Laundry Day and the Ijams Nature Center

Last Sunday Maddie had to earn her keep by accompaning me to the Laundromat to wash her sheets. She was a pretty good helper, especially with the basket on wheels!

Entertaining herself with the ipad!

Don't worry, the day started to look up, after the laundry, we hit up McD's playplace and the Ijams Nature Center. I was hesitant to go to the Nature Center because I thought it'd be pretty boring, but it was gorgeous! And they even had a kids area with a play cabin!

Maddie got on this turtle's back and said "I need a rope!" She's definitely a cowgirl at heart!

Our humble abode!

By request.... Here are some photos of the interior of our new "pad!"

The "Kitchen"

The "Office"

The "Living Room"


The "Master Suite"

Maddie's Room!

We are actually really enjoying living in our great big 5th wheel. Sometimes it's a little close quarters, but it only takes about 5 minutes to clean from one end to the other, so that's a major plus!

Happy Birthday Crafting

Gigi's birthday was last week, so Maddie and I put on our crafty hats and made her a gift. This is not my strong suite, so I'm fairly proud of our product. If anyone wants to repeat this loveliness, I suggest checking out the "original" on the Bringing Up Bug and Bee blog on my list.

Presenting Fall Hands!

At first, Maddie wasn't sure about what I was doing to her hands, but she soon discovered that finger painting is super fun! We started out pretty neat and clean with it, then things went down hill.

The mess was totally worth it, though. Maddie still asks if we can do "hand prints" almost every day!

Treasure it - When we can!

Lately, the word is "Attitude!"

A while back I told Kristi, I was going to rip off her "treasure it, tuesday" idea, but I haven't put it into practice, obviously. We're kicking this off on a Sunday and I'm going to try to do it as often as possible! No promises, though.





Maddie is Miss Independent these days. I hear "I do it!" at least 100 times a day. Lately she even wants to tie MY shoes. I usually get them back by telling her, "no, I do it!"





She also loves to climb on anything, chairs, ladders, tables, furniture. Once she gets on something, stands up really straight with her arms in the air and says, "I tall!"


She knows how to shake hands with people and she usually says, "How are you? Nice to see you."




At night, she's lately taken to telling me "Bye, Bye, Mommy! Daddy read to me." The first time that made me sad, but I will admit that John is a more entaining reader and usually keeps reading until I have to poke my head in and tell them both its time to go to sleep.



Whenever she wants to do something, she always says, "Come on, Mommy! Let's go, Mommy!" or my other absolute favorite. She asks for it a million times in a row, like "playground, playground, playground, playground...." Then, we I say, you want to go the playground? She say, "OK!" like, "What a great idea, mom!"

Knoxville Zoo

We knew from our summer visit here that the Knoxville Zoo was a "must do" on the list, so we are now official members. The membership paid for itself if we went to the Zoo twice, and so far we've been 5 times, so it was definitely a good decision! Maddie loves it and always asks to go to the Zoon!!

During our first trip there, we never made it to the Kid's Cove, so we were excited to find goats and sheep that you could brush, turkeys, bunnies, a big slide and "mountains" to climb.

I also have to give the Knoxville Zoo a double thumbs up in the cool department because a lot of the exhibits have these tunnels that look like logs, so you can go "into" the animals habitat. This one is for the praire dogs....

And this giant one is for the bears. They even put snacks down at the end to try to lure the bears close to the window. So far, we've not gotten close though. They are usually climbing on top of the tunnel when we're inside. It's still cool, though!

"Hatching" out of egg in the Kid's Cove

Officially on the Road!

We officially started "life on the road" Sept. 30th. Maddie was very excited to see Daddy and thought the new camper was super cool. Her favorite place is the top bunk, "fishing" for Rowdy. On a funny note, before Maddie got there, I bought her new, very cute, Owl bedding from Target and got the wall decals to match. I spent some (maybe not a lot) of time putting the stickers up, thinking she'd love them. And the first night, she told me that the owl was scary and she wanted him to leave. Hilarious! I put him in the bathroom instead and she's ok with that, but every night, if I leave the door open on accident, she tells me to shut it because the owl with get out. I guess she knows they are nocturnal!

On the first day, we found the Bounce House. So far anytime we've gone to these places, Maddie has been a little timid and I always end up wondering why I brought her there, but this time, she just took off and climbed, bounced and slid like a big girl! It was awesome!

Snow Hats and Bubble Baths

In the couple of days between putting everything in storage and getting to Knoxville, we stayed at our favorite home away from home, Momo and Mop's house. One morning, I was trying to get Maddie dressed and she put her shorts on her head and called it her snow hat. Pretty funny and she wore it there for at least 30 minutes. I just kept thinking that if I had an actual hat for her to wear I doubt it would last a minute.

She also discovered in recent weeks to joys of a bubble bath. (She's a girl after my own heart!) Too bad there are mostly RV showers in her immediate future!

Final Days at Gold Yarrow

Yep. We moved - again. Since Daddy is still working in TN, and our lease was ending, we decided to put everything in storage and hit the road! In our last few days on Gold Yarrow, in addition to packing up, we had a little fun.

I took Maddie to Inflatible Wonderland and when she saw this, she said, "Daddy!" I thought that was pretty cute!

She is way in to Hide-N-Seek these days. Here she's hiding in a giant bush outside the mall.

Where's Maddie?

I thought this was pretty cute. I noticed her door was wide open one night and when I went in to check on her, I found Rowdy keeping her company.

It became a habit in the last few weeks for Maddie to wake up in the middle of the night and get in bed with me. No matter how far over I started her off, by morning, this was as much space in our KING SIZE bed as I had to sleep in!

With Kenedy and Hadyn manning the garage sale/bake sale table where we were disposing of most of our wordly goods we had no use for!

We squeezed in one more visit with Blake and got to see one game of Bradys!

Maddie loves her cousin!