Sterling's Graduation

 Sterling's Mom and sister came out for the weekend to celebrate his graduation.  Our first stop was Mammoth Cave, which was as amazing as ever.

 Waiting for our tour, learning about white nose syndrome (a disease killing bats around the country).  We had to sanitize our shoes after the tour to prevent it from coming or going from the cave.

 Going down into the cave, discovered by a guy hunting a bear back in the 1700's, so typical.

 Lots of picture taking opportunities!

 We thought it was funny that I could stand up straight while Sterling was slouched over.

 Old graffiti from the 1800's, made with the smoke from their candles.

 Big Red the official mascot of Western Kentucky University.  I don't think you can get any further from athletic than him.

 Way to go Sterling!

 It took a long time for us to figure out how to his hood was supposed to go.

 We also went to Nashville and saw the Parthenon replica there.  It was built for the world's fair back in the day.  We ate at Burger Up, where we tried things like fried pickles and truffle fries, which were really good. Then we went next door to a popsicle place called Las Paletas.  They have the most amazing popsicles I've ever had.  Paula had one called cookies, that had huge chunks of chocolate chips cookies.  Rachel had cantaloupe, which I've tried before and I think it's my favorite of all that I've tried.  Sterling had nutella and I had kiwi.  I wish we could have tried more of them!

 Lastly we went to Antique Archaeology.  It's one of the stores for that show American Pickers on the history channel.  Unfortunately there was a little bit of a line to go through the store, but it was excellent weather so we just had fun taking pictures while we waited.

We had so much fun with Paula and Rachel.  Thanks for coming to visit us and thanks to the support of all our family!  The big news is that Sterling got a job with the Missouri State Health Department!  We will be moving to Jefferson City memorial day weekend! 

Thanksgiving Fun

In case you were wondering, let me tell you how the Weed household celebrated Thanksgiving. Alee's parents came and spent the week with us, which was useful because we did not know how to cook a turkey. We were also able to go on some entertaining excursions in Kentucky with her parents. The first excursion happened while the turkey was cooking (and between football games). There is a cave just down the street from where we live called the Lost River Cave and we took her parents there. On a side note: many companies in the area are named after the Lost River and we like to remove the River part of their name as a joke. For example, Lost River Child Day Care becomes Lost Child Day Care.

This is called a Blue Hole. When we first went there in the Spring, it was brown and apparently it is only blue when it has not rained in awhile. The hole is part of a cave river that is briefly exposed above ground.


Alee and her parents.

Bowling Green is also home to the Corvette factory and the Corvette museum. We went and looked at the museum the day after Thanksgiving. It was pretty neat. They pretty much have every type of Corvette that has ever been made. This picture is of a 1970-something Corvette, and it is blue.

We also took Alee's parents to Mammoth Cave. Below are some pictures that we took inside the cave. They are not the best pictures, because...well it was a cave.

Near Bowling Green there is also an old Shaker village that they have turned into a museum. Below are some pictures from that excursion.

Alee's dad really liked to read all the historical markers that we encountered on our trip.

Our Apartment

I know that this is a little late, but we decided to give a tour of our apartment. Here is a view from the outside.

We decided to put together a video of the inside of our apartment, it seemed easier and possibly more entertaining than taking a bunch of pictures. The video is nowhere near the "quality" of HGTV shows, but we hope that you enjoy it.

This is what our apartment looks like from the outside.

Here is a couple videos of the downstairs:

Utah

At the end of July we ventured off to the land of Utah. While there we had many adventures, and we have decided to share some of them with the numerous readers of this mighty blog.

The video below is of a ski jumping competition that we saw when we visited Park City.

Later that same day, after stops to both J-Dawgs and the BYU creamery, we went to my cousin Alexandra's wedding. The reception had some pretty good views of BYU and the surrounding area so we decided to take some pics.

On one of the days, we decided to go on a morning hike. We did not have a specific trail in mind, but we just decided that we would just find a trail and hike up it for awhile. Below are pictures from the trail that we found. It was pretty fun.

No vacation to Utah is complete without an excursion to the desert to shoot some Shasta.






It was a very fun trip, and we were sad that it had to end so quickly.

Mammoth Cave

Awhile back, we decided we should finally explore the nearby Mammoth Cave National Park. We learned it has over 300 miles of cave, a useful fact in case you happen to be on jeopardy in the near future. We only walked through two miles of the cave on our tour.

It was very difficult to take pictures within the cave, so here are a few of our attempts to take some pictures. It also did not help that our camera battery died during the tour, so these pictures are only from the first part of the tour.

It looked much cooler in person, trust us.

Home on the Range

My mom got the boys some really cute cowboy outfits for their birthdays. They were always very excited to go check on the cows!

Of course we all got used to putting on lots of bug spray. Weston was very sure to get a good coat after he got a thousand chigger bites during the first couple days.

The herd was very excited about the prospect of cow cakes.

Weston and Rhett were so cute in their cowboy hats.

And so was my dad!

My mom got some baby chicks while we were there. They were so fluffy and cute. They hatched right before we took them home.

Rhett didn't have a nap this day. He fell asleep watching our evening round of Phineas and Ferb.

We caught a lot of fireflies. We tried to take a picture of them, if you look close you can see some small dots of light. Weston never got tired of catching them.

My mom and sister were happy just watching.

It looks like we have a 5 year old kid. haha.

Rhett had a lot of cute faces, so we had to take pictures of them. He really liked to squish Sterling's face like in the one below. Unfortunately, now Sterling keeps doing it to me.

We went to Wilson's Creek Battlefield. Its a national park in Springfield from a Civil War battle site. Sterling had wanted to go for a long time because he's been reading lots of Civil War books. We went in the middle of day though, so it was a little hot. We did go on a mile hike there and saw a snake, Sterling and Weston were both pretty scared, luckily I was there to keep them safe.

My voice went out on two separate occasions from reading books to the boys, I could never last until they fell asleep. It was so fun to play with them for two whole weeks. We did a lot of swimming in the pool, shooting bows and arrows, exploring the creek, and eating swiss miss bars. Sadly we are back in Kentucky now. I'm enjoying my job working on a Med/Surg floor though, and Sterling is doing an internship with the Health Department. We are already planning our next vacation, hoping to check out Mammoth Cave soon!