7 things we learned while traveling

Hi, Professional Traveler speaking.

No, really, I'm not kidding. This blog post is going to be dedicated to the things we've learned over the past 70 days of living out of our car. Thomas helped me come up with a pretty hysterical list that you won't want to miss. We came up with quite the long list, but we decided to only share the funny/appropriate ones. Believe me, Thomas came up with PLENTY that were inappropriate. So here is our revised list:

7. Pack snacks. Preferably a big box of snacks. The best things are pistachios {although they might make your husband nervous if you crack them open while you drive}, granola, dark chocolate edamame, pretzels, sunflower seeds, and when you want to reward yourself for driving a really long time, p-nut butter m&m's.
6. Don't throw a red pen with no top on it in the back seat onto your wife's white dress. Thomas did this. He speaks from experience. He nonchalantly threw a red pen into the back seat. We didn't realize until 3 days later that it landed upon my recently purchased stark white dress. Worn only twice. As you can imagine, I was horrified and said things I won't repeat. BUT, if your husband does throw a red pen with no top on it into the back seat onto your new white dress, I can tell you how to get the stain out. Because I got the stain out. Determination + Clorox can do great things.
5. Utilize cruise control. If you don't have it on your vehicle, sell it and buy one that has it. Last year, I got three speeding tickets in my Camry {may she rest in peace}. Thomas always ridiculed The Camry for not having cruise control. He said we'd save a lot of money {on speeding tickets} if I had a car with cruise control. FOLKS, it is TRUE! Since we've been driving The Green Taxi, aka The Mullet Truck, cruise control has saved our lives. We've driven thousands and thousands of miles this summer and NOT.ONE.TICKET. Cruise control is a lifesaver. And a money-saver. And a marriage-saver. And a drivers license-saver.
4. Don't help your husband practice football. At one point on our trip, I decided it would be a good idea for me to take snaps from Thomas so he could practice playing center. This seemed like a very good idea to both of us until Thomas realized I thought it would be a fun thing and I realized that Thomas thought it would be a serious/helpful thing. First snap, Thomas jammed my finger. Second snap, I said he snapped it too high because I couldn't catch it {I have no clue what I'm talking about + I can't really catch}so this only made The Husband angry. Third snap I started complaining and Thomas was beginning to sweat and mutter things I won't repeat under his breath. Thankfully, my brother-in-law was nearby so he took over the snapping and did a much better job. Lesson learned: let The Husband practice football specifics with other men. End of story.
3. Chick-Fil-A is worth risking your life. We ate a lot of Chick-Fil-A over the summer. The Husband is obsessed with Chick-Fil-A and hopes to own a Chick-Fil-A one day. Chick-Fil-A can do no wrong in his eyes. Therefore, many times we would dangerously risk our lives by swerving off of the interstate in order to get to a Chick-Fil-A exit. It was always worth it and yummy and tasty and the employees always say "my pleasure" and The Husband always says "you just can't find a bad Chick-Fil-A. The people are just so darn nice." However, this leads me to my next piece of advice:
2. Update your GPS regularly. More often than not, we located Chick-Fil-A's by using our GPS. Our GPS has been telling us we need to update for some time now. The Husband never gets on the computer and doesn't know how to update the GPS, so he blames it on me that the GPS hasn't been updated. Many, many times, destination Chick-Fil-A didn't exist. According to the GPS it did, but we would get to our "destination" and it would be a Home Depot, or a Wal-Mart, or a field. But no Chick-Fil-A's in sight. As you can imagine, The Husband would get very angry. And blame the GPS on me. And I would laugh and make The Husband even angrier. And then we would drive many more miles until we found another non-existent Chick-Fil-A.
1. Don't fight the traffic. Traffic. It exists. Get over it. Don't throw up your hands in frustration. Don't shout or yell curse words about traffic existing. Don't honk your horn. DO NOT drive down the side of the road to get away from it. We saw so many folks do some or all of these things. And sometimes we did these things {although we never drove down the side of the road. We were raised better}. All I can say is, you need to get a grip if you think you are better than traffic. Traffic exists to keep us humble and remind us that we have no control over the interstate, especially when you are driving 19 hours.

And above all, have FUN with each other in the car. We've had more fun than you can imagine in The Green Mullet truck over the past 70 days. And hey, I might even do it again if I had to.

Maybe.

What crime says about my personality

I've been back in DC for a few more days as I wrap up my homeless travels. Today marks 2 full months that Thomas and I have been "homeless" and we've only shared the same roof over our heads for 3 out of the last 8 months. Thomas says the statistics are depressing, but I say they are downright hilarious. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

Anyway, I digress. Like I said, I've been back at my sister's house on Capitol Hill in DC. I'm probably not informing you of anything new when I tell you that lots of crime goes on daily in this city. But there is something different I've noticed about DC residents:

When they see a crime scene, THEY WALK TOWARDS IT.

