Fall In The Mountains

I've been waiting to write this post, hoping my laptop would start functioning better, but that hasn't happened, so I am trying to use my tablet.

The last Saturday in October Hubby and I decided to take a drive up in the mountains with the hope of seeing some fall and some views.

It was sooooo pretty and a beautiful day!

Hubby searched for a scenic drive online and found a great hour and a half drive through the mountains that just got better and better as we drove along.

Some people say that when they look over the ocean, that peace comes to their soul. I get that feeling when I see the mountains. The expanse just speaks to me of God's majesty.

So much beauty! Hubby brought his really nice camera and took some pretty terrific pictures.

Hubby and I had a good day together and were thankful to see that the mountains aren't always socked in with fog like we experienced on our abandoned vacation the month before!

Oh, one more picture.... Hubby thought he needed to take a picture of me in the mountains. I should know that his "one" picture always means lots and lots of pictures.  This is the result after he took more than I wanted him to. Can't decide if I am laughing or screaming.

I am thankful to God for blessing us with a good day and for allowing us to see His creation.

I Should Have Brought My Scuba Gear

This was our week to explore a wonderful part of the Southeast. Hubby and I planned a 10 day get-away, just the two of us. We hadn't done that this year yet as all of our time away has involved visiting family and business meetings. Vacation spent with family is a good thing, but so is time alone with my hubby, even after 31 years of marriage.

So what did we plan to do? We wanted to take a week and drive the 469 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We wanted to see views like this:

Instead, this is what we saw for three days and 169 miles:

Fog. Lots of fog. Oh, and rain. Lots of rain.

Tuesday morning we woke up in Floyd, Virginia and saw the weather forecast for more rain, so we decided to abandon the vacation and come home. So, instead of a 10 day vacation, we had a 4 day weekend. Sigh.

Yesterday, I was really regretting the decision. Today after looking at the Blue Ridge Parkway page on the National Park Service website, I feel better. I read that there is an advisory for the whole Blue Ridge Parkway because of the possibility of falling rocks and trees (due to the massive amount of rain). I am choosing to believe that God sent us home to protect us danger.

We covered 169 miles on the Parkway, but didn't see anything but fog. We did do a few fun things, anyway.

Saturday we drove to Charlottesville, Virginia since it is near the beginning of the Parkway. When we got to town, we went to visit Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. (Thanks, Joyce, for giving me a heads up about that!)

This place was built about 1772. (The many, many years of history out here in the east sometimes is hard to wrap my brain around). We went on a tour of the house and learned a lot and enjoyed it very much.

Sunday morning we stopped at an apple orchard, bought a few apples, some cider and a piece of apple pie to share at lunch time.

Then we headed to the Parkway in the rain and fog with hopes of the weather clearing up.

At mile marker 19 (the speed limit is 45mph on the Parkway), we stopped at an overlook, (with so much fog we couldn't see anything) chatted with another couple who were stopped there, then cracked open the cooler and fixed some sandwiches for our lunch.

After lunch, Hubby tried to start the car and there was NOTHING. Just a little wrrrrr sound. The battery was dead. We have never had any trouble with that car and we were stumped. We had no cell service and there were not many cars on the Parkway. We tried to text our kids to pray for us and to call someone to help us, but no texts would go through, We ended up sitting in the car with the hood up for an hour and a half before someone stopped to help us. I have never been more thankful for cigarette smoking, tattooed, pickup driving people with jumper cables!! (Our car was fine the rest of the trip...go figure.)

We spent Sunday night at a pretty cool hotel in Roanoke, Virginia. Monday morning we looked over a D-Day memorial. I am always sobered with the global impact of World War II. Before we left Roanoke, we browsed through an antique architecture hardware store and had lunch at an amazing french cafe.

Tuesday morning found us texting our kids that we were abandoning our vacation and driving four hours in the rain (of course) back home.

Hubby went back to work a couple of days this week. We now have a couple more vacation days to use in the remaining part of the year. Hopefully we can get in some three days weekends and see some more of this awesome part of the country.

Thirty-One Years

July 24th was my last post? Oh man. Let's do some catching up...

Hubby and I celebrated 31 years of marriage the end of July. I wrote to my hubby on Facebook the day of our anniversary:

Today marks 31 years since I married you. Doofus me forgot to buy you an anniversary card, but if the stack of cards I unpacked a couple of months ago that you've saved over the years are any indication, I'd likely write basically the same stuff: I love you always; Thanks for __ years together: You're a terrific husband; blah blah blah. This year you get a Facebook public card.

