All About June

So we've been busy and I haven't been able to connect my Mac to the internet for the last month (long story) so here's some highlights of the last month.

We moved to Charlotte, NC the first week of June! We love Charlotte! It's beautiful, the people are super friendly, it's way less expensive than NY and Curtis loves his job. What more can you ask for?

 Here's the view from our apartment.  We live over the goose pond, which ironically enough has a sign posted that says "no swimming." Does this water tempt anyone? Eek!  We feel like we're on a 10 week vacation at a time share condo since all of our furniture is rented and we only brought what we could fit in our car-clothes, Kaden's toys, a few kitchen things and that's it.  

For Father's Day Curtis and Kaden were twins. I made them matching ties by cutting part of the skinny part of the back of Curtis' tie off and creating a small person tie for Kaden.  They looked so cute! Kaden also "fingerpainted" his handprints for Curtis that we gave him in a frame with a picture of the two of them together to put on his desk at work.  Kaden loves his Dad!

Curtis' parents and Kyle came to visit right before Kyle left for London, England on his mission.  We had a great time exploring Charlotte together since we'd only been here maybe a week when they came to visit.  We ate at Amelie's French Bakery and Cafe- delicious and so fun and eclectic.

 We toured all over Uptown Charlotte (their word for downtown).  It's a beautiful city, super clean and all the buildings are super new and fancy looking. We went to Discovery Place.  It's like a kid's science museum but it had some cool stuff for adults too.  We all laid on a bed of nails and it was very strange feeling but didn't hurt. I don't remember why it didn't hurt, something to do with the air pressure.

 Kaden loved all the displays, especially those he could pull himself up to and pound on.  (That's one of his favorite things right now, pounding. Cheap thrills.)

 He really loved the fish in the aquarium display.  He was mesmerized by them and kept following them along the glass. It was so cute!

Discovery Place had a little section for kids and babies and Kaden had the best time there playing with their little push car, riding it and crawling back and forth through this little tunnel they had there. 

 We also wen to the Duke Mansion (I think that's the name at least), which is now a Bed and Breakfast and looked around. It was so pretty and just happened to have swings in the backyard, lucky Kaden!

 Probably only the Fairbourns will get why this sign is funny but I'll try to explain it. Back before there were any grandkids on the Fairbourn side Marv and Dana were discussing what they wanted to be called by grandkids. Dana said she wanted to be "Nana" Dana and Marv was trying to think of something, too. He said he wanted a really cool, manly name like Buck, but we all thought Bucky might be better and he's never heard the end of it since then.  I guess lucky for him, he settled on "Papa" but Buck is a pretty manly name :)

 There was a big gold rush in North Carolina before the California gold rush so we went to the Reed Gold Mine.  

We found the perfect sign for Kyle before he left to England on his mission!

Swimming at our apartment complex' pool.  Kaden loves his floaty car!

 In Uptown after lunch

 Freedom Park "Central Park of Charlotte"

Kaden really wanted to crawl and move around...

 But once he realized the cement hurt he started doing this bear crawl and he's been doing it ever since, everywhere that we are (home, church, outside, etc...)

 We had a great time together, especially with Kyle since he left for England the week after he visited. We will miss seeing him for two years but are so glad he's chosen to go on a mission. Kaden loved it too. We were too much fun and it wore him out.