On the road again...

(Flowers in Amish country)

Since the RV purchase in February, we'd yet to take a trip together with Michael's parents. We used it in April and they used it in July but the Timms family had not made their first trip altogether. After a few tentative plans and changes, we settled on a September trip to Kentucky & Ohio. Our original destination was an RC airplane event but that even got changed and we would up with an alternate itinerary. Still, it was a fun little getaway and we saw some places and things that we hadn't seen before-- and we added a few more 'states visited' to our list!!

Here's a summary of the week's adventures:

We left right after Co-Op and took the back roads (and a borderline dirt road-- thanks to TomTom!) out of Georgia toward Tennessee. Our goal was to get close to Knoxville and 'boondock' at a Flying J (for all of you non-RV-ers, boondocking is essentially free camping overnight in a parking lot-- you drive in late and leave out early--no need to spend $$ on a campground just to get some sleep).

We got up before the sun and continued driving toward Lexington, KY. Our first stop was the Old Friends farm. They are a retirement home for thoroughbred racehorses. The total earnings of the 53 horses on the farm was some outrageous number like close to a billion dollars. Unfortunately, when the horses are no longer money makers, their fate is often the slaughterhouse. This facility allows them to live out their days roaming freely in their pastures.

(Emma with Sunshine Forever)

Our next stop was the Kentucky Horse Park & Campground. We set up the RV here and then surprised the girls with a 'trail ride'. Emma was over the moon because this was the first time she's gotten to ride a horse outside of the ring. She was so excited to be in control of the horse all by herself.

The horse park has a super nice campground and we enjoyed the cool weather and cooking out on the grill.

The next morning after making breakfast, we were back on the road driving north to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY (just on the Ohio/KY border). We were looking forward to this stop after hearing good things from friends who had visited. The girls are also studying the time period of "Creation to the Greeks" in history this year so I felt like they would really enjoy this. My absolute favorite part of the visit was the planetarium show-- it gave a small glimpse of the vastness of our universe and how small we really are... a speck of dust... and yet the spot that God chose to place his special creation and ultimately send His son. I left the theater with tears in my eyes...

After our time at the museum, we headed toward Cincinnati and revealed a surprise to the girls-- we were going to be spending the night at the Great Wolf Lodge-- a lovely hotel that has a full-scale water park inside!! This was great fun-- after the girls got over their water slide apprehension! We climbed stairs and toted inner tubes for several hours until we were all exhausted and waterlogged. We ate dinner at Red Robin and came back and crashed in our suite.

On Friday morning, we had another big day of driving-- about 200 miles-- toward northeastern Ohio. Our destination was Holmes county-- the site of the largest Amish population in Ohio. On the way, we passed acres and acres of farms planted with corn. It reminded me a lot of driving through Kansas last summer (except that it was corn instead of wheat in the fields). We arrived in time to visit a cheese-making company and got to see them making cheese from local organic milk. They also had samples of all of their cheeses which was very enjoyable (except to Grandma who is not a cheese lover!!).

(What goes good with cheese samples? Why ice cream, of course!!)

After the cheese tour, we drove through some of the back roads of the area and saw so many beautiful farms, lots of horses and buggies and just got a really nice feel for what the Amish country really looks like. We stopped at a hardware store that caters to the local community (wood stoves, propane refrigerators, etc.) and saw an interesting film about the Amish culture. While I think that many of their beliefs/practices are kind of 'legalistic' interpretations of Scripture, I do think that they have many good ideas-- focus on family time, training their children to be hard-working, productive members of society, etc. It was so interesting to see this lifestyle up close.

On Saturday, we visited an Amish farm and toured the homes and barn and schoolhouse on the property. The girls loved all the animals. We even took a buggy ride (which was surprisingly a pretty comfortable ride!). This was one of the highlights of our trip.

We began our drive home Saturday afternoon. A stop for Abbie's birthday dinner at an Outback in West Virginia will be an unfortunate memory (long story short-- we paid $14 for our entire meal there which included dessert and appetizers if that gives you any idea of how bad it was!). We boondocked at another Flying J in Virginia (after taking the scenic route to get there-- thanks again, TomTom!!) and finished driving home on Sunday.

