Vacation

After Sam's disappointing ENT experience two weeks ago, we recharged on a family vacation! 

We drove up to Stone Mountain Park in Atlanta for the first leg of the journey.  My parents and sister met us there.  Stone Mountain isn't exactly our idea of a great camping vacation, but we went there for a purpose.  Chris and I signed up for the Muddy Buddy race months ago.  This is a bike/run adventure race that benefits the Challenged Athlete Foundation, which provides special equipment and prosthetics to disabled athletes.  The race is a team event with trail biking, trail running, obstacle climbing, and mud pit crawling.  It was a lot of fun (even though it was 140 degrees outside).

After the race, we drove up to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  We camped in the park for 5 days.  It was much better weather in the higher elevation.  We did some beautiful hikes, played in the rivers, and tagged along as my parents bought their 'dream' retirement home in Gatlinburg, TN!  Sam had a FANTASTIC time being TOTALLY spoiled by my parents and sister.  He enjoyed camping, too, and got to spend every night on a queen sized bed all to himself in my parents pop-up tent trailer. 

Even better, Sam learned to WALK!  He finally caught the hang of it while we were shopping in a great outdoor sports shop that had a super cute crawl space decorated like a bear's den in their kids clothing department.  I guess he got excited and curious enough to just go for it!  Since then, he's practically mastered walking.  AND he wants to walk EVERYWHERE.  We could not be more proud or happy!

Unfortunately, he did recently master something else: the fine art of temper tantrums.  He now REGULARLY throws himself down on the ground, kicks his arms, throws his legs, bangs his head, and screams at the top of his lungs.  Usually, he does this for NO APPARENT REASON but to try it out.  Ugh.  We are doing out best to ignore it, but if anyone has any other suggestions, I'm willing to listen!

~Kathy