Jake's big 14!!!

Today was Jacob's birthday.  Hard to believe it he is that old!!  He wanted a steak for lunch so we went to Logans.  He ate 4 rolls and almost all of his 6 oz steak!!  Not to mention all the peanuts!! 

 

He has saved all his money for a long time.  He really wanted an XBOX and he finally had enough money so we ordered it from Amazon yesterday.  After lunch we stopped by Game Stop and he bought Halo 4.  He is so excited about this game system.

 

On the way home we stopped by the Humane Society to pet the puppies.  They have the young puppies cages locked now so we couldn't hold them but there was the cutest little dog with the biggest ears!  We gave all the dogs treats, there weren't as many there as there usually are.  But that is a good thing.   We also stopped by Steak and Shake to get his free birthday milkshake.  We went through the drive through and he ordered strawberry but has we were pulling up to the window we saw a sign for red velvet cake shakes.  So we left the drive through line and went inside quickly so we could catch them before they made the strawberry ;)

 

He wanted chicken cheese steaks for dinner and red velvet cake. 

 

He was a little bummed because the weather wasn't great.  Last year we hiked at Natural Bridge.  He wanted to go to the Newport Aquarium but I was afraid of the roads getting bad.  The roads didn't get bad but buy the time we figured that out it was too late. 

 

 Look at those ears!!!!!

 

 This puppy was in Diesels old cage.  Her name is Delia.

 

Valentines at CiCis pizza!!

We met a few fellow homeschoolers at CiCi's for a little Valentines Day party.  They closed down the CiCi's in our town so we hadn't been for a while.  It was a nice low stress party :)  Fun just hanging out with friends!

 

A little spring in the winter

I hadn't been outside today until I had to take Anthony to Banjo lessons. I stepped outside and it was so nice!!!! My van said 63 degrees. So after banjo lessons were over I took Jacob, Michael and Diesel to Great Crossings. Jacob brought his fishing pole and Michael brought his sling shot. It was such a beautiful day. Just wish I had found that out a little earlier :)

 

No bites but he just loves to be out there :)

Sling shot'en, part of his sling shot broke  but it is still useable.

 

Jake had a spilled his tackle box

 

 

Had to put new sinker and hook on his line.

 

 

 

The dark spot in the water was hundreds of little fish.

 

 



On Monday of this week I decided to take Jacob and Michael to the gorge.  Anthony stayed home to go to banjo lessons which he ended up not going to anyway.  The weather was okay, warmer than it had been for a while.  Tuesday was suppose to be really nice, around 70 degrees but it was suppose to rain Monday afternoon and keep raining most of the night.  So I thought lets go on Monday, try to beat the rain and the mud that would be there on Tuesday.  We got a little bit of a later start than I wanted but we headed on out anyway. 

 

We went through Nada Tunnel and it had ice hanging along the end of the tunnel.  I bet it was awesome before most of it melted.  There was so much ice on our drive to the education center.  I took lots of pictures of it and we deemed it ice cycle day.  I forgot my map so we stopped by the educational center to pick another one up.  Then we had a nice conversation with two of the forest rangers there.  They gave Jacob lots of ideas about things to do to help his chances of actually being hired by the federal park system. 

 

We went on one of our favorite hikes, Sky Bridge.  We took Diesel with us, he loves hiking :)  We thought we might take the trail backwards this time and start by going down the 4 flights of stairs at the beginning instead of going up them at the end of the hike.  Well, that didn't go so well because the stairs of made of mesh metal and Diesel would NOT go down them.  We have taken him on this hike several times before and had not problem getting him to go up the steps.  But he was adamant about not going down them, to the point of almost pulling me over.  And he was doing this by backing up!!!  He is one strong dog!  So we went the other way ;)  About 3/4th through our hike it started raining on us, just a little though.  So we rushed through the rest of the trail.  We got back to the van before the heavy rain started.  On the way back we stopped at the Silver Dollar camp sites.  We saw some wild turkeys and the rain had made the river foggy and it looked really cool.  I remembered that there was a great place there to take pictures of the Red River. 

 

The boys were starving buy the time we got back out of the gorge.  We were all excited to head to Miguels Pizza, but when we got there it wasn't open.  We ended up at Subway, the only other place open around there this time of the year.  Jacob and Michael both got 6 inch sandwiches and after they finished them I had to get them each another one!!  Michael ate every bite of his, Jacob finished all but the end with mostly just bread.  We took that and gave it to Diesel. 

 

Even with the rain we had a wonderful day.  I love the gorge.  Its one of our favorite places here in Kentucky.  So glad we went because 2 days later the temps dropped majorly.  Yesterday (Friday) it didn't get above freezing all day.  Looking forward to another nice winter day so we can head back.