I am grateful for SO MUCH!

So this month, a lot of people on Facebook have been writing '30 days of gratitude' type posts. To be honest, I kept rolling my eyes at them. I've been bitter and cranky about life lately, and seeing these posts made me think 'well, I wish I had 30 things to be grateful for, but all I am thankful for is Paul and my dog.' Harumph.

Then the Darkness of Awful Sickness rolled in for the past 7 days. Maybe it was a way for God to say "Be Thankful!" to me. All I know, is that today, I woke up and I feel GOOD. I feel so thankful for being able to eat again, as well as just being able to DO THINGS, that I am bounding with gratitude-type energy. I even sang in the shower today, something I haven't ton for a few years now. Huzzah for happiness! :)

Enough rambling. Since I missed out on the '30 days of gratitude', I thought I would post all my thankfulness in one post (but it's not 30 things, just the most important). Yes, I know, it's not Thanksgiving and this would be a perfect post for then. But I don't care. I am bursting at the seams with thankfulness and I want to say it now. These are in no particular order.

Here it goes. I am SO thankful to God for...

1. Food
**Oh blessed food, I love you and I am so thankful that we can afford groceries and that I can currently eat. I am so thankful that I am happily addicted to trying new recipes (if you don't believe me, check out my Pinterest board! Yes, we have tried almost all of those items, or we will be within the month!) and that this is more of a hobby for me than a chore! I love eating you, oh beloved food. So many options! So little time!

2. My dog, Achilles
**Achilles, I am so thankful that you love snuggling. I love how intelligent you are, and your antics on the lake make me laugh every single day. If things go right, I hope to give you a puppy-sister before next Thanksgiving to double our fun! (hint, hint Paul!) :)

3. My parents
**I never realized until lately how lucky I was to grow up in a household so full of affection and honesty. I love how easily our family hugs each other and says 'I love you'. I am thankful to you both for giving me a safe, happy childhood. Mom, thanks for being one of my best friends. I love you both.

4. Paul's parents
**Thank you for making me feel like part of the family from the very beginning of me and Paul's relationship. It has never been difficult to call you 'Mom' and 'Dad', I am so thankful that we can play games, fish, and talk about knitting together.

5. My sisters
**I am so thankful to finally have sisters. Thank you Amanda, for being so generous, loving, and so spunky. Thank you Christy, for drinking wine with me and making me laugh with your sense of humor. Thank you Becky, for having one of the most beautiful, authentic laughs I have ever heard. Thank you Katie, for making me laugh and think. I love you all so very much.

6. My brothers
**I am so thankful that I grew up with two brothers that I actually got along with! The more people I talk to in life about siblings, the more I realize that what we have is rare and amazing. Thank you Jon, for letting me tag along with you and your friends throughout our childhood. It helped make me the tomboy that I am today. Thank you Jim, for being lovable and friendly all the time. It is so admirable and I love it.  Of course, there are my brother-in-laws, too. Thank you Chris, for being one of the most dedicated and loving dads that I have ever met. Thank you Michael, for always making me think about the Big Picture.

7. My nephews and niece
**I am so thankful to be blessed with three nephews and a niece. Thank you, my precious darlings, for filling my life with innocent laughter, hugs and kisses, and for renewing my imagination. I promise to never take you all for granted and I love you all so very much.

8. My extended family
**I am so thankful that I grew up with such loving and amazing aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents! I am so grateful that you have all showered me with praise and love. You have all helped shape me into the person that I am today. I cannot come up with the right words to express how important that is to me. Thank you.

9. Paul's extended family
**I am so thankful for all of Paul's aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. Even the ones that I still haven't met! You are my family now, and I am honored. Thank you for being in my life, even if only in Facebook-form. You are all important to me.

10. Julie
**You are the only female-friend that I have ever trusted completely and the only one that I have opened my heart to completely. Words cannot express how amazing that is, I will be grateful to you for your friendship for my whole life. You are beautiful and amazing. Thank you for your friendship, thank you thank you thank you.

