Camping Adventure

We just returned from our first camping adventure with Alanna in tow! Five families from our Home Group (Bible study group) joined us at Stone Mountain Park Campground for 5 days of camping and to go to Atlanta Fest. This was a 3 day music festival of Christian artists. We only attended the concert one day, but enjoyed hanging out at the camp the rest of the time.


This is the veiw from our campsite.


The boys doing some fishing with bread. They caught enough brim for us to have some lunch!


Alanna, observing the action. I think this was before she took a tumble down the hill at our campsite.


Enjoying some good ol' Hersheys and marshmallows. They couldn't wait until the campfire!

This is at Stone Mountain Park. The boys are on the Sky Hike, which is a large adventure course. It took them 1 hour in line and 1 hour on the course!




I checked out the glass blowing demonstration while Alanna took a short nap. She quickly discovered the playground!



We then took a Swiss cable car to the top of Stone Mountain.


Here's Alanna jamming to Toby Mac. She LOVED the music! I will tell you when this girl gets tired, she gets pretty goofy and starts doing sommersaults. She tried this at home while we had all our camping gear on the floor. She managed to roll right over the fishing poles and got a hook stuck in the side of her shirt. I had to cut a small hole in her shirt to get it out. Thankfully it didn't stick in her side!


Sorry to say, my camera battery died at this point. I am usually a good planner and pack everything we could possibly need, but that didn't happen on this trip. This was not our normal camping trip. I felt like I spent all my time keeping an eye on Alanna. She doesn't pay much attention to her surroundings and it seemed like she was falling down every 5 minutes! She also likes to just keep on walking when everyone else has stopped or gone in a different direction. I think she also greeted every camper she passed by! This doesn't make mom feel very comfortable, knowing she'll talk or walk away with anyone. Needing a few boundaries here!

So glad to be back home! Tomorrow, I send off Holden to church camp for 5 days.

I'm still here!

Alanna and big brother Holden


OK, I know some of you are wondering what happened to me. I'm still here...just been a little pre-occupied with a certain 3 yr old named Alanna! I'm starting to get it together, so I'll fill you in on what's been happening in the Videon home.

Alanna is picking up English pretty quickly, but still a looong way to go to have effective communication between us. She's learned to say pray, amen, bike, swimming, too deep, work (that's where ba ba goes), school (where the boys go), doggie, yellow, drink, food, banana (her favorite), apple, lemonade, shoes, and her favorite...Elmo! It's a little funny because she adds "ah" to the end of everything, so it's more like drinkah, foodah, and shoesah. They boys are having fun teaching her words like amigo, cool and eewwww! Chick-fil-A was having a family night and she had a ladybug painted on her hand. The boys said it looked cool, so now she walks around lifting her hand up saying "Qingfang cool!" She can also count to 10 and we're working on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Give her a few more weeks and she'll have it down!



We've been hitting the pool at the Y every few days and she is LOVIN it! She wasn't too excited about the spray ground the first day though. Just last Friday I taught her how to go under water. She'll hold her nose and count to 3, then I dunk her under. By the time I pick her up out of the water, she's already counting again! She has a blast with ba ba. They both go under water and look at each other. She thinks that's pretty neat.

My husband Robert is by no means a quite person. He has one of those voices that just booms when he wants to be loud. Well, before we brought Alanna home, I cautioned him he may need to control his spontaneous moments of loudness in fear of startling our little girl. HA! God has a sense of humor and knows exactly what child will fit our family. Alanna is NOT a quiet little girl, at all! Occasionally, she'll miss her nap time when I'm out running errands. When that girl gets tired, she gets a little delirious, expressive...and loud. If I only knew what she was saying!! I really try to keep the naps on schedule!