All in all, it was a neat trip-- kind of a mix of unusual destinations but we all really enjoyed it!

Back to School... or should I say, "Back to Home"?

Or 'Back to the Basement'?! Regardless of how you say it, it is that time of year once again-- time to get back on a schedule and start hitting the books... Summer is on it's way out (not that I'll miss it's blazing heat and thunderstorms!) and I am looking forward to FALL!

I didn't take any of my typical first-day-of-school pictures with the girls-- however, these pictures of them cooking for our anniversary dinner happened to also fall on our first day, so I guess they will have to do.

Our 5th grader (with her apple pie):

Our 2nd grader (with her potato gratin's--recipe courtesty of The Next Food Network Star show winner!):

We are continuing with much of the same curriculum this year. Math for both girls stays the same but some new changes are taking place in grammar and vocabulary for Abbie, spelling for Emma and writing for both girls. Our core is again from My Father's World and we will be starting in our 1st year of a 4 year cycle of world history. This year we will be studying history from "Creation to the Greeks". Because of the time period covered in this curriculum, we will naturally be focusing quite a bit on Biblical history as well as many of the traditions and celebrations of the Jewish people. Part of our 'hands on learning' will include preparing and participating in the Jewish holiday and holy day celebrations such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkoth, Passover and Purim.

(Notice the happy look on Michael's face that I'm taking a picture of people at the table! My mom will be proud!)

Our first Jewish tradition to celebrate was the Sabbath. Fortunately, we have a book that details all of the preparations and prayers that are a part of this event. We didn't have a typical Jewish meal (no gefilte fish for us, thanks!) but we did bake homemade challah bread and make potato latkes (which we do enjoy!). While it felt a little awkward because it was our first time and we didn't exacly have a feel for the flow of the events, it was definitely an interesting experience to see all of the detail and symbolism that goes into a weekly celebration. We were all really ready to eat by the time we got through all the ceremony!!

(The challah loves and covering made by the girls)

In other news, the garden is still producing tomatoes by the basketful. I've canned a total of 7 quarts of marinara sauce and 4 pints of salsa... and now I'm just putting tomatoes in the freezer (because I've decided that the whole sauce making/canning thing is just too time consuming now that we're back in school!!). Here are a few more pictures...

I've decided that pioneer life was certainly much harder than I've ever imagined-- it took me ALL DAY to make my few quarts of sauce. I'm certainly glad my family's survival through the winter is not dependent upon my gardening and food storage preparations!!

A bountiful harvest...finally!!

We've had moderate success with our little garden this year. All of our carrots came up-- they were small-ish, tasted okay but turned soft within a day (Any expert opinions on the cause of this?).

We had a few zucchini before I gave up trying to win the 'battle of the squash bugs'. (Sorry, no pictures-- I totally thought we took some but I cannot find them!)

The sweet onions grew from green-onion size to about racquet-ball size. (Again, no pictures?!)

The banana peppers and jalapenos have done pretty well. We are still waiting on our first red pepper. The herbs and marigolds are also still thriving. The strawberry plant yielded a few berries.

And the tomatoes-- well, there are right around a billion of them on the three ENORMOUS plants that have outgrown their cages (which then had to be tied to the fence post to hold them up). The only 'problem' with the tomatoes is that they have all been green for just about forever. Someone told me that it has to be warm at night for them to ripen and since July had quite a bit cooler temps. than normal, I guess they were just taking their sweet time.

However, the 'ripening time' has finally arrived. Over the past two weeks, we've picked well over 75 tomatoes off of our plants! Woohoo!!

I made a big batch of homemade marinara sauce last week (using our tomatoes as well as our own onions and basil) and after making 2 lasagnas, had enough leftover to can these two quart jars (plus 1 pint that I gave away). I am extremely proud of my two jars!

