Final Days of Vacation

Our last few days of vacation were spent lounging! After our busy day in Nashville, we hung out at the trailer for most of Thursday. Nate did take the older 2 swimming while I stayed back with Toby so he could get a nap. But Thursday evening, when it cooled to a lovely 90 degrees, was one of the highlights for the kids when they got to do this...

And make These...


As you can see it was a huge success for this guy...


And This Guy...


I think they all had a good time just enjoying their Smores and "playing" in the fire! (While heavily supervised, I promise)


This is one of Drew's Favorite things... It's a boy thing, I'm sure of it!

We didn't hang out by the fire long, but the kids got to experience making their smores on vacation.

Then on Friday afternoon, again when it was too hot to do much else, we jumped in the car and headed over to Ft. Donelson, TN. It is a self guided tour to about 11 or so different sites from the Civil War Battleground. Lots of history. We saw a very nice video with details of the 3 day battle and then went on our way to visit some of the sights.

Here is the Confederate monument at Ft. Donelson.
Here the kids are inside one of the reconstructed sleeping quarters for the soldiers. The soldiers and slaves built over 400 of these for their sleeping quarters. After the surrender, the Federals burned them all down due to a measles outbreak.



This is a beautiful shot of the Confederates lower river batteries. From this site, the Confederates were able to defeat the Federals as they cruised up in their ironclad boats.
This was one of the most touching parts for me personally. Going to the National Cemetery and seeing tombstones like this one. 670 Union soldiers are buried here, and of them, 512 are unknown. The pictures in my head of the battles, and what remained are just heartbreaking, then to see that there were 512 unknown soldiers buried here, just confirmed what war looked like in the days of the Civil War.

And this place, the Dover Hotel is where the surrender took place. We were able to go inside and they showed a short video of what discussions prior to surrender may have sounded like with General Buckner and his staff, as well as what the discussion may have been upon the surrender to General Grant. An estimated 13,000 Confederate soldiers passed by here as they loaded the boats on the river to head North to the Prisoners of War camps in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Boston. It was said that they suffered greatly because they were ill prepared for the weather (I can relate here in Ohio, we are never prepared!)
Drew did not want to go with us on this outing. But after, when we asked him his favorite part of vacation, he stated it was the Civil War place. He bought a few packages of the little plastic war guys and has been playing with them a lot. I think it had a pretty big impact on him!

After our tour of Ft Donelson, and a stop at SONIC for Limeades to cool off from the 100+ temps, we headed back to start our cleaning up and packing for the trip home!

So Saturday morning, bright and early... well maybe early, it wasn't bright yet at 4AM, we loaded up and headed out! We hit the Ohio border around 11 due to a stop for breakfast, we stopped again for some lunch around 2 and were back home by 3 or so. (there is a one hour time difference, too!)

It was a very nice trip. We made lots of memories and had a wonderful, relaxing time!

God is Good!

Nashville Zoo

After our wonderful lunch in Franklin with Zach and Sarah and tour of Total Axxess Studio and visit with Wally and Donna and others there, we headed back for Nashville and a visit to the Nashville Zoo. We didn't know what to expect but knew we would have a wonderful time hanging out! It was hot, so we were afraid we may not be able to stay long, but then as we walked through the gates, we knew we would be fine! What a beautiful, wonderfully shaded zoo!

Here is a view of what we saw when we first walked in! We knew if it was all this beautiful and shaded, we'd be fine, and we were!

The one animal Toby wanted to see was the "montey". They were right inside, so that made it easy! He got a good show as a few of them were swinging around from branch to branch!

We were on our way to get the lay of the land. Unfortunately, we lost our maps about halfway through and missed seeing a few things like the elephants and giraffes, but I think we saw most everything else.

Taylor had a close encounter with a snake. She was the only one of the kids brave enough to get up close!


What a life!

ANACONDA!!! This thing was measured at 17 feet... 3 YEARS AGO! They said it is likely 19-20 feet now. And to think, after the dinosaur encounter, Toby wasn't scared of this thing. But it WAS behind the glass!


This had to be the creepiest looking thing there. The giant ant eater. Just down right Weird. One of those... what was God thinking moments! I'm sure there was a purpose for this thing to look like it does!


A cute photo of Nate and his "baby" Toby. He's sucking on one of those ring pops, but it looks like a binky! And he's sporting his new Zoo hat!!


