Our Little Gymnast

Kylee started taking gymnastics 4 weeks ago. She has become more familiar with the gym and more comfortable doing the different activities. She has come A LONG way since the first class when she spent most of it screaming and crying!?!? But as you can see, she is doing a great job! (Sorry for the shaky camera -- Ryland was trying to grab it.) : )


The first video is of the trampoline that we do each week. Each session a new jump or skill is added. This video is just the first jumping that we did -- hands in the air and jump to the other end!

The second video is from something Kylee had trouble with the first few times. Today, she did great though! She has to jump up on the pad from the ground. Today was the first day she got both feet under her when she landed on top!!

Swinging Siblings

During one of our park trips at the beginning of the month, I decided to give Ryland a turn at swinging. I didn't have any extra "support" to put in the swing with him so I used Kylee. At first she was excited at the idea of riding with her brother. Ryland was all smiles when the swing started to move ...

Kylee, on the other hand, was disgusted with how slow and "not high" the swing was moving. Needless to say, they didn't last too long in the swing together. : )

The next time we headed off to the park, I was sure to pack some extra blankets to help Ryland swing. Again, he was thrilled when the swing started moving (although this picture doesn't really show it) and now that Kylee had her own swing to go "very fast" and "very high" she was happy too. : )

Kylee working on getting up to "touch the trees."

And Ryland excited to be swinging. : )

Ryland has since graduated to swinging with no blankets needed. Yay! Now, Kylee has moved onto wanting to push him. VERY close supervision is needed for this one. : )

Kentucky!

This year we took a "Snyder" family vacation. Nana, Grandad, Aunt Amy, Uncle Randy, Jack, Bubba, Aunt Laura, and the four of us packed up and headed to Kentucky!

The question we answered most . . . "What's in Kentucky?" This was actually a pretty understandable question since most people were headed to the beaches for their vacation but our reason was simple. The Jellystone Campsite in Kentucky was the closest one that offered the Boo Boo Bungalow -- a cabin (with air and running water) that could house up to 15 people. Since there were 11 of us and we liked the way these Camps seemed to be set up we settled on Cave City, Kentucky for our vacation. While we expected this question, and got used to answering it, from people that knew we were leaving we did not expect to get asked a similar one while in Kentucky . . . be sure to insert a thick southern accent and slight tone of disgust with this question . . . "So, why'd ya'll come to Kentucky?" Ha!

All in all . . . we had a great time and enjoyed the "sightseeing" we did as well as just sitting back and relaxing at the Boo Boo Bungalow. We managed to have "Fire Beer" every night. : )


Here are some of the highlights of the trip.

To break the driving up we stopped in Charleston, WV on the way to KY. We got there early enough to take advantage of the pool. The kids thought this was a great start to vacation and probably would have been happy staying there the whole week!



Some pictures of our time at the Boo Boo Bungalow. Fire Beer, Washer Toss, Blongo Ball, Puzzles, Computer Time, Game Room . . . the list goes on and on. :)

Kentucky Down Under was one of our first stops. It was a nice little Australian themed "zoo." The kids really enjoyed all the animals (and the adults seemed to have a good time too.)

One of the attractions is an aviary where you could feed the birds as they landed on you. In the above collage there are a few pictures of Kylee, Pete, Randy, and Jack inside the aviary. They seemed to enjoy the birds as they landed on their shoulders to eat. BUT, the pictures of BJ and Laura inside deserved a collage of their own. Once the inital shock of the bird on BJ's shoulder was done (see the upper left and lower right corner picture) he seemed to ease up a bit.

Laura on the other hand . . . was priceless. I don't think there was a better picture taken all of vacation then the one of the bird as it came towards her. (I'm sure you can tell I am talking about the picture on the far right!) Although she calmed down and let the birds eat, she seemed to have a look of utter disgust the entire time she was in there. : )

There were even more chances to get up and personal with the animals while we were there. Aunt Laura and Jack were able to pet a camel. Uncle Randy and Jack got to pet a kangaroo. And Kylee and I were able to pet a kangaroo and an emu! Kylee seemed to have no fear with getting close to these animals. I was a little freaked out by the emu but since this one wasn't staring right at us while we petted it, it wasn't so bad. While petting the kangaroo though, all I could think of was the episode of "When Animals Attack" that I had seen a while ago with the kangaroo that went nuts -- needless to say I was just hoping Kylee, or I, didn't tick this guy off!

