Fort Wayne, IN

 On December 17th we made it back home to Fort Wayne. We are still working on unpacking and settling in.....and getting everyone on a better schedule. The kids have been getting up by 8:30 am all this week to do school and we've picked up the school schedule slight and will go into a full schedule after the new year. It's quite a change from our time on the road where they were sleeping in until at least 10 most mornings, although part of the deal with Nathan the last week was they were up by 8 am every day, so we're trying to keep that momentum going. Now it's on to trying to figure out what is next in life. 

We were greeted with snow on Monday, which was super exciting! 

However getting clothes for the boys had to be high priority at that point, as they only had two pairs of pants that fit them, as they both grew a lot in the past six months 😀 It's been nice to be able to stock up the fridge and freezer especially with Christmas meat sales! We'll see what comes next, the kids are eager to get back to Fire & Light and Hannah is applying for jobs. Life will definitely look different in the new year.

Muncie, IN

Saturday we drove from Tennessee to Muncie, IN, we stopped in Muncie for one night to winterize and have a short day our last drive. Saturday was the last day of the Fire & Light fall semester elementary show, which many of the kids friends were in. They were very much wanting to drive up and see the show, so Nathan made a deal with them, if they'd be super helpful and cooperate for the week he'd drive them from Muncie up to Fort Wayne (about an hour and 20 min. drive) to see the show. The kids even got up at 6 am Saturday so we could leave the Nashville area early and get up to Indiana with enough time to drive on to Fort Wayne. They kept their end of the bargain, so Saturday night Nathan drove them to Fort Wayne and they very much enjoyed the show and seeing all their friends. 

Surprisingly the only picture they got from the night at the show was this one:

Nathan was excited to get a picture with Santa 😉

Columbia, TN

 We were south of Nashville visiting our boss and spending a few days there before heading to the chilly north of Indiana. We stayed from the 13th - 16th. We made it into Nashville proper on Thursday afternoon and went to the Tennessee State Museum which had the history of Tennessee and then we headed over to the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, where we ended up eating dinner first across the street and then walked around the Gaylord Opryland to see what it was like. Dinner was a fun experience at Caney Fork River Valley Grille, the kids tried alligator, and Damen had a bison burger, it was a good southern food and wild game place. The kids devoured the food. Friday we went out to lunch with our boss and one of our co-workers who is north of Nashville, it was nice to see people face to face instead of just listening over the phone. We spent Friday afternoon working in the office space our boss has.

These are pictures from walking through the Gaylord Opryland Hotel

These are from Caney Fork River Valley Grille. besides the unique food there were fun things to see!

The Tennessee State Museum was free and had the history of Tennessee along with all kinds of random other stuff in it.

Birmingham, AL

 December 10th-13th we stopped in Birmingham. We were actually just south in Hoover and stayed at the Hoover Met Complex which has an RV park, a large sports complex and a super fun playground. The three younger kids did climbing walls along with Nathan and had so much fun! 

This is the first time Kaleb climbed the buildings and jumped off the top one. He loved doing this and did it repeatedly in the hour we were there. 

The gears actually turn on this wall and Evie was the only one who made it to the top

There were so many fun things to climb!

Evie and Kaleb on walls

Now racing to the top

Damen when he heard about it was like, that's lame, I don't want to climb with a harness, but when he saw it and then did it had a lot of fun. He also found it much more terrifying than all the rocks he's climbed in national parks, it was pretty amusing. 

Evie ready to jump, she went up several times, but only stood and jumped once, the other times were from a sitting position. 

Here Damen, Evie tackle the moving blocks while Nathan conquers the Tetris wall. 

Nathan enjoyed the climbing, but wasn't found of the jumping, he'd get to the top of things he could jump off and take FOREVER to actually jump, but he did it! 

In the video you can hear Nathan said "I didn't die" enjoy!

We went into Birmingham and were too late into town to go into the 16th Avenue Baptist Church or the Civil Rights Institute, but they have signage and you can do the walk from the church to the town hall, so we did that with the kids. 

There were several sculptures in a park right outside 16th Avenue Baptist Church. That told the story of the protests and bombing. 

We walked all the way to the court house.

Vicksburg, MS

 We stopped in Vicksburg the 8th-10th to do a little history and so we could count going to both Louisiana and Mississippi. We went to Vicksburg National Military Park and learned about the civil war battle that took place there. The number of markers and memorials was crazy, it's the most well documented battle location in the US. 

We got to see the U.S.S. Cairo, which was an iron clad ship. 

This is the canal Grant tried and failed to build to bypass Vicksburg and get supplies to the Union troops. 

After we went to the park we stopped at Whataburger, because we hadn't done Whataburger while we were in Texas. 

This was also the first time we stayed at a casino RV park, it was super empty, like only two or three other RVs in the 60+ spaces. 

Murfreesboro, AR

 We got in Tuesday, December 5th and spent Wednesday working and learning about diamond searching at our RV park. Thursday we headed to Craters of Diamonds state park, to much complaining and frustration by the kids. We got to the park and hunted for diamonds for a couple hours, had some lunch, then Hannah, Kaleb and Damen walked back to the RV park, it was only about two miles away. I was having to deal with work issues off and on through out the day which was super annoying and I couldn't get the panning to work like it showed in all the how to videos or how we were taught, but Evie and Nathan had a good time diamond hunting. Kaleb found a cool rock near our campsite. No one found any diamonds. 

This is the rock Kaleb found at the campsite.

Here is a chart of all the possible kinds of rocks and such you can find at the diamond crater

Evie searching for diamonds

Nathan searching for diamonds

Evie bringing a bucket of dirt to the water tables to sift through. 

Hannah, Damen and Kaleb walking the fields looking for diamonds, or avoiding their parents, one of the two.