Friday Faves

It's Friday, ya'll! Do the happy dance with me! This week has flown by and June is now almost a memory. Here are some things that I am loving this week:

1. My little "happy" for me: I had to get on the J-Crew Bubble necklace bandwagon. I finally broke down and ordered one...but from Ebay of course! I wasn't about to drop 250 beans on a piece of costume jewelry. So, $30 later, I have my knock off!

Not bad, huh? I love it. There were a few options on Ebay, some as cheap as $15. However, by looking at them, they didn't seem to be of the same quality of this one that I found. This one looked a little more authentic to me. I might have to break down and get a couple more colors. I love it! (Please excuse the messy hair and tired face. I'm not fully awake yet this am!)

2. My new "happpy" for the office: I finally got around to purchasing a frame for my artwork for my office. And I kinda "love" it! It makes me smile.

Mainly because it is next to my three canine loves. It is also a good reminder when I get frustrated or aggravated at work with someone. I look over and its like God is telling me to  "love one another." So it's my own personal attitude adjustment.
3. My weekend trip: I am sooo looking forward to heading back to South Carolina this weekend to visit Charleston!

David and I are mixing it up this weekend and going to stay with his friends for the weekend and bum around Charleston. I will definitely be stopping here for a few pictures:

And no trip to Charleston would be complete without a personal tour of David's alma mater, the Citadel!

It should be a fabulous weekend!

4. Planning for a future trip: I am looking forward to spending some time with my family here next month:

And hopefully squeeze in a little of this along the way:

 And a little of that:

5. Finding some old "love letters" from high school:

Ok, this isn't exactly a love letter from David, but he did draw me a nice picture of his Bronco and our Scrambler. We were so retarded! But at the same time, I thought it was cute :-) I like how he labeled us driving, since I wouldn't be able to figure that out otherwise ha!

Well, that about sums it up for me this week. Hopefully I can come up with something a little better next week!

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Lake Hartwell...Part III

I guess I will go ahead and post the rest of the trip this morning, while I have the momentum going. This will just be a mishmash of random things.

The house we stayed at was very eclectic. It had everything you could imagine. I am assuming that the owners get a lot of use out of the place, because it really felt like we were squatting in some one's everyday home instead of a rental because it was stocked right down to the refrigerator. It even had a mascot:

This beaver cracked me up. It reminded me of when I used to volunteer at an elementary school in college whose mascot was the beaver and they had a stuffed one in the lobby that they dressed up for every holiday.

More importantly the house came with it's very own fondue fountain. We of course, had to fire it up for the kids.

The kids thought this was "the most awesomenest thing in the universe- or ever- for infinity." It made a pretty good topping for the homemade strawberry ice cream that David's mom made. Ha!

I took a few pictures of the massive butterfly bush they had out back. There were several hummingbirds that kept visiting it and I wish I had gotten a picture. All I got was a bee :-(

We also had a bit of drama over the weekend due to this scenario:

Golden retriever + 8 year old girl who believes he is a horse = disaster.

David's niece, Elisabeth had found an old jump rope on the property and she asked me if she could tie it to Mox's collar as a leash to lead him around. I saw no problem with this, so I showed her how to loop the rope on his collar through the hand opening in the rope. Big mistake. She decided that Mox was big enough to ride, so she would try and ride him and use the rope tied to the poor dog's neck as a reign and would swat him with it. I have to give Mox props, he was a sport about the whole thing....that is until E decided that she wanted to hitch a wagon to the poor dog. Granted, neither David nor I were outside with Mox and the kids when this went down, so we weren't there to put a stop to it. Elizabeth had tied the little radio flyer wagon to the rope and the rope to Mox's collar. She wanted him to pull her. I get it. It seemed like fun. Heck, my Springer Spaniel Renegade would pull me around in my wagon when I was little, so I totally understand where she was coming from. Mox on the other hand did not. He was fine until she tried to test if the wagon would work. So she tossed a frisbee and had Mox chase it with the wagon attached. Mox took off, and so did the wagon. It freaked him out so bad being chased by this wagon, that he yanked himself out of his collar and ran and ran and ran. David tried to call for him, I tried to call for him, but he was gone. And gone he stayed for about an hour. I was really getting worried that we wouldn't find him. We looked everywhere. At the lake, in the woods, at the neighbor's houses. He was nowhere to be found. Finally David and I walked across the street and down another street and I called for Mox and he finally popped his little head out of the bushes. He was totally freaked out, bless his heart. We were relieved to get him back. Needless to say, the rope disappeared after that! And Mox learned to run and hide whenever children were present. HA!

By Sunday it was time to go home. We never stopped at any of the fruit stands up in the northern part of the state for me to get some peaches. But by the time we made it down I-75 to Vienna, I made David stop because I really wanted some. We stopped at Ellis Bros. pecan store called We're Nuts. I'm really a fan of Dooly County, GA because it's a lot of farm land and just so pretty. Plus, any city whose water tower has the cotton logo on it gets an A+ in my book.

 I made David take a picture with the sign at the store and I told him to "go nuts." And I totally photoshopped myself in this picture.

 See. Talk about nuts! But we had no one to take our picture. I knew the photo I wanted in my mind, so I made it happen. Ha!!! Anyways, I really enjoyed the store. They had every flavor of pecan you could imagine, peaches galore, ice cream, even bags of freshly shelled peas!

I got the Key Lime pecans and they were amazing. I'm trying to figure out the next time I will be up that way to get some more, although I'm pretty sure this place has a website, so they may ship them out. Delicious!

So that wraps up our trip to Lake Hartwell. I had a fabulous time not only because I got to spend some extra time with David, but also because I got to spend time with his wonderful family. It was a very special trip.

