South Carolina, Here We Come!

As I told you in my last post, Adam graduated from SUU and made plans to work in South Carolina for the summer. Here he is on the last day of school, April 29, 2010. Gotta love the snow!!!

After two days of celebrating graduation and an early birthday, it was time to go!
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." according to Lao-tzu. For Adam and Clark, their journey of 2,100 miles began with backing out of the driveway...

Sunday, May 2 at approximately 6:20 a.m. they backed up and headed toward South Carolina. How long would this trip take? The trip itself was going to be 35 hours and they had 51 hours until Clark had a ticket for a flight home from Columbia, South Carolina! With that kind of time constraints there isn't alot to write about! Like the pioneer children who came before and walked and walked and walked and walked....they drove and drove and drove and drove....but since a picture is worth a 1,000 words, here is some of what they saw along the way!

Wyoming! Lots of it! They drove to Kansas City for the first night and got some sleep there...here is their view of the professional ball fields in KC!

Then they drove through St. Louis and saw the temple...(see, they didn't stop as you can tell by the passing cars on the freeway!) Also in St. Louis, the drive by view of the Arch...

And finally, (because they didn't take anymore pictures after this!), the famous horse farms of Lexington, Kentucky...my old Kentucky home!

They also passed through Knoxville, Tennessee which I called home once, too! They successfully made their way to Columbia, South Carolina arriving well after midnight Monday night. A few hours sleep and Adam dropped off Clark at the airport and went to find his new home! That has to be some kind of a record for crossing the country. Adam's plan is to get to the ocean sometime this summer and then he can say he has been from coast to coast this year!
We talk to him everyday and it sounds like he is happy with his choice of work and the people he is working with. Here's to a successful summer of work for Adam!

Open Season for Swimming!

I remember an old Mervyn's commercial when they would talk about the newest sale and at the end there was a lady with her face against the store door saying, "Open, Open, Open!" ready to run in and shop...Well that has been my kids asking about when we would open our swimming pool. Sometime back in April when there was a few warm days, the girls began scrubbing the cover...

Then we added water and salt and turned up the heater and a couple of days later we had an 87 degree swimming pool that needed a good vacuuming! Several hours of vacuuming later, we had a warm and clean pool and it rained and snowed! Finally, Monday April 26 was warm and dry, in the high 60's and Caleb, Madelyn and Marissa took the first plunge!


The next day, it was warmer and Jocelyn came over to give the pool a try, too. She has been taking swimming lessons and she has learned to hang on to the side, so here she is showing off her new skills...


The little kids weren't the only ones asking about opening the pool! Adam came home from school on Thursday (with an Associate Degree!) and left on Sunday to work in South Carolina for the summer. He wanted to have a birthday party before he left so he invited friends and told them to bring a swimsuit. Mind you, Tuesday was the last warm day and it had been raining and snowing since then, including all day Friday. Friends started coming about 5:00 and finally by about 6:30 they are ready to swim. Don't let the streaming sunlight fool you...the pool was 87 degrees, but the air was in the low 40's at best!

So, the pool is open and anyone can join us! The temperature of the pool ranges between 87 degrees and 95 degrees, depending on who checked the heater last! We can guarantee the pool temperature, but nothing else! Hope to see you soon!

Oh, and here's a little patio story just for fun: On one of the warm days when we were working on the pool, the girls wanted to eat lunch outside at the table and they wanted the umbrella up. I told them to bring it out and set it up. Unfortunately, I didn't help and it was too heavy for them. In the process of trying to get the umbrella into the hole and down into the stand, the umbrella fell and the top shattered into a million pieces! We were glad they weren't hurt and extra glad we had a shop vac!