Southern Babies: Grandparents Day and Rapids

Do you think grandparents' day and rapids have anything to do with each other? You'll find out.

All week I meant to try and catch up. Then life happened. So where did I leave off? Oh yeah, I had just flown in from Connecticut.   Remember that weekend I totally surprised Callie for her birthday. That was fun.

It was a little hard getting back to work and school Tuesday morning. Having a Monday off always throws me off for the rest of the week. The best part of returning to school after Memorial Day - NO HOMEWORK!!!!!! We finished daily homework!! They both still had a project to turn in but no more daily math columns or spelling homework. Life instantly got easier that week! I'm not sure who was more excited, me or the kids!   It was my first year of doing homework with the kids. Drew has been in charge of homework the past two years. For the most part I liked being involved. I knew what they were learning. I felt out of the loop the last two years with what they were learning and what they knew or needed help with. I'm not going to lie and say it was always easy but we got through! I felt like I got to use that elementary education degree a bit this year!

Nothing exciting happened throughout the week. More playing outside, staying up a tad later and Will did get a haircut.

Friday started a very fun weekend for all the Southerns in our house. Friday was Grandparents Day in Lindy's class. She had to interview a grandparent, write up their answers, and then invite them to come talk to her class. The whole project was to learn about their grandparent growing up and for them to come in and talk to the class about the old days. If there was ever a more perfect project for ole Bob Southern, I couldn't think of it. This was so Bob Southern. Even Lindy knew that as she immediately chose GrandBob as her parent of choice. She interviewed him one weekend when he was up here and she wrote her answers up. The big day came where GrandBob got to come talk to her class for 15 minutes. That was the hardest part of the day - keeping GrandBob to 15 minutes!!! He could have been the only grandparent there that day and he could have talked all day! He did his 15 minutes on phones. He had some ancient phones and told stories of party lines.  The kid and their grandparent got to sit on a couch while the grandparent talked and Lindy ate that up. They said Lindy was pretty funny. I'm so glad Suzette was there to take pictures!   After the talk was over, they left and went and got lunch for everyone. They came back to school so they could eat with the kids. I went over and ate with them as well. We ate with Will and his friend Bowen first and then Lindy and her friend Amari came in about half way through. We took up a whole table in the lunchroom!  We always pick a day at the end of the school year to celebrate the kids' summer birthdays since they can't actually do it on July 30th.  I emailed the kids' teachers and only Will was able to do it on that Friday. I went ahead and brought doughnuts for his class to celebrate his birthday. I thought that would be a special treat to have GrandBob and Suzette there to celebrate his pretend birthday!  It was a fun day for the kids to have their grandparents there.  The fun didn't end there though.  GrandBob and Suzette went to visit Ellie and then they came back and picked the kids up from school and took them home to Charlotte! woohoo!   I bet old GrandBob and Suzette were exhausted that night. Old men get really exhausted. hee hee!

What did Drew and I do to enjoy our kid free evening? We ate leftovers, played a little tennis, and went grocery shopping. So exciting!

Our excitement happened the next day when we cashed in the birthday present I had gotten Drew in January. I got him tickets to the U.S. National Whitewater Rafting center in Charlotte.  No, the grandparents didn't go down the rapids, but Drew and I did. We got up and got down there at 9:30am. We figured out what we were supposed to be doing and what to do first and we headed there. Our first stop was the 100 ft high zipline.   It was my first time ziplining too. Go big or go home! It was really fun. You zipped down to one platform and then back on another one. We were going to do the ropes course next but it was so hot outside I needed a water break. I didn't want to pass out up on a ropes course. We ended up getting a water and snack break and then we got signed up for the whitewater rafting. I wasn't too excited about this but I did it and afterwards I wish I hadn't. It was scary!!! This Whitewater Rafting Center has a manmade river that professionals train on for the Olympics. It's a really cool place to see, watch and play.   We did our first ride on the Wilderness Course and it was okay. I survived. We did our second ride on the Wilderness Course and it was even better. I kind of enjoyed that. Next we headed for the Championship Course. I would have been fine staying on the Wilderness Course. We came about as close to tipping out our boat as you could get without tipping. Even the guide agreed we were about out. No one in the boat knew how we stayed in. I did not enjoy that championship course! We were supposed to go around one more time but for some reason all the rafts in front of us headed in and then our guide did too. We don't have a clue why but I was glad! I was so happy to get back on solid ground!! It was an adventure I don't want to do again! We grabbed lunch, cooled off and then watched others going down the Championship Course. In a 5 minute span we saw two whole boats tip as well as other single people fall out of boats. It was crazy. If I had seen that I would not have gone.   No way!! It was an awesome spot to sit and watch some action though and to be thankful it wasn't us!! We ended our day out on the Catawba River kayaking. It was super calm and pretty out there which was nice. It was super hot out too though. We were out about an hour before heading in.   We finally ended up leaving at 4:30pm. Drew could have done more but I was spent. It was crazy hot out and I was shocked how much it took out of you. I wasn't prepared for that actually.  We drank lots of water but I finally had to get some sugar to get some energy back in me during the day.   We finally left and headed to GrandBob and Suzette's to collect the kids. We showered, ate dinner and finally headed home.

Sunday we had church and then Will had a birthday party. I dropped him off and met the other two leaders for VBS shopping. I got Will at the end of the party and took him home before heading out to do a little more VBS shopping.   We were all exhausted after a busy and fun weekend.

Lindy got to introduce Bob. She told everyone he was old!