Enjoying Nature...

All has been, well, quiet in Turner Town for the past few weeks. Our summer routine seems to be working with minimal tears/upsets from the kids. They are continuing to work on basic skills that will hopefully give them some sort of upper hand when school starts back in just over a month. We are working on english lessons, nouns, adjectives which I think are the kids' favorite things to create. I'll make up a sentence for the kids and then they go back and come up with crazy ways to describe the noun in the sentences. We have also tackled math. Aizley is mastering her long division while Colton knows through his 5's on the multiplication table. Small steps but steps none the less! We are also working on our "manners". For some reason, probably because in Ukraine we encountered the fact, we have the hardest time smiling and replying when someone speaks to us. We have "Thank You's" down, but overall "happiness" is so hard. We are getting there, slowly.

We have been very busy, filling our days with family activities but nothing big. We are saving the BIG stuff for the upcoming weeks when we have our "America's Birthday" party this Saturday and (the results of working so hard on school work all year long) our week long vacation to Dollywood the week after.

Saturday, we enjoyed some outside time at Fall Creek Falls park. We spent the day hiking, picnicing and (a favorite) swimming. Here we are beginning our day.

The view from the top. 300' straight down to the bottom. That wasn't as bad as the 300' trip straight back to the top, whew!

We took a side trail and found several little paths and some destruction from previous storms. Look at my spidermonkey (can you tell he is a Ben 10 fan?)


After a couple hours walking around, exploring, we headed to the POOL.


After a couple hours, we headed home and found a surprise. Papa had gotten the day off of work and traveled to South Pittsburg (name of a local town about an 1.5 hours away) where he and several friends loaded up on fireworks for our big party Saturday. Aizley and Colton love the 4th and all that goes with it, the grilling, the watergun fights with cousins, decorating the outside of the house and of course the homemade icecream! Until then...

"Happy America's Birthday!"