Tons of pictures and critters (yuck!)

We got home last night about 9:00ish. It was a great trip. I really love Gatlinburg. It has increasingly become one of my favorite spots. I love how local it is, I love the beauty of the area, I love the shops, everything. It is like you get the best of all worlds. I have never really pictured myself being the type of person that would want to visit a place over and over again. I mean there are so many places in this world to visit. Sometimes though places get in your heart. I think Gatlinburg is becoming that for me. Florida is one of those places also I guess.

Here are some recent pics.......

Leah came home to her room looking like this:

And this........

I think Leah and Aunt Chrissy have a little thing going. Something about $2.00...... I think this will be going on for a while.

While in Gatlinburg we took the kids to this go cart/ride place. They had lots of kiddie rides. Everyone had fun. The little kids really wanted to ride this train, but I think after about 2 loops they were less than impressed.

Daddy and Maddie swimming in one of the beautiful river mountains.

Asher was fussy/tired at the amusement park, but he managed to crack his gorgeous grin a couple times.

Logan and Ethan at the river.

Gee can be so cheesy sometimes. I love this silly smile though!

You can't tell real well in the picture, but check our Leah's short hair. We cut off a good 5 or 6 inches before we left.

Asher's looking not too impressed here. Again, he was very tired. It seemed that much of our travels were during his nap time.

MaMa and Asher.

Eating breakfast at our very cool vacation home.

Rock jumping.

A hot day + no swimsuits = little girlies in their undies.

Asher can pull himself up on everything these days. This is how I found him after a nap one morning last week. He was quite proud of himself!

Leah has become quite the baker. She is starting to really know her way around the kitchen. I think one of her favorite things to eat though is your basic box of brownies. She fixed a batch last week and before I knew it, this is what the pan looked like. I guess she doesn't care for the edges (my favorite part). Plus, look at that massive piece. I swear that I try and teach them portion control!

So our barn is definitely coming down. Here is a picture from like a week ago. It is even flatter now.

Here's the loft before:

And, the barn:

I am both sad and happy to see it go.

Now to the critters.....

Living in the country you expect certain things. Critters are one of them. Field mice are a common thing around here. We had them bad once at our last house and I was determined that when we moved here I would never let them get out of hand. I have been pretty successful with the use of mouse poison bars. I always keep them out of reach of the kids, usually just down in our basement. A couple weeks ago I noticed what appeared to be mouse droppings in our living room. Very gross. For 4 or 5 days straight I cleaned them up and before we left for Canada I re-poisoned our basement. I came home to more dropping, in the exact same place as before. Unfortunately the droppings weren't green (indicating that they had eaten the green poison) and that baffled me a bit (this poison always seems to work). I decided to put a poison bar out right where the droppings were before we left for Gatlinburg. I check it last night when we got home and was very surprised at what I saw. There were 3 baby bats in our living room. Apparently from the Chimney (which is where the droppings were) One was dead, but two were very much alive. They were almost cute. Ryan threw the alive ones outside. It would be great if they were old enough to survive, although I doubt they will. They eat tons of mosquitos.

So, I went to bed thinking that this critter problem had been taken care of. Well, I woke up to more dropping this morning, in the same place. Now I don't know what to do. Maybe the mama bat? If so, how is she getting into our living room? And bats fly, why would their only be droppings in that one little spot beside that chimney. Ryan said we should start our wood burning up and that should kill anything in there, so we will probably try that soon.

Julie