11. Rick
**Thank you for being my best friend, even though society says 'guys and girls can NEVER be 'just' friends!' Thank you for being generous and loving and awesome to be around. Thank you for eventually moving down and living by us again (ahem). You are amazing and I am so grateful that you are in my life.

12. All of the other people I 'friended' on Facebook
**I am thankful for all of you. I truly and honestly wish that I could spend more time with each and every one of you. You are all important parts of my life in some way or another. I am honored to be your friend, acquaintance, co-worker, etc. I am deeply grateful for you all.

13. Paul
**You already know how I feel about you. What we have is crazy-awesome. How is it possible to work all day and every day side-by-side on the same couch, and when you leave the room, I miss you like crazy?! It blows my mind. There are too many things to be thankful for with you, but here's a few of them: Thank you for being so blessedly optimistic about our future, even when I am not. Thank you for working hard at TWO jobs to keep things stable. Thank you for being so good at making me laugh. Thank you for taking care of me when I am sick. Thank you for having more patience with me then I ever deserve. And, thank you for eventually getting me another dog...(?)  :)


I love you all, and I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Charleston Fun

Eesh, I need to get better at this blogging thing. My excuse is that I was trying to juggle two jobs and it was making me crazy. Thankfully, one of those jobs is no more, so I have time to focus on funner things again. :)

A few weekends ago, Paul and I went on a weekend adventure to Charleston, SC. Paul had some nerdy math school thing, where he and the other math teachers at his school did nerdy math games with various students in different locations around South Carolina. On Wednesday, they went to Greenville to do a nerdy math/history tour with those Greenville-centered students. On Thursday, they went to Columbia, and then on Friday they went to Charleston. We decided to make it a fun weekend in Charleston since Paul had to be there anyway. 

We left with our carsick dog on Thursday morning. While Paul did his nerdy math stuff in Columbia, I cleaned up the gallons and gallons of dog barf and drool and walked the dog in a nearby park. Paul was done by 3pm, so then we went off to Charleston from there and crashed in our hotel room. We found out two things on this trip: (1) Charleston is only 4 hours from our home! We are totally going again. :) and (2) There are hotels, like Red Roof Inn, that are pretty classy AND allow dogs for free! That was nice to know. We were going to camp, but we found out that the Red Roof Inn was going to cost the same price as camping, and a hotel sounded more comfortable. We aren't exactly super prepared for camping. For example, last time we went camping, we slept on a foam mattress thing that we found in our camper and after two days, we had huge bruises up and down our hips. Every year we buy more camping supplies, but until we have the right stuff, if a hotel room is going to cost the same as camping, hotel rooms win every time.  :)

On Friday, Paul had to do his final nerdy math thing, so we drove into downtown Charleston together, decided on a meetup place, and then went our separate ways. He had to work from 11-2pm-ish, so I had plenty of time to explore Charleston before we met up. I had already decided to walk up and down The Battery. The Battery is a long stretch of parks in Charleston that borders the ocean on one side and tons and tons of historic and super beautiful mansions on the other side. Here's a picture of one of the multiple fountains and statues located here:

I was drooling at all of the historic mansions. I had totally forgotten that Charleston was originally in love with England (before the Civil War) and they imitated the English with their homes and styles. I felt like I was in an European town because of the way the homes were put together.

I read every single plaque and sign, and soaked in hundreds of years of history. It was really cool. It was also nice to soak in the ocean breeze and the warm sunlight, and end my casual walk with some delicious chocolate gelato. :) Paul and I met by this fantastic fountain, I didn't mind waiting for him since it was so cool:

By the time we met up, we had both walked for many miles and we were sun-burnt and tired. We were GOING to do a historical carriage ride, but we were too tired. There's always next time! We ended the day with a tour of the Old Exchange Building (where historical events such as George Washington's visit and the decision to break from the North during the Civil War took place) and the Dungeon, where American patriots and famous pirates spent their last days. It was pretty nice, but they could have done a better job with the Old Exchange Building information.

