Meadow in the Mountains

On Saturday, we took Meadow around to show her some East Tennessee sights. First off, though, we had to stop at Home Depot Kid's Workshop.  October is fire safety month, so this month the children were building a fire truck.

Meadow helping with the construction!  

This hammer is awfully big!

Then we took her to the Smoky Mountains where we stopped to try to get a view of the mountains. It's hard to get a nice picture of the mountains when you're already in them! 

Welcome to the Smokies!
Then, of course, we had to go to Dollywood. It is Harvest Celebration time at Dollywood, so Meadow got to learn lots of things about how things were made in the olden days.

Meadow welcoming people to Dollywood  

Watching the bees make honey.  

Learning how meals were cooked along the open prairie.  

Watching and learning about weaving.  

Meadow even got to make her own jump rope (or lasso) to bring home.  

Meadow certainly enjoyed her visit to Dollywood, but her favorite part was visiting with this horse who had been helping grind sugar cane to make sorghum.

Traveling Meadow

Traveling Meadow (GT#6) has arrived for her visit with us. She's originally from Colorado and has been to New Hampshire, Virginia and New York so far on her travels. I believe her next host after us is taking her to the United Kingdom. What fun!

Meadow meets all the girls who live with AGR in Tennessee


Feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the new girls and tired after her long trip from NY, Meadow decided to rest for the afternoon.

Curling up to relax and read, Meadow dozed a bit in Josefina's bed.

Addy & Adele Rose

I found a lot of Addy things on eBay that I wanted to get for my Addy. The lot also came with another Addy. I figured we'd just sell her and keep her things. But NOOOO!!! This new Addy that arrived in this lot was a 1993 original issue Addy!! We just had to keep her. Here's a comparison picture of our Addys faces:

 Our beautiful 1993 Addy has her hair in the original braid and has softer, more pliable vinyl unlike the newer Addy. She is just gorgeous. (Addy never photographs as well as she looks!)

So we've decided we needed to keep both Addys. And to minimize the confusion, we've made the 1996 Addy into a modern American Girl.

Meet Adele Rose our new Haitian American Girl of Today.

Willow comes aboard

Recently, on the very fun doll forum at American Girl Playthings, I came across a person selling this beautiful, cut hair Kaya.

I thought she was perfect for a "girl of today" doll, since she no longer had those long braids of Kaya. Also, I've always wanted to play with my Kaya's hair, but didn't want to take down those original braids. The seller also mentioned that she would consider a trade. So I sent her a picture of the re-furbished Josefina, that we had fixed up from her horrendous state.

The seller was instantly in love with our Fosterfina and agreed to a 'trade'. So trusting one another explicitly we mailed out our respective dolls (UPS with tracking) and waited. It only took two days, and our lovely "Willow" was here! What a great deal. Welcome to the family, Willow.

Nora's adventures conclude

We had lots of fun with Nora. It was very hard to send her on her way to her next host. We are going to miss her very much.

Goodbye!

Julie

We went to American Girl Boutique and Bistro in Atlanta last weekend. Look who joined our family from that store:

Ms. Julie Albright
Now we need to get a wide angle lens to get everyone in one photograph!

Nora vacations in Florida!

Vacation in Florida

 

After my host family took me to AG-Atlanta, they took me to visit Florida (although I was just in Florida with my first host.) This visit we got to go to the Gulf Coast. It was certainly hot and sunny down in Florida. Here I am being given a WARM welcome.

 

 

Julie and I enjoyed a day at the Reddington Beach on the Gulf coast of sunny Florida. Being that it was a weekday in September, we basically had the beach to ourselves.    

We went to Florida to visit with my hosts' grandma. She lives in a really nice retirement area where most of the folks only live there in the winter. So basically we had the run of the streets. Playing street hockey was lots of fun. I had a bit of trouble with Molly's skates at first, but I learned pretty quickly.  

Look at me go!!!

And, of course, being a retirement community there was a chance to play shuffleboard. 

Here are Julie and I facing off.

Nora travels to Georgia!

Georgia

We traveled to Georgia and took lots of pictures. However, we are only going to share a few with you here. It was hard to pick which ones to post and write about, but here goes.  

First is AG Boutique and Bistro in Atlanta! I can't believe we are here.  This is going to be so much fun.  

We had lots of fun posing with the various girls in the store. I even got to help my host pick out a Julie for her to adopt into her family. I couldn't believe this girl here....it was ME! So here is a picture of me and my twin me baking some goodies with the new sweet treats set.  

After we shopped for like, forever, we finally got to go eat at the Bistro. This is Earhart and I trying to decide what to eat for lunch. Julie ate with us too, she's at the other end of this table.

After we did the fun girl kind of thing (American Girl shopping!) we did some fun stuff for the boys. We went to see expensive imported sports cars. Here are Julie and I as we hang on to the back of an Italian sports car....a Lamborghini.  

Ah, this is the life. After a hard day of shopping and browsing, Julie and I got to relax by the pool.

Then we got into the car (again) to continue our trip on to Florida.  No car trip is complete without a nice BIG cup of coffee.

Nora goes Downtown Knoxville

We have been having so much fun with our Traveling Nora.

Downtown Knoxville

 This morning as I was taking Earhart for his morning walk, we got to meet the BIG dog who lives at our host's home. He's really friendly, but his size usually scares people. I wasn't too afraid because I had Earhart to protect me.

As we walked around the yard, we realized we hadn't been up in the treehouse yet, so we climbed up and had a look around. We could see really far from there. But not as far as where we would go later in the afternoon!

The Sunsphere!

It started to rain, but we went to visit the Sunsphere anyway. It wasn't good for pictures, so here's a great picture from the Wiki entry where you can read more about this 266 foot tall tower that was built for the 1982 World's Fair that was held in Knoxville. The glass sphere is 74 feet in diameter! And yes, you can go up in it (and we did) and have a wonderful view of the city and the Tennessee River. The glass sphere part has real gold flecks embedded in the glass to give it that permanent golden glow from the outside. The inside has five levels (once you get up to the sphere part!) but you're only allowed on level 3 right now. The other levels are being re-constructed (1982 WAS a long time ago, you know) and a restaurant inside the sphere is supposed to re-open this month. For more technical information you can visit Sunsphere.info.

This is me from the inside looking out. It's kind of hard to see very far in the picture because the camera couldn't see well through the gold tinted glass, but we could. We would have been able to see further if it hadn't been raining. It still was a great view and a little bit scary.

Earhart thought he was on top of the world!

Later we went to the library. Earhart and Toast had to wait outside, because dogs aren't allowed in the library. They look so sad out there, don't they?

I chose a book about Josefina. I just love reading about all my sisters!

Our last stop with to recycle the plastics and a few glass bottles. It was still raining, but I tried to help and stay dry at the same time.

More fun with Nora

 
Kailey and I start our morning off with a good exercise routine. Just watch our muscles bulge.

Darcy, Kailey and I played with the pattern blocks.

It was a beautiful day, so I finally got to try out what fishing is all about. I didn't catch anything, and I ended up loosing my bait AND my bobber. It wasn't as fun as I thought it would be.

Now this was relaxing, as long as I hung on tightly and didn't fall off into that dirt below me!

Then we had to go to piano lessons. This is youngest son as he tries to teach me some songs. The piano teacher thought I was just beautiful. Well, of course she did!

Some of us played a board game later in the day.
This is me with my new friends, Kailey, Jess, Kaya, Samantha and Darcy.