You can tell it is Fall...



...when you have to wear several layers of clothes to play softball




...when the cotton is done bloomin'



...when Miss Priss thinks she is Taylor Swift of the forest

...when you can go to the county fair and get some roasted corn

Poor Poor Pitiful Me!

HaHa!  Are ya'll familiar with that song?  "I laid my head on the railroad track, waiting for the Double E, Train don't come through here no more poor poor pitiful me..."  That is the way I started to feel last week.  It all started on Monday when I was on my way to work and my car started "whistling".  It overheated and I had to leave it in a Food Lion parking lot for my dad to come get and take back home for me.  I had to call Brandon and have him come pick me up and take me on to work.  To make matters worse Brandon's truck was in his shop waiting on a clutch to be shipped so he could put it back together.  So our one extra vehicle was down already.  My old truck is running, but had an oil leak, no tag, no registration, no inspection, and no insurance.  Brandon has off on Fridays so he thought he was going to take have to take the engine back out and replace a seal that he thought he may have pinched when he put the new engine back in it recently.  So we were still short a vehicle so I borrowed my moms 4-Runner on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  Tuesday morning I got lucky and won a $50 gas card, 2 tickets to the race in Charlotte, and a chance to win a new 2012 Camry!  WOO HOO Right??  Wrong, I will keep it short and go ahead and tell you that I didn't win that drawing... Anyway, Friday morning I decided I would just drive Brandon's Mustang and let mom have her 4-wheeler back for the weekend.  Well what do you know, I hit a freakin' deer with his car on the way to work!!  Talk about luck!  I had a terrible day and then things turned around a little.  Dad put some stuff in the radiator that seemed to seal off the head gasket leak and Brandon found that it was something very simple that was causing the oil leak in my truck.  We drove my car around all weekend and it was fine.  Brandon drove it to work on Monday and it was fine.  He drove it Tuesday to take kids to school to get on the bus and what do you know, it won't start.  So he got back home (call me for a funny story about this trip-I can't report it on the world wide web) and took his truck to work.  SIDENOTE:  He had finished with the clutch, but had moved onto the catalytic converter, which he cut off over the weekend and ordered a new one-so he had no exhaust and his truck sounded like a tractor pull tractor going down the road.  Anyway he had to drive it (illegally) into Charlotte and back sounding like a Saturday night tractor pull.  He bought a new starter for my car and put it on Wednesday night and Thursday morning the head gasket blew again and he had to "limp" back home with it steaming and get his car to go to work.  Meanwhile this week I have been racing around getting an inspection and a tag for my truck and driving it again.  I feel 16 again!  HaHa!  It literally cramps my style though when you have 2 kids crammed in there with you and there is no room for a pocket book, jackets, or grocery bags.  BUT I feel very fortunate to even have it to drive.  The only peculiar thing with it though is that when you first crank it and go the speedometer doesn't work and it may or may not go to working after you get down the road.  This happens every time you stop and turn the truck off somewhere.  Oh well, I guess that's not all that necessary.  Like I said I am fortunate to have something to get me from A to B!  Next week Brandon's car is going into the body shop for Bambi repairs and we will both being driving our trucks-thank God for the gas cards since we will be driving the guzzling beasts! 
I was at the end of my rope by last weekend and the darndest thing happened.  When I tied the knot to prepare to hang on, the knot slipped out and I was holding onto a thread.  I went around to the DMV office, inspection station, insurance office all in a frazzle.  A couple of times the thought crossed my mind to reach either for a Valium that I have secretly stashed away for times like this or for the Captain Morgan, but when it came down to that I fell over and crashed on my own from pure emotional exhaustion! 
I do want to say that in the grand scheme of things I don't have it all that bad.  I am very lucky that when it is my turn for drama that it's something we can handle and move on with.  I though I would just share my crazy week with whoever wanted to read about it.  Stay tuned for I fear it may not be over...

Big Canoe 2011

We just got back from our vacation to Georgia.  We went to Petit Crest Villas in Big Canoe GA.  We went there in the summer of 2009 with our friends (the Johnson family) and we decided for a repeat this year.  We left on Friday which happened to be Alyssa's 6th birthday and Brian and Amy's 11th anniversary.  We celebrated that night at Fuego's Mexican restaurant which is right outside the gates of Big Canoe.  Saturday we started the day with getting a pass to the waterpark area and it gave us access to the canoes, paddleboats, pools, and rock slides.  All 4 kids love the rock slide which is an overflow area from the lake there in the community.  We did the rock slide thing Saturday and Sunday because that was the only time that lifeguards were there since there schools had already started back and it is officially off season there.   

Monday we went up to Tennessee near Lookout Mountain and then we drove up to See Rock City and Ruby Falls where Abigail took over the binoculars and loved looking around at what they did for her!  We got lots of cute pictures in the rock garden and the caves leading to Ruby Falls.  We got a late start and didn't get back to the cabin till around midnight.  When we got back we saw a raccoon running off from the trash can and a bunch of our chicken wings were laid out on the railing where he had stripped what meat had been left on the bone.  We had to clean up the trash and put the lids back on the cans.  We thought about when in 2009 the crows tore through our ziplocs and stole our leftovers we had left at the picnic table.  Animals seem to always be after our food around there!

Tuesday we went to a nearby river and let the kids play in the river.  Jordan walked up on a water snake and it took them a little while to get back in after the thought of being in the water with snakes crossed their minds.  They played for several hours and then we made a grocery store run before we went  back to the cabin to grill some supper.  We went to the park area and grilled zucchini and porkchops.  The kids played ball in the park and we had our laid back picnic.