On Saturday, we went to two plantations. First was Drayton Plantation, one of only two plantations that were not destroyed by evil Union soldiers during the Civil War. This plantation was kept in perfect form and was fascinating to see:

Can you tell that the Charlestonians were obsessed with England?!? This is a perfect imitation of an English manor from the 1700s. 

We then went to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, which is just down the street. The house tour was both lame and depressing. Anyone who goes here, don't spend the money on the house tour, just go see the free video presentation. I swear the lady who did the house tour just watched the video a few times and quoted it back to us. However, the gardens were amazing. I want to go back later this year when more of the flowers are in bloom. 

After seeing the plantations, we went for a seafood dinner. YUM. There are all-you-can-eat crab legs places all over the place. Also, we ate she-crap soup, which is a famous dish in Charleston and it was SO GOOD. We also split a bucket of shrimp, mussels, clams, and oysters. YUM. And a crab dip appetizer. AMAZING. This is a really good town for seafood. The problem is that most of the restaurants do icky fried seafood. We had to do some research to find the good stuff. :)

We ended our trip on Sunday with some time walking up and down Folly's beach, a local hangout. Achilles loved that long hike! We left for home and made good time. It was a great weekend getaway, and I must say, it is so wonderful living this close to the ocean! Whenever we need a little break from the awesomeness of the mountains and lakes (or just crave fresh seafood), it's nice to know that a beautiful city like Charleston is only 4 hours away. 

We love it down here! Now please come visit. :)

~Paul and Cris

Trek to Mount Dumb

It has been a while since either of us has posted, which is all Cris' fault.  Don't worry, I'm here to remedy this problem in style.  We went home for Christmas this year and loved seeing friends and family, but by the end of the two weeks we were very ready to head back home (that's right, we call SC 'home' now unlike when we lived in Milwaukee).  After two weeks of gray Michigan skies it was nice to finally see our old friend sunny back in SC.
We took advantage of the nicer weather immediately by hiking and fishing as much as possible for a couple weeks.  Then my parents came to visit us for a few days at the end of January.  It had been almost an entire month since they had last seen us so they were naturally eager to hang out with us again.  Come to think of it, it has almost been another month so I expect them to drop by shortly.
I was excited to show my parents how awesome it is living down south with our warmer weather and lots of stuff to do in January.  Sadly, my mom gets frequent hankerings for icicles so they decided to bring cold weather with them.

On the Saturday that they were here, Cris decided to go milk and marry some goats and poke holes in cheese (I think that's what she said, after like 22 years together all her words mush together into cute white noise).  So, it was just my bachelor self and my parents going on a short hike.  It was just like high school except my voice squeaked less and my dad has hairier ears (sorry).  We went to one of my favorite parks by the Chattooga River to do some fly fishing and hiking to see awesome waterfalls (Kings Creek Falls is to the right).  It was pretty cold so there were icicles all over which was neato.  Also, along the path there were patches of what we later learned is 'needle ice'.  Apparently, when the earth is warmer than the air and wet, the water from the ground will seep up and freeze as soon as it hits the air.  It keeps pushing out and freezing until it makes needles of ice (thus the name).  Here is a picture, look at it:

