Happy Birthday, U.S. Navy!

Saturday night was the annual United States Navy Ball. It's a fancy dinner and ball done every year to celebrate the Navy's birthday. This year was so much fun. It was held on the Chattanooga Riverboat downtown. Lee and I went with another gal from his work, Laura, and she brought our good friend Mike as her date. We all had a blast. The dinner was yummy and the dancing and socializing was great. It was so nice to get out and have a good time without a toddler under foot!!

Stupid me, in our rush to get out the door on time, forgot to bring my camera... but here are a few shots taken by the photography company hired to capture the event:

Sunday night in the park

Lee has been wanting to take Logan to the children's park in downtown Ringgold for a while... just about ever since it opened a few months ago. I had taken him once before with my friend, Mike, but Lee had never gotten to take him. He thought it would be fun for Logan and good for him to be around other kids. We waited to go until about 8:00 or so because it was just so darn hot earlier... there was no way we wanted to be out in that heat wave.

We grabbed some dinner at Wendy's on the way and brought it with us to eat there. At first, Logan just kind of stood around our picnic table and watched the other kids playing from afar. He slowly started inching his way out to see what they were all doing. It finally took Daddy taking him over to the slide and other stuff for him to really get "into" it. Once he did, he had so much fun. He ran around and looked at all the toys and Daddy took him down the slide a few times (he doesn't like the slide very much... scared him, I guess!), showed him the little toys you can sit on, and took him on a swing. Logan seemed to like swinging with Daddy, but he really loved all the attention from a group of little girls. They were a bit older than him, I'd say about age 6 to 8 or so, and they adored him. I walked around to keep an eye on him and they were having a blast just "chasing" him and tickling him and getting him to laugh really hard. They even took him down the slide (which he still didn't like). Right before it was time for us to go home, one of the little girls had a cell phone (imagine that, a cell phone on a kid under 10 years old... I didn't get a cell phone until I was out of high school... but that's a whole 'nother tangent) and they asked if they could take a picture of Logan. It was really sweet.

Since Logan enjoyed himself so much, Lee suggested we try and make it a weekly event. So from now on, we're going to aim to take him to the park on Sunday evenings to get him out of the house and interacting with other little kids.

Fresh green beans!

Tonight for dinner we had a turkey and stuffing boxed meal (gotta love easy dinners!) On the side, I made rolls and we had DELICIOUS, fresh green beans. Our neighbor, Jeremy, is so kind. He brings us lots of fresh veggies from his amazing garden and just the other day he brought several cucumbers and a huge bag of beans. Here they are after we cleaned them and removed all the strings! Yum!!

All ready to cook & eat!