New Favorite Sleep Position

The only way Kirk can get Sam to take a nap during the day is by carrying her around in the backpack carrier. He then takes it off (very gently) and lays her on the bed. She likes to stay in the exact position she was in when she fell asleep - it's so funny!

Playing with Mom

Here are some cute pictures of Sam and me playing the other day. Nothing special here - just some cute pictures. I love the expression in the first one.

If this were video, you would get to see Sam clapping. She does "patty-cake" and claps when you do.

New Trick - Shaking Head No

Sam has acquired a new skill - she can now shake her head "no" and does it with alarming frequency. At least she can't verbalize her dislike yet!

It's pretty cute :)

For Chris and Rhys

Hilarious picture of our friends Chris and Rhys's dog Charlie. He is the most tolerant dog in the world! He lets Sam pull his beard, eyebrows, poke him in the eye, etc. We're not sure this is good in the long run because Rosco is far less understanding. But Charlie is the best and we're going to miss him (and his owners) when we move.

More Hiking

Another weekend in Tennessee means more hiking. We stayed close to home for this one and went up to the North Chickamauga Pocket Wilderness. It was a great trail and we can't believe that we waited until 3 weeks before we move to find it!

The hike basically took us along and relatively gradually up the side of a pretty huge rock face. Look at the size of these cliffs.

There were a few places where you could see old coal caves had been cut into the rock face and there was coal dust spread out onto the trail.

At the top, there was a pretty great view along the river and over to the other side of the valley.

Sam fell asleep on the way down. I love how she puts her hands up by her face!

We had our friend's dog Charlie with us. He and Rosco had a ball playing on the rocks and in the water.

Lately, Sam likes to provide her own running commentary while we're hiking. Here's a sample:

Cool Flower

Kirk took these pictures of a really cool flower we have growing on a vine in front of our house. Kirk has done such an amazing job with the plants and flowers in both our front and back yard - it's sad that he finally gets them whipped into shape and we have to move!

Another funny picture - we have morning glory vines growing up through our grill! You can tell how much use the grill has gotten lately :) It is also obvious in these pictures that we subscribe to the "let it burn off" theory of grill-cleaning. Not that any of you should really be surprised.

Comparisons

Here's some perspective on how big Sam is these days. This was Sam at about 4 months in the Baby Bjorn:

Here's Sam at 11 months in the Baby Bjorn:

Here's Sam at about four months in the Johnny Jump-up:

And here's Sam at 11 months:

Crazy how fast she's growing huh?

Dancing

Again, here's our girl dancing! Kirk's newest pasttime is putting Sam in the Baby Bjorn (which she is way too big for these days) and DANCING, DANCING, DANCING. The neighbors must think he's crazy! You can see in these pictures and video how much Sam loves it (and she shows off her new ability to clap to the music - our girl's got rhythm!):

Getting Tall (and cute)

Sam is growing like a weed! She is so tall these days. Here's a picture of her playing to give you reference for how big she's getting.

And this is just a cute one of her smile. She's a pretty happy baby and we consider ourselves lucky!

New Use for Bottles

Because Sam is getting a lot of her calories from solid foods these days, we have tons of extra bottles laying around. Kirk has discovered that they are an excellent way to measure how many ounces of alcohol you are adding to your frozen fruity drinks. Oh Child Services would love us!

Lookout Game

On Friday night, we went to our second Lookouts Game of the season. As usual, we didn't watch much baseball but it sure was a damn good excuse to get outside and drink a few beers. I'm not sure whether Sam actually liked watching the game or trying to climb the net (and put it in her mouth):

The Lookouts unveiled their new mascot at the game. His name is Blooie. I liken him to Baby Jay for all you Jayhawks fans out there. The Lookouts main mascot is a big dude the looks a lot like Blooie but is red and is named Louie the Lookout. See, until this year, the Lookouts were affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds - hence the red mascot. Now, the Lookouts are the AA team for the Los Angeles Dodgers and their color is Blue - hence Blooie the new mascot.

Sam wanted to eat Blooie.

Christy and her friend Brad came in town from Atlanta to go to the game with us. Sam always loves seeing her aunt!

Oh, the dreaded family picture.

Sam was upset that the Lookouts blew it in the bottom of the eighth when the 3rd base coach didn't send the runner (who totally would have scored). They lost by one run. Heckling was required.

Asheville

Like I mentioned in a previous post, we're playing tourist these days. Ever since we arrived in the South, I have wanted to visit Asheville, North Carolina. I've always heard great things about the city but never had the chance to visit. I actually wanted to move to Asheville rather than Chattanooga but, unfortunately for us, there are no federal judges in Asheville. Anyway, so we decided to visit Asheville over the long weekend for the 4th of July. The next few posts are the things we did while in Asheville!

Playing at the Hotel

The hotel didn't have any rooms with a king bed left when we checked in late Thursday night so we had a room with two double beds. Since we co-sleep these days and have a queen at home, we decided to just move the two beds together so we could all sleep in the same bed and have enough space. Sam thought the huge bed was the best thing ever!







She had a ball crawling around the bed and trying to get down in the crack between the two beds. At one point she wedged herself into the crack and played for an hour with her legs stuck between the beds. For whatever reason, she loved it in there!

