Going to the beach!

 

We drove up to Lake Alatoona, near Acworth, which is a really small town. It was a short drive, about half an hour or 40 minutes. It was a really nice beach with real sand.

 

The water was the perfect temperature to swim.

 

The kids loved swimming and making drop castles in the sand.

 

It wasn't crowded at all.

 

It was a nice break after a crazy week of Carson's homework!

Savannah playing pretend

 

Savannah is very girly and loves pink and loves to dress up. In stores, if she sees pretty dresses, she starts taking her clothes off cause she wants to immediately put the dress on. This dress is an "Olivia" dress, and I bought it cause it was way cheaper than the Disney dresses, and prettier too.

Carson is a Bobcat

 

Update: Carson got some new glasses, he wears them at school only.

 

Carson is a Cub Scout now, so he goes to den meetings every Tuesday evenings.

This is Carson at his pack meeting last Tuesday, standing with the Scout Master.

 

He was awarded his Bobcat badge, so now he will continue on to his Wolfe badge.

New lawnmower

 

We got a new lawnmower a couple of weeks ago. That is Carson in the background helping with the job!

 

What kind of bug is this?

 

 

One of the many bugs here. This was at Keith's office, and it's about an inch long.

Tucker said

Last week, as we were waiting at the bus stop, Tucker said, 'I just wanna go to Kindergarten in Sparks. I just wanna go back to Sparks and go to kindergarten. I just wanna go back to Sparks cause I like being close to my Grandmas. I like my Grandmas, I like being close to my Grandmas.'

Today, after I asked him about school, 'There so much wasted playtime at school. There's only like, 5 minutes of playtime at school.'
(He meant there's so much time he spends at school that he could be using for playtime here at home.) He's still adjusting!

First Day at Mt. Bethel Elementary

 

7am, just before walking down the street to the bus stop.

 

Tucker is still asleep.

 

 

After school is over, the boys look pretty happy.

 

 

They both have had a good experience so far. They have very good teachers, Mrs. Hoeflinger and Mrs. Smith for Tucker. Both classes have two teachers each!

Foods We Miss

We've found that since we've been here, we CAN'T find some of the foods we really liked and ate regularly while living in Sparks, NV.

1. Tri-tip: I guess Tri-tip just isn't a big deal down here in the south. We can't find a tri-tip anywhere, and when we asked a butcher at Kroger's to cut one for us, he didn't know what we were referring to. Keith went to whole foods and the butcher seemed to know about tri-tips and cut one for us, but it definitely looked different than the ones we are used to - BUT Keith grilled it tonight and we had it for dinner. It was the BEST tri-tip we've ever had! Super tender and juicy, flavorful meat! Hefty price tag though, so we'll have to limit our tri-tip eating to every once and a while, instead of once a month - which might be a good thing.

2. Salsa: we can't find any good, fresh salsa to buy here! In Sparks, we bought Casa de Sanchez, or Killer Salsa, or even the Safeway store brand was good. They have a lot of fresh salsas to choose from here and I bought about 5 of them a few weeks ago to try them all out, but most of them were too sweet, and none of them have the cilantro content of Casa de Sanchez! Feel lucky and blessed west-coasters! You have great salsa that you can't find over on the East coast. Unless I make it myself.....

3. Whole foods cookies: we didn't go to Whole Foods in Reno very much cause it was like, a 20 minute drive and I am just fine with buying non-organic foods. There's plenty of good stuff at Raley's in Sparks. They have this cookie stand at the bakery in Whole Foods where you could pick out your own cookies and buy them by the pound. They had caramel chocolate chip and shortbread cookies with apricot jam inside - soooo good! I thought, 'cool, we have a Whole Foods 1 minute from our house here, I can go and get those yummy cookies whenever!' NOPE. They have the buy cookies in bulk thing, but no caramel chocolate chip and no shortbread jam cookies! Yes, it's better that I don't go and eat cookies frequently, but now I can't EVER get them unless I go back to Reno! Sad.

4. Yogurt Beach: a really awesome frozen yogurt place in Sparks that we went to here and there and their frozen custards were soooo good. they had great flavors and a ton of topping options, but we just really liked their flavors. There's a frozen yogurt place a minute from our house (everything is a minute from our house), and it's the same type of business as Yogurt beach, the serve yourself and they charge you by the weight. Their flavors just aren't the same and they just aren't as good! They were ok, though, so we might go there here and there too.

5. Sushi: we got sushi rolls from CJ Palace frequently and they were sooo good - can't find anything THAT good here, yet. We did get some sushi from Whole Foods last night - they have a sushi station where someone makes up sushi rolls right there in front of you and you can request anything you want. They were really good! and to have it made up fresh right there and the price was ok too. Too bad they don't have fried rolls too......but I don't think Whole Foods fries anything.