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!

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.

SEFF 2009

The end of April saw the Timms family making their now annual trek to South Georgia for the Southeastern Electric Flight Festival (SEFF). This year, however, there would be a new tradition-- camping on-site!! Yes, we were taking the new RV on it's maiden (for us) voyage! Michael and Emma went down a few days before Abbie and I, as she had a bunch of make-up soccer games that week and we wanted for her to be able to participate in at least a few of them.

(on the flightline with Daddy)

(Our dog lover with 'Servo' the SEFF dog)

I neglected to get any pictures of the camping experience-- it worked out very well, though-- considering we were 'dry camping' (for you non-RV-ers, that is the lingo for no electric, water or sewage hook-ups!). We did find a local campground mid-week to dump & refill all of the tanks so it wasn't like we were completely roughing it-- we had showers and AC and working appliances (a pleasant change from last summer's trip!!).

Michael had a BLAST at SEFF-- which probably goes without saying. The girls, however, also had a ball. They were the fill-in "Fly Low Girls" and shot a ton of pictures and video with Mr. Fred (the official photographer/videographer of the event). Here they are doing their thing:

We also took some time for 'educational experiences' (you can take the homeschool mom away from the 'home' but she will always be on the lookout for ways to bring the 'school' to her kids!!). We made a repeat visit to Plains, GA-- home of former president, Jimmy Carter. The girls and I had visited 2 years ago, but Michael had not-- so we took him out to Carter's boyhood home which was a working farm back in the 1930's. Even though we're not big fans of this particular president, it is a neat place to visit purely from the historical aspect.

(A cool windmill/water pump that was ordered from Sears back in the 1930's)

(Washing clothes the old-fashioned way SEEMS fun!!)

(Emma, of course, loved the animals!)

(Peanut butter ice cream-- the BEST part of visiting Plains!!)

The girls and I left Michael at the field one day and we made the trip down to Albany (about a 45 minute drive) to the Flint Riverquarium. This was a neat place full of all kinds of water creatures from alligators to fish to giant turtles. We enjoyed seeing river displays from different continents (which tied in nicely with our geography studies this year-- always a plus!) and we rounded out the day with a movie about Australia (the next continent we would be covering in school).

(On the banks of the Flint River)

(Emma and 'Rusty' the red-winged blackbird-- who was VERY friendly!)

(Abbie petting a bamboo shark)

We made lots of new friends at SEFF and were able to put some faces with 'screen names' which was fun. These little cuties are the daughter's of an online friend in Texas:

On Friday night, we helped organize a cookout for the 3D Hobbyshop crew/addicts! Despite being gone all day to Atlanta to a homeschool convention, I managed to coordinate my efforts with Costco to produce this for the 'Brotherhood':

All in all, it was a great week... the RV worked great (although 'dry camping' is still not my preferred choice!), the weather was beautiful, we made new friends, had fun as a family and even got some schoolwork done-- what more could you ask for??! Oh-- I almost forgot-- the icing on the cake was that we all got the chance to view Saturn (& the moon) nightly from telescopes set up onsite!

If homeschooling doesn't work out.... she can always join the circus?

The girls received tickets to the "Big Apple Circus" for Valentine's Day and today was the day of the show. They were eagerly anticipating this event as neither of them had ever attended a circus.

We arrived early at Stone Mountain Park and had time to look around a bit and check out their seasonal 'Snow Mountain' attraction (which was proclaimed super cool by both girls!)

We wanted to be in line early so we could choose good seats. We entered the tent and settled in with our popcorn, cracker jacks and cotton candy. Not long before the show started, one of the attendants asked if we'd like to move down to closer seats since the show was only about half full. The girls were excited to be sitting on the second row-- right near all the action!

It was a great show-- with enough clowns, musicians, horses, acrobats, dogs and jugglers to keep us thoroughly entertained. About midway through the first half of the show, however, things got really exciting!

One of the clowns picked Abbie out of the audience to come into the ring with him! He was doing a spoof about pretending to conduct the orchestra. He had Abbie take a turn and she did a great job!

Then he chose one of our Co-Op friends' dad to take a turn at 'conducting' and he... well... didn't do quite as good as Abbie. So the clown had to have her come back to 'help' him. It was so funny and what a memorable experience for her first circus visit!!! They even had them both take a bow at the end of their 'performance'.

Both girls and I thoroughly enjoyed this outing! If you ever have a chance to attend a performance of the Big Apple Circus, we highly recommend it! And who knows-- you may even see a performance by one of my daughters!?!?!