Cherry Log, GA - Part One

 I'm back with another summer recap post. Last year, we realized that if both boys went to church camp this summer, that we would have an entire week without them and we could go on an adults-only trip! We hemmed and hawed about where to go and, despite knowing dates and everything ahead of time, we didn't get anything planned. Throw in a few other snags and we were left about two weeks before wondering what to do. We decided on Nashville, TN, and then realized several things we wanted to do would be difficult to plan that quickly and prices were SKY HIGH so we scrapped that idea and I sort of resigned myself that we would stay home. Eddie talked to a couple in our church that owns a few cabins in the Blue Ridge area and after they sent links, he secured one for us for a few nights! 

I was pleasantly surprised at how EASY it was to get to the Blue Ridge area (we stayed in Cherry Log, which is just north of Ellijay and just south of Blue Ridge). Our cabin was WAY up on a mountain and it took us about 10-15 minutes to get to it coming and going. Other than that, it was easy to get to and easy to get around in that area!

We set off on Tuesday morning and headed north! We stopped for lunch and we were close to Reinhardt College  so Eddie decided to drive through to see if it had changed since 1997. We had no sooner entered campus than he slammed on brakes, reversed, and shouted, "Zach?" Ummm....what is happening? Zach was not just a friend, but Eddie's ROOMMATE that he hasn't seen in all of the 21 years that we have been together (at least! probably longer!). They enjoyed catching up with each other for a few minutes, Eddie got the Reinhardt scoop, and Zach told Eddie that we would pass another friend's business on the way to the mountains so later we stopped AGAIN and visited with Jeff. (I didn't see any of my college roommates! Such a disappointment!)

I did, however, enjoy riding around Reinhardt and Cherokee County where there were plenty of nods to my distant family that still lives in the area.

We continued our trek north and finally arrived in the big city of Cherry Log, Georgia, to enjoy life in the cooler mountains for a few days. The views were BEAUTIFUL and I enjoyed a picnic on the porch as well as some reading while we watched the sunset. It was gorgeous!

The week before we left the weather report was rain, rain, and more rain. We'd sort of resigned ourselves that we were either going to miss out on some of the outdoor things or we were going to be wet. But lo and behold, the weather reports were wrong! Wednesday morning we woke up and Eddie declared there was no chance of rain! One of the biggies on my wish list was Brasstown Bald and it was also the furthest from where we were staying so we decided to start there.

We also woke up on Wednesday morning and got a phone call bright and early that James had fallen the night before and hurt his elbow so I began orchestrating how to get that seen about. Big thanks to my sister in law, Kayla, for the guidance on where he could easily be seen and bigger thanks to Grandmamma for taking him, waiting a few hours for all of it, feeding him, and returning him to camp. He was in Dooly County and she went and took him to a neighboring county to an urgent care. AND because we were headed to higher elevation, we had ZERO service a lot of the day which made coordinating things even more fun! I'll do a whole separate post on this injury because it is quite a story!

Back to Brasstown - The closer we got, the darker the skies got. Apparently, the higher elevation didn't get the no-rain memo. When we pulled into the parking lot it was EMPTY and raining. There were clouds EVERYWHERE. One of the appeals of Brasstown is that you can see for MILES AND MILES. It was also COLD. 

Instead of walking up in the rain, we hopped on the shuttle and when I expressed my concerns about it being a bad day, the driver said, "It's never a bad day on the mountain! You can still see the movie and museum and sometimes the cloud will lift around noon!" The video was VERY interesting. The weather on the mountain has been as low as -27* and never higher than 84*. *mind blown* 

After we went through the museum we realized that the clouds were lifting and we were able to see a lot! We couldn't see Atlanta (apparently you can on a very clear day!), but it was beautiful! We did take the path down instead of the shuttle and enjoyed all of the mountain laurel and rhododendron that was blooming. It was really a good morning!

Enjoy this last photo of me "visiting" Brasstown Bald as a kindergartener!

