E,E, and Little E Stringfellow: Catching up

I feel like that's all I do these days... catch up. But, hey, it's better then never catching up at all I guess. Our computer crashed out about a week and half ago. Boo! But, thanks to family who know a thing or two about computers, they helped us out and we are back online. Woohoo! Viruses blow.... and are really good at scaring the "you know what" out of people like me who think my entire hard drive has been wiped out. Anyway, enough of that.

The past month to month and half have been crazy but fun. Lots of fun stuff going on - end of summer stuff, etc... let's re-cap (I'll try to keep this short, we'll see) You've been warned :)

Elaina started school (as you know) but her last day of preschool was August 9th. Here she is with Mrs. Vernice, whom we loved, on her last day

Her last week of school, they took a field trip to Safari Adventures in Pigeon Forge. It was pretty cool. I had not been there before. We went with her best friend from school, Katherine and her family. Here the girls are.

all decked out with binoculars

They got to pet all sorts of exotic creatures... here is a baby alligator

A turtle

A chinchilla (no so exotic, but very fluffy)

A snake, as you can see Katherine wanted nothing to do with this snake and Elaina is not even in the picture so she went far away. But, Elaina ended up petting it after I showed her it was okay. They also got to pet a ferret, baby chick, and a rat. In the exhibits were all sort of different animals... the most memorable - a 2 headed turtle. Elaina still talks about that thing. She was so fascinated by it.

They had goats... Elaina had a ball feeding them. This was a big deal for her to do as she has normally been afraid to in the past.

Elaina, with Katherine, and Katherine's sister, Gracie. Such sweet girls!

The weekend before she started school, on Friday (August 10th - Erik's b-day), we went to Tatarus (we had never been there before and always heard it was empty)... uh, it was raining and the Friday before school started. What were we thinking?? It was packed! But, still fun. I actually took her again a few days later after school started for everyone else and we pretty much had the place to ourselves.
Here she is in the foam blocks

and the rope swing...

And finally, the Saturday before school started, we took a drive up to Williamsburg, Kentucky to KY splash. We had heard good things about it and how cheap it was. It was cheap and it was great but 2 things... 1)it was strangely cool that day so the water was cold and then when you got out, it was even colder. So, that made it a bit hard. 2) Elaina is just about an inch to short to ride any of the big rides (even doubles with us). So, she couldn't do much. But, we made the most of it and enjoyed the day. Here are me and Elaina in the lazy river....she did enjoy this very much.