BWE, Part 2!

Once we arrived in Clemson (actually it was Seneca, but very close to Clemson!), we drove to our beautiful lake house.  The Mazuks found this house online and it was amazing!  Right on Lake Hartwell with our own little dock!  There was plenty of room for all of the kids to run around crazy and that's pretty much what they did all week!  Chase and Zeke Mize were instant friends and got along so well together.  Siena and Hannah weren't quite old enough to play together, but they did enjoy sharing toys.... sometimes!

We stayed the week with the Mazuks, the Mizes, and Lindsay and Sage Adams, and had a couple of drop-in guests too, like the Johnson family and Gary Kirby.  I don't really feel like we DID too much (well, actually the guys did: they played golf one day and basketball in Littlejohn with Dabo another day!), but mostly we just sat around talking and relaxing.  I'm sort of amazed that we never watched any movies or played many games (except for one night of "Celebrity!"), but there just always seemed like so much to talk about and so many memories to share!  And food to eat!  It could have been called the best week ever just because of the food: velveeta dip, brownies, ice cream, hot dogs, tacos, pizza... yum!!  But really, it was the company that made it so awesome.  Time like that with "old" friends is so comforting and familiar: it's good for the soul.  It made me sort of "homesick" for a time and place that doesn't exist anymore....

There are so many little things I want to remember, but I'm not sure they're paragraph-worthy, so I'll just list them:
-driving out to the "Sin-E-ca" Bi-Lo with the Katies (this is how the Garmins always pronounced it!)
-swimming in the lake
-Chase not really swimming in the lake much, but acting like he was going to just so he could run around naked
-going for a run in the rain with Eric
-the cake balls!
-picnicking and then tromping around the Botanical Gardens
-driving all over Seneca/Clemson looking for a pumpkin patch that was open and then going to Bi-Lo for pumpkins instead!
-waiting for Dickson to show up in a ski mask (I'm still really surprised that he didn't!)
-watching the kids run up and down the stairs and the driveway
-listening to Zuk apply our "3 special steps" strategy to our conversations
-hearing Gary's jail story, wow!

And now for some pictures!

Like I said, always naked (he didn't actually get in the water this time):

But these boys did:

 throwing rocks in the lake... naked... again!

This time he actually did get in for a few minutes with me... in his bathing suit!

Hannah warming up after a swim!  what a trooper!

This is how Chase and Zeke ate their meals... until Chase broke one of the chairs!

Okay, so we didn't watch any movies, but the kids sure did!  The "witching hour" was in full force with 4 kiddos in the house!

Trip to the Botanical Gardens:

 Picnicking:

 Tromping:

 

Eric and I walked around campus one day with the kids.  Chase was actually really interested in seeing "where we slept" when we showed him our old dorm.  This was the exact spot outside of Holmes where Eric and I first talked!  Pretty cool to be back there with Chase and Siena now.

playing outside the house with chalk:

 carving the Bi-Lo pumpkins:

Atlas pizza from Columbos... yum!

We also had the chance to visit Emily and her 2 boys in Greenville.  Chase and Cort had lots of fun playing firetrucks together!

Cohen and Siena:

me and Em... another "old friend" that I love to spend time with!

One night we decided to drive back out to Greenville for dinner at Gregg and Jeanne's house!

Their son Jospeh was born only 10 days after Siena!

And finally, the week ended with the Clemson/Georgia Tech game and a big tailgate "reunion" party!  Lots more Clemson friends and their kids came together to eat lunch and catch up on each other's lives.  It was so neat to see all of our kids running around together, climbing trees, and rolling around in the grass while we listened to the Tiger Band.  I think it was really the first time we'd all been together like that since we graduated about 8-9 years ago!  It was lots of fun.

(ummmmm.... slight problem!  I tried to upload the rest of the pics and it says that my blog is out of storage space!!!!  What in the world?!  I have no idea what to do.  Does that mean no more blogging, or do I need to set up a new blog?  Hmmmm....  Guess that's the end of part 2 until I figure this out!)

**And be sure to check out part 1, which is probably on the previous page... you have to click "older posts", if you haven't read it already.  Apparently I uploaded so many pics that it won't all fit on one page!**