I love vacation!

Going on vacation is great! Yesterday we drove back from our week long vacation in the south. Unlike last Monday when we started our trip, we did the whole drive in one day. Mapquest said it would take 9 hours but fortunately it only took 8. And the other good news is that we had an "audio book" to listen to practically the whole way. It was called "Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog". I definitely recommend it! Especially if you have a dog or two... it'll make you feel like you have the best dog in the world!! The audio book made all the difference in our long drive. Time just flew by!

Anyways, to back up a bit... we left Maryland last Monday night and headed down to the Raleigh-Durham area. There, we got to spend some time with Eric's aunt, cousin, cousin-in-law (is that what you'd call his cousin's wife?), and their daughter. We also got to see my favorite friend-that-I've-known-since-I-was-a-baby, Kristen and her new son Elias! He was SO cute! We were so fortunate that they all lived so close together.

Then on Tuesday night we drove a few hours more to Greenville, SC. I think that about 75% of Clemson's graduates live in Greenville and our friends are no exception. Most of the old gang from college got together at California Dreaming and I think we stayed there for about 4 hours just chatting and catching up on things. It felt just like the good ol' days! I miss those guys.



We stayed the night at Dan and Heather's, and had fun watching "Amazing Race" together... just like the old days at Berkeley Place when we'd watch Survivor together every week. I'm pretty sure they played a large part in the development of our reality show obsession! The next day I went over to Emily's house to see her and Cort, also a new arrival!

Eric and I teased about this trip being the "Baby Tour 2006"! His cousin's daughter that we saw in Raleigh is only 2 years old and they have another one on the way. Seems like we were always answering the question, "so, when are y'all going to have a baby?"... but the answer was always, "not now!" Anyways, Cort was just adorable and I was so grateful for the opportunity to spend time with Em. Later that day we had lunch at what Gregg calls "The best barbeque place in the upstate": Henry's Smokehouse. I was in heaven! Pulled pork sandwich, cole slaw, baked beans, and sweet tea in a styrofoam cup. I have no idea why it has to be in a styrofoam cup... it just does!

Afterwards, Gregg took us to an awesome park in the middle of downtown Greenville. We hung out there for a while, took our shoes off and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

The next 4 days were spent in Charleston with my family... minus Amanda because she was in Disneyworld with her marching band. I did get to see her on Sunday night for a few hours though, and she'll be coming up to visit in a week or two. Time with my family was great! We didn't do much of anything... a little bit of shopping, lots of eating, and just hanging around the house and enjoying the company. Abbie has grown so big and was lots of fun to play with! She even got her yellow belt in karate while we were there... so grown up! We also had the chance the visit with my grandparents in Myrtle Beach and my aunt that lives in Charleston. Haven't seen them in a long time so it was good to catch up. AND we had a big cookout on Friday night where we saw some more friends from Clemson. Plus I saw Kristin and her boyfriend on Sunday. I guess it WAS a pretty busy weekend afterall.

The biggest part of the trip (and our main reason for going when we did) was the Cooper River Bridge Run. It was a 10K (6.2 miles) over the brand new Arthur Ravenel Bridge that leads from Mt. Pleasant to Charleston. It was a beautiful day on Saturday and the race went really well! I thought it was really organized and even better than some of the smaller races that I've run in. The views from the top of the bridge were amazing!! That made it all worthwhile. Afterwards, we got to eat at one of our favorite places in SC: Groucho's Deli! Can't beat their STP Dipper and more sweet tea in the styrofoam cup! We bought lots of their "45 Sauce" to bring back home.

At first I was dreading the long drive down to SC. I'm used to flying since the airfare is usually pretty reasonable from Reagan airport to Charleston. But this trip reminded me of the song that this blog is named after. There's a line that says, "Keep me guessing, these blessings in disguise". And this trip was definitely that: if the airfare had been anywhere below $300 like it usually is, we would have flown. What seemed like a pain at first turned out to be a huge blessing. We would have missed out on seeing so many friends and family members along the way. Praise the Lord for expensive plane tickets!!!