Swimming - Cherokee Lake

It's June and you know what that means...

THE BOAT IS BACK ON THE LAKE!

If you haven't heard me say it every single summer for the past four years, let me reiterate:
I LOVE CHEROKEE LAKE!

The water this past Sunday was perfection!

We woke up Sunday morning rearing to go.

I'd packed a cooler full of sandwiches, watermelon and drinks and thats all

we needed to keep us entertained all afternoon!

Our able Captain:

Dom's End of Year Reports!

I finally got around to printing out all of Dominick's end of year reports today and I am SO proud of my little man!!

Even though we don't technically use percentage grades yet, it was still really nice to see that both of our hard work paid off this year!!

Misc. Summer Pics

Dom and Diana's new favorite activity is to take Ed's camera and take pictures of the house and pictures of themselves.

Diana has mastered what I like to call the "MySpace Face". (You know the one, lips to the side, head tilted, etc.)

But I thought it was funny, that both Dom and Diana wanted their picture taken with Ralph, and they both took their photos themselves!

Fathers Day 2010

Tried and True Summer Fun

One of my favorite swimming holes in Hamblen County is a creek at Panther Creek State Park.

I woke up this morning with no other objective than to get out of the house. After breakfast we loaded up Charlie and a small picnic lunch and headed to the creek. There were more people there than usual, and to our surprise our "usual" spot was already taken!! It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we found a new favorite spot further down the creek. The kids had a nice shallow area to play in, there was a small waterfall nearby and our towels were under some beautiful trees that gave us cool shade all afternoon!

This was Charlie's first outing to the creek and he loved it! Brooke and Dom took charge of teaching him how to swim and keeping him entertained!

It was just a great day all around!

Summit ATA picnic

Saturday morning I awoke knowing I had to get right to the grocery store. The kids and I had been invited to a picnic (hosted by Dom's Karate studio) and I'd offered to bring Pink Stuff. In order for the pink deliciousness to come out right it had to set for at least 3 hours or so.

I jumped in the car and headed to Ingles and got the four ingredients I needed. Jumped back in the car and was home in record time. I had two major problems right away. 1. I'd bought chunked pineapple instead of crushed and 2. the Cool Whip was frozen solid. NO PROBLEM I told myself! I popped the cool whip in the microwave on a defrost and began dicing the heck out of the pineapple hoping I could crush it enough to pass for what the recipe called for.

In case you didn't know (and I can't imagine how you wouldn't) Cool Whip does not defrost in the microwave. Ever. I retrieved a tub of melted, brownish goop. As soon as I saw it, I abandoned my efforts of dicing the pineapple and went back to the store, again. The cool whip was still frozen, but on the ride home I put it right on front seat and opened the sun roof and hoped it'd work. It wasn't exactly thawed by the time I got home, but it was thawed enough to fold into the rest of the ingredients. Crisis averted.

The picnic was a BLAST! We'd never heard of, let alone visited the park it was hosted at, and I was blown away! Settled in the heart of downtown, but with beautiful mountain views just about anywhere you looked! We got rained out in the end, but the kids had enough time to fill their bellies, get soaked and thoroughly exhaust themselves!

Diana endulging in some watermelon:





The water gun wars:





Diana not enjoying being soaked through....

Give a girl a camera

I'm not sure when Diana comandeered my camera, but she actually did a pretty good job of snapping pictures from around the house! I started downloading pictures tonight and realized there were about 50 I didn't remember taking..... I figured it out when I saw the 'self portraits'.

Dom graduates to CAMO belt

Last Friday, Dom graduated from Cheetah belt to Camo belt! He perfomed his 1-step and his form really well and at the end of the night was presented with his new belt. Receiving his Camo belt marks a big step in his ATA training as now he will begin sparring!

Dominick and his core instructor, Mrs. Cordry.

Right after graduation, with his big bag-0-goodies containing all of his new sparring gear!

The artist's perspective:

Diana loves to draw and color. Give her a box of crayons and a pad of paper, and she's easily entertained for HOURS.

Today she drew these pictures and came running to show me....

Cinderella gets to look all beautiful, where as I look like I'm on a murderous zombified rampage... But hey, it's 'art' right?