The Carolina's

Vacation May 21-29, 2011

Our summer vacation started early Saturday morning

when we left for the Creation Museum at the KY border.

We saw lots of cool stuff, including this mammoth.

We went to a planetarium and watched a show about

how big the "known" universe is...How amazing God's

creation is and how incredibly tiny we are.

We went back to Indy for the night (and Olive Garden!).
Sunday was the wedding of Katy Zeller and Eric Frantz
and we enjoyed being able to be there for their big day.
From there we headed to the Carolina's.



We drove through Smoky Mountain Ntl Park,
and spent a lot of the day in Cade's Cove.

Still operating mill.

Biltmore

Asheville, NC

We spent the day at the 8,000 acre Biltmore estate.

George Vanderbilt built this estate in the late 1800's

and it is the largest private residence in the U.S.

They opened it to the public for touring during the Depression.

The house tour was incredible, but the dozens of

gardens were no less impressive.

We spent a few hours walking around the grounds

and seeing all the plants, flowers, ponds....

The estate also had a creamery and a winery.

We spent the next morning canoeing at a campground,

then headed down to Charleston, SC.

At Patriot's Point, we caught a ferry to take us

to see Ft Sumter, the site of the first battle

of the Civil War.

Also at Patriot's Point was an old submarine and aircraft carrier

that we toured. The submarine had a volunteer on board

that used to work in a submarine in the military.

He was full of crazy stories of following a Japanese sub

for months, of submerging with only a minute of warning...

A great feeling sleeping above the torpedoes :(

Oh so small inside!!

Retired aircraft carrier turned museum.

We found the Isle of Palms beach, but couldn't find a place

to change to our swimsuits...so we enjoyed the sun and surf

by reading our books instead :)

The Charleston Aquarium

Albino Croc!

My favorite turtle!

The aquarium had a HUGE two story fish tank

full of different fish. There were two scuba divers

in the tank. One was working, scrubbing the rocks

with a toothbrush. The other was hanging out, doing

flips, waving, being entertaining, and taking pictures with people :)

We went through the Charleston Fire Museum

It had the official American La France fire engine display.

Old manual pumper truck :)

Home fire safety simulator.

Roll Up Your Sleeves....

....And get to work

This spring we tried to spruce up our landscape

with a little edging block that we had ran out

of time to put down last fall.

Ahhh...so nice to mow around :)

We also had a major overgrown weed and brush patch

in our yard. We weren't sure if it was ours or our

neighbors...but after she hadn't touched it for two years,

we decided to claim it. After pulling out about 6 bags of leaves

and sticks, the weeds were still terrible. We decided to

make it a flower garden instead of seeding it with grass.

Many days have been spent digging out weeds,

planting flowers, moving flowers :) and putting down mulch.

It's getting better here...

David and I went to Oakville for a few days to help

my dad and mom on the old farm. We spent one evening

with Benjamin, hiking on the hill ground, finding "my" spring,

"my" trail, and other beautiful things.

BJ trees a coon.

Ok, so if we had tons of money, we would build a cabin

right here by the pond :)

(next to my trail and my spring)

Friday we spent the day working down on the farm.

We tore down fence in the lot, cleaned out the barn,

cleaned in the machine shed, and burned a bunch of junk.

What did we put on the pile???

I found a website called onceamonthmom.com,

and it is full of menu's for every month of the year.

It's totally free, downloadable and printable.

Menu, grocery list, recipes, and order of preparation

are included. Basically I spent 8 hours cooking one day,

and had about 20 meals in the freezer for the month.

It is working out great! I am almost forgetting how to

cook...until next month :)

I was on my way to work one day last month when

my car seemed not to want to accelerate.

C'mon, just get me to work! Well, it didn't.

It made a big klunking sound and totally died.

David looked at it and found that it had spun a bearing.

And since it only had 260,000 miles on it,

we decided it was well worth rebuilding the engine ;-)

David and Wes worked on it in Wes' shed and now

my wheels are back on the road - yay!

Who knew you could miss a car??