Now, one thing you must know about me is that I am a pretty fearful person when it comes to crime. I shouldn't be this way seeing as my father once chased a criminal down and tackled him with his bare hands, but those genes somehow missed me. When fights would occur in high school, all of my peers would gravitate towards the fight. Not this girl. I would see a fight and immediately orient myself as far away as possible.

Yet in DC, I've noticed that folks crowd around crime scenes. A few weeks ago my sister and I were on a walk and we saw a whole block roped off with yellow "crime scene" tape. My heart began pounding and I sped up to head home. But I noticed that my sister was walking towards the yellow crime scene tape. "Jeannie! We have a child in a stroller, there could be something terrible happening, what are you DOING?" She scoffed at me. She calls 911 all the time and turns bad people in. I'm not kidding.

So, you can understand that when a police helicopter began hovering over our house at 11pm last night, I was slightly terrified. I heard Jesse go downstairs and Jeannie came to tell me that someone had gotten robbed down the street. The robber had been cornered in a back alley somewhere nearby. Hence, there were 3 police cars one block over and a hovering helicopter:

Sorry the photo is so bad, but I took this with my phone to prove to Thomas that there really was a hovering helicopter with a big shiny light right above our house.

Anyway, I decided to venture downstairs when I realized Jeannie and Jesse were GONE. I couldn't find them anywhere in the house. And the front door was unlocked. And they weren't in the front yard or on the street. As I deemed them unfit to be parents, I too took the bait and walked outside. And that's when I realized that there were tons of people standing around at the end of the street to see what was going on. It was bizarre-- I kept thinking that the robber was going to come sprinting down the street and kill us all.

OK, so I'm willing to admit that I have an overactive imagination, but since living here I've learned some things about myself. A. I'm a wimp. B. I'm a wimp. and C. I'M A WIMP.

Stay in school. And stay away from crime.

The end.

Why my husband gets paid to hit people

Now that training camp is almost over, I figured I'd better do a post about what has been going on up in the far-away land of Minnesowtah. Thomas left on July 28th and was in Mankato, MN at a private college for the dreaded and long-awaited Training Camp. Every football player dreads Training Camp because it is 3 weeks of hellacious 2-a-day workouts, lots of coaches yelling, and very tired players. Thomas got the pleasure of not only sleeping on a queen sized mattress on a dorm room floor, but on a queen sized mattress on a dorm room floor next to another lineman. Sleeping with one lineman is enough for me, but two of them would be a nightmare, no pun intended. I shudder when I think of the snoring that went on in that room.

I'll spare you the rest of the details, but Thomas made it through camp and only needed one IV throughout the whole process. We made it through 20 L.O.N.G. days without each other. I am a total wimp and 20 days was really hard for me, especially talking on the phone. If you know me, you know that I am not a huge fan of talking on the phone so having to communicate on the telephone every night was torture (for both of us, poor Thomas) but we made it and I got to go visit for 5 days last week.

Little did I know, Brett Favre was coming to visit Minnesota as well. I was supposed to get to go watch practice one day, but it happened to be the same day Brett was planning to return. Needless to say I wasn't allowed to go because of all the media. However, I couldn't help but go check things out at the facility as there were helicopters and media everywhere in Eden Prairie. I innocently parked my car next to the facility and got out with my camera. This is what I saw:

A man hiding in a tree in order to watch practice through the chain-link fence.

A man who brought a cooler and a bottle of water. I guess he was there for the long haul. Poor guy, nothing else to do on a Wednesday?? Oh wait, I don't have anything else to do on a Wednesday either....

Right after I took this photo, 3 women ran up to me and began talking in hurried whispers: "Get down! The security guard is coming! You aren't supposed to be on the grass!" It startled me because I had no idea I was doing anything wrong, plus the fact that these three women were speaking in hushed tones as if we were attending a funeral. Sure enough, a security guard walked over and informed us that no one was to be standing on the grass and no photographs were to be taken. As soon as he left, my 3 new friends launched into a tirade about the unfairness of the situation and how bad they "just wanted to see Brett. We aren't here to hurt anyone or sell pictures on the Internet." This was followed by a slew of curse words regarding security guards, the Vikings, the fence around the facility, and anything else on their hearts.

Needless to say, it was a pretty eventful week. We had so much fun just being together again for a few days. Continue to pray for us to trust the Lord with our future as we still have no idea whether Thomas will make the team or not. You can watch his pre-season game live tonight on NBC at 8pm EST. He will hopefully get to play sometime during the 3rd or 4th quarter.

 When you see #63 hit a player from the opposing team down onto the ground, (called a knockdown block) cheer. Cheer loud.

