I'm Dreaming of...

a white Christmas? Be careful what you dream for....Emily and I were thinking about a white Christmas and we each got a 6 hour commute home last night! I had Lily in the car for all that time and as usual, she did great. We sang songs, played games, and sometimes were just plain silly without rhyme or reason. You've got to admit, if you have to be stuck in traffic for 8 hours, you couldn't have prettier scenery or more fun driving conditions (we were in the Jeep).

Well, we all made it back safe last night (eventually). Emily is on call today and had to get back out on the roads which pretty good, and definitely had a lot less people on them. Lily and I went out for some supplies so we could go in the back yard and make a snowman. It would seem that fun and snow are not in short supply around east Tennessee right now...

We made over two years...

...before Lily got really sick for the first time. She picked up a little stomach bug that had been going around her day care. With Nana and Papa arriving shortly, the poor thing started getting sick. We finally had to isolate her in an easy to clean area. She actually lost a lot of color from her face, I've never seen her look pale before.


After a bit of a rough night, she is at least doing much better this morning. She has been able to keep fluids down and has her usual color and cheery disposition back. Given the night she had, its understandable that she would simply curl up in the lap and fall asleep this morning. After Gator jumped up on the and stood on her foot with no reaction, I realized I would be able to get up and tuck her in for a good nap.

Challenging Preconceptions

One of the greatest joys of parenthood has been the opportunity to see the world through fresh eyes. Lily continues to challenge our powers of observation as she accurately points out items of every nature that we had not noticed before (her powers of observation obviously come from her mother). So, when she decides that jammies for the night should be a pair of rubber, cow-shaped rain boots, don't we have to give her the benefit of the doubt....at least for long enough to snap a couple of pictures?

More Pictures from the Farm

These pictures are courtesy of our friend (and Donna's college buddy) Lorna.

Puttin' Nana to Work!

Mmmm.....Toasty!

Afternoon at Aunt Willie's Wildflower Farm

Our church has a program where a group of families get together occassionally and hang out. One of the families, the Doans, invited everyone over to their farm for some scenery and dinner. Here are some pictures of what all we got to see and do this afternoon. The first picture is of a persimmon tree....we actually pulled in underneath it, plucked persimmons from the tree, and ate them. They were delicious! Linda (our host) said the trick was to eat them after the first frost.

We saw a multitude of cows! This was a baby cow with a really cool face that went running by. Apparently, the white face and brown eyes are the result of some sort of special breeding. We also saw a buck, in the next blurry picture, he didn't hang around long though.







































































The farm house below was built in 1870 by the ancestors of our other host, Roy. Now, the Doans' use the house as a workshop where they hold seminars on creating flower arrangements with wild flowers.





Lily has now put Papa and I both to shame by driving around this Ford tractor. More so than any Cub Cadet or John Deere, this big Ford was built for serious work over a long period of time. Driving it was obviously a highlight of the trip for Lily!

Happy Halloween!

With Emily being on night float the last two weeks, Lily and I were so glad to have her back today to celebrate Halloween! Earlier this week, Lily got to open her Halloween card from Gran.





















Of course, there was pumpkin carving that needed to be done. Our "theme" this year was M&M's...so Lily dressed up as the sassy, femme-fatal Green. Emily should get massive props for this, as she made the costume this week, in between 14 hours night shifts! We also carved our pumpkins to be Red and Yellow.

Now, the Green M&M outfit was not so popular at first, but the issue proved to be no match for sugar!

Emily's colleague Elizabeth came over with her son Luke to go trick-or-treating in Wiltshire. Luke was dressed up as Thomas the Train. Apparently, we have quite a popular 'hood for trick-or-treating as the road in front of our house was parked up for most of the evening.

Evening though the rain was steady for most of the night, it could not dampen the spirits of us east Tennessee folk....the festival must go on!