Kayla started 1st grade today!! I can't believe it. this is more painful than when she started Kindergarten. I had to hold back the tears today. She was so ready to go back. she is very excited about learning and starting big kid work. Here are some pics. of her getting ready to walk out the door for us to head out for our first school day this year! Miss Ingalls is her teacher this year. She is so excited to be in her room.

On a side note Madison started PRE-K today!!! Yep...she is 3 1/2 years old and the school promoted her to pre-k...said she was too advanced for their 3 year old program!!! Wow...my little brainyack!! They said she won't get everything in pre-k this year...but being she will have to be in it for 2 years (because of her age) she will really get a lot out of it by the time she is going to Kindergarten

wwwwwhhhhoooooo.....what a party he had! Another blast! I just hope he remembers everything I do for his birthdays...=) HA HA HA HA.....we had over 50 people here...Karaoke going on...Parkers catered....Kenny (Jerry's cousins husband and Cory their son) had out their guitars and were singing and playing songs. It was a really good time. Of course I had to add a couple pics. of the boys who drank too much (Jackie.... and or course Jerry) The first couple pics are of Jerry getting his cool tee-shirt from Sam. The back said...Jerry is 18 years old...with 22 years of experience! LOVED THE DAY...it was a good time....

we went back to Dollywood for our last day. We had such a good time and was so impressed with the park that we went back again. The girls had a blast. Here are some pics of the last day.... again they come in as jibberish so I can't tell you about the pics but I am them doing some poses at Dollywood ...along with Jerry being silly in the coffin...told him that I was going to put that up for his 40th birthday part last week!

Cades cove is in the gatlinburg area of TN. absolutely beautiful!! we saw a wild baby bear running....saw a HUGE buck...Jerry was dying to have his gun. We let the girls play in a real mountain stream. It was really a great trip. The girls were amazed by nature. They found a lot of enjoyment in just spending the afternoon in the country and doing some nature watching. again...pictures are jibberish... but there should be a pic of the baby bear...a dear...and the girls in the mountain stream!

okay...finally getting pics. up on the blog...but it is messed up or something...because the post when I type it shows a whole bunch of jibber jabber and no pics...but when you look at the preview the pictures are there. UH.... anyway..here are some pics...can't really comment on them because not sure in what order I put them up...but these are from splash country when we went a couple weeks back to pigeon forge....LOVED IT!

We spent day two at Dollywood. It is by far THE best amusement park we have been to! The lines were very short, the rides were perfect....there were enough rides for ALL of us to ride. Madison only had to sit out 2 rides that Kayla was able to ride. Jerry and I didn't do the big upside down rides but to be honest....we were just as happy not doing them. The girls had a blast. The park was clean and the people were super friendly...Jerry and I said we would come back here before Busch Gardens or Kings Dominion!!! To be honest I think it was better than Disney...just because we were able to have family fun and not be in huge crowds and worried to death about where the kids are...the longest we had to wait for a ride was about 10-15 minutes. If you have not been here I highly suggest you consider it a trip for your family!

for some reason I can't get the pics up....I will upload those later...tomorrow we are off to splash country

This is a view from our balconey of the resort.


Here are the girls eating in the dinning room
the view of Seiverville from our balconey
Kayla posing on the balconey

We got to Fairfield today. Took us about 8 hours but we stopped for breakfast and lunch...and the girls did an excellent job in the car!!! We were so proud of them....we only had to ask them once to calm down and that was about 15 minutes from the resort.