We left Brasstown Bald and headed to the Toccoa River Swinging Bridge. I kept reading that this was hard to get to, but wow! It was 20 minutes off the main road on a bumpy, narrow dirt road! We were glad we went! It wasn't crowded and we enjoyed walking across the bridge, exploring a little, and then returning! 

We had trail mix for lunch between our stops so we got back in the truck and headed to Blue Ridge for an early dinner. We stopped to look at Lake Blue Ridge on the way (I love a clear lake!). 

After we browsed downtown for a bit, we stopped to eat at Chester Brunnenmeyer's. We ordered a wings and ribs appetizer and OMG. The sauce on the ribs was amazing.

After dinner, we headed back to the cabin and enjoyed reading on the porch.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

16 Years!

 Our marriage can officially drive today!

Sixteen years seems like no time and a LONG time all at once!

Some interesting (I hope) facts about our marriage:

1. We have lived (short-term AND long-term included) in six houses in sixteen years - Lake Blackshear for a few weeks after we got married, the Magnolia Hill house, Cacky and Poppy's, Michael Drive, the house in Lakewood, and our current home.

2. We have only flown together three times in sixteen years! Bahamas for our honeymoon, Washington DC in 2018, and Jamaica in 2018. (I think the years are correct...) 

3. Marriage has come VERY easily for us. Dating did not and parenthood has not!

4. Our honeymoon was SO SHORT. We left our wedding venue on Saturday night and drove to Atlanta (where we learned that Eddie had booked our hotel for the wrong night...). We flew to the Bahamas the next morning and then returned on Tuesday evening. When we got to the airport on Tuesday we found out our flight had been delayed and we could've stayed at our resort for a few more hours...but had to sit in the airport instead. I started a new job bright and early on Wednesday morning over 2 hours from the Atlanta airport. THAT was fun. If we had to do it over again, we would've postponed the honeymoon and gone to the Bahamas at Thanksgiving!

5. Our wedding venue was GORGEOUS and we loved it, but we got married on the hottest day of the year in the middle of a MAJOR drought. We've actually never gone to another wedding there and I'm the only one who has ever returned to see it - Mom and I dropped by when we were close one day with the boys.

6. Eddie has worked for the same company all 16 years of our marriage, but has changed roles twice since then. I've worked in two different jobs and had a stay-at-home mom position for about 8 years. 

7. In our marriage, we have traveled together to the Bahamas, Jamaica, Washington DC, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. I feel like we need to get out more!

8. We met officially in a "College & Careers" Sunday School class at our church in 2003 when I was in college and he was working, but because we grew up in the same church (just a few years difference in age), I'd known who he was and our parents had known each other for many years before that.

9. We joke that Eddie started dating me for my college football tickets. I had a student ticket at UGA, but my dad also (VERY generously) gave me REALLY, REALLY amazing 50 yard line season tickets when I was there. I always had an extra and Eddie GRACIOUSLY offered to go with me. LOL! We've only gone to about 5 UGA games since I graduated and we've never been able to top those tickets that I had then.

10. Two years ago on our anniversary, Eddie got C*vid and shared it with me...He brought it home from a mission trip and woke up on the morning of our anniversary SO SICK. He immediately tested positive. I never tested positive, but most certainly had it a day later. Our children never became symptomatic and they lived in the bonus room upstairs and lived off of poptarts and Gatorade for a week while we recovered. I think they lived their best lives that week.

11. We ACTUALLY got married on July 17th at the courthouse...sort of. We wanted former associate pastor friend to marry us and he was very willing to do it, but because we were not in his current congregation if he married us it could cause some issues with his ordination process. Instead, we opted to have a local judge (family friend and uncle of one of my bridesmaids - I'd babysit their kids for years) marry us on the 17th and then we "faked" the ceremony on the 19th and the judge signed the license (he was a guest at the wedding as well). It was weird and hilarious! He literally asked us, "Do you take him? Do you take her? Done." We sealed our marriage with dinner at Applebee's with some friends and played Wii (it was BRAND NEW) late into the night on the 17th.

