Summer Summarized

Our summer was filled with fun! Our family went to Vacation Bible School, the Jacksonville Zoo, and the beach. I even went to a concert with an old friend! However, most of our summer could be summarized by our trips! My last post was about our trip to Hawaii, but then we had 3 more. 

The next one was a quick trip to Asheville, North Carolina to meet our newest niece/cousin. Curtis's sister, Heather, had a baby last December and we were so excited to meet her! This is the entire McDaniel side of the family:

We explored the Botanical Gardens at Asheville.

Drew was especially excited to find a big train track!

We also surprised Megan (Curtis's other sister) and Jonas with a Zoom baby celebration in honor of their baby boy on the way! We had family on both sides giving them advice and blessings as they prepared to become parents for the first time. (Since I'm posting this later, I'll say that he arrived safely in August!)

Our next trip was to Gatlinburg, Tennessee with my parents. It started off on the wrong foot when a nail was lodged in our rental car's tire!

Thankfully, we got there safely after switching out for another rental car in Greenville, SC. We did a lot of putt-putt with this beautiful view right where my parents' timeshare was located.

We stopped at a festival on the 4th of July and posed with Smokey!

We recreated the picture from 4 years ago at the Three Bears General Store. They are all growing up so fast!

My parents brought these cool colorful smoke bombs for the kids to enjoy. This pic made me think it could be a cover on an album, haha.

We took a hike in the rain at the Sugarlands Visitor Center.

Here we are at Cataract Falls!

We also explored downtown Gatlinburg and did some shopping.

We spent 2 days at Dollywood! We learned which of our kids are risk-takers (Kate) and which aren't (the other 2).

Grandma and Grandad bought them matching firefly shirts! It was exciting to see fireflies while we were there.

We enjoyed the fireworks and the drone show. We'd never seen anything like it before!

We also went to the Stampede!

The kids got to pet one of the horses after the show was over. It was a great time in Tennessee!

Curtis had to go to Denver for RUF staff training. I tagged along so that I could meet with some of the RUF campus minister wives and actually do a little bit of ministry together with Curtis. It's much harder to minister together now that he travels so much. It also allowed us to have a little bit of kid-free time together! Last year I hiked Mount Sanitas with wives, but this time I hiked it with Curtis. It seemed much easier after all of our hiking in Hawaii! Here's our picture at the top:

The next day I hiked a portion of the Flatirons with some of the campus minister wives. We had lots of great conversations and took lots of amazing shots!

When Curtis travels, these are most of the people that he visits to shepherd, coach, and consult. We are missing several wives and all the interns, but it's a good representation of the Florida/Georgia area that he serves:

Most of the trip was spent in conference rooms, but we did some more exploring after the training was over. We went to the Red Rocks Amphitheater. It seems like a really cool place to have a concert! Maybe we'll go to one in the future!

We also took a tour at Stranahan's Whiskey Distillery. 

It was a nice ending to our last trip of the summer!