I just can't get enough of when the two of them are off on their own, getting along so well. Other than the car ride home, it was a day full of sites like this!

I couldn't believe I got this photo! Katy would be proud! Have no idea exactly what it is, but hey, neat photo non-the-less!

The one entire section of the zoo was bamboo! It was amazing! I just kept touching it and marveling at all the bamboo! It was beautiful!

Drew had a good time playing on the jungle gym!

And here's Taylor exiting the mouth of the snake!


Nate had to have a fun photo as well! Like he would ever get this close to an alligator!

After our time at the Zoo, we headed into Nashville to go shopping for Katy, or try to at least. Here we were outside of Cotton Eyed Joes and Nashville Limited. Nate had to get a photo with his pal Elvis! It was a beautiful night to be walking around, but it started to get late, and dark, and you all know what happens then. The kids got a quick lesson on how to handle certain people when out in a big city.

We got to stop at Sonic on the way. Our first time, and it wasn't the best. The order was wrong, the food was cold, but the Limeade was AMAZING!! Worth the stop for sure. We may have to make another stop there tomorrow, and again Saturday on the way home!!!

All in all a WONDERFUL day!

God is Good

Adventure Science Center

Well our trip to Nashville was a BLAST!! It took us 2 hours to get there, and it was worth every minute of the trip! Our first stop was Adventure Science Center. We had planned about 3 hours and that was plenty of time. I'm sure the kids could have played all day, but I think they enjoyed every minute we were there!

This was the room we first walked into. It just had a lot of hands on "science experiments" that were kid friendly. Here, Drew is learning about trajectory. The blue ball is in the air, headed toward the catching net!
In the same area, the kids got to mess around with sound a little bit on this piano. Of course Taylor was all about playing on the piano!


The kids worked hard to pick up this nice red Fierro. Nate and I both laughed when we saw it and thought of Papaw Rudy. The kids didn't understand our reference, but any of our family will!

I thought this was just an amazing shot! As you can see, Drew is jumping off the slide on to what else, but a whoopee cushion! I'll leave it to your imagination what happened when he jumped on it, but let's just say he enjoyed it over and over again! There was an entire section on the body and the kids particularly liked all the stuff on digestion!

There was an entire section on space and astronauts. I'm not exactly sure what Drew was doing in this photo, but I thought it was hilarious that Toby was mimicking him!

This is a rather long video, but it is Taylor "Space Walking". She enjoyed it, but said her bottom hurt for a little while afterwards. i can't imagine why :)

This was the only dinosaur exhibit. One little section with a few automated dinosaurs! Let's just say...

Toby wasn't thrilled about them!

Here Nate and Taylor were trying to move a ball with their brain waves. Not exactly sure how it worked, but Nate's kept showing flat line... not sure what that meant :)

They had a big climbing/jungle gym thing that the kids really enjoyed! Toby worked hard to get across this rope bridge!


Here Toby was doing some sorting! He did such a great job sorting and naming the shapes. Something we've been working very hard on this last year!

Here are the kids in front of a brain. It was interactive as well!


Here is one last video we took as we were heading out. It was a green screen and you could pick your background! They had a lot of fun with this!

After our time at the Science Center, we hopped in the car and headed to Franklin to have lunch with a friend who used to work at our church. Zach and his wife introduced us to McDouglas Chicken! YUM!!! After lunch, Zach was kind enough to take us on a quick tour of the radio station he works at, where he works with Wally on Total Axxess. This radio show is broadcast back in Wooster on WVMC FM at 7PM each night! You should check it out if you haven't already! We had a quick encounter with Wally, who had to remark on Drew's TobyMac shirt and if you've ever heard Wally, you'll understand his fascination with Toby! It was a really fun little tour, one the kids won't soon forget, especially each night as we listen in to the radio show! Pretty cool little side trip!

God is Good!

Just for Katy!

Well, considering Katy has been a Titan's fan since, well, forever (prior to them being Titans) I figured it would only be fair that we stop and do some sightseeing on her behalf! So, here are the photos we took of LP Field for her. We had hoped to get into the team shop, but as you can see in some of the photos, they had chain link fence the entire way around the stadium. We tried to drive around a little and find some souvenirs for her, but for some reason, in Nashville, all you can find is music related stuff. We went into a few stores, and literally only found one Titans baseball cap. But we will keep looking as we are here!