12. Favorite thing that will entertain both of us for a date? Mexican food and a bookstore!

13. Where have we traveled more than anywhere else during our entire marriage? Disney World. Whoops!

14. Eddie asked me to go with him to a wedding in 2003 and I declined, but still went to that wedding with another friend (I wasn't invited). She and I wound up sitting with the groomsmen at the reception. Whoops! I DID go to Eddie's house afterward to play games with a group of friends, but he's never let me live it down that I turned him down and still went.

15. We got married on those friends' anniversary 5 years later! 

16. He's still my favorite person after 16 years of marriage. He does drive me crazy occasionally, but it's VERY rare. He's the BEST.

Books & Besties

 Let's do a little Summer 2024 Recap this week, shall we? Waaaaay back in May right after school got out, some friends and I drove over to Thomasville for the evening to attend a book signing by the one and only Mary Kay Andrews. To say I was excited is an understatement! She's definitely one of my favorites and has been for YEARS. The Book Shelf is always doing amazing events for readers (this is the second we've been to recently!) and this one was so nice! Tickets were sold so there were seats and plenty of space for everyone!

After mingling around a few minutes after arriving, we got seated and the queen herself came out! Two of us are avid MKA readers and two of us have become MKA readers! Jennifer and I have pretty much gobbled up everything she's put out, but I think this event introduced Lori and Stephanie to her writing. She's just so fun! If you like funny rom-com with a side of murder and mystery, she's your author!

After entertaining us for about half an hour, she opened it up for questions. Her new book is BASICALLY set in Brunswick and St. Simons and features a resort called The Saint that's very similar to one on Sea Island called The Cloister. I STILL haven't read it, but I DID get my copy signed and it's proudly featured on my bedside table currently. 

After the event was over and we had our signed books, we walked down the street (I LOVE Thomasville!) to eat dinner at Jonah's. I ate at Jonah's for the first time in April and I've decided it's one of my favorite places EVER. The food is so, so good!

It was an evening well-spent!

What's Working for Me

 I've seen this here and there and thought it would be a fun one to share.

1. A membership to the car wash. I've had this for over a year now and it's amazing. I will drive through just to wash at least 1-2 times a week. About every other week I'll also stop and vacuum out the car and through all the trash out. It's kept the car feeling SO MUCH CLEANER. We practically live in it, so this is so nice.

2. Listening to audiobooks on my headphones. Last year I read ONE HUNDRED BOOKS. And I'd say probably 75% of those were straight into my ears. I TOTALLY think that we all need to read with our eyes, but if you want to read ALL THE BOOKS, this is the way to do it.

3. Having a cleaning crew come every other week. Shew buddy. Here's the thing about having these ladies come in and clean my house - it requires that we REALLY pick it up every other week. I know that seems crazy, but it really keeps us a little more disciplined and I love it! I SO appreciate everything they do to scrub our house down!

4. Reworking my work life. As middle school took off for us a few years ago and James joined every single thing he could, my life suddenly became busier than ever. The crazy thing is that it made me less social than before, but kept me a lot more tied up. I've learned as a parent of pre-teens and teens that you spend about 90% of your time in a sitting-and-waiting state (see #2 above about all the books I listened to last year!). I've also learned that there's a lot more emotional need for pre-teens and teens than we had with toddlers and elementary students. Don't get me wrong, the baby years were physically demanding, but this is a whole new world of hormones and learning to be a person and all the challenges that go along with that. Over the past two years, I've found myself missing out on a WHOLE LOT of things that my family was involved in because of my job. And it's weird, because my job is just 3/4 time so I'm really only there when the boys are in school. BUT last year the school system readjusted the start times and I couldn't drop my kids off before I had to go to work so I wasn't ever able to take them to school, which has been a really happy part of my mothering. If anything occurred during 8-12, I really had a hard time leaving my work to go to it, because I felt sort of tied to the hours when we were open. Finally, after some adjustments at the church and a few things just falling exactly into place, I decided that where I needed to be was not where I was and on a leap of faith I resigned from my position way back in November of last year. I remained there through the end of May, let them hire my replacement, and helped her get her feet under her and then I've slowly faded into the background over the summer! I've been asked a LOT if I'm enjoyed my "retirement," and I really don't know yet because my summer is almost exactly the same (except right NOW in July I'd be driving the boys AND working at a desk a lot of the day). Come August, I'm sure it will feel a LOT different!

