Joy School

I am sitting here at 11 am typing this blog post in complete silence except for the clicking of computer keys. Can you tell I'm a little excited for some morning silence? Grace started Joy School this morning! (And Ruby is sleeping - in fact probably sleeping the best morning sleep ever because there's no 3 year old outside her door making lots of noise.) She was so excited to go to school like Daddy. There are 6 kids in our group and every week we rotate the teaching amongst the mothers. I am a little nervous to teach, but excited to learn how to be a better teacher. I think it's Grace's dream come true to have kids to play with for sure at least 2 days a week at school. She sure is a social girl! She even got to bring her Baby Tiana for show and tell today. I am so proud of my big girl!

Cuteness

My cute, clean girl and her hot daddy

Road Trip!: Destin, FL

We had one week between the end of Rob's internship in Louisville and the start of his second (and final!!!!) year of MBA school, so we decided to do a little camping at the beach. Sounds beautiful right? Well, it was in Florida, so wrong! Ha! Despite warnings (thanks, Erin!) we decided to head to beautiful Destin for a few days. It was a pretty long trip down, around 9 hours, but the girls were awesome in the car. Grace watched Tangled over and over and over again. The whole way. It was really cute, because sometimes she'd sing along to the songs (she had headphones on so we got to listen to our own thing). We stopped at Cracker Barrel for lunch. We're becoming more Southern by the minute. Aunt Leslie, if you're reading - I think of you every time we go to Cracker Barrel :)

We got down to Destin. Beautiful white sandy beaches and blue water. Heaven! Until, that is, you step out of your air conditioned car. So it was hot, but nothing we didn't think we could handle, but that could have been because there was a storm blowing in, which apparently happens every day there. That, and it was after 6, so the sun was setting - that helped too. After the storm blew through, it got hot again and we didn't really sleep. The next morning I ran to Wal Mart to get us an extension cord and a fan so we could survive the next night in the tent (gotta love hookups!). We headed down to the beach, but it was windy (more storms) and the red warning flag was up for dangerous surf. By the time we headed back to camp for lunch, they had closed the beach due to all the storms running all the nasties out to sea. Bummer! This is apparently only the 3rd time in 6 years this has happened. What terrible timing! We were dying on land though, so we headed out in the air conditioned car to find some cooler entertainment. That led us to Gator Beach (which is really a pond under a tourist trap restaurant that has over 100 gators).



We fed the gators:

Just kidding! We love you Ruby!


But we really did feed the gators:




And rode the gators:

And Rob even acted nutty enough that he was chosen to get to hold a gator!


We were planning on staying three nights, but with the beach being closed, we cancelled the third night and headed back the next day (after a much better sleep, thankyouverymuch fan!). That night we had a crazy storm that lightning and thundered in our tent (almost!) and rained so hard and blew. It was pretty crazy to be that close to nature during a storm like that!

The ride home was looooooong again, but the girls were amazing for have done it two days before! Not the best camping trip, but one that we'll look back on and laugh about. What an adventure!

girlies, an impromptu photo shoot

The other day we took some photos of our little girlies in the backyard
The many faces of Grace and Ruby

Swimming with Friends

We loved having a pool all summer and especially having our friends come to swim with us!

Grace and Riley - too cool for school with their cute sunglasses on!

Lakai, Shanah, Ruby, me, Grace, Britney and Ben and Ben and Ruby

We were so lucky to have such great friends in Louisville to play with!

Road Trip!: Berea, KY

A few weeks back we took a little day trip to Berea, KY. It is the Folk Art and Craft capital of Kentucky. That wasn't the draw for us, but it sure was fun to look around.

We had a fun time walking around the shops and funny sculptures and Ruby napped when she could.


We also got the newest addition to the family, Louis (pronounced Louie - like Louisville, hence the name!), here. We sure do love our little steel doggy!

Th reason we went out to Berea is because my great-great-great grandfather, John G. Fee, a preacher, started Berea College here. In a time of slavery in this country, John fee believed in equality for all and education for all and took a stand. He created the first interracial and co-ed college in the South. It's a really neat and beautiful school. To this day, students can only attend if they have financial need (if the family makes more than $50k, then the student is automatically denied admission). Also, the students there do not pay tuition. The school has a very large endowment, and the students work to keep the school running (they don't get paid very much, it's mostly to "pay" towards their tuition). I am really proud of my amazing ancestors who stood up for what they believed in.

Here I am with my G3-grandfather.

We went on a walking tour of the campus.

From left to right: Union Church, started by John Fee (not the original building); a building on campus; the motto of Berea College

After the tour we enjoyed some ice cream. We could hardly lick it fast enough to keep it from running down our arms it was so hot out.


After hanging out in the College Square, we headed over to the cemetery to find our ancestors.
Here's a branch of our family tree told through gravestones:

John Gregg Fee and Matilda Hamilton (front and back of their stone)


Their daughter, Laura Ann Fee married William Norris Embree
(Apparently we didn't get a picture of William Norris' gravestone, Raymond Burrit Embree is their son buried next to his mother)


Their son, Royal Howard Embree married Mary Scott
(Their son, Raymond Scott Embree was buried next to them, so I'm including it here too, but not a direct line ancestor)


Their son, Ralph Arnold Embree married Eleanor Williams, my mom's parents and my grandparents. My grandfather is not actually buried here because his plane (he was a Navy flier) was shot down toward the end of WWII and he was lost. This is his memorial marker. My grandmother is buried in Camarillo, CA.

Ralph's stone is in the background with "Embree" on it and his parents and brother's stones are in the foreground.

After the cemetery adventure, we headed back toward Louisville, but not without eating first. Rob found that there was a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (you know, Food Network, Guy Fieri show...) on the way back, so we took a little detour and man was it worth it!
At first we were concerned we had a wrong address because the scenery looked like this:

Sorry for the in-the-moving-car-,between-the-trees- shots, it was so beautiful! Everything I hoped and dreamed Kentucky would be and Louisville isn't!

But, not to fear, we found it! A little old country store converted into a very tasty sandwich place called Wallace Station.

Rob had the Kentucky Hot Brown...oh.my.sandiwch.love. It was turkey, ham, bacon, tomato, cheese mornay sauce all squished between two thick slices of homemade bread. Yum!


Grace watched movies and hung out in style on the ride home.