We're Back...

We've been out and about for the last week, but we are back and I'm back to work for the Fall 2006 Semester.

Last Saturday, August 5th, we went to visit some moms and toddlers from my online "mommy message board". There are several of us who live within 3 hours of each other, so we get together every so often. It was a lot of fun and LJ had a great time playing with the other kids his age. The message board is for moms of kids born in November 2004, so all the kids are LJ's age. There were lots of toys and there was lots of room, so the kids had a really fun time playing together and the mommies had a fun time talking with each other.

After that we headed down to spend the rest of the weekend with SJ (our niece and LJ's cousin and first "Friday Companion"). She was kind enough to keep LJ for us while RJ and I celebrated our anniversary. We had a nice visit, swam in SJ's pool, ate out, watched Dora, named her frogs and fish (although I don't know if she'll keep the names), and other fun and relaxing things. Monday, we headed home to get reading for phase 2 of vacation.

Tuesday, we got the travel trailer out of storage and spent the rest of the day packing it for our trek to Mount Nebo State Park in Arkansas. We chose this location in hopes that the weather would be a tad bit cooler than it is here. According to the literature, "the temperature at the top of Mount Nebo is ten degrees cooler than Dardanelle (the city at the bottom of the mountain)". It must have been boiling hot in Dardanelle. While it was hot, it wasn't humid and there were no mosquitoes, so we felt pretty good. It took us a bit (say 3 hours) longer to get there than we thought it would, so it is a bit (say 3 hours) too far to go, but we liked it very much so we might just have to put up with a drive that is a bit too far.

We were 1 of 3 families at the campsite, so we pretty much had the park to ourselves. One was in a tent and one was in a pop-up. It is likely that there are more trailers there because you are warned not to take a trailer more than 24 feet long up the mountain. Our trailer is 21 feet long - and warning bells were going off in my head as we were going up the mountain. There are several switchbacks and "hair pin turns" that are rather steep in grade. At one point, they were one right after another and it was a bit scary. RJ had a great time analyzing our ascent and how he would do it differently next time. At 2 points, we lost traction on the back tires of his truck and (he tells me this later...I mean, I realized we lost traction, but I didn't know what he was thinking until he told me) he wasn't sure we would make it up. RJ says if it had rained or been wet at all, we wouldn't have made it. I guess it is a good thing we arrived on Wednesday because it did rain enough to wet the road on Thursday and Friday.

We spent our time relaxing, swimming at the pool, and riding bikes. We bought a bike trailer for LJ - one that RJ attaches to his bike and LJ sits in it as RJ rides him around. We weren't sure the LJ would like it, but he climbed right in and stared chanting, "CHOO CHOO" over and over again. I think he liked it just fine!

And, here we are back to the grind...laundry, grocery store, work, etc.