An adventurous beginning

Little Guy working on his car book

Little Guy and I had the best time in the mountains this year!  We didn't do a lot, but it felt like there was something to do everyday.  This post is going to be full of pictures, so please bear with me!

Our first morning there, we had breakfast at Maggie Valley Restaurant, my grandfather's favorite (I think that's only because he can still manage to drive there seeing as how it's like 100 yards or so from their house)  Little Guy had pancakes:

Followed by some souvenir shopping:

Little Guy's gem necklace

Ever since our last visit, Little Guy has been all about the mini golf.  He loves it!  So I promised him that we would do that our first day there.  He didn't seem to understand that we couldn't play upon our arrival at 10pm, after a mere 13 hours on the road!  So we played our first afternoon there, and he was sooo happy!

Playing Happy Gilmore style!

Nice backdrop for mini golf eh?

We then checked out the new Hillbilly Grocery Store, which was seriously needed in Maggie for those who don't want to drive into Waynesville for toilet paper and milk.  We picked up some drinks and a snack and sat for a while to talk and plan out the rest of our day.

Behind the store is a huge field of corn.  There was a little break in the fence, so I took Little Guy over to show him what corn looks like while it's growing.  He wasn't that interested because he doesn't really like corn all that much.  Perhaps I should have told him that's also where popcorn comes from!  I've always heard that corn should be "knee high by fourth of July", so I'm a little confused as to whose knee they were referring to, a giant?  Exhibit A below:

It's bigger than Little Guy, and this picture was taken the 3rd week of June!  As you can see in the picture he thought the camera was going to steal his soul.  He gets like that A LOT, like, it's sooo incredibly hard to get a decent shot of him on the first try.

After our little break, we went on a little waterfall hike at Soco Falls.  I love taking him there.  This year it was easier to get Little Guy down the rocky trail since he's a little bigger, and can do most of the climbing on his own.  I took a picture of him in the same exact spot as last year and you can really see how long his legs have gotten!  He's growing up so fast these days!

Soco Falls 2011/2012

Soco Falls 2012

The view from near the bottom

He was so proud to hike down to the falls

We did some exploring around the house and Little Guy found the door to the crawl space under my grandparent's house.  He wanted to go in, but upon opening the door I saw all the duct work {aka fiberglass} and told a disappointed kid no.  He found a walking stick just like Papa's, so he used it to explore their yard:

Little Guy learned what it's like to care for a pet (or 20).  My grandfather has a huge koi pond.  Since he doesn't get around so well anymore, Little Guy got to feed them everyday.  He thought it was so cool!

Papa's Koi Pond

My grandmother loves bird watching, so they have a gazillion bird feeders.  Little Guy learned how to fill the feeders with seed, which did create a big mess.  No worries, he loves using a broom too, so he helped clean up his mess!

We would take their dog out everyday and "hike" with him up the mountain road the next street up from my grandparent's house.  We made soup:

And we saw a bear:

And a spider:

Made some wishes:

Saw lots of flowers:

And chased a robin:

We did a few activities during our downtime to avoid the whole "I'm bored" syndrome.  Who knew a stack of red Solo cups could keep a child occupied for almost an hour??  I kid you not, Little Guy loved stacking the cups and knocking them down and stacking them again.  He did this several days while we were there!  He hasn't touched them ONCE since we've been home, but at least it did the trick while we were on vacation!

Stacking 'em up...

turns out you need 21 cups for a huge tower, so his head is the 21st cup!

knocking 'em down!

I also found, before we left, a scavenger hunt.  So I printed it out and used my laminator (love that thing!) so Little Guy could use dry erase markers and have several hunts.  We found everything but the turtle, helicopter seed, nest and bunny.  Not bad!  It really made us slow down and actually use all of our senses to find the items on the list.  I was really surprised that we found a lady bug!  I was able to get the bug to climb onto my finger (I REALLY don't do bugs!), but when I tried to transfer it to Little Guy's finger it flew away! :(

all ready for our hunt!

We played balloon ping pong in the backyard.  It was pretty hilarious and Little Guy's patience was wearing thin because his coordination isn't exactly spot on yet.  He also got quite distracted with being in the backyard with all the birds/fish/sounds and he was onto another thing before I knew it!  If you do play this game, make sure to put your balloon back inside or weigh it down if you decide to take a break.  Our balloon got away from us and got blown under the ramp to the backdoor, which is surrounded by some rose bushes.  I wasn't going to be the one to get stuck by thorns to go in after it (I don't know how it didn't pop on the way in!), so we just left it there.  Little Guy was not happy.  Until the next distraction, anyway!

Little Guy also decided to serenade us with his fantastic ability to "play" the organ.  I was a little older than he when I started piano lessons... hmm.  Maybe a piano player in our future??  He really seemed interested in gently playing this time rather than banging on the keys.  Of course he had to push all the buttons, making it his goal to make them all light up!

Well, that's it for the first half of our adventures!  Coming up: a surprise train ride, a trip to the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, the Bush's Beans factory, Pigeon Forge, Little Guy's FIRST LOOSE TOOTH! and Tallulah Falls.