Gymnastics!

So Oliver started his gymnastics at the Y a couple of Fridays ago, he has now been twice. It is such a trip to watch him. He pretty much just runs around, climbs things, jumps on things and learned to walk on the balance beam last Friday. And then, every now and then, he'll pause to dance to the music!

There is a big foam block pit that the kids can jump into.....so far Oliver has absolutely NO interest in being in the pit. I think it unnerves him :) There is a mini slide that he likes to slide down but it ends in the pit....so the several times that he has gone down the slide, he wants me to pick him up out of the pit IMMEDIATELY! Maybe he'll like it soon.

So far, no pictures, I am too busy running around after him but hopefully I can get a few soon! :)

Labor Day Weekend

We had a pretty nice weekend....it started early on Wednesday when Mom, Oliver, Boz & Baxter headed up to Blowing Rock. Owen and Dad followed separately on Thursday afternoon/evening. We had nice weather, although a little unseasonably warm but nice nevertheless. I even got a chance to head over to the outlets and did a little fall shopping for me and Oliver and Mom got a couple things, too :)

What we saw Thursday morning when we woke up.....2 fawns right below the house!

Friday morning we went over to Moses Cone Park and walked around for a little bit. It was nice weather and Oliver got the chance to run around a little bit....

Dennis and Esther came up on Saturday afternoon and we had a nice visit with them which included biking 17 miles on the Virginia Creeper Trail on Sunday. It was really fun! We had great weather and it was a pleasant trail mostly through the woods (and I didn't get sunburned, woohoo!). There were actually a lot of people on the trails (duh, Labor Day weekend) and that made it a bit crowded so I would definitely recommend it but not on a holiday weekend! We actually saw several accidents, including one woman who went off the trail down a serious hill complete with rocks and trees, she was fine, nothing broken, just bumped her head but she was lucky she didn't get hurt worse. There were idiots on the trail not being respectful of other bikers but there were more great people than the bad.

Oliver was pulled behind Owen in a buggy and I think for Owen this made things a bit more complicated and the safety of it made him a bit nervous but Oliver passed out just a few minutes in and got a pretty decent nap in! We stopped about 12 miles down the mountain at a "cafe" and had lunch (I was starving!) and then had just 5 more miles to bike after lunch. It was tons of fun!

Owen, Oliver & I headed back to Charlotte right after biking because Owen's parents were going to come down the next day, Monday. Oliver was very excited to see Nana and Big Da and had a very nice visit! We are going to get to see them again when we go up for Owen's birthday on Sunday.....we'll also get to meet Oliver's new cousin, Tilly! Charles Robert and Michelle have made their way to North Carolina to live!

Hummingbird Festival

A couple weekends ago we went to the Hummingbird Festival at Reedy Creek Nature Center. It was pretty neat but we only saw one hummingbird. I thought that there would be more but we did get to see one that was banded and then released. They didn't throw the bird up (like you see in movies) and let it fly away, rather, she just opened her hand and let the bird sit in her palm until he was ready to fly away (or, realized that he was free to fly away!).

We did get to see some "predators of hummingbirds" - tarantulas, frogs, snakes.....Oliver was fascinated by the tarantulas :) We finished off our little outing by letting the kid run around on the playground.....