Going Home, part 3

TN continued...

 One of the first activities we did upon arriving in TN was paint these cute little birdhouses that my mom had bought for the kids.  She always has really fun activities planned for them.  She's a brave woman to take us on.  My kids love to paint.  They were pumped.  It was fun to see how each house turned out.  One.

 Two.

 One, Two, and Gma Shari.  I actually think that Three, Four, and BoyTwo were all napping.

 Three

 Four. 

 BoyTwo.  Don't you just love the heart?!

 After Pinkerton Park (previous post), we took the kids to downtown Franklin where it's very quaint and darling.  There's this awesome frozen yogurt shop there (even T. Swift herself has been there:)) that we love to visit.  The kids get to pick out the flavor of yogurt they want (usually about ten to choose from) and any toppings.  My mom and I were on yogurt patrol trying to make sure they didn't overload themselves as they usually do (which ends in them not eating a single bite because there's way too much crap on their yogurt to be considered edible).  On our way into the shop, we had to pass this statue.  Shocking that the kids were completely sidetracked by this lady of stone.  We spent about ten minutes with her.  Four and Three.

 Then Three randomly decided to pick her nose, as in the statues nose.

 Which meant BoyTwo had to do it, too.

 Which led to One pretending to kiss her.

 Which led to Four having the statue bite her finger.

 Which led to Two dramatically hugging her and proclaiming her love for her.

Which led to BoyOne walking far away from us:)

 After we got our yogurts, we walked across the street to this grassy area with a cannon to eat.  I tried really hard to get the kids to all smile and pose by the cannon but this was as good as it got.

 There was this very cool memorial for the veteran's of the wars from Williamson County.  Each of the squares in the cement was for a soldier.

 Then, while I was having a really important lesson on how grateful we should be for our freedom, yada, yada, yada, the kids totally agreed with me and said, 'yeah, if they hadn't gone to war we wouldn't have this awesome rock to climb on.'

Totally lost on them.  sigh.

 And then it got dark really fast and we headed for home.

 A firefly.  One of my favorite things about TN.  Love those little bugs!!  BoyTwo wanted to keep it as a pet and in loving it so, so much, killed it (within five minutes of catching it).  He just can't not do it.

 This trip a crowd favorite was making collages.  My mom has a ton of magazines that she let the kids cut pictures out of, along with a ton of construction paper that they glued these pictures to.  They then hung the finished products all. over. her. house.  She wanted to send them all to me when we got home but I told her they were for her to keep to remember us by, thank you no!  Seriously though, it kept them busy for hours and hours.  And hours.  All of them.

 Another scenic picture.  How can you not love this place?!

 BoyOne with one of many of his collages.  He did do a bird house but at a different time than the other kids.  And I guess I forgot to take a picture of him:(  Or maybe it's on the other memory card that I haven't loaded onto the computer yet.  Who knows.

 One collage-ing.

 One, Two, and 'K', One's TN BFF.

 'K' lives just a couple of doors down from my parents and these two hit it off about four years ago and have remained friends ever since.  I can't believe how big they are!!!

 Their clubhouse that they started four years ago.  The entrance, from the inside.

 Inside the girls only club, boys with permission only.

 The price they paid for playing outdoors with the fireflies that one night.  We have never even seen mosquitos here before this trip so we were totally caught off guard.  Each kid had over 100 bites.  When I went to the pharmacy to buy caladryl and benedryl, I mentioned to the pharmacist their bites and asked if there was something better to give them (they were dying).  She asked me if I was sure they hadn't been eaten by chiggers and I said what in the world is a chigger?  So she had me bring them in to look at their bites as she had never heard of anyone ever having that many mosquito bites.  However, once she saw their little legs she said they were definitely mosquitos and not chiggers and I still don't know what a chigger is!!  I'll have to google it when I'm done.  The poor kids were miserable.  But just maybe it was nice to have some benedryl in them...  Maybe.

These pictures don't do it justice.  I've never seen anything like it before.  One had over 100 on each leg.  It was really bad.