8 years and counting...

Happy 8 Year anniversary Joe!!  We celebrated by attending a wine dinner at a local restaurant, Gabe's Downtown, http://www.gabesdowntown.com/.  We had an absolute ball!  They offer these dinners once a month on Wednesday nights.  They served 4 wines and a 4 course meal designed to pair well with the wines.  The wine distributor rep. was there and described each wine as you tried it.  Then the executive chef told you why he picked the food to go with each wine.  It was fabulous!  Great wine, great food and wonderful company. 

I was in charge of planning our anniversary this year (Joe has the odd years, I have the even years) so I was trying to think of something to do with the number 8.  I came up with a little game to play at dinner called, "Crazy for You 8s".  I listed the following 8 questions on his card and then we both answered each question as we ate dinner.

1.  Name 8 things you love about your spouse.

2.  Name 8 of your favorite things to do together.
3.  Name 8 locations you’ve enjoyed visiting together.
4.  What are 8 words to describe your spouse?
5.  What are 8 things you love about being married?
6.  What are 8 of your spouse’s favorite foods?
7.  Name 8 funny moments from our marriage.
8.  What are 8 things you remember about our wedding day?
We enjoyed it and had lots of laughs.  It was fun to hear what is memorable to Joe about our wedding, vacations, etc.

We went to the Rock Ranch on Tuesday, http://www.therockranch.com/, with Zack's class.  Despite all the rain lately, we had a perfect day.  Sunshine and temps. in the 70s by the afternoon.  A few highlights: we visited with Abraham Lincoln, ground corn, George fed the donkey Lucy a carrott, we made it through the corn maze (somehow!), went on a hay ride, and played on the giant jumping pillow.  What a spectacular way to enjoy a pretty fall day.

Zack's 1st grade class, he is in the bottom left corner kneeling down.

 
We wanted to get one more camping trip in this year so we went the weekend of October 10.  Zack had the day off Oct. 12 so we camped for three nights at a state park in the northwest GA moutains.  We had one day of gorgeous weather and were able to have campfires two nights, we got rained out the first night.  As we were sitting around the campfire the first night, one of us would throw in a stick or a piece of garbage.  So Andrew is sitting in his stroller and I hear the "tink" sound his pacifier makes when he throws it.  Sure enough, it landed in the fire and burned to a crisp.  Zack and George were quite fascinated that Andy burned up his paci.  George kept trying to figure out where it was the next day.

We played the A-Z grocery game around the campfire where you take turns naming something you buy at the store and then the next person has to repeat the list and pick something using the next letter of the alphabet.  I got the letter U so I said "underpants".  The boys were cackling about that for the rest of the night and no matter what letter George got, he always wanted to say underpants.  Little kid humor, gotta' love it.

Here's Andy next to the ladderball game with Flat Emma.  Flat Emma is my niece's school project so we're taking her around with us and keeping track of where she's been.

We had to pack up the pop-up camper in the rain when we left on Monday.  It was coming down in buckets.  Thankfully we used Joe's Blackberry the night before to check the weather and saw the forecast for rain. We put away all the outside stuff before we went to bed.  That morning before we started putting the camper down, we played games, ate some cereal and Joe and I had a cup of coffee.  I was snuggled under the covers and Joe asked, "what are you doing?"  I said, "enjoying being dry while I can."  We've since opened the camper up to let it dry out and put it away for the season.  What a great purchase, our little camper is the best.