We just got home from our trip to Clemson. It’s COLD here – in the 50’s! The house was cold, and I’m hovering under a blanket waiting for it to get really warm, but I think we’ve turned the corner from a/c to heat season, and I’d better start dressing appropriately. We went up into the mountains of northern South Carolina, just over the border into North Carolina to see some beautiful views and catch a glimpse of Whitewater Falls, the highest waterfall east of the Rockies. Very pretty! After our picnic lunch, we stopped in Atlanta at Ikea, the mega-Swedish furniture store. It’s a great store… We found a new floor lamp for $32 to start the living room redecorating we’re hoping to do over the next year:) I’ll post a picture tomorrow. It’s great to be home, but unfortunately, we found water under the bathroom sink, so hopefully we can figure out what’s up with that. There’s no major leak to be seen, so hopefully it’ll be easy (and cheap!) to fix. We just finished watching Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin special, and I’ll probably call it a night very soon. Busy day tomorrow with a couple appointments and our weekly home church here at our house that I’m not at all prepared for. We’ll catch up more later!

Hello from Beautiful Clemson, South Carolina!

We have had an awesome spir of the moment trip up here to my college Alma Mater Clemson, SC. The drive up was nice. The weather was beautiful and we had a tremendous tailwind most of the way. Shortly before driving through Atlanta, we stopped for a DQ break. Here’s my beautiful wife and daughter enjoying a Georgia Mud Fudge Blizzard in Georgia! Shortly after we made it through Atlanta on our way up I-85N, we stopped for a gas and happened upon a Citgo station turned into a cool little Fall Pumpkin Festival.

After a leisurely morning and a trip to the Express Lube for our 6,000 mile oil change (yes, I realize it’s supposed to happen more often than that), I headed out on nothing short of a biking adventure. Absolutely beautiful fall weather, a little on the breezy and chilly side, but awesome nonetheless. I’ve got a bazillion pictures and video to share, but I’ll limit myself tonight to just these three pictures. Check back sometime in the next couple days to hear more about this awesome adventure.

Beautiful South Carolina and North Carolina mountains. I drove Kristine and Analise here in the morning to the Oconee County Airport just outside of Clemson to show them this beautiful view of the mountains I would be riding in later in the day.

Much of my ride today was through roads lined with trees. This picture is from near the top of Sassafras Mountain.

I took this one just after I started my descent back down Sassafras. The road was so steep here that it took me close to 100 feet to stop. It was so steep that I had to weave back and forth across the road to cut off some of the steepness while simultateously squeezing the brakes as hard as I could.

Yes, you read the subject right. Last night as Kristine and I sat down to eat dinner, we thought we heard rain. Then we realized that it was actually Analise dropping a number of her peas one right after the other off the side of her high chair and onto our hardwood floor. It sounded just like rain. It was hilarious, and try as we might, we couldn’t keep from laughing. I hope she doesn’t start doing that now whenever we give her peas! I’ll tell you about the raining trees soon (with pictures, too!)…

Ok, now for the trees… It hasn’t rained (water rain) for probably close to a month now here — which is very unusual for this time of year. So I got out our sprinkler and set it up in our backyard to water, when I noticed that there was a new tree in our backyard! I’m not talking about a 12-inch tree, but a 3-4 foot tree has planted itself right next to our house. We can’t imagine where the seed came from to plant this tree because it doesn’t match any of the other trees that we can find anywhere near it. It may have been brought in by a bird or squirrel! In any case, it’s in a good location, and I’ve got a few pictures of it to share. If anyone can identify what type of tree it is, please let us know! I’ve also included pictures of our other trees in the yard, but the first two are of the newly planted tree…

 

And now, here are a couple good ones looking towards the front of our house from the street. In the top picture, you can see four of the five really large trees (70-75′) in our backyward. In the bottom picture, you see our beautiful river birch that has already lost a lot of its leaves without them changing color

Finally, from left to right … a picture looking at our banana tree that was damaged from Hurricane Katrina (see the dead yellow leaf hanging off the side). In the middle, you can see the largest tree we have in our backyard. Notice all the large splits in the tree towards the bottom. This tree is at the lowest point of our yard, yet it rises a few feet above the tall one located at the top of our yard. So it’s by far the biggest and tallest tree we have. Lastly, here’s the large tree next to our driveway and basketball goal.

I started coming down with a cold last night feeling miserable. I must have a touch of the flu, too, as my stomach has been in bad shape. Ag. It’s hard to be the mommy when you’re sick. I even tried to call my mother-in-law to see if she watned some Analise time, but she’s not feeling well either. Bummer. Analise has managed pretty well with graham crackers and Baby Einstien and sporadic intervals. We’re both looking forward to afternoon naptime here in the next hour.

On a different note, here’s a great site to practice carving your pumpkin for Halloween. Happy Halloween from Theo Worlds We’ve got a pumpkin carving party next weekend, so I’d better start designing:) After our nap, maybe…

This is called mindless blogging. But I had to share Analise’s favorite website with you, particularly useful for cleaning your screen:
www.TheSlurps.com. Happy Tuesday!