Wowza I am overdue for some updates here. Although most of the world has moved on from blogs, my kids still love to go back and read it, so I'm updating in their honor. And because it helps plan trips!
This spring was HARD. There were a lot of things going on behind the scenes that I can't really talk about here because they're not mine to share, but dang, it was so hard. It all kind of came to a head in one (absolutely craptastic) week where my oncologist called to tell me that I had suspicious imaging results and needed to schedule a biopsy, my beloved grandmother died, and my parents' divorce was finalized. It was really hard.
So I was very thankful when summer finally arrived and we started going on some of the adventures that I had been planning as a mental respite from everything else! The big kids had all kinds of fun things on the docket, so I decided that it would be fun for the little boys to have something similar to look forward to. My mom came out right after Memorial Day and spent a few weeks with us, then we drove down to my sister Rosalind's in North Carolina to spend a week with her family. We were excited for cousin time at the beach and in the mountains!
These Tinkerbell rhododendron are out of order, but so be it. They were so beautiful and helped a little bit with the ache of not seeing the Tinkerbell bush at my parents' former home in Michigan.
It was so fun to get to spend some time with my nieces and nephew! Here's Coco & I after we finished up a nice picture book reading session.
Rosalind planned SO many fun activities and we had a great time exploring around the greater Raleigh area.
Trying to remember what the kids were feeding the ducks here. Mangos and Sun Chips, maybe?
We hit this park one day for a fun festival that included face painting! (Nathan did not want his face painted AT ALL.)
One day we went to Rosalind's gym and spent a couple of hours working out before spending the afternoon at the pool with the kids (they spent our workout time in the childcare area which has all of these amazing fun classes for the kids to do while their parents are working out). Also not pictured but we went to a sunset yoga pop-up class Rosalind taught one night, which was very cool!!
Came back from a run to find this adorable peaceful scene pre-breakfast. I brought these bead boxes with us and the kids made soooo many bracelets and necklaces (Nathan totally bedecked Coco, I honestly don't know how many he made for her, but it was super cute to see how much she adored him).
One night we got a stack of pizzas and headed over to this fun splash pad, where Chris later met us bearing Tillamook ice cream. Yes please!
More bracelets!
We spent one morning in Prospect Park which was SO fun.
Rode the train...
And the carousel!
And the paddleboats! Gosh there were so many fun things to do there.
We also went to Boulted Bread which is actual heaven on earth.
I mean look at that morning bun...
Another day we drove to Topsail Island on the coast. My boys were very excited about the fact that they would be able to dip their toes in both the Atlantic and Pacific in the span of a single month.
It was a little chilly but that didn't stop us from having a great time!
At the end of our trip, we spent two nights camping at Grayson Highlands. This is actually the first time I've ever taken any of our kids camping without Neil along (and while Chris came up after our first night, we did all the initial camp setup and firebuilding and all of that without any men along!). My verdict is that I can camp without Neil but I greatly prefer to camp with him.
Nathan was super excited about hiking a chunk of the Appalachian Trail (planning for some time on the Pacific Crest Trail later in the summer!).
We lucked out with weather and it was absolutely gorgeous.
Seriously such a beautiful place. I almost regretted not joining Jordan and Chris a couple months earlier when they ran a 50-miler here, but they told me it was basically a wall of fog, so I would have missed out on the views anyway.
Nathan and Matty and I decided to continue on to hit the highest point in Virginia, Mount Rogers. Chris joined us after about twenty minutes on the trail (and honestly scared the daylights out of us when he caught up, haha!). It was really interesting to watch the woods change as we went higher.
Some gorgeous expansive sweeping views...
So there were two kinds of free-roaming creatures you don't usually see on trails. One was a herd of very scary cows with very scary horns. We gave them as wide a berth as possible but it honestly felt like hiking past a bear!
And the other was absolute fuzzballs of delight! Grayson Highlands is famous for the wild ponies and it did not disappoint.
I mean SERIOUSLY SO CUTE.
The ponies were interspersed throughout different meadows all along the hike, which kept things fun and interesting since you never knew when you'd round a corner and find a new pony herd.
Hiking along, taking a group photo...
And look! More ponies!
Such a fun and unique experience--the little newborn foals were the absolute fuzziest most adorable things you can imagine.
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