33

If I were trapped in the land of Lost.. this man would be my purgatory soul-mate. Or would it be my heaven soul-mate? Either way.. he is my Sawyer.

Happy Birthday Polly.

Silver Dollar City

For Christmas Pol's dad gave us season passes to Silver Dollar City! We have been wanting to go for years.. so now we had to go! YAY! We decided to do the trip in one day... one very long day. I am not complaining, as it was easier to go and come back, for time's sake. We left at 5:30am (that's before the sunrises people). I thought for sure Liam would fall asleep on the trip down there. I was wrong. Every time I would nod off to sleep, Liam would be sure to notice and yell at the top of his lungs "MOMMY, WAKE UP!" Pretty un-awesome.

We had an Amazing Race competition going with the other family members and their carloads. We won. The end. We walked in the gates first, so we won - GO TEAM BUCKINGHAM! Doesn't matter who made it to the City first, it mattered who got in to the gate first.

When we first arrived.. Liam was pretty excited. Then he threw up.. In his car seat. All over himself. Not.So.Awesome. Luckily, my mother has taught me the art of being a prepared mother and I had a change of clothes for him (I guess years of changing my clothes after any sort of travel my mom knew a extra clothes were a must). I changed him. But oops.. I didn't think about packing an extra jacket! I had a rain jacket for a spare.. but that is not so warm, and this day was airing on the very chilly side of things.

We got through the gates, and while we waited on the other family members to join, you remember me discussing them above.. the slow cars... the losers, if you will. So while we waited, I went and bought Liam a Silver Dollar City jacket to keep him warm for the day. I love spending money on silly things like that, you know, things I don't have a coupon for and that aren't on sale. They did have some jackets on sale, but they were all girls, and they were all pink. I was tempted to buy him one, but Pol said NO! And Liam liked the train on the jacket I bought him.. so as long as L likes it, it's worth the extra $$. Here is a picture of Liam in his new jacket (that is a size 4 and I am pretty sure barely fit him for the day, so much for buying bigger!)


We pretty much headed straight the train. Might as well get the day started off making him joyfully happy.



Here are the ladybugs that he rode over and over and over. They did nothing but go in a circle. That's it. He loved them. He refused to go on the rides that went up and down.. even though you didn't have to make them go up. He said "NO!" He did go on the teacups.. and loved them. And we told him the kiddie roller coaster was a train.. so he ran straight to it! Funny, because that roller coaster went rather fast and was jerky. We couldn't even tell if he enjoyed it, but he kept wanting to go back, so we took that as a good sign.






We all gathered to get some lunch and Pol and I left Liam with the others (not THE Others from Lost, just the other family members). By the time we returned with our food Liam was out. Quite possibly snoring. He slept for about an hour hunched in the stroller. YAY for naptime in a stroller!


Pol made his sisters die laughing by screaming like a little girl on the rides. Leslie had already experienced Pol's screaming, but the picture below shows Stephanie enjoying it for the first time. She was crying laughing so hard at him. Little do they know, this is just how he screams... it wasn't for show. :-) He couldn't even keep the scream up because he started laughing so hard at her. Good times.


We were sad we had to leave. and that they put us in jail.

Royal Times

I am so behind in my posts.. I know, you all have been sad when you click on the blog and there is nothing new. I am sad when I click on my blog and there is nothing new! So I understand how you feel!

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy. Here is a quick rundown of where I have been:

• Pleasant Hill, MO
  
• Silver Dollar City, MO
• Tampa, FL
• Sarasota, FL
• Orlando, FL
• The Magic Kingdom, FL
• West Palm Beach, FL
• FINALLY back to Nashville!

Get to relax for a few days.. even though I still can't do laundry because I am with no dryer (thanks Great Flood of 2010). Pol's sister, Leslie, and her husband, Brian, came to town to help us rip up the basement. I will never be able to tell you how very grateful I am to them for all they did... there will be a post in regards to that later.

Actually.. pretty much all my adventures need their own posts, so I will focus on one event at a time.

The event: Royal's game. We really enjoyed getting to see the new stadium and just going to a baseball game. We love America's pastime!



CHARGE!


He wasn't so sure about the Royal mascot (not sure what his name is, we will call him the King - not to be confused with the Burger King) Liam liked to watch with a chain link fence in between him and the King.


He wasn't so sure when the King moved in for a picture.


My KC boys.


A happy boy.

Helping Hand

If you live here in Nashville, you have probably gone and helped someone in need. You might even be someone in need. Places still need help and donations... help where you can!

If you don't live here, or if you do and you like cool t-shirts. Here are some ways:
Nashville Flood T-shirts



and of course there is the Red Cross.

Tenth Avenue North

Here are a few more of those Tenth song by songs.

The one below we filmed a portion of it at the Grand Old Opry, two weeks ago. Back when the Grand Ole Opry was not a big swimming pool.


Here's a game... play Where's Michelle?


This parade was amazing.

Our Town

This is our flooded city.

The Grand Ole Opry...

This is Opry Mills, it's only 10 mins from our house. Right now there are piranhas swimming around it. The Aquarium restaurant's aquarium busted, and the piranhas are loose.

The "funniest" news story was when Naomi Judd called all the news channels to report her Buffalos were running loose during the flooding. I believe the actual words were "Our fence has been compromised. The buffalos are loose." Is it just me, or is this some sort of weird code? No worries folks.. the buffalos made it home, safe and sound.

The Great Flood of 2010

I have lots to say about the Great Flood that hit Nashville this past weekend. I think I will boil it down to bullet points.

• Friday, The Moores and Everettes came to Nashville to celebrate sweet Joshua's 2nd birthday. The evening was beautiful and we grilled out.
• Saturday, we knew thunderstorms were expected, but we thought they would come and go throughout the day. Wrong. They came at 7:30am and stayed all day.
  
• We took the kids to the downtown library and watched a puppet show.. which was amazingly good! I highly recommend it for friends with kids in the Nashville area!
• Then we pretty much hung out at home all day. With 3 kids. In a small area. Ended up not being so bad, the kids did pretty well together!
  
• Pol discovered the water was beginning to pour into our basement.. uh-oh. He went down there and started frantically heaving the water out. He did this from about 4-8pm. Finally, the water was out of the basement.
• Sunday we were up at 6:30am and water was beginning to pour into the basement. Pol went back to war with nature. Finally around 8am he gave in and declared that the water had won and it could have our basement.
• We didn't even get to see the Moores because we couldn't get to their hotel and they headed home. To see their story of the trip click here.
  
• 2ft of water stood in our basement by the end of Sunday
• Monday. Beautiful outside. Clean up day. We went to work getting the water out.
• Luckily, mom and dad had stayed so they were able to watch Liam (who's daycare was closed because of flooding)
  
• Pol set up a great system.. see the video below to fully grasp his work. Basically 3 hoses (thanks to friends letting borrow hoses!) siphoned the water and the wet/dry vac did the rest. It went very quickly once Pol had his little invention all set up.
• All of our items from the basement went into the yard.
  
• Trips to the dump helped get rid of a lot of crap!
• The basement is pretty much empty at this point... the yard is still a mess.
• We are lucky. Many people in Nashville lost their entire home to the flood.
• The Grand Ole Opry and other historic places are filled with water at this moment.

All in all.. we really do realize how very fortunate we are. It forced us to clean up the basement, which was much needed!

Pol dumping water from Michelle Buckingham on Vimeo.