Summer

I was just taking a walk with Rebecca last night, and we noticed lots of leaves on the path. She said it made her sad, and I understand. Though I love autumn, I always hate to see summer go. It's harder now that Rebecca is here in the summer and gone during the school year. Summers always seem too short!

I also have an annual guilt about summer - every year I feel like I didn't get enough done - like I wish for a do-over. At least this summer we didn't move twice! And we had a vacation - even if it was a teeny-tiny four-day weekend.

In June, we took a brief vacation to one of our favorite spots on earth - a place Rebecca calls "The Wood Between the Worlds" (a Narnia reference), and a place I just call "Our Spot." This year it did not disappoint. We got a great site and had great weather. Even got to watch a full moon over the lake, which is always nice.

From Wood Between the Worlds

From Wood Between the Worlds

From Wood Between the Worlds

We spent four wonderful days water-skiing and tubing

From Wood Between the Worlds

reading, chasing coons from our campsite, feeding a duck that came by every day, playing chess

From Wood Between the Worlds

playing with fire

From Wood Between the Worlds

making fairy houses for folks to find in the woods

From Wood Between the Worlds

and playing cards (looks like Caleb is enjoying a good hand of spades)

From Wood Between the Worlds

While there, we celebrated Nathan's birthday. Here he is trying to guess his gifts:

From Wood Between the Worlds

But he never guessed that we were sending him to Denver to visit his friend, Noah Smith! We actually have a neat video of his emotional reaction to that gift, but he has forbidden me to post it on the internet. If you ask me in person, I will be happy to show it to you, though.

We had such a good time that we had hoped to do it again later in the summer, but we just couldn't find a weekend that we were all available. Noah spent two weeks at camp TaPaWinGo, Caleb spent four weeks at Doe River Gorge, Nathan spent a week in Denver, and Rebecca had two weekends taken up with wedding photography. Noah and I went to Arkansas for a week, too. Before we knew it, the opportunities for camping were gone.

Caleb started public school at Bearden High School on August 12th. He rides his bike to school every day as it's just one mile away on the Greenbelt. The rest of us gloated a bit and didn't start our homeschool until August 22nd:

From

On August 15, we got a visit from the Rideouts, who we knew back before they met and married. Now they are missionaries in Niger here on furlough. We had a great time teaching all their kids to ski and just hanging out together.

From August 2013

From August 2013

Other than that, the big news of the summer was that Terry finished his fourth flip house. I won't post all the before/after pics here (I'm thinking of creating a FB page for him to feature those), but here is one:

From Grenada

We are blessed that it sold quickly for a good price. We had a big party here last weekend to celebrate its completion. He's now started on his fifth house.

So Far This Year . . .

Our year has been pretty quiet so far. We are getting settled into the swing of life in Knoxville, enjoying visits from friends and relatives and doing a few CRAZY things.

Rebecca wasn't able to be here on her actual birthday, but we celebrated a few days late with a rather sad-looking but tasty cake. Note that it is swimming in icing:

From Catch up on blogging

Nathan had really hated to leave the guys on his soccer team in the Tri-Cities when we moved here last year. He now plays for the Ambassadors here in Knoxville. It turns out that this team is full of great guys, too. Nathan was able to switch his loyalty and play his heart out against his old team and enjoy beating them! It was also nice to be missed. His old teammates came up and asked him how much they would have to pay for him to back off on defense next time. Here is the "good game" after the game. Nathan is #17. ,/

From Catch up on blogging

We enjoyed visits from my family this Spring. My sisters came in March, and my Dad came in April. He treated us all to a few days in Gatlinburg, and we did some hiking while we were there:

From Catch up on blogging

From Catch up on blogging

From Catch up on blogging

One CRAZY thing we did this Spring was take a 24-hour trip to Washington, DC on the Megabus. We left at 10 pm on a Sunday evening, spent a Monday in Washington, and then returned at 10 pm that night. It was spring break, but it snowed heavily much of the time.

From Catch up on blogging

The other CRAZY thing we did was that Caleb and I did Color Me Rad. I've decided I don't really like those races. The color is fun, but it costs $40 each, and they don't even have a clock running. I mainly ran in it so that we could get some good photos. But Terry took video instead. And Caleb tried to run it without getting any color on him, which pretty much wasted that $40. Oh well.

From Catch up on blogging

Holidays 2012

Blogging about the holidays in July just seems wrong. But skipping it seems even wronger (don't you love inventing words?).

