Summer 2014 ~ Week 8

 

This week Maddie went to Sky Ranch. She had an absolute BLAST with the other five Jasper girls that went & made several new friends! This was her first year at Sky Ranch and she is still talking about it. Next year Anna will go, too!

Mayflower ~ Cabin 18 Girls

 

Maddie & Peyton with one of their amazing counselors-Yolie.

Maddie with her new friend Catherine from Garland, TX

Maddie with her new friend Mia from Dallas, TX

Maddie & Peyton…LOVE this picture of these sweet girls!

Anna told me that since Maddie got to go to camp and she didn’t, I was supposed to plan “fun stuff” for us to do this week. We spent some time doing crafts, got our toenails painted, went bowling, ate FroYo, rode horses, went swimming, and got snow cones…whew! What a fun week we had!

Anna working on her initials for her room.

I got a little crafty myself this week and made a couple of door hangers for my classroom

I had gotten some Doh Vinci in the mail to try for free {I LOVE FREEBIES!}, so Anna tried it out. Bless her heart, she is such the perfectionist-but I think she had fun playing with it!

On Wednesday my sweet friend Summer took us to Orange to see her horses. Anna thinks she is now an expert after Mrs. Summer was so patient and showed her how to brush the horses, feed them, ride them, and them give them a shower! According the Anna, she can ride race horses all by herself!

After riding horses, we went to Mrs. Summer’s parents’ house and went swimming and ate ice cream. On the way home, we stopped and got snow cones…according to Anna it was the BEST day EVER!

As if that wasn’t enough fun, the next day we got our toenails painted {how did I not get a picture of that?!} and then went bowling with Mrs. Beth & Lauren.

And of course bowling makes you hungry, so we HAD to go to Orange Leaf!

Summer 2014~Weeks 5 & 6

 

There is just too much to see and do in the summer to just sit around and be lazy! {Although I love a good “stay in my pjs and watch my dvr all day long” day}. After coming back from the most amazing family vacation ever, the girls and I loaded up and went to Ruston for several days. I love getting to spend time with my family and wished we were able to do so more often. The girls especially love hanging out with the cousins {and acting crazy most of the time!}

On Saturday, we went to West Monroe to my nephew’s “Going into the Navy” party. Trey was born when I was in 10th grade and from the moment he was born, we had a special bond. Trey has the kindest heart of anyone I know and I’m so proud of the man he has become. I’m so excited to see how God is going to use him on this new journey. Love this “kid” so much!

Saturday night we went to see The Sound of Music at the Dixie Theater in Ruston. Oh. My. Goodness. It was amazing! A major shout out to the cast! Even Anna sat completely enthralled for 3 hours! She is hooked now & I see a lot of trips to the theater in our future! A big thank you to my big sis Emily for inviting us! Didn’t Maddie & Emalyne look so pretty?!

On Sunday we went to my home church-Cook Baptist.  I love getting to hug the necks of the people I grew up with that are still around. They have amazing praise & worship at CBC! I always learn a new P & W song when we go…this time it was The Stand. My new favorite P & W song!!! After church we had lunch with my mom’s family-ya’ll…my Aunt Nette seriously make the best desserts ever! Y-U-M! Sunday night we went swimming at the Lambright Center…let’s just say it has changed just a little bit since I graduated!

On Monday I took the girls to LA Tech and showed them around a bit. We found my & Ryan’s Alumni bricks, walked around the campus, went to the bookstore, and stopped for a pic in front of the clock tower. Anna said that when she goes to college, she is getting a bicycle…just too much walking for her! LOL!

After touring Tech, we went and met my life-long friend Stephanie and her kiddos at Johnny’s Pizza. It has been years since I had Johnny’s and boy did it hit the spot! I love how every time Stephanie and I get together to catch up, it feels like no time has passed at all! We talked for hours and I was so proud of the kids for entertaining themselves! What a blessing!

Before heading home on Tuesday, I stopped and got the girls a peach Icee.

Hanging out with family, LA Tech, the Dixie Theater, Johnny’s Pizza, good friends, and peach Icees…it doesn’t get more Ruston than that folks! Maybe next time we’ll throw a little RHS Bearcats into the mix!

The McKnight’s Go to Colorado ~ Day 7

Oh. My. Goodness. Creede, Colorado has a population of around 400 people. On July 4th however, I’m pretty sure there were thousands and thousands of people! To start off the day, they have a parade-Ryan and I decided it was the longest parade in the history of parades…it seemed to go on forever! They girls had a blast though! They mostly threw beads {which seemed to become dangerous at times-we quickly learned to duck and then grab them!} but the girls filled my purse up with candy too!

After the parade we watched the mining competition for a while and then went to lunch with some friends.

Ryan has some family friends from DeRidder who were also in Creede, so we went to their cabin to visit for a little while after lunch. They have grandkids around Maddie’s age and the girls had a blast making s’mores, playing Frisbee, flying kites and eating snickers! I think it was really good for them to be able to run around with other kids for a few hours!

We met some friends back in South Fork for dinner that night. Our friends’ friends have a cabin there and were gracious to invite us over to crash their party. We had such a good time visiting with Bric and Summer, Bobby and Toni, and Graeme and Rebecca! The girls taught Tuk how to do Ring-Around-The-Rosie and Graeme taught me the meaning behind the rhyme…learn something new every day!

