Fun in Knoxville

First and foremost, let me introduce y'all to June Carter Cash Sladek! She's our precious little chewy new angel puppy and we LOVE HER! Pearl's getting to like her too. Pearl is super excited to play with her in the mornings but when it's time to go to bed and June's still biting her ear she gets a little snippy. Ha!
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Our first family outing was to Ijams (pronounced Iams) Nature Center. It's a park on the Tennessee River with lots of beautiful hiking and biking trails. It was June's first hike and long walk on the leash. I have to say she did pretty good but both her and Pearl get pretty darn distracted, they probably added like 30 minutes to the walk. We need to do some leash training with both of them.
Tennessee River
First full family photo!
Boardwalk on the trail along the river
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Turns out one of our high school friends lives 45 minutes away! Wesley came  up for the day and we did a little sightseeing. This photo was taken in the observation deck of the Sunsphere!
Sunsphere! Knoxville was the home of the last successful World's Fair and this was built for it.
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We heard from a very informative chocolatier that we should go to Knoxville's Rhythm and Blooms Fest and boy are we glad we did! We ran into Humming House, a folk-ish band that we first saw at SXSW. Please do yourselves a favor and listen to their music. I'm not sure if it still is, but their new song Run With Me was free on iTunes so you don't have an excuse. And if you get a chance, see them live. They put on a great show, I could watch Leslie play the tambourine ALL DANG DAY. 
Selfie box, or room or something, I can't remember. But it was cool!
Rhythm and Blooms is apart of a bigger, month long art event so this was painted by local artists...I think :)
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This is somewhere between Knoxville and Roanoke, VA. I wish you could see the mountains in the background better. Even though it was raining, eastern Tennessee/western Virginia was absolutely beautiful to drive through. 
We met Megan and Addi/Addy/Addie/Addison in Roanoke for the day. We hadn't seen them in 2 whole months! Addi was basically already a teenager. Ryan, Pearl, June and I can't wait to get to Baltimore so we'll only be 45 minutes away!
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Welp! That about sums up the last two weeks. I can't believe we fit all that in on my days off in between FIVE WHOLE DAYS of general hospital/nursing orientation (blegh, my hats off to you 9 to 5-ers), two orientation shifts on the unit, and my first three shifts on my own. I think we're gonna like it here!


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