Summer's Last Hurrah

We got invited to go to Tennessee for the weekend (one of Robert's graduate student's in-laws live on a lake there). So after 1 1/2 days to unpack from CO, do laundry, and repack - we headed out.

Some other friends came up as well. They have a girl, Avery, about a year younger than Logan. Logan and Avery love being together - we get him excited to go to church and nursery by saying Avery will be there. When Logan saw Avery he said "I love you" and gave her a hug and leaned in for a kiss. He isn't too free with unsolicited "I love you"s and yes, I was a bit jealous, but I digress.
We all had a blast. Bud and Lisa have a great house. They have 4 dogs and Brian (Robert's graduate student) and his wife brought up their 3 dogs -we left Izzy home. The kids loved having all the dogs around and played and swam with them all weekend - I wish they played with Izzy as much. Avery and Logan played all the time. This is some blanket game where they would run around holding ends of the blanket, usually one running faster than another, jumping off the step down into the living room.
The food was plentiful and SO good!
The days were spent at the lake, on the boat, jumping continuously off the dock, swimming, canoeing, fishing, going out on waverunners, etc. Natalie thought for sure she would be able to push Joey off the dock - even got help from Alyssa and Rachel. They never pushed him in, but everyone who tried to push him in sure got wet! Robert finally got him when he was distracted pushing Rachel in.
You had to be careful jumping off the dock - 1 to 3 dogs were sure to be joining you! Logan didn't like the water too much, but put him on a boat (especially if Avery was also going for a ride) or waverunner and he was happy.
Natalie got out a floaty and helped one of the dogs relax a bit while she ferried her around.Alyssa got a chance to try out water skiing - but the skies were too big, so she tried out the knee board and did great. I wasn't on the boat when she went out, but I'm going to get pictures from my friend to post later. The kids wore themselves out everyday, and stayed up late playing. The early morning fishing paid off for Robert when he landed a 22 1/2 inch large mouth bass. That might have made the trip for him - he was texting everyone!
Natalie got a chance to go see their horse, help take care of it, and even got to ride it (the camera battery ran out before Natalie got to ride the horse, so that will have to wait to be posted until I get a copy of them).

Avery found the perfect place for the drive home - she was not thrilled when she had to move to her car seat in the other car.

On the way home we stopped by a place called "Goats on the Roof." It was a fun place.

There were different places where you could send food up for the goats to eat. Below is one that you bicycle to get up the can of food up.

The goats knew the food was coming, and sometimes didn't event wait for it to get all the way up and dump out.

They also had a country store with yummy samples and where we got some snacks for the rest of the ride home.

Now with just a couple of weeks before school we are trying to get into some sort of schedule so the 6am wake-up won't be too much of a shock.
We've had an awesome summer!!!
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