Sometimes I am amazed that God created this thing called marriage. How cool is it to get to choose to commit to another person and hang out with for decades doing life together? I am so privileged to get to do that with you. I have loved having the front row seat of watching you grow into the man God wants you to be. I love seeing your confidence in who you are in Christ grow and change who you are. I am honored to walk by your side. I am honored to be your teammate. Our becoming one in this married life, our partnership is one of God's great blessings on us.
How lucky are we (and by lucky I mean an overflow of God's great grace) to have been given those kids of ours? I love us together watching the two of them and their spouses growing together as their own families. God has blessed us abundantly!
And now, Part 3. Empty nest and being Grammy and Pops! Wheee! Let's have a blast together in this part of our lives, okay?
And guess what? I love you always, thank you for 31 years together and you're a terrific husband!
I love you.
Always.

I think he is just the best, if you can't tell.

We always like to celebrate our anniversary in some special way. Sometimes just a dinner out, but the past several years has involved a trip somewhere. This year we headed north and east to the mountains.

Kinda a hazy picture, but I guess there is a reason these are called the Smoky Mountains Or are they the Blue Ridge Mountains here? I better learn my geography a little better.

We found a cute cabin in the North Carolina mountains to spend a few days.  As we were making the reservations online I noticed that we could order a picnic basket for lunch, so I hopped right on that! And was I glad I did! Check out this adorable basket:

 

We spent quite a bit of time driving around those mountains and loving the beautiful scenery.  One day our destination was to the top of Grandfather Mountain:

 At the top of the mountain was a hanging bridge. Yikes! That's what I have to say about that.

 

Hubby walked across the bridge and I went to sit in the car to get out of the rain, but not before I gave him one more kiss. I don't like hanging bridges. Walking across air on something that moves? No thanks.

Thankfully, Hubby made it back all in one piece. Ha.

I loved these wind-blown trees. Just stunning.

In the evenings we snuggled into our cabin (I loved the chaise lounge in our cabin) and watched a couple of old movies. The lodge where we were staying had all sorts of old movies to borrow and watch. We watched two movies of The Thin Man. We were surprised at how good the movies were.

We had a great get-away and are so thankful we have so much beauty nearby to explore.

A Week at the Beach

Last week was spent at a beach in North Carolina. I was able to stay the whole week and be with my parents and my siblings (and a few other family members like a niece, nephew, a couple of great-nieces some brothers-in-law and a sister-in-law.)

Other than a cruise we all went on two years ago to celebrate my parents' 60th wedding anniversary, none of us could remember the last time the four of us spent that much time together.

One afternoon someone looked out the window and said. "Look at all those dragonflies!" Shortly after we heard my sister and nephew come hollering and yelling their way up the stairs from the pool. For some reason there was a ten minute invasion of thousands of dragonflies. All the black specs in the picture are dragonflies! Then, just as quickly as they swarmed, they were gone!

Another afternoon I was in my room reading and watching soap operas and I heard the little girls (great-nieces ages 2 and 4) squealing with delight and then I heard a familiar roar. I looked out to see my 84 year old dad in the pool! I remembered that roar from when I was a kid and Dad would come swimming under water and then come up out of the water roaring trying to scare us.  I don't think those little girls knew what to think of their great-grandpa in the pool. Grin.

My dad is awesome.

 

 

A Trip to the Kids

The last week of June, Hubby and I took a week's vacation and few to the Midwest to see our kids. Living halfway across the country now involves planes to visit loved ones. Airports and planes are not my favorite, but I do what I gotta do to see those babies of mine.

As we were boarding the plane for Kansas City, we saw online that our son and daughter-in-law had no power at their house due to a storm that had gone through the night before. As we waited for our luggage and Kansas City, I got on my phone to find a hotel room for that night, because, hello, no electricity means no air conditioning and air conditioning is my friend. I was very thankful for having a smart phone!

We had a wonderful time with our son and daughter-in-law despite no electricity for over fifty hours. One evening we went to a jazz club in Kansas City for dinner and a fantastic ensemble of a clarinet, soprano saxophone, piano and drums. Hubby is an accomplished clarinet player, so he especially enjoyed the music.

Sunday we were thrilled to be able to worship at our son and daughter-in-law's church. We always enjoy the music and the Biblical preaching is spot-on. At the end of each service, communion is served. I cannot even express the emotions I have when my own son and his wife serve me communion.

I have experienced this several times and I am a HOT MESS (I'm picking up some Southern lingo!) Every Single Time. The tears flow. I feel so grateful that God pursued my son and that my son lives his life for Christ.

Electricity was restored to their house and we were able to spend the last two nights with our son and daughter-in-law. I very much enjoyed some conversations with my daughter-in-law. We talked about all sorts of things including sharing decorating ideas that we had seen on Pinterest. :)

After four days in Kansas City we took off in our rental car and headed to Iowa to see this beauty who has discovered her toes:

And learned to roll over from her back to her tummy while we were there:

 We took a couple of short day trips to visit our parents. Here's a Four Generation picture of my father-in-law, Daughter, Granddaughter and Hubby. 

On the 4th of July we hung out in the yard and someone went "swimming". She loved it.

I learned about the chickens...

  ...and the ducks.
 

Swedish Blue Duck

We played with this sweet angel as much as possible.

And we enjoyed our daughter's wonderful cooking and had a yummy pasta dish, balsamic glazed salmon, lots of garden produce, brats on the grill, S'mores and this very tasty, patriotic dessert:

All too soon the time came to fly back to the Southwest. For some unknown reason, I agreed to a 7am flight out of Des Moines. I survived, but barely. ha. We waited couple of hours for the last leg of our trip, just to have that flight canceled. Instead of waiting in that airport for another four or five hours, we opted to cancel that leg of the trip and rented a car and drove the last hour and forty-five minutes back to Greenville. We won't talk about how ridiculous it cost to rent a car for not even three hours, but at least once the airline refunds us for the canceled flight, we'll still come out ahead. Flying. Blech.

Charleston

There have been many places in the Southeast I have wanted to visit for a long time and since we now live in the Southeast, this is the perfect time to take advantage of that!

Memorial Day weekend we hopped into our car, hit the road and a mere three hours later we were in Charleston, SC! That is a little mind-boggling for this Midwest girl. We are wanting to take advantage of being able to travel in a part of the country we haven't seen much of.

We started the weekend by having pizza with a high school friend of Hubby's. He actually lives in the Chicago area, but was visiting his daughter who lives in the Charleston area. It's always good to see him and his wife. I was determined to take a picture of them, but I stupidly managed to talk myself out of it. I seem to always feel awkward when we are with friends to ask them for a picture.

Here's a crazy thing: We met Hubby's friend in a town that is the same as our last name, only spelled differently by one letter. Our hotel was in a town that has the same name as the town where my hubby went to high school in Iowa. Funny.

Saturday morning we decided to tour a plantation called Middleton Place just outside of Charleston. 

The property was beautiful. This house, built in 1755, was one of three that were there at one time. This is the only one that survived both the Civil War and the 1886 earthquake.

I was enchanted with the huge live oak trees that were dripping with Spanish moss. 

Just beautiful!

The "wildlife" was enchanting as well.

I am also enthralled with peacocks. The male peacock is a stunning creature. God has some crazy imagination to create this creature. I have a book from my childhood called Suki and the Invisible Peacock. It was one of my favorite books. I think of it whenever I see a peacock.

After some yummy seafood for lunch, we headed off for a boat tour of the harbor.

We often will take a tour of a new city to learn more about the history and layout of the place. This boat tour was a disappointment. The guide spent the majority of the 90 minutes talking about pirates. While I understand there were pirates in the area, it would have been more interesting to hear about what we were seeing along the shorelines and even more about Fort Sumter and the Civil War.

I didn't get very many good pictures, but here are a few:

Fort Sumter

Saturday evening was another time I wished I would get over my stupid awkwardness about taking picture of people we are with. We had supper at the home of some friends we met while we lived in Singapore. We hadn't seen each other for 15 years. It was fun to be in their house and see some familiar artwork and pieces of furniture. Us expats sure seem to like to buy the same types of things! Linda and I were in a number of Bible studies together over the two years we were in Singapore together. Since she had already lived there three years before we arrived, she had a lot of tips and knew where the good shopping places were. I learned so much from her. Butch enjoyed talking with our kids at church and especially teasing our daughter. It was a very enjoyable evening. I hope we can see each other more whenever we go back to Charleston.

Our Sunday morning carriage ride around the old part of Charleston redeemed the horrible harbor cruise. Our tour guide was very informative and we learned so much about the area.

Sunday's lunch was on the waterfront. The scenery and the food were both fantastic. 

I had a soft shell crab BLT. I am a huge fan of crab but had never had soft shell crab. I've heard people rave about it so when it was on the menu, I ordered it. I was not disappointed. It was soooo yummy!

 
As we worked our way around Charleston on foot on Monday, we came across this very old cemetery.