The Adventures of the Dahle Family

After a week or two of tearing out linoleum, carpet, tack strips, baseboards, and scraping up old adhesive, I finally got the floors all prepped and began laying tile two weeks ago. It's taken awhile to get all 340 ft. laid but it is FINALLY done. My parents flew in to spend five days with us during this time and we all enjoyed being spoiled during their visit and the great help they were with our house projects, taking care of the girls, and keeping up on the house. Unfortunately they had to endure our construction zone. Jim has been a big help when he is off in taking care of the girls and running Whitney to and from school so I can have some uninterrupted time to work. Unfortunately I'm not super speedy partly because I want it to be done well and it takes a bit to get the motivation to get going each day. Here's a few before/after shots (not the best but gives you an idea of how it looks):


The lack of motivation may have something to do with the additional fatigue and occasional nausea I feel from this:

We're excited for the little one that is due to arrive April 21st. Whitney is hoping for a brother but we'll have to wait and see! Maren just walks around and says "baby" all day.

We still have plenty to do with some painting, installing baseboards, kitchen cabinet staining, and getting somebody to install tcarpet. However the largest project by far is now complete! But for now I need to tackle the mess that this house has become after being neglected for past two weeks.

A few weeks ago I took Whitney and we joined some friends for an evening at Disney on Ice. The show included segments on Cars, Lion King, Little Mermaid, and Tinkerbell with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy serving as hosts. The kids seemed to really enjoy the show though none of us were real familiar with the Tinkerbell story. We'll have to read up on that one! They put on a great show with some pretty amazing costumes and scenery. It was fun night out!

Speaking of ice, Jim has been spending a some time on the ice each week. He started to play in a adult ice hockey league with games a few times a week. The girls and I have only been able to go to two of them so far as they start at 9 or 10:15 at night. He's scored a few goals in the games he's played in so far but is mostly excited about being back playing after 9 years off.

Here's a funny picture I got of Maren the other day chilling in the recliner and eating some chocolate she had snuck out of the pantry. What an easy life she leads!

The following day was Sunday so we headed to church in the morning after dropping Jim at his class. Afterwards, I wasn't real keen on spending all afternoon in the hotel room with the girls so we had some lunch and then headed along the windy mountain roads to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Upon reaching the parkway, we followed it south to Mt. Mitchell State Park. The drive along the parkway and up the mountain were beautiful with excellent vistas of the mountains and the beginning of the fall colors.

We arrived near the top of Mt. Mitchell hoping to make the short hike up the last 100 or so feet to the summit but they were constructing a new observation deck at the summit so it was off-limits. So we almost reached the summit of the tallest US mountain east of the Mississippi but not quite.
That evening we enjoyed a great dinner outside along the banks of the Catawba River with the rest of Jim's classmates. The following morning we headed up the mountains to Linville Gorge to do some rock climbing before heading home. We spent a lot of time hiking trying to find specific climbs as the guidebook wasn't great but finally found some good routes just not what Jim was looking for. Whitney had a blast climbing but had difficulty coming down so instead hitched a ride down clipped in with Jim which she thought was great. The girls were both flithy from all their scrambling but had fun and we enjoyed getting some climbing in.

Last weekend Jim had a wilderness medicine course out in western North Carolina. We were excited to head out there to the mountains as we hadn't visited that area yet. While Jim went to class each day the girls and I played. Unfortunately the first day it poured all day long and I began to seriously doubt my decision about coming along for the trip after being stuck in a hotel room all day with the girls. We did find a nearby ChicFilA with an indoor playground for lunch but were unable to find any other fun indoor activities in the area for kids. Luckily by the next day the rain had cleared and we had a great rest of the weekend. The next morning we headed out to a local apple orchard for a tractor tour of the orchard and then headed out to pick our own apples.
The girls had a blast running up and down the rows of apple trees. I think I've found my new favorite kind of apple: Honeycrisp. It is a relatively new type of apple, try one if you can find one.
After the apple orchard we met up with my buddy Tiffany that had driven up from Charlotte and headed out to Chimney Rock Park. It was a cool park with lots of fun rock formations to hike around using numerous sets of stairs with the highlight being going to the top of Chimney Rock. The girls both loved scrambling around on the rock.

The park is built up the side of the mountain so it provided great views of the mountains and nearby lake and river.
We also hiked out to a beautiful waterfall before heading home.