Monday, November 24, 2008

Pictures with Grandma

This year I got smart for Christmas. Normally we get a nice picture of the kidlets to give to the Grandparents. Well, this year I had a stroke of inspiration, why not a picture of the kidlets with their grandparents? Genius! And since we are here in Ohio visiting it's even a plan I can pull off.

So, here's my darling cuties with their Grandma Van Orman.
Grandma loves her girls. Everyone tells her that Princess reminds them of her. They are both very beautiful and strong individuals. Little Miss loves to give her Grandma smiles that remind her of Grandpa Van Orman. Those smiles are very special to her.

Grandma waited quite a while for these handsome boys to show up in her life. She was 71 years old when Gameboy was born. He was her first newborn biological grandchild. All of the boys love spending time with Grandma. I'm so glad that when they were little they got to go over to her house often.
Thanks Mom for being such a good mother to me and teaching me how to be a good mother to them.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

N 36° 08.604 W 086° 46.525

One our favorite things to do as a family is to go geocaching. Geocaching?” Click the link for a great article about it on Wikapedia.

Last Friday we went to what is now our favorite cache ever, Tour Of Historic Fort Negley. This cache rocked. Lots of fun and adventure, plus Mommy could take lots of pictures. “Because you’re going to blog this, aren’t you Momma,” said Princess.

This cache was extra fun because it was a multicache. We had multiple locations we needed to find and collect information from in order to find the cache at the end of our search. NASA Guy and the kids getting started.

The boys loved jumping around on these concrete pointers. I wish I had a better camera so I could have caught them in flight. Make sure you check out the visitor's center in the background. They have a really neat film about Nashville's place in the Civil War and some cool interactive displays.


The signage for this historical site was really fun. Both for peeking through and for learning more about the Civil War. Great for some hands on Home school education.

And while we're at it we might as well get some more P.E. time in, so ya'll just run on ahead.

Gameboy, true to his name, found that a stick and a hedge apple can be quite entertaining .

NASA Guy gets some help from Cowboy and Princess to locate the next piece of information we need. Little Miss was happy to supervise everyone from her chariot.

Fort Negley is often used by Civil War reenactors, and we were lucky enough to be there while a group was setting up. The kids were fascinated by all the attention to detail. We really wish that we could have come back to see them the next day. Maybe another time.

Being major history buffs we loved reading all the signs. Who ever put all the information together did a really great job. And the site is really well maintained, no graffiti, etc.
Looking in to downtown Nashville - then and now.
The Union soldiers who manned this fort would be glad to see that Old Glory is still waving here.


Just the Saturday before this NASA Guy and the kidlets had gone geocaching with out Little Miss or myself. NASA Guy had wanted to check out another Civil War battle site. Peach Orchard Hill was the site of some of the bloodiest fighting during the Battle of Nashville. We thought it was really cool to find information on their last cache while searching for this cache.


Yes, I labeled that picture wrong. Oh,well, you still get the idea.

And look, there in the background, could that be the Adventure Science Center?

Here are a few shots of the reenactors as it was getting dark. The soldier to the left of the tent is stuffing his mattress with hay. Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite.

The ladies with the group were really sweet. She cracked me up because she really has down that vintage picture expression. She said that the reason so many people didn't smile in pictures back then was because they had bad teeth. Who knew?

It was a great day. I'm glad that we decided to find this cache. Wonder what will find next?

I So Smart

Check out our cast of characters at the bottom of my blog. Just keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling to the very bottom. Traveling Longhorns had posted her cute family at her site. Unfortunately our family was to big to fit in a regular post, so I put our gadget at the bottom. Maybe some day I'll play around more and try some other arrangements.