Grand Canyon bound!!!!

Hello from Arizona. We have traveled through a few states since we last posted (Tennessee,Arkansas,Oklahoma,Texas,New Mexico and Arizona). We are staying at a condo in an area called overgaard, Arizona. The Condo was nice down time for us and the kids for the last day. Yesterday Scott, Crystal and little mylie came up from Phoenix to hang out with us for the day. We had a wonderful day of seeing Bison close up behind metal gate fence, swimming at the condo pool, and of course eating. This morning we are heading out for the Grand Canyon. We will be spending the night and in the morning heading for Lake Powell. We will try to post before we get on the house boat, but only if we can get online. Sorry about the pics, we can see them on our laptop. We will work on it. We miss you all.

On the road again!

We hope you all enjoyed the pictures Steve put on the last blog. We will try to post more as time allows.

I just wanted to send out a little update. We left NC yesterday afternoon to start our way out to Lake Powell. We stayed near Memphis last night and we're hoping to get to Oklahoma City tonight. We are hoping to get a day at the Grand Canyon Friday. We've never been there and I'm sure we'll want more then one day, but we'll have to go back another time. We are looking forward to Powell. It is the BEST vacation (from our very long vacation)!!!!

We did get some bad news before we left Asheville, one of the houses that we put an offer on (and already had a verbal agreement) fell through. The seller decided he didn't want to sell after all. But at least we still have a written contract on the one we are planning to live in. Our agent will be looking for more property for us to flip while we are gone.

We left Smokey and our trailer with my cousin Bahnson's very nice friends. (By the way I'm waiting to hear about your flip)

Cindy, I'm sorry we didn't get over to Charlotte to see you yet, but we'd love to meet up in Oct when we get back if you'll be around.

Aunt Shirley, I'm hoping everything went well with your operation, you will be in our prayers!

Love and Peace!
Julie

A Full Day!!!

Today was a big day for us. We started our morning off by going into Asheville for Organicfest 2006. It was heaven for us, we were surrounded by others who believe in a non-toxic way of life. We saw lots of hippies young and old (which meant we saw lots of dreads).

This was one of the many venders at Organicfest (sweet ride...)

The kids had fun while they were hard at work creating headbands for the kids parade at the festival. They were excited when they were invited to march in the kids parade. They had their headbands that they created and the people in charge of the parade handed out musical instruments to the kids and they played them as loud as they could marching through the middle of the festival.

This is the kids marching down the middle of the vender's of the festival parade.(what cute kids!!)

The kids also had their faces painted....(look at my pretty butterfly)

After going to Organicfest we talked with our Realtor about the homes we put offers on this week. Both offers were excepted today ( YEAH!!!). We will live in one, and tear apart the other one and redo it. We want to remodel it quickly and put it back on the market as soon as possible. The other house does not need very much done, except to modernize the look inside and out. The backyard of the nicer one is not as big as the other, but it has been put together well. We are excited about both houses. Both homes are about 3 or 4 blocks from one another, and the ward building is not far from both houses, I would think they are both in the same ward boundaries. Our Realtor tells us that the area that they are located is the fastest growing area. That works for us.

This is the side of the house we won't be living in, but it will be awesome fixed up.

Neither house was our dream home, but they will be great real estate investments. When they are both fixed up we should be closer to knowing where we want to settle down and watch the kids grow up.

This is part of the nice back yard of the house we will move into.

After we talked to the Realtor we headed south to Rutherfordton to the Children's Museum to meet Ann and her two girls. The kids had a blast, ok so did the adults. We then had dinner and headed to Aunt Nancy's house to see her before she left for work. We then headed back for bedtime. I have finally figured out how to add photos, but this blog has taken me a few hours to put together. So I will say good night to you all, Julie does not know that I figured out the photo thing. She will be really excited. I hope tonight's blog works for her since she did not proof read it. I will leave you with a few more photo's from today. Love Steve

the wild 2 year old

Look at me, look at me.....

hitting the killer rapids on the floor

Good night from North Carolina......