Another great adventure that we had while in the area was horseback riding! Aunt Laura, Uncle Randy, Kylee, and I got to go on a half hour ride on some back trails with our guide -- Brian the Cowboy! Although Kylee turned to be about 5 minutes into the ride and said, "Mommy, my bum hurt" she did great and really enjoyed it. She got so comfortable on Cherokee (our horse) that she actually feel asleep for about half the ride. The only thing that woke her up was her helmet falling off!

Next to every good horseback riding place there is . . . bumper cars!?!? Yeah, right above the stables was a set up of bumper cars, a rock climbing wall, and an alpine slide. Just another time when we joked . . . "where are we?" : ) Bumper cars is my mom's absolute favorite ride so we stopped for a quick ride. Turns out, we were the only ones! So the match up was Uncle Randy and Jack versus Nana and Kylee!

Dinosaur World was a HUGE hit with the kids. Pete and Aunt Amy took the kids to go explore the life size dinos. They came back so excited about everything they saw. From sitting on the dinosaur's toes, to playing in a dino playground, and digging for fossils it was a great time for them!

Mammoth Cave was one of the big attractions in the area. Being the largest cave system in the US, there were quite a few options on the type of cave to explore. Nana, Aunt Amy, and I took the kids into Cave Niagra which was a short and easy tour. It was perfect for them since we weren't sure how any of them would react to it. Grandad, Bubba, Uncle Randy, Aunt Laura, and Pete went off on a more difficult tour. Theirs was longer and more of a challenge but they said it was also a good adventure.

We also visited two "museums" while we were there. One was a wax museum. It definitely had a lot of neat set-ups and the wax sculptures were great -- we could have done without the cassette taped tour guide though. : ) The highlight of this museum was the woman working there. She tried to teach us how to talk Southern -- "one, two three, four, five six, seummm." We also asked her to recommend a restaurant with good southern cooking. She said that the best one she knew of was a bit of a drive (22 miles) and it was out in the country. Laura asked (in all seriousness), "Wait we aren't in the country?" to which she replied, "Oh, honey it gets much worse!"

The other "museum" we went to was an animal museum. Basically it was a bunch of animals that had been stuffed. As strange as it sounds though, it was pretty neat. Weird but neat. And the kids loved seeing all the animals.

Bowling Green was also on our list of things to do. There was a Dairy Farm there that was supposed to have really good ice cream and if there is one thing that Snyders will travel for -- it's ice cream! The brochure said that groups of 10 or more qualified for a tour. Although we think they were in reference to field trips by schools, day cares, and scouts we had enough to qualify (8 adults, 2 kids, and a baby!) The guy running the tour was very nice and let people milk the cow! As we were leaving though he said to my father, "I just have to ask . . . why would you come to a dairy farm on vacation?" Dad's response, "We heard you made good ice cream!" The ice cream was good and there was even a playground right outside to play on for a bit.

It was great to be able to spend time with everyone since it is getting harder and harder for all of our schedules to coincide. Hopefully we will get to go on another vacation again soon!

Some Good Ole Videos

My goal was to update the blog in chronological order but it seems like there are A LOT of pictures from the end of the summer that I'm still trying to organize. So, hopefully those will be sorted and posted soon.

A little update on the Cookson house though. Ryland started crawling about a month and a half ago . . . yep he is mobile! I didn't consider it crawling at first since he doesn't get his stomach up when he moves his arms and legs but he is definitely moving. It is just more of a "commando crawl." I have been trying to catch him on video for a while but it seems like when the camera is out he is just not into "performing." This was the best I could get of him crawling today (with the help of Kylee trying to entice him by showing him a bat to play with.) : )

While we were downstairs playing today, Kylee decided to pull out her dress up box. That is all I need to say . . . the video tells the rest of the story! I don't know where she comes up with half the things she says and does but Kylee definitely makes has a sense of humor. Enjoy! (Sorry, about the need for you to turn your head . . . I don't know how to change the video's orientation and it is too late for me to try and figure it out right now.)