5. Listing out my goals. I am a list maker! I looooove to strike things off of a to-do list! Earlier this summer, I listed out a lot of goals for the summer (and if we're honest, it's always overkill) and I've been working on checking it off. I check it every day or every few days and slooooowly but surely I'm making strides toward completing it!

So that's what's working for me right now. What's working for you?

Vidalia Invitational

On Saturday morning, we were up at at 'em by 5AM to hit the road for our last summer swim meet. I have lots of updating to do about summer since this is my first update in a while, but James hurt his arm at church camp and was out of swim about two weeks and missed his first two meets. We have one more coming up in July, but both boys will be on a mission trip. So it was either make the trek to Vidalia or James didn't have a summer meet at all! (And meets are the fun part of swim!) It was a HOT one, but both boys dropped a little time and had a great day!

James' relay team was SO excited going into the week because one of the teams they swim against during the school year was coming and we really enjoy watching them compete! Sadly, that team didn't have enough for a 13-14 boys' relay team and no one else brought any 13-14 boys either so as long as they didn't DQ their two relays, they got automatic 1st place points! We'll take it!

Will didn't have enough his age for a relay team, but he swam 5 individual events and got two 4th places, two 3rd places, and one 2nd place! He beat another kid on his team that has been swimming for a while and he was SO tickled with that - a win for him!

Sharing a blurry picture of James' dive because it has come SO FAR. I'll include his dive two years ago below (he's closest to the camera - this is from 1.5 years ago). He's made SO much progress. He is pretty bored with the monotony of swim right now, but does really enjoy school meets so I'm ready for that season - his first HIGH SCHOOL SEASON - to get rolling.

James wound up taking Points Runner Up in his age group and we think will get a medal. We didn't realize they had awards and left before they were distributed. Whoops!

The boys have a few more practices this week and next week and then will have a few weeks off. James will continue to swim in August and September, but Will has a break until October. They're ready for a little break!

Your Reading Guide

 I have always LOVED a reading guide. I love a list of books to try to read through and mark off. I love the goal of reading a pile of books in a certain amount of time. Y'all know I just love books.

It was time to vote in some new books for Book Club and I got fancy this year and made a Google Doc for everyone to vote on and THEN I made this gorgeous Reading Guide (if I do say so myself). I may get fancy and make myself a Summer Reading Guide as well and if I do, I'll share it here!

Enjoy!

Summer Bucket List

Well, hello there! Should I re-introduce myself? I'm back (however briefly) to share our Annual Summer Bucket List. Not surprisingly, I was met with a fair bit of complaining and gnashing of teeth when I suggested we make this list, but we powered through it anyway. James assured me he is "not three years old" when we started and I told him if he didn't suggest things I'd add zoo trips and berry picking to the list so he'd better get it together and help me!

Also not surprisingly, our list is FULL of ALL THE SPORTS. That's pretty much what life revolves around these days! Here at the beginning of May, we are full steam ahead with summer swim (which really has become year-round swim, minus about 2 months, for James). Will is going to join him at the end of the month. Will is also very interested in tennis this summer. And James has signed himself up for a variety of golf tournaments as well as the coveted Drive Chip Putt competition, where he hopes to pass the first round and I hope he is just able to compete against the kids who are also there and probably all eat, sleep, and breathe golf (we don't at this point...).

In addition to all of the sports, we threw a few foods to try, a few fun things to do on a rainy day, a few church items, movies, and trips. It's already shaping up to be a VERY busy summer! I hope to share it all with you!