Drab- Thematic Photography

I stumbled upon a cool web site this week Written Inc. Carmi host a photographic theme each week. I thought I would join in for fun. Check it out. This weeks theme is DRAB. I think these photos fit. What do you think?

March Birthdays

Two of my nieces just had birthdays and my brother in law's birthday is tomorrow. I am going to create a birthday collage for each birthday and post them. I promise I will not post everything as a mosiac ...I just got a little carried away today. This is my niece Paige. She is so sweet. She is our little take charge girl and super smart. She is definatley going to be a leader.

And here is my neice Allissa. She is our little song bird. She is big into reading and movies. Favorite right now "Twilight". And she loved her pet rock....

She has started a new tradition. I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she kept telling me she didn't know. I told her that she was going to get a pet rock if she couldn't tell me something. She made the mistake of telling me that I wouldn't do that. She named her pet rock Patricia. (She also got money and a card.) LOL.

Our Anniversary

Last weekend Robert and I had our 6 year Anniversary and we decided at the last minute we needed to get away. The last weekend we had had alone was our anniversary the year before so we were due. We had an awesome trip.


We decided to take off towards Gatlinburg, TN as soon as we got off work Friday. I couldn't get home fast enough! We left about 6 in the evening and wanted to take our time and explore along the way so we stayed over in Clayton, GA. My grandparents retired to Clayton from Florida sometime in the 70's, so I wanted to show my sweet hubby where my grandparents lived and some of the places us kids liked to go, plus this was a great opportunity for me to get pictures for my genealogy records.


Our first exploration early Sat. mourning revealed my grandparent's home had changed very little and the pond across the street from my grandparents house that has a gazebo right over the edge of the water is still there. As kids we would run over and feed the fish my grandmother's sugar free candies she would give us. The fish loved them!


We then rode up to Black Rock Mountain state park and watched the fog roll over the mountains, it was so beautiful. This was another location my grandfather would always take us when we would visit.





From there Robert and I rode up Hwy 441 into the Smokey Mountains and stopped along the road side and grabbed a few more pics at the Oconaluftee River, stopped for a little gold panning in Cherokee, NC, took a few shots of the Rockefeller Memorial where President Roosevelt dedicated the Great Smokey Mountains National park in 1940.




We rode into Gatlinburg about 1:00, found a room, and decided to walk to the Aquarium. We loved the Aquarium! I captured several nice shots there. My favorite was the sea dragon.




After the the Aquarium, we rode into Pigeon Forge and explored a little bit, came back to have dinner in town. We had a great meal at Lineberger's Seafood in Gatlinburg for our nice meal of the trip. We wandered around for a little while and decided to get some sleep, we were exhausted. We left about 10:30 the next morning and headed back down 441 south, and thought we would just have another long day of exploring on the way home.


We stopped at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center toured the farm site museum, left there and took a short walk down to Mingus Mill.





Our last adventure found us in Cherokee at Harrah's Casino. Neither of us had ever been in a casino and decided that we would check it out for fun. We each had a $20.oo spending limit and then we were quitting. Between the both of us, we lost $20.00, it was time to head home.


It took us only a few more hours to get home with another stop in Clayton. We tried to locate my grandmother's grave site but not planning this trip in advance I could not remember the name of the cemetery and after wandering through three cemeteries it was definitely time to get home. We got in just after dark and were wiped out but we had a blast. I can't wait to do that again, hopefully though, we won't have to wait another year to make it happen.

Snow Day in Georgia

Georgia had snow! I could not believe it, the weather man said it was coming but I just didn't think it would actually happen. I thought okay, if we do get any, it won't stick. Boy, was I fooled. It came....it stuck.... and it definitely caught me unprepared. We started off with flooding rain, moved into sleet/snow mix, to snow flakes the likes I've never seen. They were huge. I wandered around the property Saturday afternoon to capture a few shots of our stream behind the house that about flooded our backyard at one point. I also caught a decent picture of one of the cardinals that hang around our bird feeders.

Then... it came. It wasn't long before it started sticking. Time for more pictures...off I go wandering the property again to capture snow pictures. We had areas around the house that were 5 to 6 inches in snow. Definitely a rarity around here. I'm not missing this opportunity. I spent almost 3 hours walking around the place capturing everything white.

While I was out taking pictures...we lost electricity. Ugh...I didn't think we would lose power that quick, so I hadn't bottled any extra water, hadn't planned what we might eat with no power and no water in the tubs for toilet flushing. What a pain in the butt. Luckily, hubby had a generator on his truck from a job he had been on, so we were able to keep the fridge going and plug in the TV to catch the weather. We did plan ahead for no heat and managed to fill the kerosene jug for the heater. I had just made a pitcher of tea, so we wouldn't thirst to death for a little while. After a quick panic on the food situation I realized we did have milk, cereal and bread. We weren't going to starve. Okay we were good for the night except for the bathroom situation. Ah ha! Snow! I brought buckets of snow in and melted on the kerosene heater... toilets flushing... we're good now till morning.

We woke up and luckily my MIL had filled the coffee pot early in the afternoon yesterday for coffee this morning a quick unplug of the fridge and into the coffee pot. We have coffee ...Life is good. Time came for a hot meal, hubby and I wandered out to see if we could round something up in town, and as luck would have it Micky D's was open. On our way home, our son called to report we had power. 16 hours with no electricity. I don't want to repeat that again ever, ever, ever again. We got home, we had water, heat, and hot food. What a weekend?

Here are a few more pics of what I thought were worth sharing.