Toccoa Falls and Fireworks ~ Lake Hartwell, Part II

Continuing with my adventures from this past weekend, on Saturday some of us journeyed to Toccoa Falls to go view the 186 ft. waterfall. It was stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. If you are ever driving through that area of northern Georgia, stop by the falls. It's quick and easy to get to and well worth the detour.

Toccoa Falls College sits on the property of this gorgeous waterfall. It is a Christian college with a tragic past. In 1977, the dam above the falls was breached after heavy rainfall and a flood of water, trees, and boulders descended down the valley to the college below, killing 39 people. However, the faith of everyone helped rebuild the college and it is still going strong today. It is a very beautiful campus.

Nature's beauty at it's finest. God surely created some breathtaking scenery!

Christy's husband John, in the picture above is actually from Toccoa Falls originally. So, he was our tour guide and led us around the town for the afternoon. We decided to hit up the fireworks store on the way home, which I think was more for the big kids than for the little ones. :-)

David and John had to wait to play with their new toys, so we spent the afternoon with the kids swimming.

Moxley had a blast of course! So did the kids throwing the stick in the water for him to retrieve. Finally, it was late enough that the fireworks could begin. David and John of course couldn't wait until dark, so dusk had to do!

 The kids loved the roman candles and the boys had fun shooting them across the water or shooting them into the water to watch them explode underwater. They then moved onto the bank for all of the bigger stuff.

 The kids were absolutely enthralled with the festivities. That was the most still and quiet they were all weekend!

 The adults were mesmerized as well, but I think it was because we were all worried that David and John were going to explode a firework in their face or something.

Finally, all the fireworks had been shot and the kids thought that they have the two coolest uncles in the world. It was a success. Some other people around the lake went out on their dock to watch the fireworks as well and gave the boys a round of applause for the show.

Lake Hartwell, SC...Part I

Good Monday morning! I am back from my weekend spent with David and his family at Lake Hartwell, South Carolina. It's too bad to come home to be greeted by TS Debbie and all this rain. It's so dreary, I do believe I could have stayed in my bed all day today and recuperated from our weekend.

However, we had a wonderful time at the lake. All of David's sisters and their husbands and/or children were able to come spend the long weekend together. I know his parents were over joyed to have everyone together since they are all spread out. David, as you know lives in Savannah, GA. His sisters live in Birmingham, AL, Greenville, SC, Raleigh, NC, and Hartford, CT. So as you can imagine, family get-togethers with everyone are few and far between. It was a very low-key weekend-with just a little bit of drama, thanks to Moxley!

I am going to break this up into several posts- so today I will just cover Friday. David was a gentleman this weekend and decided that he would do all the traveling, so he journeyed down to Thomasville on Thursday night to come pick me up so we could head out bright and early on Friday. Thankfully, we didn't have to leave at the crack of dawn because we didn't get the keys to the house until 4:00, so we were able to take our time. David, Moxley, and I loaded up and headed north on Friday.

Mox loaded up and ready for his looong ride!

 I think David was secretly happy to have Mox with us, so we couldn't stop at the outlet malls in Atlanta or Commerce. Ha!

No trip on GA HWY 300 is complete without a stop at either the Salt Lick or Striplings for some beef jerky! I wanted to get my picture taken with the hay bale pigs they have out front, but there were too many people outside and I didn't want to be "that" person. Ha!

We took a detour when we got to Atlanta and David drove me around his old neighborhood. He used to live in the Virginia Highlands area of Atlanta and I really liked the feel of the area. Mox was enjoying being back in Atlanta and taking in the view. I was just relieved for the moment of peace not being driven through Atlanta. I get a tad bit anxious if I'm not the one driving....

Here are a few pictures from David's old hood:

David claims that this building is where the formula for Coke was concocted - or at the very least one of the first places it was made in Atlanta

Atkin's - David's old hangout. Our friend Laurie from Blountstown also lived in this neighborhood and they would always joke that they liked this place because it has a name similar to our park in Blountstown.

You can just barely see David's old house behind the fence.

We then got back on the road after acquiring the shrimp for that evening's shrimp and grits feast.

Yuck! It was crazy traveling up I-85, even at 2:00. We were hoping that we would miss all the weekend and commuting traffic. It wasn't too bad for us, but David's sister Frances who was coming from Birmingham wasn't so lucky. She had to creep through Atlanta and was delayed quite a bit.

We had a bit of excitement on the drive up. I had gotten David some scratch off tickets at Christmas and ever since, we have been able to keep playing due to winning a free ticket or $20 here and there. David had cashed in his last ticket and he kept it so I could scratch it off. And when I did, we had won $100! We were so excited.

Me and my "winning" ticket

If you can see this is a poker game and you win by beating the other hand. Obviously, I never play poker, but I thought that we had won. So we stopped at the first gas station so I could collect our winnings. We even had a strategy worked out- $50 cold hard cash, a $20 ticket and 6 $5 tickets. I strutted in the station to cash out only to be told that our ticket in fact wasn't a winner. Womp, womp, womp. Guess I didn't really look to make sure that our hand had in fact beat the house. I guess our 6 month winning had to end some time. It was fun while it lasted. I still felt like a major idiot though!

After over 6 long hours in the car. We finally made it to the lake house. Lake Hartwell was pretty sad. The lake is down about 9 feet than it normally is. I guess the major drought back in 2007 or 2008 really took a toll on it and it hasn't recovered yet. The lake house was on a little cove off of the lake and was pretty shallow.

Well, that's the adventures for Friday. Hopefully, I will be able to go ahead and post the rest of the weekend sometime today. If not, tomorrow it will be.