Stephen& Emily Holden: Our Georgia stay-cation

This summer with moving to a new home and all that craziness, we decided that other than seeing our family, we'd just stay close and explore Georgia! We didn't really get to do that last summer. About two months after we moved here, I was laying in a hospital bed for another two month until the girls were born. Then it was crazy busy and I never left the house....until...well...now.

But we tried to squeeze in a few things this summer. Here's a few of our highlights of our Summer Georgia Stay-cation!

We have a pool just down the street from our new place and we tried to hit it as often as we could. We'd just zip down for a hour or so on Saturday or Stephen or I would slip away with just Andrew while the girls napped. It's been a lot of fun and we've loved cooling off from the hot Georgia summer in the pool.

A few times I even braved it by myself with three kids! Our ward would do playgroup each week at a different pool of the different ward members neighborhoods. A few times they'd invite some of the YW to come and "play" with the kids too! Those were the weeks I'd take advantage of because basically all three of my kids need one on one help in the pool and there's just me and what a good way to find awesome babysitters too right???

Before we even moved, knowing our new place had a pool, we signed Andrew up for some swimming lessons. Andrew loves the water, but it brings out his spasticity. This means that when he's in the water, his muscles all flex and he's stiff as a board. He has an even harder time relaxing and controlling his muscles than typical. It's crazy, but his body is receiving a lot of "input" from the water on his skin and that is how it reacts.

We decided to do private lessons for him. He was so excited and and loved going each day! He still talks about his teacher 'Riley' and things that 'Riley' told him. So everyday for a week, we hauled the gang over to the community pool for swimming lessons. As with everything else, swimming is going to be slow in coming for this little guy. But it was awesome therapy every single day (shhhh don't tell him) and he made some awesome progress...especially the last day! (of course) So proud of him!

Last day of swim lessons!

Since we have passes to the Georgia Aquarium we've hit it up a few different times this summer! I love it more and more every time we go. Andrew now pretends that we have our very own dolphin show everyday at our house... we sit in the stadium (our stairs) and watch the show in the bathroom (at the bottom of the stairs) Which is coincidentally painted blue so of course that is the water the dolphins swim in. And he makes sure to sing a few of the songs from the show! I just love how his little mind works!

June and July are firefly season down here and with all the woods around our house we had tons of fireflies! We let Andrew stay up late and we caught a bunch. Although he looks pretty serious in the picture, he thought they were pretty fun and asked a bunch of his famous 'Why?' and 'How come?' questions as to why they light up. And where do they live in the day?

It's been fun to finally have a place of our own and a YARD of our own. I think I appreciate the yard way more after living in an apartment with ZERO green space out my door. Andrew has loved it too! When we brave the humidity and heat we have picnics outside. He loves to help daddy mow the lawn every week and we take lots of walks and we have one great little helper in the yard too!

We've been exploring some awesome places right close to our home, one of which is Sawnee Mountain... I have to say that with a chuckle, because it's more of like a gigantic hill. But yes, for those out east I guess you could say it's a small mountain and apparently it's technically connected to the Blue Mountain range soo....

But it was pretty fun! We've been a few times to a few different hiking trails. One of Andrew's favorites was when we found the canopy walk and the tree house. Stephen and I thought it was pretty cool too!

We've spent a majority of the summer going to therapy each week too. Since moving, we've had to change therapists...it's always hard to change and start fresh with someone new. It takes a good 2-3 months for them to get to know Andrew and start really pushing him. This new place is pretty awesome and has observation rooms I can spy in on.

And this is usually what happens on therapy days, because the girls don't get a morning nap.

We've been trying to get outdoors as much as possible this summer since we have the space now and we've enjoyed going on a few picnics outside.

The girls devoured the watermelon!!

We've loved living close to a greenway that has access right into our neighborhood. We go on lots of walks and even took the bikes out a few times.

Living in the city last year, I really missed good parks... They had a few parks near our apartment. A couple of them, sadly I didn't feel very safe taking my child to and one was pretty nice, but it was insanely busy all the time. We've found some awesome parks here by our house! All of them are so much fun! Andrew loves it and begs to go to the park! The girls have found a new love of swings at the park! I'm not sure if Andrew would say he loves the teeter totter or the merry-go-round best.

The week before school started I tried to brave a few days and put everything aside and do something fun each day. One of those days we headed to the zoo! This was a first, to do all by myself! But we did it (seriously I can't express to you what an achievement this is) and we had a blast! The girls just loved being out and about. And we basically chased Andrew down as he went from animal to animal. He was in heaven in his little walker going across bridges and up paths. He was pretty patient too when I had to stop and feed the girls.