home!

Meet Al. Al's mom (Ella) is Charlie's pony. He's pretty spunky for only being a couple days old!

Easter

Gaines had a fairly boring easter egg hunt due to the crummy weather on Easter. He didn't know any better though...in fact, he thought it was pretty cool that there were eggs all over the living room. In the coming days I would catch him with chocolate all over his face and fingers as he had once again gotten into the eggs. He learned to climb whatever he needed to in order to get into that basket of chocolate paradise! I'd laugh and ask him what he was eating and he'd smile and say, "chockit...I want moooore." I think Mae Mae passed down her choclate taste buds to ol' Gaines.

The Big Island

Well, as expected, Hawaii was AMAZING! We had such a great time...awesome weather (for the most part) an incredible place to stay and some pretty spectacular scenery...good company too! The week went by WAY too fast and the plane rides there and back WAY too slow:) Gaines did great considering he spent about 12 hours on a plane both ways! It was worth it because he got to spend some quality time with his uncles and aunt. However, all he really wanted to do was play with nana and papa...he didn't even really let Will or I play with him that much- in fact, we kind of missed him! Anyway, the following pictures will give you an idea of how beautiful is was. I didn't take too many pictures because Brandon bought a SWEET camera before the trip, so we designated him as our personal photographer and will be receiving all his pics before too long (hint hint Brandon)... Friday night Luau

Gaines Birthday party on the beach!

The little cove in the picture below was one of our favorite snorkeling spots...tons of fish and turtles!

This picture was taken right before we went "whale watching." Apparently the whales were being stubborn that day because they sure didn't put on much of a show for us...although we did see a couple tails. The worst part was that my mom got "sea sick"... we all felt soooo bad for her!

The next 5 pictures were taken the day we were at the Volcanoe National Park. It was a really rainy day- that side of the island gets 280 inches of rain a year, the other side where we were staying only gets 10!

Gaines was pretty funny to watch at the beach- he was really into the sand, but not so much into the water. Although, he did think it was fun to drag a boogie board around.

Needless to say, I don't think any of us were quite ready to come home, but we are so thankful we got to go!

February Pictures

Gaines taking his gator for a spinWe had our back yard leveled out last week so that Gaines would have a flat place to play, Charles Smith (a friend from camp) did the job for us and let Gaines "drive" the tractor

Mohawk Man...this is my new favorite way to style my buddy's hair!

Will and I got to take some girls from church to visit Harding this month. We got to meet up with a bunch of Harding friends. Here is Taylor Ross and his five year old son Dickson.

Saturday night we all went to the Bison Basketball game. Hannah bough Alli Kate some popcorn...Gaines found a good seat right next to them!

Alli Kate is a Bison fan and knows how to really break it down when the band would start to play. Gaines was watching her every move and picked up on it really quickly!

We stayed at Ali's parent's house, so she came home from Little Rock for the weekend. It was so good to see her! Ali said she was kinds of jealous of the competition Alli Kate was giving her for Gaines attention:)

A prince and his princess

Two very good daddies...Will and Gaines, Dane and Josiah

Dr. Justus made friends with Gaines very quickly!

Terrible picture of us...but I had to put one on here of Mom and Grandma (GG). Gaines and I flew up to Michigan for a few days. There was a terrible blizzard which made to whole trip crazy...but as always, it was worth it!

Papa took Gaines for a carousel ride at the mall. We couldn't play outside because it was -11 degrees

Gaines got to experience the Leeser tradition of Sunday night popcorn for the first time:) He's a fan

Gaines liked the new towel Nana got him, he kept saying, "Tiger...Rawr"

Gaines and I got stuck in Detroit one night due to the blizzard. Uncle Terry and Aunt Peg came to the rescue as always. They treated us like royalty! Brandon and his new pup Tela came and spent the night too. The next morning Brandon showed up his apartment and let Gaines feed his fish.