September Travels

In September we made a couple of trips back to back. First, we went to PeePaw's house in Summerville.  While Vivian was deployed my Dad decided to have Aaron come to do some work in the kitchen.  Over the last year or so he's tiled the kitchen backsplash & made new cabinet doors.  This time he made a few adjustments to the cabinet doors & painted the rest of the cabinets.  From what we hear, Vivian loved it when she got home!  While Aaron worked, Nora & I played.

She has this best dog friend, Russell.  He is the BEST dog.  He is so good to Nora...and she isn't very gentle.  He is her favorite toy at PeePaw's house.  He is also who Nora always asks to talk to when she facetimes him.  She loves that he will show the dogs on the iPad and get them to bark and howl.  Nora loves Cherry (Shur-ree) too, but she gets tired of Nora.  She is really good & moves away from Nora (or hides in PeePaw's room) if she's had enough.

One of her other favorite 'toys' there are the chickens.  She loves running after them.  I'm sure they don't love it.

Nora forcing Daddy to take a break from working.  He loves it.

We were there several days.  One of the days we went to the farm.  Aaron & my dad shot guns so I took Nora, Russell, & Cherry home.  That way no one was spooked or in danger.  Nora loved the car ride with the pups.

One of the things Nora & I did to entertain ourselves was to go shopping.  Summerville has about any store I would normally go to, so it's pretty convenient.  We made a trip to Target...our favorite store.  Then, we went to TJ Maxx.  Nora fell in LOVE with some dress up shoes.  It was really hard to get her to put them down.  That was the first time I ever had to take her out of store screaming for something.  It was not fun!

When we went home and told PeePaw about the shoes he told Nora she could get them.  He gave her the cash & we went back to the store the next day.  She was so excited!  She also fell in love with a princess set but she already spent her money.  We went next door to Party City & found her a crown, wand, necklace, & ring for 39 cents each.  Way more manageable than the $12 set she wanted & she was just as happy.  Aaron called & asked us to run to Lowe's.  Yes, I let her go into Lowe's just like this:

After those high heels came home she did everything in them.  Actually she still does.  That's another post to come soon!

After Aaron finished the kitchen work, we headed to North Myrtle with April & Travis.  They were vacationing there & invited us to come for a day & night.  We all had fun.  Nora was especially glad to be back at the beach life.  I think April & Travis just invite us so we can bring the entertainment:  Nora.  She steals the show the whole time.

We weren't there for Travis' birthday, but Nora sure dug into the rest of his birthday cupcakes!  She is definitely a frosting girl.  =)

We walked down the street and went to a little diner for dinner.  Its called the Hot Diggity Dog.  Nora's hot dog did not disappoint her.  Their food was pretty good, but their dessert was great!  They had some crazy chocolate cake & a delicious fried cinnamon roll.  Oh it was so good!

We were really watched over while we were there.  The night we stayed at the beach, several cars got broken into--including ours.  We were blessed that the only thing they did was open Aaron's toolbox in the truck bed & take a speed square.  Unfortunately, they broke it trying to break into others' cars.  Luckily they didn't bother with all the more expensive tools inside Aaron's truck.  We definitely consider the whole thing a blessing (& felt horrible they used something of Aaron's to cause so much damage to the other cars)!  

We stay busy & travel a lot it seems, but we have some great family & friends to be with!  Yes, I had the packing/unpacking.  Yes, I hate the mound of laundry we have when we get home.  And yes, I hate all the riding in the car time.  But, the fun we have & the memories we make are all worth it.  As the recently hip phrase goes:  You Only Live Once...right?

Mother/Daughter South Carolina Tour

Aaron had a big job in Tennessee and was out of town for 2 1/2 weeks.  We really missed him and had to come up with some things to do to pass the time.  So we took a mini road trip through SC.  Okay, so maybe it wasn't that glamorous.  One Monday evening (June 11th) we drove to Tutu & Rara's house in Columbia.  They live there since Rara is serving in the Temple Presidency for the Columbia, SC Temple.   (For more info about LDS temples click here.)  We spent the night with them and Nora got Tutu all to herself Tuesday morning while I went and cleaned the temple.  It was a great experience for both of us.  Tuesday we ran errands with Tutu until the afternoon when we continued our road trip down to Summerville.  In Summerville, we spent the rest of the week with PeePaw & Uncle Xan.  

