Farmers Market

The local farmers market is stocked to the brim with good stuff on Saturdays, so we thought we'd try it out on a Tuesday and get some inspiration for dinner. I got some pretty flowers and some zucchini bread, but other than that the highlight was the water fountain.









I felt like a bad mom for not bringing the sunscreen (or the swimsuit), but I am still learning as I go. It was definitely a nice reprieve from a take your breath away hot day!

Imaginations at Play

There is this kid place in Buford called "Imaginations at Play". It is next to a wonderful Italian restaurant that Bryce drools over and from time to time we have speculated about what's inside. I decided to check it out online, and it looked like a very cool place to go on a hot summer day. On the car ride over I asked Charlotte is she had brought her imagination with her, and she said "Yup, got it". The rest of the day she kept saying "got my maginatin". It is a big room with a whole bunch of stations set up for kids to play and let their creativity run wild. Charlotte really loved it!

This was a big bathtub full of water toys, and you got to put on a waterproof gear:





Charlotte's favorite thing, next to popsicles, are bubbles so when the tub starting shooting out bubbles she was ecstatic!


I'll never understand why big kids love baby toys.

This was a huge tree in the middle of the room with musical instruments to play inside it:




A vet center:


Choo-choo Trains


Grocery store with check out:


Huge sand box:


And a green screen that showed them in movie scenes:


They also had an art station where you could paint, stamp, color....

The girl who cried bug

Charlotte is usually pretty good in the mornings. We used to wake up to her crying, but throughout the summer she has gotten a lot better at imaginative play so she will spend some time in her crib playing with her stuffed animal before she begs to be out. We can hear her talking in there, but those few extra minutes of laying in bed are blissful. This morning however, she must not have wanted to use her imaginative play time because instead of happy giggles I heard "a bug! a bug! a bug!". Bryce goes running in there to rescue her from whatever bug is terrorizing her and as soon as he opened the door she started cackling. I guess she has figured out how to get us up a little sooner!

Duck Calling

This class that I agreed to teach is exhausting. It is one thing to be up in front of students all day, it is an entirely different beast to be up in front of teachers ALL day...you know the adults that actually pay attention in class! I would miss the time with Charlotte so much during the day that I would ignore the urge to come home and crash on the couch and take her somewhere special instead. I gathered up all the bread I could find and we headed out to the big lake to feed the ducks. We actually had to walk around awhile to find some and we unloaded a grocery bag full of bread on like 6 ducks. As soon as our bag was empty, they swam away and Charlotte quacked at them and stayed to play on the pier. About five minutes later a swarm of ducks and geese landed in, too many to even count. The other ducks must have tipped them off but it was too late because we had already given all the food away.


6 very full little duckies

one beautiful little girl

she has learned to jump with two feet, and practices all the time

how did I get so lucky?!





Seriously, this is just the start of the gaggle that came begging.

Many Faces

The many faces of Charlotte.....

5 & 10

We had such a good dinner at 5 & 10 in Athens tonight. Bryce first heard about this restaurant when it made the AJC's pick for best dinner in Atlanta. Chris and Andrea have been there before and raved about how good it was, so we met with them for a nice adults only dinner out. They have a regular menu that they use every day and then they have a "prix fix" menu that they change weekly with an appetizer, entree, and dessert for one price. I ordered off the regular menu and Bryce ordered off the fixed menu and we both could not have been happier. Everything was delicious. It was just my kind of food. Nothing too challenging, names I know, and flavors I enjoy. We can't wait to go back!

The customary dessert shot:

Peach cobbler


Chocolate nemesis cake. Oh so worth every bite.

Puppet Show

I took Charlotte to the puppet show at our local library. We got there about 20 minutes early to beat the crowd but then we had to fill 20 minutes with sitting quietly in a library so we didn't lose our seat. If we had been even five minutes later we definitely would have been standing so I grabbed the nearest book and we hunkered down. This is definitely a popular outing, there were a ton of kids there. Charlotte wasn't so sure about the puppet show at first. I tried to tell her it was like watching TV but she just looked at me like I was crazy. Mainly, I don't think she liked the crowd. She did sit still through the whole puppet show though, and all day long kept talking about "sock puppets" and the pigs (from the show) so it must have made an impression on her. The plays were so cute and funny though so we will certainly be going back.






The 30 seconds that she sat on the floor I grabbed a shot of her...the rest of the time she was clambered up in my lap with her arm around my neck.