D.C. Life

After we completed our tour of the northeast, we returned to Clemson for a few days for Thomas to pack up for training camp. He flew out to Minnesota, and I had my own tour of South Carolina after driving to York, Columbia, and the thriving metropolis of Edgefield. Then, I headed for Washington D.C. to spend 2 weeks with my sister, her sweet husband Jesse and daughter Margaret. About halfway through my visit, I realized that it was absolutely the best place for me to be during training camp. The Lord truly went before me and prepared a sweet place for me to be. I completely, totally, 100% H.A.T.E. being away from Thomas, but D.C. was the perfect training camp scenario for me. Jeannie and I planned lots of fun things and we had 4 wonderful visitors throughout the 2 weeks.....

Our cousin Catherine was our first visitor (far left) and we had so much fun showing her around the city. Our  favorite day was when we went out to Leesburg, VA to Tarara Winery, Lucketts,  The Wine Kitchen  and last but not least, Mom's Apple Pie Company. It was the ultimate day! Catherine was so easy to have around (its a quality of the youngest child, if I say so myself) and it was good to be with her for a few days.

Then, our grandparents came for a weekend....

They are hilarious. My grandfather is 83 and my grandmother is 81, but you'd never guess it! They've been married 59 years and are so encouraging to be around. They are also a ton of fun and keep us on our toes. I've you've ever been around Grandmama, you know that she asks about a million DEEP questions.

We then had a couple of day with no visitors and I did some babysitting for Jeannie's friends and helped with Lil' Margie while Jeannie and Jesse worked on their new rental home. You can read about the hilarity of that on my sister's most recent blog post.

Next up, my dear friend Caroline came in for a few days and we had a blast. I am so thankful for her!

We ate lots of amazing food and had a wonderful time catching up. I had so much fun in Leesburg with my cousin, I took Caroline back:

Here is a photo of some of the amazing furniture at Lucketts. It is a truly unique store and I highly recommend you taking a visit. But be sure to take a U-haul, because you'll want to buy lots of the reasonably priced furniture!

Caroline took this marvelous photo of the wine tasting at The Wine Kitchen. We decided that if we ever own a restaurant, we want it to be just like The Wine Kitchen. The food and wine there is impeccable!

Here is a rundown of my favorite D.C. restaurants, in case you'll be visiting anytime soon:

Sweetgreen, where I now own a frequent customer card
GoodStuff, where the hamburgers and fries are far beyond anything you can imagine.
Chop't where the salads are beyond any salad you've ever had!
Tabard Inn  amazing. Enough said.
We The Pizza. Haven't gotten to go yet because the line has been too long. We've tried to go 3 times!

Pittsburgh...and Happy Birthday Maggie!

Our last stop before heading back to Clemson was to visit Tyler and Maggie in Pittsburgh for a few nights.It is actually Maggie's BIRTHDAY today, so it is only fitting that this post is about them! I cannot tell you what a sweet visit it was. It was so encouraging to see their life in Pittsburgh and how they are seeking to serve the Lord faithfully. Their apartment is adorable and it was so much fun to see how Maggie decorates! The entire time I've known her she's never lived in a place that she was able to furnish and decorate, and I wasn't surprised that I loved everything about their apartment--exposed brick, high ceilings, and Maggie's favorite colors of white, beige, brown, and anything else on the pale end of the color spectrum. They are doing an amazing job of living joyfully right where the Lord has placed them, and we are more thankful than ever for their friendship!

This is a photo of one of the famous sandwiches at Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh. Yes, those are FRIES on that sandwich! We didn't eat there because the Thomas and Tyler were headed to training camp in a few days, but we had to stop in just to see what all the fuss was about. My body is still thanking me for not having one of these.

Here we are at the top of The Incline that overlooks the entire city. It was a gorgeous view and a neat place to walk around.

Believe it or not, this photo was not posed. Thomas and Tyler were really arguing like this. Tyler realized that Thomas was cheating at Speed Scrabble. And when I say cheating, I mean BIG TIME CHEATING. Maggie had been winning over and over again while the rest of us struggled to form words, so Thomas gave up and his Scrabble board looked like this:

There are so many things wrong with this picture, I won't even take the time to point them out. So, you can see why Tyler was incredulous. If you don't down Speed Scrabble, (aka Bananagrams), you should make the investment today. And please, don't cheat like my husband.

Cape Cod and Nantucket

After our visits to Cape Cod and Nantucket, we started wondering why we ever go on vacation in hot locations. That area is positively refreshing this time of the year and I never walked anywhere without feeling a great breeze. Believe it or not, Thomas was completely fine without any AC! It was a very relaxing time. Here is another photo tour:

 

The streets in Nantucket were like something out of a movie.

Thomas got to go on an awesome fishing trip with our brother-in-law. They caught lots of striped bass and sea bass. We cooked the sea bass in a pan with a little butter and shallots...pure bliss.