My stylin' co-captain

Shortly after we arrived in Summerville Nora hit the backyard running.  It was time to see Chip & the other chickens.

Loving the puddles

Learning to throw scratch

Watching the hypnotized chicken

Every morning she would get up {extra early} and feed the chickens with PeePaw and play with the dogs.

We spent a lot of time hanging out, like we try to do at PeePaw's house.  (It's what he likes to do so we go there knowing that's what we'll do.)  Nora kept me extra busy.  I brought some of her learning time things with us (abc coloring, play doh, paint with water, etc.) to make sure she'd stay out of trouble and have some okay things to get into.  FYI:  mission failed. 

A little info about PeePaw's house:  There aren't any 'extra' bedrooms.  One is Uncle Xan's.  The other is my sweet step-sister, Ashleigh's.  Often when we visit Ashleigh is at her Dad's house or graciously gives us her room and stays in the living room.  Xan's room is also known as the gun-building and/or computer room.  PeePaw has a desk with all his gun-building tools, supplies, & parts in almost half of the room.  The other half is Xan's computer lounge, if you will.  This is another reason we often stay in Ashleigh's room.  Her room, of course, is full of her stuff.  Most of which is very appealing to a two year old, unfortunately.  This trip she proved I can't take my eyes off of her...even while she's napping.  She also proved that if G.Viv is out of town, don't leave it up to PeePaw to baby proof!  =)  The first day's nap she found a pen beside Ashleigh's bed.  She did not destroy anything that wasn't hers.  She didn't even get out of her bed.  She merely tattooed herself from head to toe.

The next day (Thursday) we went to the farm.  We got to see the chickens that live there.  They live in the woods but have an electric fenced in area with their coop, food, & water.  At night, they fly over the fence (to come in) and are safe from predators.  These are pictures of them in the woods and their home base.

After playing hard on the farm, Nora was ready for a nap in her favorite Ashleigh's bed.  I moved everything I thought she could reach from the bed.  I didn't want to dig through Ashleigh's things, but anything I saw that could be tempting...I moved.  I also checked on her periodically through her nap & stayed in the room next door so I could hear her as soon as I heard her.  I hadn't heard her, but decided to check on her.  Mission failed.  Again.  She found a jewelry box type container with nail polish in it.  Not just any nail polish...black and fuchsia.  I guess she figured go bold or go home.  Miraculously, she did not dump or spill any.  Instead she painted herself literally from head to toe.  I count my blessings that she didn't get any on the furniture or carpet.  She did get some on poor Ashleigh's bedding.  Nora knew she was in big trouble as soon as I walked in.  Talk about feeling bad.  Both of us.  To say I'm not getting Mother/Step Sister/Daughter of the Year is an understatement.  I'm sure this happens to others, but I sure have felt horrible about it!  The good news is Ashleigh gets to pick out new bedding!  The other good news, that I keep trying to remind myself of, is that it's just material things and at least no one was hurt.  We do love Ashleigh though & hate this happened to her innocent bed!  Quickly, I went off to Target to get Nora some more things to play with & a big bottle of nail polish remover.

Before

After.  Hours of cleaning later.

On Friday she wasn't allowed back into Ashleigh's bedroom.  She had to take a nap in the sunroom.  After over an hour of watching the chickens & playing she finally gave in & took a short nap.  Technically that's a mission accomplished because she didn't destroy anything, but a fail on the nap front. 

Nora's favorite things at PeePaws are:

Riding her horse

She got her new kitchen from her birthday!

Playing outside with PeePaw & his chickens

Making Xan watch Dora or saying his name over & over

And being the center of attention!

Before we left we squeezed in a trip to IHOP to celebrate Father's Day early with PeePaw.  {And Tractor Supply which may quickly becoming Nora's favorite store.}  We had a great time!