Summertime

Soon after Carl left for his TDY to Mauritania, the kids and I made a trip over to Florida to visit Mimi and Poppaw.  While we have lots of friends in Texas, it’s still nice to see some of our friends in Florida too.  We visited our former church in Cantonment and then made our way over to Navarre Beach to spend some time building sandcastles, swimming, and looking for shells (one of our favorite pastimes).  Although it rained the first couple of days we were there, the sun eventually came out and we were able to enjoy the sand and sea.

Navarre Beach

We were able to spend some time visiting with some friends that I had not seen since moving to Texas. Overall, we had a great time and found a ton of awesome shells, caught crabs, and even a few small fish. Katelynn already talks about returning to the beach.  After a week or so at the beach, the kids returned to Pensacola with Mimi and Poppaw to attend VBS while I got some much needed relaxing time alone.  I will admit it did get a little quiet… amazing how quickly you miss the chaos once it’s gone!

We traveled to Brevard, NC on July 19 for a trip to the mountains with Mimi and Poppaw.  This is Todd's third time and Katelynn’s second time visiting the area and its one of Todd’s favorite places.  We rented a house in Brevard and enjoyed catching fireflies at night.  Brevard is located in Transylvania County, NC and area known as "the land of waterfalls."  We hiked to 7 different waterfalls and were able to get fairly close to all of them.  Katelynn was a trooper and hiked to all of the waterfalls with hardly any help.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous and cool.  We picnicked everyday and played in the streams and hunted for rocks.  The area had received a good amount of rain recently, so the waterfalls were full and rushing.

Moore's Cove Falls

Daniel's Ridge Falls

Slick Rock Falls

We spent most of our time in Pisgah National Forest and a portion of our time on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Sliding Rock is a natural water slide well known in the area.  The temperature of the water at Siding Rock is a cool 54 degrees.  Todd and Poppaw braved the temperatures and went down Sliding Rock one time.  They are nuts!

Todd and Poppaw going down Sliding Rock!!

One of the days, we went mining for gems at a place called Gem Mountain.  We started out with a 5 gallon bucket of rocks and sifted through them and found many gems including garnets, rubies, amethysts, sapphires, emeralds, sodalite, quartz, citrine, and amazonite.  The kids had a blast!  On our last full day, we strolled around the quaint town of Brevard, NC.  We went to an old fashioned soda shop and had an awesome chocolate malt (yum!).  We’ve been sending pictures to Carl of all the yummy food we’re enjoying, but realized it was a little mean since he’s limited on what’s available in Mauritania.  We also visited the famous O.P. Taylor's Toy Store.  This toy store has every kind of toy imaginable.

O.P. Taylor's toy store

Our last stop was Ernie's Rock Shop where Todd picked out a geode and helped the rock man cut the geode.  Todd was the first person to see what was inside his geode and he is quite proud of it.

Todd helping the rock man cut his geode

Todd's geode with quartz inside

As I write this, we are heading back to Pensacola and already miss our daily hikes to waterfalls.  We will be driving back to Texas on Thursday where Mimi will be riding with us and keeping the kids while I go a MOPs leadership retreat at Lake Conroe – supposed to be really pretty out there.

Countdown to when Carl comes home:  25 days!!!