We got to celebrate my sister's 28th birthday together. We haven't been together on her birthday since I was probably in the 6th grade. And we didn't even like each other then! Good thing we not only like each other now, but we happen to look a little alike, eh?

Thomas literally begged our waiter for this bread. It went like this:

Thomas: ya'll that crusty French bread looks amazing, do you think they're going to throw out those leftover loaves?

The rest of us: yes, Thomas, all restaurants throw out the leftover bread at the end of the night.

Thomas: Waiter, could I please have some of that leftover bread behind the counter? It looks too yummy and delicious to throw away.

Waiter: (giggling) um, sure?

This was a HILL of herbs in Nantucket. Needless to say, sister and I went crazy and nearly died for joy. And jealousy. And then we called our mother.

Jesse's sister took us all to the beach in her Jeep. You can drive your car on the beach there! It was one of our favorite parts of the trip.

We highly, highly, highly recommend taking a trip to the Cape Cod area soon!

Stop #3, 4, and 5

From Georgia we traveled back to Clemson for a few days and stayed with friends for a few days to gear up for our big trip North. That included unpacking and re-packing the car and more than one argument as it seemed like every time we opened the tailgate E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. fell out! You can imagine the comedy we presented to onlookers. I won't bore you with the details of all of our stops along the way so I will highlight some things with a few of my favorite pictures.

This house sits on its own island in an area called Thousand Islands in upstate NY/Canada. We got to go on a ferry tour of some of the islands with Thomas' sister and parents. It was such an interesting place!

This is a typical photo of Thomas wanting to hold (sweaty) hands in these throne chairs at Boldt Castle in the Thousand Islands. Maybe you can't tell, but I HATE to hold sweaty hands.

Thomas with our sweet niece, Skylar, at the local farmers market near his sister's house. Skylar is a blast to be with and such a sweet girl! She lovingly calls me "Mar-Mar" and I'm still not sure how I feel about my nickname...

This photo was of the trendy decor at Painters Restaurant in Cornwall, NY near Thomas' parent's house in West Point. I remember eating here when my brother attended West Point and it was fun to go again with Thomas! The food was just as good (if not better) than I remembered it. His parents also took us to Fiddlestix for breakfast which was also a phenomenal place to eat! We had a great time in Watertown and West Point and seeing a bit more of what his parents do in their ministry to cadets at West Point.

Stop #2, Chateu Elan

After our busy week at the beach, we planned a sweet anniversary getaway with our dear friends Maggie and Tyler. Their anniversary is July 4th and ours is July 5th, so we promised each other that we'd always try to celebrate together! Maggie and I were excited to plan our first celebration this year and decided to go to Chateau Elan in Northeast Georgia. We had a very relaxing time and enjoyed a delicious dinner and 4th of July fireworks on the lawn. It is always so encouraging to be with them and see Thomas and Tyler interact. They lived together for 3 years of college and act like giddy children when they are together. Maggie and I love each other dearly, but it is nothing compared to these two guys. Happy Anniversary to all of us!

                              

Stop #1, Litchfield

Our first stop on our 40 day travel extravaganza was Litchfield Beach, SC. My grandparents have been taking folks there for more than 50 years and we continue to be blessed by "Beach Week." It is a time full of food, crabbing, sitting on the beach, bocce ball tournaments, roadside lemonade stands, and ends with Skit Night and a bonfire on the beach.

Thomas and I did a skit that went like this:

Those are Thomas' hands and my body. I'm sure you've seen this skit before. We tweaked it and did a "day in the life of Thomas" version that included taking lots of JuicePlus, fish oil, and drinking from a gallon jug of water. The unplanned part of this skit was Thomas dumping most of the gallon of water on me (on purpose!) and in my frantic attempt to get away from the onslaught of water, we both fell over and broke the chair we were sharing. In front of 50+ people. Par for the course.

Every member of my mom's extended family was actually there for most of the week. Here is a chaotic photo of our fun group:

We had a wonderful week! Wish I could do this all day, every day:

                             

Fresh Start

I'm going to turn over a new leaf. I decided to make the blog public again. The whole reason I made it private in the first place was because Thomas was living in Atlanta and I was living in Clemson. And my dear, sweet, loving mother was terrified I would post about living alone in our dangerous duplex and something terrible would happen to me. So I made the blog private and slept with a golf club and a can of wasp spray next to the bed. The golf club was to whack intruders in the nether parts, the wasp spray was to spray directly into their faces. Mother Dear sent me an email forward explaining the benefits of wasp spray versus Mace. So wasp spray it was.

Good news: I no longer live in a duplex with wasp spray and a golf club next to the bed. We actually have no home address at all whatsoever. So don't try to snail mail us anything. And I currently live with my sister while Thomas works hard to make the team.

So, I am going to try to post more often. I can't make any promises except that I will try. So check back often in the coming days and weeks.

Adios.