Picture Fall: Day 1

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

-Albert Camus

My mom and I are taking the Picture Fall class from Big Picture Classes. I'm looking forward to appreciating this season to the fullest. 

I love the sound of crunchy leaves. Do you also go out of the way to step on the fallen ones?

Almost camping...

"Camping: nature's way of promoting the motel industry."

-Dave Barry

Friday night, Rob got off work early so that we could head up to North Carolina to go camping. After packing up the car (gosh... it takes a lot of gear to go camping!), we were on the road with plenty of time to arrive before the gates closed at 8.

We arrived at the given address about 7:20, only to find a dark and completely empty parking lot. Apparently we were not in the right place. Luckily I had printed out the park maps, so I could direct us to the other campsite. The estimated time of arrival on the GPS was 7:59 pm. However, in the dark and fog, it was not easy to drive fast. We breathed a sigh of relief when we drove through the open gates.

However, due to car trouble (luckily not ours!) and scary weather reports (roads were already being closed due to ice!), we decided to take our camping trip back to Ricky and Heather's house in Hickory. We put up our tents in their basement. With a heater, real bathrooms, and a TV to watch college football, we had ourselves a much more comfortable camping trip.

On Saturday we made the executive decision to play outside, so we headed to a local corn maze. After our lengthy orientation to the maze, it was our turn to get "corn-fused." This was quite a difficult maze, and we were proud of ourselves for making it out in just over an hour and thirty minutes.

Good distractions...

"Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us."

-Oscar Wilde

Yesterday Rob and I brought two more carfuls of stuff up from our house. Everything else was supposed to get packed and moved into storage, however, long story short, that did not happen. Suffice it to say that we will not be closing on our house tomorrow... instead, it's back on the market. (Wanna buy a house?)

Knowing that we will probably be in this apartment longer than originally anticipated, I spent today organizing closets, winter clothes, and all of the other treasures we brought back with us. As usual, I got a little distracted when I got to the bag full of scrapbooks.

My scrapbooks go back to sixth grade, and it brings back such a flood of memories to flip through the pages. Here are a couple of favorites...

If you look close, some of you may recognize yourselves in the photos...

A Sunday afternoon...

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me."

-Erma Bombeck

including...

• Pitching our new tent in the living room... practicing before we have to set it up (for real!) in the dark this weekend. 
• Gluing together cupcake toothpicks for the Epworth Craft Fair.
• Simmering meat on the stove for Natchitoches Meat Pies.
• Admiring my freelance work, a last-minute ad in the Spartanburg Journal-Herald.
• Another evening of house hunting... fingers crossed that we saw our future home.

A good day to get dirty...

"Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts."

-Dan Gable

Apparently the place to be this weekend for active twenty-somethings in South Carolina was Columbia for the USMC MudRun -- the largest mud run in North America. A couple of months ago, a high school friend of Rob's invited him to join his team. Team BOHICA was made up of two Army drill instructors, a high school football coach/Army vet... and Rob.

Every fifteen seconds from seven in the morning, a team left the starting line of the race to complete a 10K run with 34 muddy obstacles in between. Rob's team left late in the day (around 4:00 pm), after the mudpits had already been made really soggy and the trenches really deep.

Another one of the wives and I ran along the Spectator routes (and sometimes just through the woods) to catch up with them to photograph them and provide SAG support at some of the obstacles. We may not have gotten super muddy, but we also got our exercise!

Obstacles ranged from walking across logs, swinging from ropes, sludging through muddy trenches, and climbing up wooden walls. And, if you couldn't conquer the task, you were required to take a penalty... sometimes just waiting an extra minute and other times PT exercises (pushups, situps, flutter kicks, etc) until the drill instructor in charge decided to give you the go ahead.

An hour and forty-five minutes later, four dirty boys jogged across the finish lines. Mud and sludge covered almost every inch of their bodies, not to mention the scrapes, bruises, and blood. They walked right over to the makeshift showers to clean up as much as possible before we headed home.

Now, they're anxious to do it again next year!

 

Find more photos on my Flickr page.