Vacation Day #1 and HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Well, we made it!! I wasn't sure for a while, but we did! It turns out Garmin does know directions, we just didn't listen! We made a wrong turn, that took us a different way than we are used to, but it still got us here! We pulled in to our trailer at around 2AM, and the kids were wound up after being in the vehicle for 10 hours! They did a wonderful job on the trip! Very well behaved and very little fighting! When we pulled in, they were wired!! It took another hour to get them to settle down enough to fall asleep. Then Toby was a little "scared" but he did well once he was asleep.

Remember, they fell asleep at 3AM and guess what!!! Still up at 8AM!! Ready to go swimming. Mom and I had to run to town (30 minutes away) and get groceries, so we took off and did that, then it was too hot after lunch, so we promised them we would go about 4:00! Of course they were watching the clock, and we headed out promptly at 4! Here the kids are hiking down to the beach area and dad is riding his new bike along side them!

Toby was very excited about the sand, but as soon as he would get dirty, he was ready to jump in the water and clean off!

I don't think Drew left the water at all! Dad and Nate wanted to take Drew fishing today, but Drew wanted to swim first. So he spent a good 2 hours or so in the water and then announced... "I'm ready to go fishing"!

Who could pass up a photo op of dad and his kids on Father's Day? It took some coaxing to get Toby in front of the camera and out of the sand for a minute, but we did, and this was the best I could do!

Taylor practiced the art of skipping rocks, though the practice session didn't last long! She realized "it is hard" and gave up pretty quickly!

Dad was hanging with us on the beach for a while, then he started to get the itch to "get the right side of the boat wet" as he puts it. So he took off and just fished around the docks near the swimming hole, waiting for Drew to declare he was ready. So I snapped a few photos and just happened to get this photo of him releasing his catch. It "wasn't much" he said, but hey, the first catch of the trip!

So once Drew declared he was ready, the guys headed out for an evening on the water to celebrate Father's Day. They are gone as I type! Not sure how long Drew will last, but I think they will all have a great time no matter!

The temps were in the mid-90's today, but beautiful blue skies! Dad said the water temp was in the 80's so it was more like a hot tub than a refreshing swim, but it was fun and refreshing anyway!


Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there, and especially:
My Dad - Ron
Nate's Dad - Carson
Nate's Stepdad - Rudy
Grandpa Vince
Grandpa Richard
Grandpa Ermon
Michael, Tom, Jer, Jason and Mike (all the great dads of our 12 neices and nephews!)

God is Good!

Life with an 11 year old

So, this is just a funny I had to share...

We had a Garage Sale this weekend. Of course we were getting rid of a lot of the kids clothes that were outgrown. Taylor and Drew were also making vacation money from selling some of their things. Well, as some of Taylor's clothes were being carted away, she asked if I gave her credit for the sale. I told her "I'm the one that paid for the clothes." Her quick response, the response of a pre-teen, blew me away! She said to me "Yeah, but I'm the one that made them look good!"

That little stinker! She had me laughing, that's for sure! And I'd have to agree!! :)

God is Good!

Columbus Crew!!!!

Taylor got a package in the mail today! She had no idea what it was. Nate and I were expecting it, so we were prepared with the cameras as she opened it! Here is what she found!

An autographed Columbus Crew jersey and a photo. It's sweet to have an uncle that has connections, and loves his nieces and nephews so much! It was supposed to be a birthday gift, it just took a while to pull it together!

God is Good!

Last Days of School

Well, it's official! We have a 6th grader and a 2nd grader!! Another wonderful year for the Mills' kids! Yesterday, the elementary awards program was held. I was able to attend, and Taylor racked up several awards!! She got an award for being part of the Fine Arts Festival, volunteering in the cafeteria, participating in the Strings Orchestra, and for being on the Honor Roll all year! Here she is after receiving one of her awards!

And I also got to stick around for some of Drew's class party. I was at Taylor's Christmas party, so I spent the afternoon at Drew's End of Year party! The room mothers did a wonderful job! I snapped this picture of Drew before he knew I as there. He was working on his journal!


And today, even though Field Day got rained out, the kids finished their last day of school! I got home just in time to snap a few photos of them getting off the bus for the last time...

as a 5th Grader

And a 1st Grader!

Here is one final photo of the kids together on the last day of school...
And to be nostalgic, here is the photo from the first day of school!

They just keep getting BIGGER AND BIGGER!!

God is Good!