One of the first orders of business during the holidays was to take family photos for our Christmas card/letter. Unfortunately, this letter was never mailed, or even written, for that matter. However, in case you need a recent photo of the Seaman family (ours or extended) for your fridge, you can print out one of these below:

From Seaman Disc

From Seaman Disc

We started two new traditions this year. One was to build a Lego Christmas village. We got the first collectible set this year, and the kids had lots of fun putting it together. We hope to get a new set every year and build them from scratch (well directions are included). The kids had lots of fun with this. I have no pictures of the completed Lego set, but lots of photos of the goofing off:

From Thanksgiving 2012

From Thanksgiving 2012

From Thanksgiving 2012

The other new tradition was to have a family game night with "Minute-to-Win-It" games. Got the idea on Pinterest. And it was a blast! We were glad that our house renovations were progressing to the point that we could host the entire extended family.

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

An older tradition is to make sugar cookies with all the cousins, and we did that, too: Another fun thing was that Rebecca got her Poppa to help her make a photo booth, and she made some props to go with it. We look forward to even more fun with it next year, as with all the excitement of the games we forgot to use it much. Here are a few of the funny photos she made with it:

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

From For Facebook (Christmas 2012)

Fall 2012

One of our coolest memories from last fall was the Lego Competition at the Tennessee Valley Fair. Noah won "Best in Show" for his Hollywood film studio:

From Catch up on blogging

and Nathan inspired the judges to create a whole new category - "Master Builder" - when they saw this spaceship:

From Catch up on blogging

Then when Rebecca went with Noah and me to see the displays, the three of ended up entering (and winning) a Lego building contest.

From Lego Competition - 9/15/12

The boys have been asked to help promote this year's contest at several library events this summer. Noah is busy working on this year's entry.

Besides Lego, our boys were involved in the Venture Scouts. They learned to shoot at a local shooting range (I did, too) and also learned to blacksmith. We went to a scout Rendezvous where the boys spent a very long day teaching dozens of cub scouts how to blacksmith. Here are some photos from that day:

From Catch up on blogging

From Catch up on blogging

From Catch up on blogging

Caleb also ran cross-country in the fall. I enjoyed watching him in the Marine Corp Mud Run:

From Catch up on blogging

We also took some cool hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains. Here we are at The Chimneys:

From Catch up on blogging

From Catch up on blogging

And here we are at the fire tower on Mt. Sterling:

From Catch up on blogging

From Catch up on blogging

The weather was mild, so we kept our pool open for a long time - long enough for Noah to carve pumpkins poolside:

From Catch up on blogging

From Catch up on blogging

and for Terry to hurt his back on the diving board and require an ambulance ride to the ER:

From Catch up on blogging

We are so glad that his back wasn't broken. He was back to "normal" in a week or so.

Rebecca got to come home for fall break, and her arrival coincided with the Fall Festival at our church. My favorite photos from the fall were the ones taken there:

From Fall Break 2012

From Fall Break 2012

From Fall Break 2012

From Fall Break 2012

From Fall Break 2012

Back By Popular Demand, Moving Part 2

Actually, back by one person's request - my Dad's. Obviously, the move and changes in our lives took a lot of my energy in the last year. Once I felt like blogging again, I was behind and couldn't really figure out how to catch up. Then I considered just jumping back in and letting that year of my life appear blank, but that didn't feel right, either. In related news, I didn't send out a Christmas letter the last two years. It's nice to know that somebody noticed. So, I have decided NOT to skip over the last year but to just do a few abbreviated posts to catch those who care up-to-date. As I was preparing to do this, I also realized that I was way behind in reading posts from family members who are doing a good job keeping up with blogging (Yay - Allison, Katie, Lisa and Rebecca!) because I had typically used my blog as a porthole to theirs. I really enjoyed those posts and wish I had some cute toddlers to spice mine up with. But, alas, my kids are growing up way too fast. Anyway, with further ado, here is my first attempt toward catching up-to-date with my blogging. We moved to Buckingham Drive (aka, "The Palace")in early August.

https://plus.google.com/photos/106680165472319420873/albums/5896792490382691409/5896794137427274258?pid=5896794137427274258&oid=106680165472319420873

From Catch up on blogging

The move itself wasn't too bad (mostly because 2/3rd of our stuff was still in storage in Johnson City). But it's hard to overestimate the chaos we lived in the next few months as we renovated the kitchen and installed new (actually old, reclaimed flooring) on the main floor. The following pics give you a little idea:

From Catch up on blogging

From Catch up on blogging

I was without a kitchen (except a stove and paint sink in the garage) and without a laundry room for several months. My new stove was actually hooked up on Thanksgiving morning. I plan on doing a complete "before vs. after" post on our house at some time, but that will have to wait. Even though renovations aren't fun (and they aren't over yet!), we are blessed to have gotten this huge house at FAR below market value. The location is so convenient, and we love being around the corner from the Green Belt trail.