The rest of Summer 2018

Sarah and Caroline were featured on a bakery's

Instagram page for their great costumes

during Harry Potter week.

 We spent some time at the science center.

Usually, when we get home from the road trip, I am all traveled out and just want to stay at home until school starts. Our visits to the National Parks this year had a very different effect. I wanted to see more of nature's beauty and drink in as much of it as I could! I talked the girls into going hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains with me.

We don't spend enough time here!

It's so close and so gorgeous.

I thought I was taking us on a short half-mile hike.

But I misunderstood the directions and it ended up being

more like a two miler. Oops.

The girls did great, though.

More chances for C to get her feet wet.

Our view from the top. Love it.

This is the Rough Ridge area of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We found blueberries to forage!

Look at all of these!

We also stopped at the Otter Falls, near Seven Devils, NC.

It was a great, short hike with a fun waterfall at the end.

Such a fun day with my girls.

Dinner with the missionaries.

Harry Potter day at the library with Ally and Finley.

We spent lots of time downtown.

C and I spent an evening at LeBauer park.

Can you see that snake poking his head up in the grass?

The Hunter's live on the lake now and had an open invitation 

to friends to come swimming once a week.

Awesome!

Sweat...

 Whitney and I got to go to a Pentatonix concert!

It was an outdoor venue....

And it rained...

But eventually it stopped and we got to enjoy the show.

We LOVE Pentatonix!

They're show was good, but a little more provocative

than I expected. Darn.

The girls worked REALLY hard to make this lemon

meringue pie from SCRATCH. The meringue was 

great, but the custard never set. :(

We did several puzzles.

Lots of time at the BoxCar Arcade downtown.

Winston-Salem Open.

Love watching pro tennis every year.

More fun water time at the Hunter's.

You can paddle out to a dock that you can jump off of.

A new family moved into our ward, Chad, Angie, Ember, Piper, and Bodin.

Caroline and Piper became instant friends!

The girls got passes to Celebration Station as part of

the summer reading program. We snuck in a quick visit 

before school started.

We played mini golf.

And the girls did bumper boats.

They got SOAKED.

There was a Mia Maid/Teacher activity in Salisbury that

I drove Whitney, Ember, and Spencer to.

While they were at the activity, Caroline, Sarah and I went to

Lazy 5 Ranch. It's a drive through animal park where you 

can feed the animals. I went years ago with the kids when

B and W were little, but hadn't been back in a long time. 

Sarah wasn't so sure about feeding the animals.

Caroline is such an animal lover that she

was in heaven right away.

Such a fun, exciting, unique place to visit.

Even though I had fun adventures with the kids and fun dates with Andrew, as the summer came to an end, I realized we'd hardly done ANYTHING as a whole family since we got back from the road trip. I was so sad. I really wanted to go to a Grasshoppers game. But the rest of my family members weren't excited about it. Boo. We decided to go out to a nice Japanese dinner instead.

Yum.