The final arrivals

Last night was not what I would call a good night's sleep. I don't know what my problem was. 1. I couldn't go to sleep. 2. I kept imagining I was hearing noises (I swear at one point I heard a car engine, so I thought my rental car was being stolen, then I heard a door upstairs, so I feared a burglar was breaking in and stealing stuff.) I heard noises all night. When I wasn't hearing noises I 3. had to go the bathroom once an hour. I finally gave up the battle a little after 6:30. I was awake long before everyone else. Maybe with the arrival of Fran I'll have company when I'm awake at the crack of dawn.

This morning Katherine, Andrew, Lydia, Gabriel, Cassy, Travis and I went swimming in the lake. We even swam across and back. I made everyone stay together so that if a boat came speeding by we would at least be a group of bobbing heads in the water. Good defensive swimming, don't you think?

While we were in the water, Monica, David, Nicole and Grace (Keith and Giovanna’s youngest) went to the Fontana Dam.

When we were done swimming, we came back up to the house, cleaned up and then the rest of us headed to the dam. Now, in the words of Keith the dam was “very close” turns out that he wasn’t perfectly clear on where the dam was because it was really quite far off. The Fontana Dam is one of the ones built by the TVA between 1942 and 1945. It is the tallest dam in the Eastern United States.

On the way back, at the urging of Cassy and Katherine who were in my car (with Dad too), we lept ahead of the pack. David is a very conscientious driver which loosely translates as slower than snot. We had to stop for gas, but managed to get back on the road and arrive at the house as David was just driving up.

We were back and started lunch (late lunch about 2pm) when Fran and Jim arrived. Hooray! What a happy cheerful pixie face! And it was great to see Fran too. Ha ha.

Fran, Jim, Katherine and I went to Cherokee because Katherine had forgotten her swimming shoes and Fran hadn't brought a suit. Luckily, I knew just where to go.

Fran brought two of her laptops and one of them has wifi, so we are able to access the internet anywhere that there is cell phone access. Oh happy, happy, joy, joy

Keith has started working on dinner ( steak kabobs), sadly he just told Monica that dinner won't be ready until 7:30!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm gonna die!!!!!!!!!!

My face is a little pink from our water adventure, and tomorrow we go river rafting. Can't wait to see how that goes.