HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Autumn '08 in the Smoky Mountains *People Notes*

The hiking is fantastic in Smoky Mountain National Park any time of the year, but our favorite time to hit the trails is definitely in the fall when the weather is spectacular and the colors are vibrant. A couple of trails that we hiked recently did not disappoint as evidenced by these pictures (which don't even begin to do justice to the magnificence of the Smokies!).

Trillium Falls Trail - hiking behind a waterfall was cool - a bit creepy, but very cool!

Lower Mount Camerer Trail

Happy Trails!

Autumn '08 in the Smoky Mountains

I hear that the hiking is great in Smoky Mountain National Park - especially in the fall. I wouldn't know because of this:

Clearly I know when I am not wanted!

However, my people do take me for long walks in our neighborhood which is just outside of Smoky Mountain National Park and I think it is quite nice.

Except when it rains...I hate when it rains. Bad for my hair.

Damn!

Fall Break *People Notes*

Yes, it was a wonderful week...the grandkids, papa, mema, the cabin in the woods, nature, activities, lemonade on the porch, bonding time, swinging in the hammock, roasting marshmallows, walks in the woods, sweet memories.....ahhhhh! A storybook adventure.

After night one. Which brings us to the next blog entry:

"GOING GREEN"

It had been a long day beginning with making pancakes, playing outdoors, collecting leaves, swinging, baking cookies, climbing hills, sitting around the campfire, and all that mushy grandparenty stuff one's mind conjures with the much anticipated 'time-spent-with-the-grandkids-don't-screw-it-up-let's-make-nice-memories' week at the cabin with a 5 and 9 year old. Granted, we are a bit out of practice, but having semi-successfully raised 4 boys between us and giving advice to numerous other 'drop-ins' (and drop-outs) through the years with no major battlescars or other obvious trauma we figured we had this one in the bag for sure. The day had been successful at every level including a relatively healthy diet (ok, not so much the pancakes, but we did serve them with turkey bacon which has much less fat than the typical Tennessee pork salt variety), no injuries requiring first aid or the assistance of 'nurse papa', and a bubble bath complete with the tub jets to spray off the majority of the caked on grit, grime and any residual ticks or other bugs. A quick albeit somewhat tearful call home to mommy and daddy to tell them goodnight and the day was coming to a close which was good at this point because although the 5 and 9 year old kids could have probably continued on their energizer batteries for another several hours, well, we old'er' people were tired as all get out not being used to getting up and moving much before mid-morning and missing our mid-day naps and all...well, we were just plain tuckered - exhausted actually - couldn't get those kids up the ladder and tucked into bed fast enough. Thinking ahead and being the proactive grandparents that we are, we had filled the loft with toys, books, favorite stuffed animals and pillows from home to ward off any potential homesickness, as well as a flashlight at the top of the ladder and a couple of activated glowsticks to illuminate the loft just enough in the event of a midnight trip down the ladder for the bathroom or any other late night roaming around which necessitated a safe exit from the bed. Kiss, kiss, hug, hug, goodnight all....holy crap we were sooooo tired that we barely made it down the ladder and stumbled into our bed...smiling softly we were proud of surviving day one and we were especially looking forward to falling off into a wonderful, well-deserved, restful sleep...boys were quiet...crickets chirping...dog barking in the distance...burrowing deeper and deeper into the down pillow with the warm quilt wrapped around my tired bones...a soft whisper from the loft "Ryan, are you asleep?" and with no answer the night is upon us...the pitter-patter of little feet shuffling...probably looking for a favorite toy to slip under his pillow..."Ryan, wake up."

Groggy and in a dream-like state, I mumble "Matthew, go to sleep."

Whispers.

Whispers.

Pitter-patters.

"Ryan, I really need you to wake up."

"Matthew, don't you dare wake up your brother. Go to sleep."

Snoring...oh wait, that is Paul.

Then there is whimpering..."But, but, but...I can't get it off...and, and, and..."

