Springtime in Plymouth

I'm totally loving living in Plymouth! What a fantastic town! Living near downtown, I get to walk to the bakery, butcher, and produce market, which is so cool! Matt and I have been enjoying the various restaurants and we've been walking around the neighborhoods. There's always something new to discover. Love it love it love it! Oh, and there are blossoming trees everywhere! My neighbor asked me to take a picture of this tree near our home:

Land Between the Lakes

I just had a fantastic week with my family! Once a year, my parents come down from Michigan to do some vacationing with my brother, my husband, and me. Last year we had a great time in Gatlinburg. This year, we met up at Land Between the Lakes, in western Kentucky. It's a really pretty wildlife area, with lots of water (us Michiganders love water and sailboats!), trees, trails, and the like. As always, we made tons of yummy food, relaxed at a nice cabin (I would highly recommend the Lake Woods Log Cabin), and enjoyed laughing and talking together.

Our first evening there, we made sure to visit the Elk and Bison Prairie at dusk so that we could spot the animals. We definitely saw quite a few elk and bison. It was hard to take pictures because it was so dark, but I did manage to capture the neat textures and colors in this one:


Matt and I were off to the side, viewing the animals, when I decided to take a picture of Shannon, my brother, and my parents looking out at the prairie. Then they spotted us!


On another day, we hiked around a small lake. There was this neat area where you could walk across stepping stones at the top of a waterfall. Matt went to take a picture of the four of us, and while he was walking away, we set up in the YMCA stance! He got a kick out of that when he turned around! We're so silly.

This one shows the waterfall:

There were tons of butterflies all over the trail. They gathered in little clumps a lot.

We had fun playing put-put golf at Maggie's Jungle Golf, and then checked out their Jungle Run, which is filled with lots of crazy animals, from emus to goats to donkeys to a camel.

I think this is an emu:


They had peacocks EVERYWHERE!!! I asked the owner how many they had and he guessed it was around 28 to 30. Crazy!

The camel liked to have food thrown in his mouth!
After the awesome weekend, my parents spent a few days in Nashville with Shannon. Then they came back to visit us for a couple of days as well. We did some shopping, lots of eating (as always!), and a little sightseeing. We stopped in at the Jim Beam distillery, and checked out the Bernheim Forest. Both are places I'd like to visit again--especially since they're just 20 minutes down the road!

I'm always thankful for time I get to spend with my family, and this week was no exception. It's great to get together and talk, experience life together, and encourage eachother in our walks with God. It's such a blessing! I wonder what we'll do next year!

The Zoo

My cousins, Katie and Dave, came down to visit us this week. I'm so glad they came. We had a blast! We did tons of stuff all over Louisville. One of the highlights was our trip to the zoo.

This little dude was so cute! He kept looking around and I caught a few of him looking straight at me. He was pretty funny :)


We fed the birds, which was really neat. This one stole the cup of nectar.


Love birds! Or, maybe they're fighting? Or maybe they're conjoined twins?

Purple Trees

Being fairly new to Kentucky, I'm in awe of the purple trees that blossom everywhere in the spring. They're so neat! I don't think I had seen purple trees until I moved down here. So I took some pictures at the park near our apartment the other day:

Tennessee Nature

My family (parents and brother), along with Matt and I, spent a weekend near Gatlinburg recently. It was packed with great memories--yummy food, relaxation, a crazily hilarious charades game, and making it safely up the mountains to our beautiful cabin (long, scary story there). Best of all, I got to be with my husband and family! And, of course, the beauty of the Smokey's was stunning:

The sun was setting and the trees were glowing green all around our cabin! Really hard to catch on camera, but this is my best attempt:


A little fungi:


It was all wet and mossy. Yummy spring: