Welcome Back!

We made it Charleston, SC tonight around 6:30. The drive wasn’t bad at all and the roads had all been cleaned, but you could see cars that didn’t make it so well through the snow storm of the weekend.

My goal was to leave by 6 AM, and we somehow left at 5:45, but had to go back home to look for Dave’s inhaler, oppps. (Which he didn’t find) We had to make a quick stop in Grove City to drop some things off at one a friend of Dave’s house and then on the road again.

We make it to South Bloomfield and we stopped at Mickey D’s to get some breakfast, and I took over the driving and drove the rest of the way down. Dave isn’t feeling to well, possibly the start of the cold like thing I had a few weeks again - YUCK!

We stopped in West Virginia at the Tamarack for about an hour. We walked around and looked at all the arts and crafts, bought a few things, had some lunch and hit the road again. They have a very nice eating area that is set up kind of like a cafeteria and you can pick what you want from the different stations. I think we will be stopping there again if we go though the area near a meal time!

We made it through Charlotte in good time and plenty before rush hour, unlike my parents who it at rush hour AGAIN!

We got here and got checked into our room with no problems, chilled for a few and then off we went. We needed to find another CVS to get a new inhaler for Dave before we did anything!

After we got the inhaler we headed down to downtown Charleston to see what we could find. I was a little sad to see not many Christmas decorations. We ended up going down by the water to take some pictures. We didn’t stay long as it was on the chilly side and I was hungry!

We ended up coming back to the area by the hotel and going to Carrabba’s and now we are back in the room relaxing from a long day!!

Tomorrow we get to see the family!!!

Baby Steps…

Tonight I “started” my training for the Avon Walk For Breast Cancer next year! I joined the Y last week and tonight I went for something other than Water class!

I am sure the people there got a nice laugh out of me. I decided I was going to start trying to get some time in on the treadmill. Of course I haven’t used one in YEARS. And they never had this many buttons before! So I walked around it, away from it, back to it, almost left, decided not to. Finally I got it started…and walked for 15 minutes and then did the 3 minute cool down...for a total for .7 miles. Yes I know it wasn’t much, but it was a start. And I learned for next time - bring water and my Zune! They have a few TV’s with closed captioning but, I of course was standing in front of Sports Center - BLAH!!!

I plan to go back on Friday night after our Girl Scout outing and try for 30 minutes….BABY STEPS will get there!!

We Reached the Destination!

We got on the road at about 9 AM this morning, a little later than we expected but it worked out well. We got to Charleston about 11:30 and waited for Sarah to come and get us to follow her to the base and get signed in so we could get on base.

Stella has grown so much in the last 2.5 months!!

We went to their house and got settled in and then Mom, Sarah and I headed to Wendy’s to grab some lunch and then ended up at Wal-Mart for a few things.

We went back to the house and waited for Heith to get home from work.

I started making the chocolate pies and then we moved on to getting the shrimp ready for dinner. YUCK! I guess I should be happy I guess when he had them they had heads on them….ICK!!!

The neighbors and their kids came over and stayed until like 9….it was a BUSY place with lots of kids running everywhere and noisy!

I am ready for bed!!!

One Day Down

My Mom and Dad picked me up at 9 AM this morning to start our Adventure to South Carolina. The day started with my mom calling to say they had gotten lost already. My apartment is NOT that hard to find. But they quickly got back in track and got me.

I went to put my three bags in the car and wasn’t sure if they would even fit in the trunk! My mom had SO much stuff to take down with us. Food for Thanksgiving, clothes people had given her to give to Stella, a trash can Sarah liked and left in Ohio, and a chainsaw….YES a chainsaw! I guess Sarah has a bush out front that she wants out. Everything did fit though!

There really isn’t a good way to get out of Ohio to 77. It is either rather out of the way or roads that at times are 2 lanes. This time we took 33 down to 77. Let’s just say Dad did NOT like this route. A lot of stopping and going slow in small towns.

About 3 o’clock Dad decides our goal is to drive THROUGH Charlotte and stop of the night. I pointed out to him that we would be hitting Charlotte at rush hour….but he was driving so we went ahead and did it. Let’s just say the last hour was HORRIBLE!!!! My Dad is NOT used to driving places and especially not in heavy traffic!

We are staying in a Holiday Inn for the night and just got back from a yummy dinner at Longhorn. My is getting ready to watch the season finale of Dancing with the Stars and I am going to get some sleep for the rest of our drive in the morning!

Holiday In Hand

I signed up for Holiday In Hand class on-line this year and MUST follow through! Even though it was free I have to prove to myself that I can keep up and DO it!

Day 1 is about value and goals for the holiday season. This works well with the thoughts I have been having this year and conversations I have been having with friends and family members so I am excited!!

Assignment 1: Write your Values & Goals

Values -
Family, giving, gratitude, traditions, memories, friends

Goals -
* Focus on my family and spending more quality time with them
* Connect with friends and spend more quality time with them
* Complete Holiday in Hand class
* Make treats to give to family and friends
* Spend and evening having fun and going to see a lights display
* Find a way to give to those less fortunate
* Start the tradition of Dave and I exchanging stockings
* Get my Christmas cards out by December 1st so I don’t have to worry about them!

Today is Day 2 and I am just doing Day 1...so off to look at Day 2!!

Welcome Home!

My Sunday morning started BRIGHT and early at 4:30 this morning! I know, I surprised myself with this insanity too!! I had said yes to helping with selling merchandise at the Columbus Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event, after saying there was no way I was going to help since it was the morning after we got back. Too bad people know I can’t say NO when asked to help out!

I needed to be downtown by COSI at 6:30 AM to start setting up. You forget how dark it is that early in the morning until you are trying to set up tables and items and can’t see anything! We got everything set up and participants started to come and buy things. YEAH! I think we had a good amount of sales but not sure how it compared to years past. It is amazing to see all the PINK out there!!!

I worked the event until about Noon and I headed off to Hilliard to have lunch with Stacy and Jimmy. They had walked the event and stopped by to see if I wanted to meet them when I was done. We met at Red Robin and had a nice lunch and got to catch up. We ended up being there for a few HOURS! It had been awhile, so it was nice to have that time.

Then I was off to Meijer to look for large cupcake pans and liners to make cupcakes for my Girl Scout meeting tomorrow night. I was so happy I quickly found the pans I was looking for and they only cost $5 each! At Wal-Mart they had been $10 each…and I really wanted to get 2 of them!! AND I also found the liners I could use there (I couldn’t find them at Wal-Mart) so I got some of those also.

By the time I got home it was close to 6 PM and I needed to make 2 cake mixes of large cupcakes!!! It didn’t take too long and they turned out yummy so all is good! Now I just need to get them packaged up to take to the meeting tomorrow.

So not much of a recover from vacation day! Glad all of our laundry was done on vacation!!

Random Day

Today was a rather random vacation day.

As most days we didn’t really have a plan when we left and ended up pulling off the road at a pull off by a bridge that I had seen multiple times and thought was neat and wanted to go get some pictures of. Dave decided that he was going to give some fishing a try in the area also. So he fished, I walked the trail and took some pictures. Then before we left I made him do a couple pictures of us on the bridge and down by the water.

We then started driving and looking for a place to pull over for some more fishing. I was going to leave him there and come back for him but I decided to just stay and sit in the car and read. Didn’t want to have to worry about turning around, coming back and finding him, etc.

We then came back to town to look for the Post Office and then back to the condo for spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

After dinner we relaxed for about an hour and then we decided to go walking through Gatlinburg.

We found The Village which has a lot of really cute stores to walk through, and even made a few more purchases! We stopped for a coffee and a carmel apple cider.

On the way back we stopped and listened to a live Bluegrass band for a few before we came back to the room for the evening.

Only one more day…and it is supposed to be rainy L Oh well we did have good weather for most of the time!!