We're home!

On our trip, Jeff wanted to do something (new to our family) called Letterboxing.
If you click on the link, you can go to the national site and learn more about it, but in a nutshell
it goes like this...

Families around the country hide a box in a discrete location and the directions to the location can be found on the website. We printed out a bunch of them to look for on our trip. When you read the clues and get to the general area, you then need to look for the thing you're looking for. lol And, in this case, it was "Man's Best Friend" (notice dog above). If you look under "Man's Best Friend" you'll find "what you're looking for" and remember to "put it back the way you found it"
so that it stays hidden. It didn't take us long to do this one but it was a great start to a soon-to-be weekend-family-fun-event that we plan on continuing.

The "treasure" always consists of a stamp and a booklet, hidden inside some sort of seal-tight container. You, as a family, need to pick your own stamp, and stamp that stamp in their book, and then take the stamp inside the "treasure" and stamp that in your book. We bought a leather-bound journaling book for $3 at Dollar General. There's a place for the date and any remarks you'd like to make along with lots of space for the stamp. Some stamps are quite large while others are small.

Our family stamp was going to be an elephant but I couldn't find one anywhere in the area, so we picked a Halloween Kitty. I doubt that this stamp will remain our family stamp as we are going to get an elephant one soon. The Kitty stamp will become what's called a "hitchhiker". A Hitchhiker stamp is a stamp that's placed in any of the letter boxes and they travel from place to place, never knowing where they'll end up. :) Cool, huh?

Once you find the treasure and stamp it, you can write a message in it. We usually put why we were there (vacationing) and had all the kids sign their names. :) Once, I even put my blog site. I thought it was a lot of fun!

We found our first Letterbox!

Natalie signing the book.

Deanie finding a 'drive-by' Letterbox.

This was a really fun Letterbox, called "With This Ring". A story about a woman who wanted to marry a man that her family did not think was good enough. She put the engagement ring around her neck to keep it hidden, however she ended up with fever and her brother found the ring, snatched it from her neck and threw it in the marshland. The legend is that "Alice" was searching for the ring until she died and is now a ghost still looking for it.

Alice's grave was difficult to find, but once we did we found it covered with little trinkets and rings. So cool! The story goes on to say that you're to walk around her grave backwards 13 times and Alice will appear over the stone wall. The kids enjoyed walking around the grave. :)

This particular letterbox was found hidden in the old stone fence inside a small seal-tight canister along with a booklet for our stamping. The stamp was a wedding ring. You can read more about Alice Flagg HERE.

We plan to do more letterboxing in Lexington and there's even one in Versailles. This might be a fun thing for your family to do too. Happy hunting!

* * *

We went to a fun putt-putt place and enjoyed several rounds before the girls abruptly put down their poles and said, "we're done! let's go!" lol I grabbed some great pics along the way.

Jeff trying to squeeze Colie and Dean to death. lol
Nathaniel and Nat weren't in our group (no more than 5 to a group).

* * *

On Tuesday, we spent the entire day at the beach. It was glorious and I wish we'd had more days like this, but maybe next time.

If you're wondering where Nathaniel is on this all-day-at-the-beach day, well he's in the water and didn't come out! lol He had a blast!

This was the morning we were leaving. Jeff gave everyone the chance to go down to the beach to look for shells, but the only taker was Nicole. No surprise as she was talking about going every morning (altho getting UP that early was a different story, she didn't want to lol). On the last day she decided that she would go and I'm so glad they did. Jeff caught some wonderful shots of her, especially the one of her dancing. I love this picture. This is so Nicole.

All in all, our trip, despite a few days of rain, was wonderful. We hope to go back again soon.
I hope you all had a lovely week. I begin work tomorrow and am really looking forward to it! I wasn't sure I'd feel that way, what with a whole week off, but I do. As I begin to fill all the recent orders and get those taken care of, I'll begin working on my Holiday Open House creations. My plan is to have the Open House on November 23rd.

Thank you for being patient with your orders.
I truly appreciate it, and my family appreciates you!

South Carolina with Friends

i did a vintage color on this one. it's probably my favorite look,
a little bit of black and white with a hint of color. :)



natalie has had the best time!



the boy.

natalie taking a break from the sea.

friends making sand castles.

nicole loves the water.

two years ago, we went to cocoa beach and deanie wasn't as thrilled
with the sand. this time however, she's so in love with it, she's not thrilled to
go to the pool. :)

deanie with her sand castles. nicole with her boogy board. and me with one of my girls.

i have to admit, the boy with the hair fits in quite nicely at the beach. he reminds me
of a young patrick swayze, no? remember Point Break? yeah. me too.

beans.

same photo as the first one, only in its original version.

