This weekend and our trip to Chimney Rock

This past Saturday we had an extremely busy but fun day. First we packed up our stuff and headed to the Lazy 5 Ranch in Mooresville for our neighbors' Kenna(6) and Andi(4)'s birthday party. We got to ride a wagon around the ranch and feed animals like bison, ostriches, and giraffes out of our hands! Leah did not like to let them eat from her hand so much (and I can't blame her) but she would watch Daddy from the safety of Mommy's arms. Very fun trip to anyone who comes to visit us, it's about an hour and a little drive from our house. I do not have any pictures because we FORGOT our camera. We are bums. My friends should be sending me their pictures soon so that I can post them.

After we left there, we headed straight for Mike's boss's house. He lives on Lake Norman. They have this party there every year called the Dock Crawl. Several neighbors get together and throw this party on their collective docks. This year Matt hired a band to play on the top of his dock (the bottom is where the boat is dry-docked). FYI this is where Mike goes wakeboarding every week. So we stopped at Wal-Mart on the way and bought me a pop-up float and Leah a little blow-up boat and Mike a tube. I thought Leah would be a little scared to climb right in the lake since she is hesitant to get in the pool most of the time. She was NOT AT ALL! She LOVED floating around being pulled by us. After a little while she wanted to sit at the bottom of my float, which was nice because she was more in the water. She wore her swimsuit with the floaties built-in so we didn't worry too much about her jumping from float to float. We finally headed home that evening to see my dad and Myrn who were waiting at our extraordinarily messy house.

Monday we drove over to the Chimney Rock/Lake Lure area. It is really nice over there. We explored the town a bit when we got there, but it was raining at first. We ended up having really good pizza overlooking the lake and walking around this pretty boardwalk once the weather cleared. Tuesday we headed up to Chimney Rock itself. That was an awesome drive up and an even better view at the top. Leah and Mike took some other paths too. The first picture is a rock called Devil's Head that they saw when they took a little walk without the rest of us. After we were all done exploring and almost ready to head down the Rock, Mike realized that he had locked our keys, his wallet, and both of our cell phones in the car! We then proceeded to wait 3 1/2 hours for AAA to come and let us in. I guess we couldn't have picked a better setting, but still we were all STARVING when we finally could leave. (We snacked out of the gift shop in the meantime.) We stopped to grab a sandwich and take some pictures by the river (had forgotten our camera in our explorations the day before) before we headed home utterly exhausted. I really want to go back up there next year and hike some of the trails that go to the waterfall. The top of the waterfall is the film site of The Last of the Mohicans. They rent kid carriers (backpacks and front packs) if you don't already own one to hike around with.

So now we are gearing up for 4th of July dinner at our house (homemade spaghetti and meatballs from my dad, YUM) and then a trip to the park to see the fireworks. We may also head over to Waxhaw to the parade. Will post pictures of that later!