The good news is that I think I have enough to make another big batch... and since I'm not making lasagna this week, I might even get 4 quart jars. It takes a LOT of tomatoes to make sauce!! I'm not sure we'd make it through a long winter with the fruits of our labors but it sure has been a fun learning experience for everyone.

Thank goodness we only live 5 minutes from Publix.

The painting fairy never showed up...

I put out a request for her, but sadly she must have been on vacation so Michael and I had to finish the cabinet and bathroom painting all by ourselves!!

Fortunately, I am super pleased with the results. I LOVE the brown cabinets. The green bathroom walls are a tad brighter than I was hoping for but I'm going to live with them. I am opting to not paint my bedroom the same green (that was the original plan)-- so if anyone needs two unopened gallons of Behr paint in 'celery', let me know 'cause I can hook you up!!

I also opted to go ahead and put out the new linens that I bought for our master bedroom. I was going to save these until we had repainted that room-- but I'm so done with painting for now and I really wanted to get these out because our old ones were literally falling apart. I love them! At some point, we'll come back in here and paint the walls a more matching shade of khaki... but that is definitely for another day....

My latest project...

The pictures probably speak for themselves. This is our master bathroom and the change in progress is not so much out of a need to redecorate as out of a need to repair the only 4 year old cabinet surfaces that are already chipping-- and actually have been for the past 3 years (@%#!@$&~!!).

This is my first time ever to paint cabinets and so I went to Home Depot armed with paint chips and ready to ask for any and all advice.

The paint counter lady assured me that if I used "XYZ" paint, I would not need to prime it. After the first coat, I was doubting the quality of her advice...

Three coats (and 3 days later), there is some significant improvement! I think I may just need one more coat plus a sealing finish.

(You may also notice that I took this opportunity to clean out under our bathroom sinks which were a disaster area!!)

You can take the girl out of Florida...

but you apparently can't take Florida out of the girl!

Having grown up on both coasts of Florida, the beach was always a 'day trip' to me, not a vacation destination. When I was younger, we regularly went to the beach (at least it seems regularly in my mind--Mom??). I have fond memories of playing in the waves, building endless numbers of sandcastles, collecting shells with my Gaga and eating sandy picnic lunches. I think I took the beach for granted and because I had been so often, didn't really even miss it much when I went away to college in South Carolina. While there, I learned a lot of things-- one being that going to the beach was a real and much anticipated summer vacation destination for many southerners (and likely northerners too-- there just weren't that many of them at Furman). For the first time, I heard about places such as Destin and Panama City Beach (Really? Those are in Florida?? Who knew?!) and Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head... when you grow up with a beach 20 minutes away, you don't generally (or at least we never did) travel to another beach destination for a vacation.

Since becoming a 'grown up' and living in Georgia, I have discovered that this 'beach vacation' thing is still quite popular with the locals. And in the past 15 years, we have taken a few trips that have included the beach as part (or all) of the destination-- but not usually because any of us was just craving the waves, sand and sea breezes-- those were generally just an 'added perk' of the trip.

However, as of this past weekend, I can officially say that that has changed. This Florida girl was hit with a craving for time on the beach like I have previously never known!! We had our vacation plans set for the year and they did not include salt, seagulls or sandy picnics. Everywhere I looked it seemed that people were going to, at or planning to go to the beach... except for me and I MISSED IT!!! This Florida girl needed to get to the ocean ASAP!!

(for my sister-- the only picture of me that I have is blurry!)

We are blessed to have a friend who owns a condo right on the gulf in Panama City Beach and let us rent it for just a few days (very uncommon in the height of the 'summer season'). We headed down to there on Father's Day and spent the next three days soaking in the sun, listening to the waves crash, searching for seashells, building sandcastles and relaxing.

(Calypso Towers)

The condo was fabulous-- on the top floor (23rd!) so the view was fantastic and located right next door to one of PCB's newest attractions, Pier Park--an outdoor shopping/restaurant/entertainment complex. We enjoyed several meals there as well as walking around the cute beach shops. This was our first time to visit Panama City Beach and we were pleasantly surprised at how nice it was (with it's reputation of being the "Redneck Rivera"!!). We were on the west end of the city and it was surprisingly not overrun with t-shirt shops, airbrushing studios and go-cart/putt-putt locations.