* * *
everyone is having a lovely time. i forgot how much i enjoyed the beach and the sound of the waves hitting the shore. the kids are having a blast, as you can see from the photos. earlier today, nathaniel made a comment about how he thinks there's something wrong with him because his body is stinging. i asked "where is your body stinging?" and he says, "the backs of my ars and behind my legs, that's where." i about laughed but refrained. i told him it's because he spent six hours in the ocean the day before and did a lot of working out on those arms and legs. lol poor guy. however, it didn't stop him from getting right back in the water today. :)

the girls are having a fantastic time with their sand toys and building castles. i've had such a great time with my camera and taking photos of everyone. there's one of me, but i need jeff to take a few more. i'm just the one usually behind the camera. :)

tonight we don't have big plans. some of the kids are taking a golf lesson at the club house, but not all of us. we're all pretty exhausted and need an evening to just chill out. tomorrow, if the weather is good, we'll head to the beach. if not, we're thinking of doing some LetterBoxing and Putt-Putt, or maybe a movie.

i'm loving this. every single minute. :)

And... we're off!

Hello Everyone!

It's been a crazy two-days around here. Everything is packed (for the most part) and the Yukon is clean (for the most part) and we're so excited about our vacation! The kids were asking all sorts of questions this morning, things I didn't have time to answer, "how long is it going to take to get to South Carolina? Are we going to stop along the way? Can I bring my favorite stuffed animal? What about crayons? Can we bring crayons? Are you going to do my hair when we're in South Carolina?" lol Questions like that. Yeah. crazy! I shewed them out the door and I went back to sleep because for the last several nights I have been waking up at 4 in the morning. Ugh. Do you do that? I hate it.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and I'll be sure to post pictures while I'm away! :)

Oh, I meant to tell you, yesterday I spent a lot of time getting packages out the door, and I am thrilled to report that a bunch of you will have your things in a few days. I did my best to get as many smaller orders mailed off. The bigger ones will have to wait until I'm back to work on Monday. :) Take care of yourselves and I'll talk to you soon!

Home sick. Thirty days to go.

Nathaniel is home sick today. He had a headache last night around dinner time and his stomach hurt this morning, however he is now eating breakfast so I don't know how sick he is. lol I'm one of those moms who, if my kid says he or she doesn't feel great and they want to stay home, I let them. There are so many years of "really important" school days ahead of them, that these younger elementary and middle-school years aren't anything to get myself all worried about. Plus, they are all excellent in school and are usually SO excited to get out the door, so when they say they want to stay home, they probably don't feel so great.

Once, I sent Nicole to school when she said she wanted to stay home. The school called me less than an hour into the day, saying she'd thrown up in the classroom and could I come get her? So, now I just let them stay home. We have kids at our school who never miss a day and get awards for doing so, but when asked if they ever came to school sick they replied, "oh yeah, loads of times!" ::sigh:: That doesn't make me all too happy since all they're doing is spreading germs and in this age of h1n1-piggy-swine-flu-epidemic, I just think spreading germs isn't a great thing.
Okay. I'll step off my soap box now.


My vacation starts in roughly thirty days. I can't tell you how excited I am. Heading to South Carolina with two of my closest friends and their families, all of us spending the week at the beach? Walking along the beach with my hubby and watching my kids make stuff with all the sand? "Listening" to a good book in a canvas beach chair and listening to the waves crash against the ocean floor? Can it get better than that? :) I think not. The kids talk about it everyday, asking when are we leaving? Are you sure we're going? :) Yup. It's done. It's a done deal. I think I better start packing! Thirty days will be here before I know it! lol

Well, I better get going. I have to clean beads and then get custom orders made. Today a lot of packages will ship out. Thank you for all the lovely emails about how you received your items and you adore them. I'm so glad. Great things are always worth waiting for. Okay, I will talk to you later. I'm going to have a couple pairs of earrings tonight. The beads are already made I just need to photograph them. Check back around 7:30p. :)

Enjoy your day!

Plantation Resort, South Carolina-here we come!

Hello All!

I've been working on custom beads and orders this week, and am so glad to say that they're all turning out beautifully. :)

It's just 40 days until we head off for vacation, but we're not going to Florida as we originally planned. In my life something is always changing, get used to it. lol But, we're okay with this change... we're headed to South Carolina and we're staying at the Plantation Resort. We are SO excited. It's a mile off from the beach and the weather for that time of year is 77 to 82 degrees, so we're not talking sweltering heat. We had friends go to SC this Summer and it rained the entire time and the ocean was freezing due to an unusual cold front, so I'm hoping that doesn't happen to us. But the point is, you can get bad weather any ol' time, and I'm hoping that our week is wonderful and NOT rainy. :)

The kids are so excited they can't stand it. We're going with our good friends the Mix's and Chapman's, we met them several years ago when our kids began going to school together in the GATE program. I am thankful for that. They're some of the nicest people I've ever met. We are not going to be staying in the same condo's so we're sure to remain just as close after the trip. LOL!! (haven't you heard horror stories about friends vacationing together and then staying in the same condo and leaving as enemies? Yeah. We are havin' none of that!) Our boys get along great and the older daughter that's going is hoping to bring a friend. We are just so excited! :)

Well, I better go. Busy morning. :) I'll catch up with you all later.