House hunting and homeschool

We spent most of today and yesterday looking at real estate with a wonderful realtor here in Asheville. We put in offers on 2 houses today, so we'll see what happens. The kids have been troopers and justly rewarded with ice cream today! We are all hoping we are done looking at houses for now.
We have found a large (400+ families) homeschool group and a unschool group (50 + families) here in Asheville. There seems to be lots of activities and we are hoping to meet up with the unschool group tomorrow. Also Organicfest, a big once a year festival, is tomorrow.....that HAS to be a sign that we are in the right place!!! There is also a organic farmers market every Sat. We went to a huge health food store today, Earth Fare (I think?) it was great, but just as over priced as Wild Oats..yikes! We can't wait til we can get a garden going.
Well Winston is still up and it's after 10pm. I will try to post an update tomorrow. I'm also trying to add all of you with blogs to my blogroll and add pictures. So send me your blog adresses and hopefully I'll figure out how to work this eventually!!

Love and Peace!!

North/South Carolina ( We made it !!!! )

Hello from the Carolina's, we have not found WiFi for a week or so. Tonight I found the right spot, ( in the laundry room ) at the KOA campground that we are staying at in Candler, North Carolina. For those that do not know North Carolina, we are about 10-15 minutes West of Asheville. To catch you all up real quick, we did do a 2 hour cave tour with the kids into Mammoth Cave. It was amazing how huge the different cave rooms were. Some of the rooms had around 20-30 bench seats to sit on and listen to the Park Rangers. The kids could have handled the 5 minute or less tour, at one stop in the cave where we all sat on the bench's, Winston didn't want to sit still and his voice carried very well in the cave, the Ranger asked if we could contain him, I asked where the exit was and if he wanted me to take him out? The dumb part of it all is this stop was an hour into the cave. All the others on our tour were very nice about the kids being in the cave. So that was the story of the cave tour. Julie and I thought it was ok, we liked Jewel Cave in South Dakota better. We headed to South Carolina last Sunday evening after the cave tour. We pulled into Julie's cousin Ann's house about 3 am Monday morning. Ann and Randy were so nice to let us park our trailer literally in front of their house for the week. If you wanted to see the true life story of Nation Lampoon Family Vacation, you should have seen us all living out side Ann and Randy's house in our trailer. Thank you so much for letting us stay with you guys!! We put our kids to bed every night and then headed into Ann and Randy's house to hang out with the adults, we had a great time with them. While we stayed at Ann and Randy's we drove into Greenville and Spartanburg areas to see homes for sale, no real luck or great feeling about anything in those areas. We also took the kids to see Aunt Nancy and had dinner with her in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. On Wednesday last week we also went back to Rutherfordton to take the kids to the kids museum, but after eating lunch we found out that they closed early that day, so we had pretty sad kids. We took them to a pottery store and they all picked out a piece and painted them. We are waiting for them to be cooked and pick them up this week sometime. On Saturday we loaded the trailer up and moved our selves across the boarder to Candler, North Carolina. We went to church in Asheville Sunday morning and was welcomed with open arms by the whole branch. We met a couple who had just moved to the area a few months ago from Logan, Utah. They were a lot of help on finding a Realtor that knows the area. The people at church said we came to their ward for a reason, (they said we were meant to be in their branch). Sunday night we went with Julie's cousin Nancy to Asheville to take the kids to the Children's muesum, but again we were too late, they had closed. So we went to the Mello Mushroom for dinner. Yesterday (Monday, Labor-day), we met up with Ann and Randy and their 2 girls and Nancy Clair and Josh at the Hendersonville Apple Days Fair. The kids had fun and we watch the Apple days parade. Yesterday has been the only day we have seen the sun in about a week. The rain won't go away. People keep telling us that its not normal for this much rain this time of the year, we don't believe them. Today we drove into Asheville to meet with a Realtor, we gave her what we are looking for in a home, and tomorrow we meet her for a full day of seeing homes with her. Today we drove around on our own and tortured the kids looking through different neighborhoods. No real luck yet, but it will come in due time. We miss you all and hope all is well. Love Steve, Julie and kids p.s. Julie really didn't see this before I sent it, her and the kids are asleep.