Wednesday we went to Helen GA and went tubing down the Chattahoochee River.  What we didn't know was that the water level was really low and we had to walk the Chattahoochee at lots of places.  Brian lost his wedding band while he was pushing his tube across a shallow area and by crazy luck Amy was able to find it resting on the bottom of the river.  You could say that Amy saved the marriage!  HaHa!  Then we had dinner on the river at "The Troll Tavern" and we headed back to the cabin.  When we got there something had tore out the trash again and there was one trash bag that had been half pulled through the banister of the walkway.  Trash was everywhere and Brandon and Brian picked up all the trash and put it back in the can.  What was weird was whatever it was did not like watermelon-they left that laying.

Thursday morning the neighbors told us they watched as 2 bears went through our trash the night before and drug off what they wanted.  We were upset we hadn't been there to witness that!  We didn't do much of anything on Thursday because a day trip would have been  a bit much driving because of the anticipation of following day driving home.  We did go out for a 3-4 hour hike around the lake that day and hung around the cabin to watch a movie.  Late that evening we went to the park to grill our leftovers and let the kids play in the park.  When it was almost dark a little old lady was doing her daily exercise when she asked Brandon and Brian to hang around till she was finished walking because there had been a bear sighting the night before.  The guys had to tell her about our trash and they were at our cabin.

Friday we headed home around 10 am.  While we were packing the cars our neighbors told us the bears had been back the night before and someone from the villas had picked up our trash already.  While we were making trips back and forth to the cars (all the while with the cabin door wide open) we heard Brian calling "Come here! Come here!" in a low, distressed voice.  Brandon ran out to find out what was going on and a bear had just ran under the cabin and Brian saw it fleeing.  I ran back through the house and hollered something's outside!  and the kids followed me to the front deck and we were able to see the bear below the deck out from the cabin.  One of the kids squealed and the bear ran a little further and stopped and someone squealed again and it ran on off into the woods.  We were all so excited to have the bear for company.  We have seen bears off the side of the road in the Gatlinburg area, but we had never had one visit our home!  On the way home we stopped in Commerce GA at some outlet mall to pick up a quick gift for a friends' little girl.  We ended up finding some awesome end of the season sales and we shopped for several hours.  We didn't get home till 6:30 and I didn't get everything unpacked and put up till 8:30. 

Our little villa 611

Outside Fuego's on Alyssa's birthday

Abigail preparing for rock slide

Abigail preparing for landing at bottom of slide

Emily and Jordan waiting there turn at rock slide

Everyone but Alyssa meditating

See Rock City Girls!

Me and Abigail posing for picture in Rock City

Outside of Ruby Falls

Walking back up for another turn on the rock slide

Abigail and Alyssa in the Rock Garden path

Girls at the Mushroom Rock

See Rock City BABY!

Rock City Flower Princesses

Swinging Bridge across Rock City

Sitting on the porch of souvenir shop

3 of our little birdies!

Fat Man Squeeze-Yes we were able to walk through there!

Me and Brandon near Lover's Leap

Emily and Jordan outside Fairyland

Ruby Falls

From here you could see Seven States

Me and Brandon posing in Helen GA

Abi in Helen GA

Abigail resting after an afternoon of playing in the Amicalola River

Amicalola River Explorers

Me and Amy and our 2 little mermaids

Helen GA

Helen GA

Abigails flowers of interest

Girls posing in Rock City

Emily had ball practice Saturday morning and we had a birthday party to go to Saturday evening and here it is Sunday afternoon and I am exhausted!  I am so ready to go back to work so I can rest!  The kids start school this coming Thursday and I am kind of ready for us to get back into a regular schedule. 

Grandfather Mountain for Abigail's Birthday

Somehow I skipped posting anything about our surprise trip to the mountains on Abigail's Birthday. We took the Wednesday off and Tuesday after work decided to tell the kids we were going to go get ice cream after supper. We rode up to Lincolnton to the Morgans Dairy Bar and Calf-A and got ice cream. By then it was 9 pm and we told the kids it was just too late to go home and we were going to go ahead and go to the mountains. We rode to Blowing Rock and got a hotel and were fresh and ready to go to Grandfather Mountain Wednesday morning. It was only 67 degrees up there and very nice clean fresh smelling air. I couldn't but keep saying IT SMELLS SO GOOD HERE! We went out on the mile high swinging bridge and then we found a hiking trail that was labeled AGGRESSIVE-PROPER HIKING EQUIPMENT REQUIRED! We looked down and everyone had good sturdy tennis shoes, so hey we were equipped! It was a 2.4 mile trail that at times you had to use cables to pull yourself up or to rappel down with. Some rocks were only climbable with ladders that were bolted to the side of them. This was one of the funnest trails we had ever been on. We were almost to the top of the "cliff side" when Brandon decided it wasn't safe anymore to hold onto Abi with one hand and only have one hand to hold and pull up himself. Emily and I went a little further on our own because we wanted to see the last ladder area. We will definitely be going back here to hike these trails again. Abigail kept saying THIS IS THE BEST BIRTHDAY IDEA EVER! We actually had 4 happy people in our party and we were so happy that we chose to spend the day there.

HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY ABIGAIL!!!





Thank goodness Emily grabbed me before I went over the edge for good!!!  No... this actually looks like the edge, but there is actually a grassy area we walked to around behind this rock!





I took this picture about the place where Brandon turned around with Abi.  The lady in the green was standing at the bottom of this ladder that was pretty much on the side of a rock that we had to scale to get up to the ladder.  Brandon and Abi are teetering on  a mass of tree roots that just barely had enough room for you to perch to get over to the ladder.  It's hard to explain or even show in a picture how scary this actually was. 



Another ladder area-not so bad...

3 of the most important people in my life 1 mile above sea level!  High on Life!!!!