Asheville's Independence Day Celebration

After Sam's long nap, we headed downtown to get dinner and go to Asheville's 4th of July celebration. As is typical for us, our choice of restaurants was guided not by the food we wanted to eat, but by the beer we wanted to drink. I had researched Asheville's microbreweries (quite a selection for the South) and found one that looked like it had decent food, was kid-friendly, and most importantly, had an interesting beer selection. Jack of the Wood (the restaurant was called) featured a local brewery called Green Man Ales which makes all kinds of organic beers. The food was pretty freaking good and the beer was even better. We left dinner quite pleased with our selection. Sam wanted to know what the hold up was - she was ready to get to dancing.

And, after dinner, dancing we did. On Saturdays during the summer, Asheville has a concert called "Shindig on the Green" which features a lot of local bluegrass artists. Since the 4th of July fell on a Saturday this year, the city combined their celebration with Shindig on the Green. As I'm sure you're aware by now, we love bluegrass music so we were psyched to hit the Shindig. As expected, it was packed but we eeked out some grass for ourselves and Sam got to dancing and crawling around.

Sam also discovered that she can play with dad's ears when he puts her on his shoulders. This was a lot of fun.

Think she loves her daddy? Just maybe.

For the last song of the night, the band played a bluegrass waltz and Kirk and Sam had their first father/daughter dance. I know it's tough to see in the video but I had to record it:

When the music ended, the fireworks started. Sam was mesmerized for a few minutes - then she lost interest. Attention span of a gnat I tell you. It was about 9:30 which is when she typically turns into a pumpkin so we headed for the car and went home. A successful 4th of July was had by all.

Happy 4th of July!

We celebrated the 4th by kicking it at the pool at the hotel for most of the day. Grandma Hughes gave us a special swimsuit for Sam to wear.

Sam had a blast at the pool. She splashed all around and had a good time.



She even got dunked a few times by mom and dad and didn't cry. She's a trooper for sure.

Drum Circle

After a quick nap back at the hotel, we headed to downtown Asheville for the weekly drum circle. I had read online that a group of people get together in a park in downtown Asheville for a drum circle. But I had no idea how big it would be! We got there a little late and had to squeeze in to dance and drum. It was my first real drum circle. Kirk has done a lot of them but none this big or well organized. These guys kept the beat in the middle of the park.

As you can see, there were at least a hundred drummers. Now I know it was a holiday weekend so I'm sure there were a few more people than usual. But even if you normally only have half that many people, it's pretty amazing.

Kirk drummed for most of the time we were there. Sam and I danced and wandered around watching people. Sam also danced with dad.

This little guy was next to us most of the night. He was absolutely adorable! We hope that Sam grows up to be just like him - but I bet she'll be an even better drummer!

There were people from all walks of life there - all ages, races, socio-economic backgrounds, and sexual orientations. For being in the South, we found Asheville to be a relief as far as open-mindedness and diversity. We loved it! Here's a video to give you an overview of the whole scene.

The Biltmore

First stop in Asheville was at the Biltmore - George Vanderbilt's summer home and the largest private residence in the United States. Normally, visiting old houses is not our cup of tea but we talked to a lot of people who had been to the Biltmore and were universally told that it was well worth the time and money to visit the Biltmore. So we did.

Our first stop was the house. It's an impressive structure. You can't take pictures inside the residence so we don't have any of the interior. I can tell you that it's nice but not my cup of tea. First, it was way too crowded. Second, we didn't pay the extra $10 each to get the headphones for the audio tour but the vast majority of people around us did. So we were trying to just see everything while 80% of the other people were walking around like zombies staring at all kinds of random things around us. When people have headphones on, they are disconnected from anything around them so we got run into a lot and had people just stop right in front of us time and time again. Needless to say, we were glad to get out of there and out in the open.

The view from the house, however, was incredible.

After we finished our tour of the house, we walked around the gardens. They were amazing! While we didn't really appreciate the inside of the house, the gardens and the grounds more than made up for everything.

Kirk discovered a new favorite flower. If anyone can identify it for us, I'll come up with some good prize for you (you'll have to take my word for it).

This was the Conservatory (a big greenhouse). Inside, there was a hothouse, a cool house, and an orchid room. Behind here, there was a little stand serving up fruity frozen drinks. We had two pina colada's and they were awesome.

Sam got to play on the nice green grass. She loved crawling around in it!

We told Sam that it was time to go and we got this reaction. What? What's up with that?

Seriously though, this is Sam's new favorite gesture. We're not sure what (if anything) it means but it's awfully cute.

We walked down to Bass Lake - about 1/2 mile from the house. Man you should have heard most of the tourists complaining about that walk. You can tell that most of them don't get up off of the couch that often :) Here's the Lake. There were some huge freakin fish and turtles in here. Don't you know people would have loved to fish there!

On the way back up to the house (and our car), we took a hiking path that was a little longer and out of the way. The benefit of it was that we didn't see anyone on the trail. And there were a few incredible bamboo patches. Sam climbed on it and wouldn't let go!

Also on the grounds of the Biltmore are a winery and a working farm. We took Sam down to the farm and went to the petting zoo. She's a little young to really interact much with most of the animals but she was mixed between interested and terrified.

Our final stop of the day was at the Vineyard. They offer tours and free tastings but by that time we had been at the Biltmore for nearly six hours and the last thing we wanted to do was stand in another line and be surrounded by a lot of people. So we went straight into the gift shop and just bought a bunch of wine rather than wait in line and taste them. We are now the proud owners of four bottles of Biltmore wine. It was a good visit.