Tomorrow we head home. So sad to see this vacation come to an end. It has been the BEST family vacation EVER!

Maddie kept a list of all the animals we saw along the way. Here is her list: deer {whitetail & mule}, antelope, black buck antelope, elk, moose, buffalo, mountain sheep, groundhogs, prairie dogs, chipmunks, bear {dead on the side of the road, but we still counted it! LOL!}, oryx, cottontail rabbits, jack rabbits, ducks, snakes, geese, coyote, foxes, pheasants, and in people’s yards-llamas, alpacas, cows, horses, and donkeys!

The McKnight’s Go to Colorado ~ Day 6

This morning we got up and drove to Lake City to meet some friends for breakfast. Along the way we saw some mountain sheep hanging out…we are loving all the wildlife we are seeing!

I’ve decided that I am thankful Ryan is doing most of the driving on this trip {and all of the driving in the mountains}…Slumgullion Pass gave me the heebie-jeebies! Beautiful scenery, but made my stomach drop every time I looked down. Definitely the highest elevation we have been at; just over 11,000 feet!

Hands-down Lake City is the prettiest place we have visited! White picket fences, parks, and flower gardens nestled in the middle of the mountains…

A friend recommended that we get ice cream at the local Soda Shoppe. So. Worth. It! Thanks Alexa!

When we finished up in Lake City, we drove back to South Fork and Ryan played golf with some friends at the Rio Grande Club. When they finished up, all the wives & kids met the guys at the club for dinner {yum1} and then we watched the fireworks. I have never been so cold in July! Brrr! After each firework, the “boom” echoed down the canyon for several seconds-sounded so cool!

Tomorrow we head to Creede for July 4th. We hear it is supposed to be a big deal!

The McKnight’s Go to Colorado ~ Day 5

This morning we got up and decided to do a little hiking. There are several hiking trails that you can go on that lead to waterfalls around Pagosa Springs. We chose the one that had the shortest hike {Anna complains about having to walk at Wal-mart…I was NOT about to get several miles into a hike and have to carry her out! LOL!}. I had gotten directions to the trailhead online-pretty simple: drive about 17 miles on this county road and then take a right; drive until that road ends and find the trailhead by the river and start hiking. Simple enough, right?! Only they didn’t say that after we took that right, we would have to drive on a dirt road for over an HOUR-and the road is so narrow you can’t turn around without falling off the side of the mountain! We were seriously in the middle of Nowhere National Park!!!

Finally we found the “end of the road”! The river was beautiful, but we had no idea what we were about to find!

After about a 15 minute hike, this is what we saw…

Yes, those are my children climbing on big rocks again…

The waterfall and surrounding area was absolutely beautiful!

Who knew hiking could be so fun?! I definitely see more hiking in this family’s future!

After hanging out at the waterfall for a while, we hiked back down and played in the river for a while. The girls loved “finding” rocks and decided it would be easier if they took off their shoes so they could wade out in the water…we may or may not have waited until AFTER they got in to explain to them that the waterfall and river were formed by snow runoff! LOL! It didn’t take long for their feet to get numb and they were begging for their socks and shoes again!

While the girls looked for rocks, Ryan played a little baseball…

Out of all we have done on our vacation, I would say this was my favorite thing! Definitely worth it if you are ever in the area!

After having all the fun we could possibly have at Piedra Falls, we drove to South Fork. We have some friends who live in South Fork part of the year and were thrilled to get to spend some time with them. We just love Uncle Bill and Mrs. Liz!

We will be “based” out of South Fork for the rest of our trip, but will be making a couple of day trips to Lake City and Creede. I am so thankful for the memories we are making!

The McKnight’s Go to Colorado ~ Day 4

Our adventures today were not only fun, but educational! We got up this morning and drove to Mesa Verde to see the cliff dwellings.They were really one of the neatest things I’ve ever seen…seriously-who wakes up one morning and decides to build a house in the side of the cliff?!

You have to drive quite a ways into the park to get to the first dwelling. There are several places to stop and take in the views {and take pics of course!} along the way.

We saw a few of the houses from afar, but were able to actually go into the Spruce Tree House. Absolutely amazing!

It was so neat to walk where the Pueblo Indians used to walk. At the Spruce Tree House we were able to climb a ladder down to one of the underground kivas.

After taking in all we possibly could at Mesa Verde, we drove to Pagosa Springs.

We walked around downtown and checked out the hot springs…although we couldn’t figure out why anyone would pay to smell like rotten eggs-YUCK! We considered floating the San Juan River, but it turned out to just be too cold and we didn’t want to risk anyone getting sick for the rest of our adventures!

We found a fun place for dinner called Bogey-Q…BBQ for supper and then mini-golf afterwards! I’m pretty sure Ryan picked this place so he could show just how much better he is at golf than the rest of us! LOL! Ryan may have won in the end, but the girls like to remind him that they both got a hole-in-one and he didn’t!

After mini-golf we threw horseshoes for a while before realizing just how late it had gotten…times flies when you’re having family fun!

Tomorrow we will have a little more fun in Pagosa Springs and then head to South Fork.