Tidwell's are good spelars...

Well, at least Jake & Ellie Tidwell can spell. They both proved it by qualifying for the Bearden Elementary School spelling bee. The finals were held this morning and Jake surprised us all by winning 1st place! He will go on to represent his school at the city-wide spelling bee in January 2009. Wish him luck!!

Ellie Tidwell is a rat

The Tidwell children have recently completed several successful turns in the performing arts. First, both Ellie & Jake acted in the children's Christmas dramas at our church. There were two plays and Ellie was in both. They both had speaking roles and did a great job!

Then, Ellie made her ice skating debut in "The Nutcracker on Ice". She played a rat and did a spectacular job! She had four performances and was sorry to see it end.

"Rat" Ellie and her buddy "Jester" Sara Beth

Thanksgiving 2008

Yeah, we know, it's almost Christmas and we're just now blogging about Thanksgiving. What can we say? We've been very busy.

On Thanksgiving day, we drove to Lebanon, TN to spend the day with Tim's family. We all met at Nicci and Mitchell Trawick's house (Nicci is Tim's niece). They have a very nice house with lots of acreage. They also have the toys that go with a nice country spread, including two ATV's, one adult size and one kid size for their daughter Carley.

None of the Tidwell's have much experience with ATV's, but that didn't stop us! As you can see below, I think Anne had the most fun...

Carley and Ellie

Election 2008

Now that we've had a few weeks for the dust to settle, it is high time for the Tidwell's to weigh in on Election 2008. It was a hard fought campaign, full of campaign posters, speeches, promises and pressing the flesh with the voters. Two very serious candidates who ran a closely contested race to the very end.


What? Obama versus McCain? Palin and Biden? Heck no, silly, we are talking about THE election of November 2008. That's right, the race for Treasurer of the Bearden Elementary School Student Council.


And the winner is JAKE TIDWELL!!!!!


We are very proud of Jake, who first was elected one of two student council representatives from his homeroom. Then all the student council members could opt to run for one of the executive offices and Jake chose to run for treasurer. His opponent was a fourth grader named George Mitchell and both boys ran excellent campaigns.


During the two weeks prior to the election, the candidates could stand in the hallways of the school for 15 minutes to meet and greet the voters. To boost his campaign and name recognition, Jake printed $1,000,000 bills with his picture in the middle with the caption "Vote for Jake Tidwell!". He handed out almost 200 of his trademark bills and they must have worked.


Here is a picture of Jake getting sworn into office by Knox County Commissioner Ed Shouse.

Halloween

Front row (L-R): Martha Jane Lay, Ellie Tidwell, Nathan Bond, Isabel Evans, Noah Bond, Gregory Sawyers, Reilly Sawyers

Back row (L-R): Ren Blevins, Jake Tidwell, Zeb Evans, Anna Murray, Bailey Butler, Addison Bond

The Tidwell kids had another huge Halloween, trick-or-treating throughout Westwood with several of their best buddies. Ellie dressed as "Alex", a character on "Wizards of Waverly Place", one of her favorite Disney Channel TV shows. Jake dressed as a long-haired hippie.

Thanks to their trick-or-treating prowess, we have enough candy to last until next Halloween. Jake weighed his bag on the bathroom scale and it came up to around seven pounds! Their dentist will love us...

Fall Break 2008

The kids are out of school this week for Fall Break, so we stole away to the mountains for a three-day getaway. We rented a cabin in Wears Valley and tried to find fun things for everyone to do. Of course, "fun" meant different things for each of us. For Anne & Ellie, it meant spending some quality time at the outlet malls in Pigeon Forge, while Tim took Jake to find his fun at Nascar Speedpark.

We also visited the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and went on several hikes, including Laurel Falls and going to the highest point in Tennessee at Clingmans Dome. The 20-mile drive up to Clingmans Dome was pretty effortless, but the half mile walk from the parking lot up to the observation tower was a challenge. It's a paved trail, but very steep. Tim ended up carrying Ellie "piggyback" for the last half. But the views at the top were spectacular. We were lucky to visit on a very clear day and we could see all the way to Mt Mitchell, which is more than 100 miles away in North Carolina.

Other fun activities included soaking in the hot tub at the cabin (and Jake enjoyed the Play Station 2), trying to cross the mountain streams by hopping from one rock to the next, browsing the "tacky tourist" hot spots in Gatlinburg, and Tim even got to ride his bike in the mountains one morning. Ellie even had a visit from the tooth fairy in the mountains.

Everyone had a great time and we came home exhausted! Good thing we've got the weekend now to rest up before school starts again next week...

The Adoption Tour

Last week, I (Tim) participated in my second annual Adoption Tour, which is a five-day, 450-mile bike ride across Tennessee (Memphis to Knoxville) to raise awareness of the need for adoptive and foster families. The ride was awesome, despite a couple of days of rain. We finished on Friday at Worlds Fair Park and I was never so happy to see Anne & the kids. I really missed them! Here is a picture of me and the kids at the finish at Worlds Fair Park.