After seeing King's Creek Falls we decided to do some flyfishing.  Chattooga river is pretty big and fast so it takes some pretty good skill to figure out how to get a fly down to the trout in cold weather like this.  I'm a natural flyfisher so I quickly got a fly deep down in a pool where a giant trout grabbed my fly and hooked it around a tree branch.  By that time (my third cast) my hands were freezing and it had started to snow.  I think I probably tied another fly on but I could really feel it, and moved further upstream while it snowed ever harder.  It was beautiful and serene and extremely freakin cold, so I figure my dad felt right at home.  As the avid flyfisher that I am, I found the best spot on the river where all the fish live but unfortunately I had to jump across a couple rocks to get there.  I think I made a bunch of perfect casts but I couldn't feel them, so after a while we decided to call it quits.  I jumped back across the rocks I had used to get to the middle of the river, but this time one of the rocks decided not to be as solid or I had gained weight from all the snow sticking to my shirt.  Either way, my foot found its way into the nice warm (compared to the air) water so I had a wet foot for the rest of the day.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank my parents for not stating any of the obvious things like "that's why you shouldn't wear sandals when fishing in the winter" or "maybe you're too heavy to be stepping on small rocks" or "your older brother wouldn't have fallen in the river".  We warmed up in the car and the rest of the day was nice: we went to Spoonauger Falls and ate hamburgers.
The next week, Cris and I somehow decided that it would be a good idea to climb to the tallest peak in the SC (thus the Mt. Dumb title).  A little background:  neither of us got nearly enough exercise when we lived in Milwaukee due to the weather, ugliness, and lack of motivation.  So, we have been working on slowly building up to longer and longer hikes.  Before Christmas we had gone on a nice six-mile hike and ended it feeling pretty good.  So, the next logical step was to go home and get a little fat over the holidays and then come back and climb a mountain.  The hike to Sassafras Mountain is 10 miles which didn't sound too bad, but I don't think we realized how hard it is to go up and down that much.  There is a 2200 foot elevation change from where we started to the top, but there is also a lot of down and then back up and then back down and then back up and then back down and up again in there so we probably actually hiked about 300 miles.  I'm going to blame our decision making on the formaldehyde that is leeching into us from our camper. Anyways, we struck out in good spirits from the lovely town of Rocky Bottom and immediately began to regret our decision.  The first half-mile was very steep and there were leaves all over that made it a bit treacherous.  After about an hour, we got to a bridge that I optimistically named the halfway point since I was already pretty tired.  Then an hour later we got to a sign that was at the halfway point.  It was really cool to walk along the sides of the mountains and slowly get higher so we could see further and further.  At one point we got to a really awesome spot where others had camped before where I climbed some rocks to see the scenery. This was almost at the top of one mountain so we were thinking that we were almost there.
Then, after we walked over to the next mountain and realized that we still had to get to the next mountain after that, we figured we had misjudged.  I was starting to wonder if we could make it up to the top in time so that we could turn around and make it all the way back to the car before dark.  Spending a night in January in the woods with a grumpy and hungry wife didn't sound fun to me.  So, fastforward one blister, a bag of granola and lots of breaks to catch our breath and we finally made it to the top of Sassafras mountain.  I was proud that I had made it to the top, but I was not excited to hike all the way back down.  It was absolutely gorgeous on the top of the mountain and it was cool to see all the lakes in the distance.  We could even see the part of Lake Keowee where we live.  We rested and ate and drank on the

overlook for quite a while.  It always surprises me how nice the people in SC are.  Several couples walked up to enjoy the view and struck up conversations with us.  My natural reaction after living in Milwaukee is to hide my valuables and look at the cracks in the sidewalk so that the crazy person will leave me alone, but I tried to be friendly.  Once we felt rested and sore, we scraped ourselves off the ground and made the trek back down the mountain. The whole trip took a little over 7 hours and did a good job of deflating my ego.  It turns out I'm not in as good of shape as I was in high school and my muscles don't recover as fast.  It was a great experience with beautiful views and good company, but I think our next few hikes will be less ambitious.  Maybe just a nice walk to the fridge next time.

 Besides these little adventures, not much is happening in our lives.  I already have all my yardwork done for the year and it's only February.  Cris is doing some nannying to make some cash, and my work is going great.  In a few weeks I'll be going on a math field trip for three days all around SC so I might make a blog post about that.  I'm sure all the math nerds will have some hilarious hijinks and puns that I will want to share.  It's also finally time to do some serious fishing and less serious windsurfing.  This coming year is looking like it will potentially be the best year of our life together: a couple of weddings to attend with awesome people, lots of hikes to go on, fish to catch, and driving back and forth to Michigan a little too often.  Stay classy San Diego.