I lazily roll over and push Paul out of bed. "Go check on him." And I snuggle back into my dream-like state. Soooo tired. Soooo comfortable. Sooooo warm...beginning to have sweet dreams suddenly I hear Paul say in a well-controlled voice "Matthew - DON'T MOVE - HOLD STILL - STAY RIGHT THERE!"

Well, this can't be good.

So I roll out of bed, stumble over to the ladder and start climbing, only to run into Paul who is perched half in the loft and half on the ladder and I rub my eyes...yes, there is a curious green glow coming from the loft...climb another step up...and for a moment in time we all were frozen in our tracks in a vibrant, neon, luminescent, chartreuse, day-glo, surreal green world.

I know that in the next nanosecond my brain processed at a speed faster than my laptop computer - 'Holy crap, why is everything green, not just green, but radioactive green, there are splatters of green on the ceiling, green hand prints on the floor, the ladder, the bookcase, why is Matthew standing in the middle of the room glowing, what has caused his hands to look like little kryptonite mittens, holy crap, his face is glowing, no - this can't be projectile vomiting (well, maybe the turkey bacon?!), he has green speckles (freckles?) covering his entire body, giant green welts on his spiderman pajamas that look like the green goblin is winning the war, should we call the 'haz-mat' guys or should we just gown up ourselves, all the little action figures look like they exploded on a bio-luminescent battleground, glow worms gone wild...holy crap, the glow-sticks, what went wrong, did they explode up here, what was on that stupid warning label, are these chemicals bad, did I bother to read the warning label, am I still going to get 'grandparent-of-the-year', probably not now, does this stuff burn, rule number one is to stay calm, this looks like fireflies gone very, very bad....'

In the softest, sweetest voice I can muster I ask "Matthew, honey, are you ok? What happened?" And I proceed up the ladder and put my arm around him (slightly wondering if I am going to get burned, scarred and disfigured for life if I actually touch him) and he proceeds to tell me his story:

"Um, um, um...well, I wanted to make the, um, um, I wanted the glo-stick to glow more and um, um, so, um, I shook it hard like this, um, like you did it, and um it didn't get any brighter so, and, um then I held it really tight like this, like you did and um, I um bent it really hard like I saw you do it, um, um, and then um shaked it some more, then I shaked it harder, and then um, um then it started to um get on my hands...' and we can finish this sentence from here: and my pajamas and my bunny and the ceiling and the pillow and the floor and the toys and the ladder and the rug and the quilt and my brother and the walls and the books and the dog... So we (calmly, very calmly) get towels and washcloths to begin cleaning the radioactive room, but you know, as soon as you turn on the lights the glowing green world disappears and all appears normal, lights off - glowing green: lights on - normal world: lights off - glowing green: lights on - normal world. And you know what else? That crap doesn't wipe off, doesn't clean off, doesn't come off, doesn't glow any less with any given amount of effort. It simply has to wear off with time. Armed with a stack of clean towels and a clean pair of pajamas to put on Matthew I sit on the edge of the futon...bam...tipped the thing on its end, flipped Ryan out of bed onto the floor (who had been sleeping soundly through this entire green indiglo affair) and then started giggling to the point where I couldn't even breathe anymore. Oh well...maybe if I swore them to secrecy and bribed them with cookies and go-carts, maybe they wouldn't tell their parents about the horrible, terrible, middle-of-the-night, g(l)owing green adventure at mema and papa's cabin.

After the best possible clean-up efforts we all settled back to the wonderful, tired, ready to fall asleep any second dream-like state that we had been in mere hours earlier...ahhhh...boys are quiet...crickets chirping...burrowing deeper into the down pillow...

Whimpers..."Mema...my fingers are still lighted up..."

"I know honey. It will be gone in the morning. I love you. Go to sleep."

Snoring...oh wait...that is Paul.

