4th of July Weekend

Laurel Mountain Lake Tennessee:

Day 1:
Here's my princess soaking up the hot sun rays as she hunts for shells. The shells came in three sizes, itty bitty, itty bitter, and itty bittest. I love the way she is wearing her swimming cap side ways.

Last weekend or so, we went to Bass Pro Shop to buy her a life jacket. She zoned into the only pink one that they had which of course has "Barbie" written on it. She was brave on the water slide.

The slide didn't exactly slide well and she ended up scouting down. Notice that she is holding her nose. Well, she does this but as soon as she hits the water, then she lets go and swims. It just cracks me up. By the way, she didn't like the this activity so this was the one and only time that she did this. She was content to stay in the roped area that didn't go over her head. This suited me fine. I don't like to worry more than I absolutely have to worry.Emily met Mary who is the daughter of one of the Barker's clam who used to play with Hartford and his sisters when they were kids.
Emily enjoy playing in the sand almost as much as she enjoyed the water.
Emily is slowing down on picking flowers. She only picked this one. She picked it without the stem which made it impossible to keep behind her ear.Much to my delight, Emily spotted a berry bush and she gave me all of the berries that she picked .The other day, I was playing around with my camera and discovered that it has a firework setting. I enjoyed taking a bunch of pictures of the fireworks. The show wasn't too bad at all for a bunch of drunk amateurs. However, there was a time that I feared for our lives and we were soon in safe distant. Emily stated the next day that those people had lost their brains. I couldn't have agreed more.

One night in the hotel room Emily and I looked at the many firework pictures on the digital camera. We told each other what we saw. We saw a lot of fairies, worms, and jellyfish. This was so much fun and we giggled as the fairies chanced the worms, etc.

Day 2:
This picture doesn't do the mess justice. Trash and rubbish was all over the area, including the swimming area. People were picking it up a little at a time. It was time to go fishing (A.K.A. let's wait and let the water warm up a little before swimming).
Here is Emily with the fishing bait. She actually touches worms and thinks nothing of it. Ewe, I can't even image.
While we were at Bass Pro Shop searching for a life jacket, Emily tried to convince Hartford that her fishing pole was broke and needed to buy a Barbie fishing pole. Hartford didn't fall for it.Since the fish were no where to be seen, it was off to the swimming area. Although the you can't tell in the picture, she has decorated the small sand person sculpture.
Playing in the water and sand wore Emily out. She needed a break to fill up with snacks.
Day 3

The journey home -
Rock City
Upon entering the attraction, Humpty Dumpty was just sitting around waiting to fall. Emily wasn't thrilled to take this picture, but she was a good sport
As we walked toward the top we saw some beautiful sights, here are a few of them.



Here are some sights that we saw on the top. A statue of an Eagle.
The Rock City corn maze.
A map of the 7 states that can be seen.
Boy oh, it was hot. The only thing that a person could do was get ice cream.
Emily really didn't want to share but she figured that it was be wise to do so.
Instead of heading down right away, we went exploring and found a few items that we didn't see the last time that we were there.
We got the opportunity to see this owl up close. I loved it.
There were painted boards all over the place. Too many in my opinion and since I heard a number of groans, I wasn't the only parent that they annoyed.
Dad getting into the action as well.
On the way down, I took more pictures.


I hate this part. It's called the fat man squeeze. I actually made it though this time without any problems. Hartford made sure this time that we let the party in front of us get a good head start. Last time, the people in front of us came to a hault and the people behind us was crowed behind us. I couldn't see light and I couldn't feel air. I began to panic.
At the end of the attraction there is a part called Fantasy Land. It has a bunch of gnomes and nursery rhyme scenes. It was cute, but near impossible to take pictures of and it was awful hot in there.

Afterwards, we had a picnic in the back of the truck.

When we returned home, the house had not cleaned itself nor did Missy cat clean it. Thus, the reason that this post is so late.