Taryn's Comments

Okay, so I have to blog about the little Princess and her many funny saying.
She will say "Welcome" when you ask her to say thank you.....HA HA HA It gets quite a reaction from those that don't know her.
She calls McDonald's "EDonals" And will let me know about everyone she sees. In fact we live right across the street from a McDonald's and she will look out the window each morning and say, "Mom, EDonals, Taryn yeah yeah yeah!!!" And say it with such enthusiasm. It is to die for.
She loves anything princess, but she cannot say princess so she uses her word "Kinkas." I have no idea where this came from but if she is talking about princesses she calls them Kinkas.
Her vocabulary grows miles every day. The kid is like a sponge and will say anything I do. Like the other day I said "Crap" in front of her when I was frustrated about something, and guess what my little darling said not two minutes later "Oh Crap mommy." GEEZE!!

Volunteer Landing

Since living here in the "Volunteer State" we decided we had better go down to the Volunteer Landing and see where the famous "VOLS" march to the stadium. We have been told that there is this walk way that starts off on one end of town and then goes to the Tennessee Volunteer stadium. I guess, during game days, it is full of people and lots of tailgating or as they call it boat gating. (Little side note, just ten minutes before this picture was snapped, Tyson was on his scooter going way too fast down a steep hill and CRASHED. And not just a little crash, I am talking a CRASH, HIT THE PAVEMENT, SKID, and then HIT THE PAVEMENT again kind of crash. It looked something out of the X-Games. Poor kid. He had all kinds of road rash.)

All along one side of this walk way are train tracks and on the other side the Kudzu was just growing wildily.

Look closely....do you see the car almost covered up in the Kudzu? I thought it was pretty cool. If you were looking to bury something, this place would surely cover it up.

I love the look of this Kudzu. Most people around here hate it, but I think it is beautiful!

Look at the skinned knees, and he is still smiling.

It was very, very hot that day, but the kids loved the time outside, even if their little heads were wet with sweat.

My little not-afraid-of-anything girl. She is a monkey. She jumped to Vaughn, and about gave her mother a heartattack.

Also along this walk way were tons of boat ramps and docking stations for these yachts and house boats. Most of them were covered in Tennessee Volunteer orange. We were told that most people will stay on their boats during the game and watch from their TV's on board and have a heck of a party.

This is another part of the Volunteer Landing.

They also had a splash pad area, which Tyson immediately ran towards to cool off.

The kid had a ball.

Taryn, not-so-much! She hates water splashing on her. I tried to drag her over to one, literately drag, and the kid wouldn't budge.

There she is, the Tennessee Volunteer Stadium. It was a walk up to it. We will be coming here during a game to just experience the hoopla of it all.

1st Day of Kindergarten

My little boy is all grown up. (sniff, sniff). Tyson went to his first day of Kindergarten today. We had to wake up REALLY early; like 6:00 a.m. early. His school starts at 7:45 and the teacher, Mrs. Smith, wants them there at 7:35. So I was up at 6 just to get myself presentable and then Tyson's little eyes popped open at 6:20 and he was up and so EXCITED! He was dressed and ready for breakfast faster than I have ever seen the kid move. (He had his outfit picked out the night before and was so excited to wear his new Star Wars shirt) He ate his breakfast in record breaking time and was ready before 7:00a.m. WHOA! It must be the 1st day excitement jitters, because I can guarantee that this kind of behavior won't last long. So we drove to his school, which we only live about 1 mile from, but with all the traffic from the morning rush it takes about 15 minutes to get there. I then get to walk him into the school, which has about 1200 students--no joke, and then down the long Kindergarten hall to room 323 where his teacher is waiting with smiles. She is such a nice lady, as far as I can tell. She reminds me of my mom.Taryn wanted her picture taken with big brother on his special day. She was also up around 6 and ready to go. I think she thought she was going to get to go with Tyson to school, and was not to pleased when she had to leave her big brother and come back home with me. This is going to be a BIG adjustment for her. She adores Tyson and is going to be a bit lost without him, as will I. I did, however, put on my "big girl panties" and never shed a tear this morning, which I am very proud of myself. We pick up Tyson at noon today, but most days he will stay until 2. It is all day Kindergarten. WHOA! A new door opened for everyone today!

The Triplets!!

I should have written about this a long time ago. But...................I am doing it now. Back in June my sister-in-law gave birth to Three babies. Their names are Maggie, Molly and Rebecca. We are so excited to have them in the family, even though we have only seen them in pictures. Love you girls.

Tyson vs The Fountain

More Fun With Grandma T

Since our knowledge of Knoxville is limited, we took Grandma T to the Clark Center Beach, out in Oak Ridge. We love this little man made beach, even though the sand is quite coarse, it is still a lot of fun to play at and spend an afternoon.
The kids, Grandma T and myself made a fort, as Tyson called it. We even had a mote around the whole thing in case robbers came to over throw it. (Tyson has a good imagination)

Grandma T loved the water, it is as warm as bath water; but you have to watch out for the little fishes. They like to nibble at your legs if you stop moving in the water.Grandma T buried Tyson up to his neck in sand. We did this once on St. Maarten and it was just as funny now as it was then. Glad he is willing to do such things.

It has been so fun to have my mom here to be with and to just go places with the kids and I. I don't particularly love to do things myself, however, I have gotten used to it since I have been doing it by myself for years, but it is always nice to have someone along with you.

Vaughn has begun to be really busy at work and so he was only able to hang out with us for a short amount of time. Thanks for hanging out with us babe.

Of course we picked the hottest day of the week to take the kids to a park. That is just my luck. After we all sweat for 2 hours we decided it was time to go. Luckily I always bring plenty of water to drink during this excursions.

There was this red tube slide that the kids just loved. It was short, fast and they must have gone down it about 30 times, no joke!

The swinging queen. If there are swings at a playground, you can bet Taryn will want a turn on them.

Puddles, Puddles.......and my kids love to play in them. They will dance all around in the puddles until they are completely wet, or at least partially.We took another day and visited the World's Fair Park in downtown Knoxville. The kids played in the water and then we headed over to the Sun Sphere.
I had just recently found out that you could actually go up in the Sphere and see all over Knoxville. It was really cool, but the elevator ride was the most entertaining. It took the elevator about 5 minutes before it came to the ground level to let us in. There was a lady and her two kids also in the elevator with us. The elevator starts to go up but it does so in such a slow motion, and we could hear such awful scraping noises that I was a little bit nervous if we would make it. Well.....that other lady in there with us started to FREAK OUT! She started to hyperventilate and started ranting about how we were going to fall or the elevator was going to break down and we would be stuck. About this point I was ready to slap the woman and knock her back into reality, but luckily the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. We all filed out quickly, except for the lady. When she saw how high up she was in the sphere, she again freaked out and yelled at her children to get back in the elevator. The kids protested and I was just smiling. What did she expect to see when those doors opened up? Did she not realize that she was going up, up and up into the ball? GEEZ...some people.We had a great time up in the Sun Sphere, looking out over the vast area of Knoxville and learning more about her history.

It was hard to put Grandma T on a plane back to Utah, but at least she got to stay with us for 10 whole days. We love every minute of it and cannot wait until she comes back. The kids, especially Taryn, will ask where she is and I have to remind them that she went back to Utah. They then get a little sad and say, "OH." I am glad that they love her that much!!