Fall Break

Woohoo! The little people (Ryan & Matthew) came to the cabin for their fall break!! I love sharing my cabin with little people...or any people, really, since we are kind of in the middle of nowhere and visitors aren't commonplace. We did some fun stuff that week. We hiked around the hills and played in the dirt - it was great to have little people who like dirt as much as I do. We got to stay up late and tell scary stories. We gathered firewood and learned about building fires and then, of course, we lit marshmallows on fire like little torches. Cool. We spent almost all of our time outside playing and painting and running and getting messy.





One day all the people went to the Nascar go-cart track in town, but no dogs allowed so I stayed home and napped. That was ok because I was pretty worn out and tired by then.



We had so much fun - I hope we get more visitors to our cabin.

Happy (NOT MY) Birthday *People Notes*

Happy 6th birthday, Matthew!!! 'Jump Zone' was awesome! Now move over all you little kids because the big people want to play!















Jeannie, David and Paul take the plunge! (**reference blog posting dated 09/01/08 at http://www.katyanderik.blogspot.com/ )

As previously noted from the alpine slide adventure a couple of months ago, the biggest plunge of all was taken by Paul. In fact, Paul took two plunges. That afternoon, the eighteen 5 and 6 year olds and the three of us 'older folks' (David, Jeannie and Paul) thought it would be fun to try Jump Zone's inflatable slides. For you flatlanders that don't know what an inflatable slide is, it derives from everyone's favorite playground structure: the metal slide. Instead of metal and wood, though, the slide is made of plastic and filled with air.

Jump Zone sliding is not meant to be difficult. Unlike playground sliding, there is no hot metal, no ladder to climb, no hard surfaces, no rock-throwing, no mud puddles, and no hard landings at the bottom. I don't even think there is an age limit. The only thing you control is where you place your bottom, legs, feet, arms and hands on the slide. To operate; sit, slide, stand up. Somehow, Paul missed these instructions.

For our first run, Paul and Jeannie started together for a friendly race down the fire engine side-by-side slide. As we began our descent, I thought to myself, "Hey, Paul's never driven a car faster than 27 miles an hour, so I'll just take it easy and wait for him at the bottom." Wrong. Before I finished that thought, a Paul-shaped blur was 2 feet* ahead of me (*the slide is approximately 9 feet in length!), disappearing into the air. I didn't see him again until halfway down the fire-engine slide, when I passed him trying to get back on his rear end. I thought to myself, "Paul must have stopped to take a potty break." Wrong. When we met up at the bottom, I could see from the missing skin (knees, hands, elbow) and melted polyester t-shirt (seriously) that Paul had taken a fall. If you were paying attention above, you know that this should not be possible.














He took the challenge to race David for a second run. Not wanting to lose any more skin, Paul noted his intent to "take it easy this time," which he did. Three feet into the race, David was comfortably in the lead, and I thought to myself, "Well, good, he's really taking it easy, so he won't fall this time." Wrong. David got to the bottom and we waited. And waited. And waited. And finally, he finished the last 2 feet - going 0 miles per hour - and made it to the bottom. He had done the impossible. He had fallen on the inflatable Jump Zone fire-engine slide. Twice.





























Lucky we had plenty of bandages and ointment left from his alpine slide adventure.

Happy (NOT MY) Birthday

We have celebrated so many birthdays in recent months that I have lost count. Except mine. No, we did NOT celebrate Odie's birthday because some people forgot. But I'm not bitter. Really.

Matthew was turning 6 and this party sounded like a lot of fun...we loaded into the car, drove down to Alabama the night before and spent a whole day baking & decorating a giant birthday cake that looked like Batman's Bat Cave, stuffing goodie bags, wrapping presents, buying ice cream (I LOVE ice cream) and making the final birthday party plans. It was going to be at a place called "Jump Zone" with dozens of little people and giant, inflatable things that you can jump on, crawl on, climb on, slide down, etc... I was soooo excited.

Then they all loaded into the cars and left me at the house. Are you kidding??

So I snuck out of my kennel, turned on the TV, watched movies and played games all afternoon. I don't care if I am still grounded from the video games. Sighhh...

They didn't even bring me any ice cream. Damn.