Beautiful Day at Cane Creek

A beautiful spring day in NC, so we decided to go on a picnic and hike.  After a little bit of fussing that they wanted to hang out with their friends we were off. Turned out to be a bit colder and windier than we realized but we all had a great time!

 

 

Our quick little hike turned into a 3 hour hike.  Ryan at one point said are we lost? We werent but the path took us out further than we thought.

We saw trees that had been cut down by woodchucks, we think because I dont think there are beavers at Cane Creek, we also saw a snake in the water...yikes!

Longboarding is the new Skateboarding

So up until recently I had no idea what long-boarding was and how it differed from skateboarding.  They both have 4 wheels, so what could possibly be different.  Well Ryan has been educating my on this.  First of all the long-baord is way more expensive that is because they are made of bamboo and you can do 'tricks', like sliding but you have to have special gloves so you dont tear up your hands.

He saved up his money and purchased his first long-board but what longboarder doesn't have a cool helmet to match the board!

He Loves to Cook

Justin loves to cook and from time to time he cooks dinner for us.  Not bad for a 12 year old!

It's Official...2nd Degree Black Belt

It's Official...2nd Degree Black Belt...such a proud mom!  While in pre-school he talked about wanting to take marital arts.  Since it is a big commitment we waited until the beginning of 1st grade to start and now over 4 years later he is a 2nd degree black belt.

He started as a white belt with Blake, Alec and Zach over four years ago. So very proud of all of them! The time and effort and commit he put into just amazes me for someone so young.  It is something to be so proud of! He made great friends along the way.

 Mr. St. Clair

 Mr. Streicher

 Mr. Cousar

Another Snow Day!

Hard to believe that Charlotte got snow again this year!  That is so not like us!  But let me tell you it was a great snow, light and fluffy and more than a 1/2 inch!  We got 6 inches and loved it! Our incredible 300 year old tree in the snow, just breath-taking.

We had almost 2 days of beautiful snow with sledding and snowball fights. The boys had a blast and even got me to go down our neighborhood hill sledding twice! Thankfully no pictures were taken!

But then in the southern fashion, in came the ice.  We were concerned about power outages which didn't happen.  The boys friends came in from a long day of sledding, dropped their gear and had some mac & cheese and hot chocolate.  My dryer never ran so much in those 3 days of snow and ice!  I totally was lovin' it!

Tubing in the snow

The whole month of February has gone by without a blog from me! I have to say that this month is my least favorite month, it is typically cold and short and dark.  I am always glad when it is over because here in the south March is when spring comes marching in! Although one of my favorite things about winter is snow tubing!  I completely forgot to mention our snow tubing trip with our friends.  Great time!

Well did I mention that when we got to the house my mom's friend lets us stay at that the water pipes had burst and there was no water!  And the heat wasn't working, house temperature was 45 degrees.  We got the heat working and started a fire while waiting for the temperature to rise.  We stopped and bought 8-9 gallons of water because we had paid for our tubing tickets and they wouldn't give us a refund.  So we decided to stay the night.  The six boys (that includes the husbands) didn't seem to mind peeing in the snow, the ladies, since it was only Rachel and I knew we had 2 flushing since there were 2 toilets in the house.  We cooked and washed dishes with microwaved water.

We made the best of the situation and had a great time at the A-frame!

The boys loved sledding down the hill in the neighborhood, they even saw deer run across their path as they were sledding.

 

Next day was snow tubing! It was a beautiful afternoon!

Snow Day

As you can guess we don't get much snow ever in Charlotte!  But a 'big' storm was coming, so the weather forecasters were saying, it was set to hit at 3pm on Tuesday.  The kids got out of school at 1130am on Tuesday but by then the forecast had already changed, snow was coming around 5pm.  My boys were so excited we got out the snow gear, 5pm came, no snow.  Now the snow was suppose to come our way at 7pm and it did a few flakes but not enough to play in.  We got 'the call' at 715, school was cancelled for Wednesday.  But that is typical here, if there is a flake of snow schools are cancelled, issue is there are no built in snow days so days off will have to be made up.  But the kids dont care they just are excited to have the day off. We woke up the next morning to about 1/2 inch of snow and ice.  We will take it!!

The hill in our neighborhood just didn't have enough snow to sled down so in the southern way of  sledding, we took to the streets and rode down the street that was a sheet of ice!

The boys spent the entire day outside, running through the neighborhood and going from friends house to friends house.  They would come in to dry off, get some hot chocolate and food and then out again.  Ryan loves his cloths right out of the dryer!  We live in a great neighborhood!  At one point I counted at least 22 kids sliding down the hill in front of our house.  It was definitely a SNOW DAY!

Well, we get to do it all over again, no school again today!  However most of the snow/ice is gone.

Justin and BBall

Justin loves his basketball, he has been playing since he was about 6 years old.  This year he made it on the NBA division in the league he plays in, such a proud moment.  He was so very excited!

His dad helps with the coaching.  They are currently are undefeated and are 5-0.  Not bad, huh?!