Winn's Birthday Weekend

On July 17th, we headed out to Monteagle, TN for Sallie Wright Milam's (now Serene) wedding.  We stayed at the Smokehouse Lodge (which Meredith referred to as the Steamhouse Lodge yesterday).  The groom's mom arranged for babysitters to look after the children during the wedding festivities, so Roberts and I were able to sit down and enjoy dinner at the rehearsal dinner without being interrupted.  The wedding was in the morning at Anne and Claude Stuart's beautiful home.  It was truly and magical mountain wedding.  Probably the highlight of Winn and Meredith's day was our hike down the gorge of the Fiery Gizzard.  They loved rock hopping up the creek and seeing all the waterfalls. Sunday, we drove down to Chattanooga and our first stop was Rock City.  See Rock City was not as cheesy as I thought it would be and we loved hiking through all the narrow rock corridors and caverns.  The view of the 7 states was beautiful from the top and Winn had his first rock climb. From there, we went to the Boathouse which was right on the river and had a good late lunch/early supper.  The next day, we celebrated Winn's birthday by going to the Tennessee Aquarium! We got to touch sturgeons and stingrays.  My favorite were the long neck turtles and Winn's favorite were the sharks, of course!  From there we went to Whole Foods and ate pizza and Winn picked out a cake. Before heading back to Oxford, we sang Happy Birthday and Winn blew out 5 candles!  Happy Birthday to our sweet boy!

Beach Trip

Our beach trip this year was early, way back in the beginning of May.  Winn and Meredith have been out of school since April 30th!  We didn't do any swimming this trip, because the water was still chilly, but that didn't stop us from wading around in the ocean and catching crabs, hermit crabs and some fish. Winn got stung by several jelly fish and even stepped on an electric ray, but that did not deter him from getting out in the water to flyfish with Daddy.  LaLa and Aunt Annie came for a couple of days, so we got in a good visit with them.  We went to the zoo one morning with LaLa, but mostly just played on the beach.  Winn loved going out at night with the flashlight and looking for ghost crabs.  This was really the most fun I've had with the children down in Gulf Shores.  We can't wait to go back!