Road Trip 2007!!

As most of you know, I just got back from an amazing road trip with my dear friend Emily. We travelled all the way through Tennessee and across North Carolina to the ocean. It was a blast and will always be remembered as one of my favorite vacations...ever.

Before I show you some pictures, let me recap some of my favorite memories:

• When Emily realized that she forgot her sunglasses and was forced to buy an expensive pair in a gas station in the middle of nowhere, only to find the glasses covered with a thick film of dust and grime.


• I am truly like a fun grandma and bought Emily and I a fun backseat traveller book with entertaining activities like camp songs, string games, palm reading, and even a scavenger hunt to find all the liscense plates of North America. Out of 50 states, we found 42!! We even found a Canadian liscense plate! This game entertained us the ENTIRE trip!


• In the car, we ate a bunch of snack foods, but I'll never forget the huge quantity we ate of string cheese!


• It was amazing to see Emily get to know my favorite people in Tennessee, Dennis and Shanna Fuller. They are the ones in charge of Discipleship Focus in Pigeon Forge.


• REAL sweet tea in the South!!
  
• We went on an amazing hike in the mountains and enjoyed the beautiful scenery and the cool air. After being on trail for a while and griping at the occasional piece of trash on the trail (enough to take the trash with us), I accidentally lost both of my toxic-fish-killing batteries out of my camera into the river, never to be seen again. I'm such a hypocrite!


• Because we stayed on a Marine base, our car had to be searched every day by beautiful Marines carrying big guns. (I'm pretty sure I was convinced that I wanted to marry one!)


• While frolicking in the ocean, Emily noticed a school of stingrays swimming towards us. There were probably six or seven of them. While Emily walked towards the shore very calmly, I ran screaming out that water as fast as my body could carry me!


• Peeing simultaneously with Emily in the Atlantic Ocean. She was right, it definitely is more fun to do it at the same time as someone else.


• On the drive back, we discovered the amazingness of watching DVDs while driving. Not something I'd recommend for careless drivers, but it did make time fly our last 12 hours.


• Everytime Emily drove, she almost always had to drive through a major city and was always being rained upon. Everytime I drove, the rain stopped and the sun came out.
  

Here are some pictures that highlight the trip:

This is Emily and I in the car at 6:30AM on our way out of town. Don't we look like little kids?

Here's the skyline of Nashville, Tennessee. I like the Motorola building on the left...it looks like something from Batman or something.
This is me in serious distress that I can't, for the life of me, get my flipping sunglasses off my head! This is Emily rubbing in the fact that she CAN take off her sunglasses...what a brat. No wonder we were confused at this stoplight in Pigeon Forge....there are at least 15 lights!! This is Emily and I taking advantage of timer shots at the Potter's House, a darling little cafe in Pigeon Forge. They make there own flour, bread, and plates!!

This is me on the peak of a very tall mountain...or a very big rock.

Here are some views of the scenery in the Great Smoky Mountains.

We hiked up the mountain and found a barn, a springhouse, a cabin, and even a double seater outhouse!!

After our beautiful hike up in the Smoky Mountains, Emily and I travelled back down to civilization to explore the amazingness of Dollywood!!

After our fun in Tennessee, we loaded up our car once again and headed for the coast of North Carolina, where Emily's brother is in the Marines.

For the full story of the second leg of the journey, I'm going to direct you to my dear friend Emily's blog. She tells the story so well, and it might be excited to hear about the adventure from her perspective. Don't be frightened.... just click here.

However, I will show you some fun pictures...

This is us at the beach we were at. As you can see, it was beautiful and not really crowded at all.

While at the ocean, we ate at this fun little bar called Buddy's and enjoyed some fried sea food and mojitos while gazing at the beautiful view of the ocean.

Here are some pictures of Pete, Emily's brother, and her beautiful neice Evangeleene. She was darling and had the coolest baby hair ever!!

Well this about wraps up the coolest road trip of 2007. Like I mentioned before, you really need to check out Emily's blog if you want to read the fun details...try it. It'll be fun!

First week of SUMMER!!!

So, exactly a week ago today we finished school! I shed my last tears and sent my soon-to-be 6th graders out the door.

This week I jumped right into preparing for next year. I had training all week for a technology program called eMINTS4all. I'm slowly discovering that I have a little geekyness in my system and that there is SO much out there I don't know about in the techy world.

This week, I have discovered what an aggregator is, learned about the constructivist theory, why Madeline Hunter's teaching method is on its way to the garbage and what an avatar is. Never heard of any of these terms? Neither had I!

The craziest thing about my cool techy class was that we were introduced to Second Life, a highly geeky virtual world where people create a dual personality and communicate with SL's other 7,000,000 inhabitants. If you don't believe me, check out SecondLife.com.

Tonight I coached my first softball game! To those who haven't heard, I'm the new assistant softball coach at Branson...pretty exciting! I felt really nervous in the games because...well, I haven't played in 7 years and I forgot some of the rules of the game and all the lingo. It'll take me a while, but I'll get it.

Being a new techy geek is definitely going to benefit me during softball, because Coach Arnold has already put me in charge of updating the website and keeping all the stats on a PalmPilot. We'll see how that goes...

Well, this about wraps up my first week of summer. I like to think that NEXT week is my real first week of summer. I'm going on a crazy road trip with Emily to Pigeon Forge and then the beach!!! More to come later!