First Outing of the Summer

Last week, the kids and I drove up to Georgia to visit my parents.  We stayed for a week, and had a great time.  The six hour drive up, (and, of course, the six hour drive back), is difficult at best with our group.  Nathan doesn't sleep in the car, unlike most children.  He does not like to be confined to his seat, and he's very loud about his discomfort.  This, of course, makes everyone else in the car miserable.  And the car itself is not a good one for traveling.  A tiny Scion XA five speed, without cruise control, is not conducive to a comfortable six hour drive for anyone!  However, we made it and we had a great time while we were there. 
My parents have a beautiful front porch surrounded by gardenia bushes, and butterfly bushes.  We spent quite a bit of time out there since the weather was much cooler than it is here in Florida.  It's a great coffee drinking porch!  One morning, while we were sitting on the porch, I spotted a lizard poking his head out of one of the pipes on my moms wind chime.  I thought he was so cute!

Can you spot the lizard?

How about now?

Peek A Boo!

My parents live north east of Atlanta in a little town called Suwanee.  Suwanee is off of I85, one exit south of the Mall of Georgia.  The north east part of Georgia is the very southern part of the Appalachian mountain range.  There are a lot of beautiful places up there.  Water falls in particular.  We visited one water fall while we were there.  Tocoa Falls is actually on the campus of a small Christian College.  Most of the other water falls in that area are in State Parks.  Tocoa falls is beautiful!  If you've spent any time in north east Florida, something you will notice is that there are no rocks.  None.  Not one.  If you find a rock in north east Florida, it's been imported from somewhere else.  Rocks in north east Florida come in the form of sand.  That's it.  So even though we've only lived in north east Florida for not quite two years, we've sorely missed rocks.  I know that sounds strange, but if you are used to having rocks, and then you don't have them, you miss them!  I think half the beauty of Tocoa Falls was the rocks we got to climb on.  We had a blast climbing on the boulders and rocks at the base of the falls!  That is, until we saw a snake sunning himself on one of the rocks across the stream from us.  We figured if he was there, he probably had friends and relatives on our side of the stream.  Time to go.