Daddy, Look He Has a Jet Pack!

   Our last few days have resembled more normal family life. I think we have all relaxed realizing that we just need to wait until the closing on our house and do not need to stress over looking for a house. Our apartment is getting more "inhabited" look although we still sit on folding chairs and have boxes stacked up in random corners. We actually bought a nice TV (of course, it is sitting on top of a very fancy TV stand made out of cardboard boxes). Stevie has been asking for Wii games (he has not played any for at least 2 months now) and the kids can watch Netflix on it too. We refuse to move furniture or anything heavy again and that is why we sit on folding chairs. The first thing we are going to do after we close on the house is to buy 2 recliners and have them delivered.

   Hannah found the wooden pieces that came with our Handwriting Without Tears program. She loves making letters with them but on Thursday she got more creative.

She created a person and said her name was Hannah. 

It looks more like a monkey if you asked me.

   We had to turn the heat on on Thursday night and on Friday morning we woke up to fresh 26 degrees. 

What is this stuff?

Crunchy ... cold ... 

... and pretty yummy!

   Since it was freezing outside, we decided to plan an indoor activity and went to Memorial Park Community Center swimming. The pool is heated to toasty 83 degrees and it was very pleasant. After our swim, Stevie saw an older man with an oxygen tank on his back in the men's locker room. He had to loudly  point him out to Dad - "Look, he has a jetpack!" Well, at least he was not commenting on the size of someone's behind or the amount of body hair (as he has done in the past). Hehe. 

   Saturday turned out to be a beautiful fall day with cooler temperatures following the cold front that just passed through this area. We had 3 pieces of land on our list to look at and we also wanted to drive to Shady Valley. Shady Valley is a small community just over the ridge from our future home. We have driven through there before and loved it. 

   As we drove through the Cherokee National Forest, we noticed patches of white snow here and there. It stayed cool enough in the valleys that the snow stayed on the ground. It was not much, but it was the second time in Hannah's and Stevie's life to see snow so it was exciting for us. We stopped at the parking lot where the Appalachian Trail crosses highway 91 (just about 15 minutes driving time from our future home) for some snowy fun:

   We went to a play ground on Sunday afternoon but did not stay long because Stevie fell and scratched the palm of his hand. It was not serious but pretty painful as he scratched off a pretty good chunk of skin. When we got home, we cleaned it out and put a large band-aid over it. Stevie told us that we should never ever go to that playground again because we know he likes to run and he got hurt while running there. 

   With that in mind (and Stevie's hand taped up with a band-aid and duct tape), we went back on Monday. This time with Stevie's bike and Hannah's tricycle. This was the first time without training wheels away from the apartment. Stevie did really well and rode his bike on the paved trail. Hannah rode her tricycle and played on the playground. Afterwards, we went to do our laundry and then headed home. I baked an apple pie and the kids got to eat some before going to bed.