(Pier Park)

(Watching fireworks from the balcony-- we were higher up than them!)

Our favorite things were the simple ones:

relaxing under the umbrella...

playing in the the waves...

shell collecting...

reading a book....

and eating THE BEST DONUTS on the beach (and probably the planet!)...

We were all sad to leave... our little beach getaway ended all to soon. But we made some great memories as a family and have decided that our future definitely needs to continue to include the beach as a vacation destination.

And this Florida girl couldn't be happier.

A trip down memory lane

Yesterday, the girls and I had to make an unexpected trip to Woodstock, GA and so I thought it would be fun to take a run by our very first house-- since we were relatively near by. Michael and I built (not literally!) this house during the first 3 months we were married-- which any good marriage counselor will tell you is a big NO-NO! But-- we've managed to survive for nearly 15 more years so....

Anyhow, it was interesting to see the changes in the Acworth area-- we used to be in the 'boonies'-- no shopping or anything for a good 10+ miles around us. That had certainly changed. I was pleasantly surprised at the shape of our old neighborhood-- there were some houses & yards that could use some more TLC, but overall it was in decent shape.

Without further ado, here are the pictures:

We planted the Bradford Pear and Maple trees in the front yard and they were teeny tiny (remember, we were poor newlyweds-- we bought the cheap landscaping items at Home Depot!!). They are HUGE now!! Glad someone else has been able to enjoy them... We also planted (and repositioned about 3 times) all of the holly bushes by the front walkway and those are nicely filled in as well. "Our lawn" also looks to be in fairly good shape-- we redid the entire lawn during our first summer---re-grading the lot and planting/watering in the seeds. That was a project we have NEVER repeated (wonder why??!!).

It would have been fun to see the inside-- the site of another HUGE project (we finished the downstairs 'bonus room' entirely by ourselves).

It all seemed a bit smaller than I remembered (especially the front lawn-- I remembered that as being MUCH LARGER-- probably due to that grass project previously mentioned??!) It could also be that the plentiful trees have grown and filled in quite a bit...

Anyway-- it was a fun experience and I don't even think the girls were too bored!

A new niece!

We were excited to welcome Celeste Hope to the family on May 16th, 2009.


Although nearly everyone was predicting that Melissa was having a boy, baby Celeste made her debut as 'grand girl #4" for my parents.

My girls and I made a trip to NC to meet our new niece/cousin-- as well as throw a surprise 'Sprinkle' (baby shower) for her and spend time with the grandparents who were also visiting from Florida.

We managed to pull off the surprise for Melissa-- which was super fun because she is the big 'surpriser' in our family-- so do it to her for a change was great! She got lots of cute & needed items including a handmade, monogrammed pillow that Abigail embroidered for Celeste's nursery.

The girls really enjoyed the chance to hold a newborn (and help change diapers & give her first bath). They didn't get to meet Chloe until she was nearly 5 months old, so this was a special treat!

The girls also had fun with Chloe-- although she nearly ran the two of them ragged!! She is not even two and has more energy than both of my girls combined! She is a cutie, though, and we all enjoyed her bubbly personality and cute sayings.

They 'swam' outside, played 'house' and 'slide' and 'wagon' and kept the toddler pretty well entertained! We also made a trip to the Jumpin' Monkey and all three girls had a blast on the slides and inflatables.

Aunt Missy was sweet to take the time to do some special 'big girl stuff' with them when the little ones were napping or in bed-- she painted toenails, helped them bake a cake and took them in the hot tub. Uncle Tom taught them how to play on the Wii-- which had them in hysterical laughter several times over the week.



We had a great trip and really enjoyed our time with the family. We certainly wish we lived closer to each other but we treasure the times that we are able to spend together.

(I will admit, however, that we were all completely exhausted by the time we left-- I am DEFINITELY too old to mother a toddler and newborn!!!)