Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Quick update

Good news. Things have improved tremendously. Yesterday was our day of White Water Rafting. ooohhh aaahhhh. The morning was fairly mundane with people reading the paper, working on computers and some of the kids watching Pride and Prejudice.

The river rafting was tons of fun. We were in 3 rafts. We had guides in two of the rafts, but poor Jim had to be the guide for the 3rd one. (It had three 13 year olds, Cassie (17) and I.) It was the ADD raft. Jim would hollar out paddle. Then within about 3 strokes we were all looking around aimlessly with Jim yelling "paddle, I didn't say stop". Almost immediately our boat got turned around. We hit a big ole rock and Jim bounces off the back . . . holy cow he is hopping up and trying to get out of the way of the raft which is ready to pick up speed now that it bounced almost 200lbs out, my mouth is hanging open and his paddle is floating down the river.

He grabs hold of the back and is trying to get in when I FINALLY remember they gave us instruction before we began that in such an instance someone INSIDE the raft should help the person outside of the raft by pulling on either side of the top of the life vest which I did began doing immediately. I hauled him in and handed him my paddle post haste. He was ok, and we got help from others getting the paddle and one of his shoes which had floated off and away.

The rest of the float down was not so exciting (thank heavens) and everyone in the other boats managed to stay on. We were all keeping our eyes on Mom and Dad, but they did great. Although word on the street is that they had trouble remembering which side of the raft they were on. When instructions were hollared on 3 strokes on the left . . . they were slow on the pick up and required some reminders that they were on the left.

After that, the adults all went to dinner. We celebrated Mom and Dad's 50th anniversary AND Fran and Jim's 22nd anniversary (since it was actually on Tuesday). The service was awful, but the food was delicious.

We returned to the cabin and the kids had set up a cake that Monica had ordered and picked up and decorated the table. It was really cute. I was ready to fall into my cake at that point, so I quickly ate and then headed to bed.

Today we took our little caravan of vehicles and drove to some water falls, took a walk up to the waterfalls and then walked back to the cars for a picnic lunch. We were a motley crew and quite a few of us required multiple breaks.

After we ate we took a drive through the Smoky Mountains. We got out at the top of some mountain or another and walked to the very top. I have got to get in better shape. That is all I have to say. No, really I have a couple of other things to say. Keith is leading the way on today's adventures, and I feel better knowing I was not the only family member that was quite done with walking, walking uphill and nature in general by the end of the day. Specifically, I like nature. It's great. Pretty blah, blah blah, but enough is enough already.

We got back and had dinner (soooo good). Jim made London Broil. Mind you, dinner wasn't until about 8pm because we were out in nature for about 8 hours. We keep eating so late. I'm going to be lucky to not have any gnaw marks on my arms by the time I get home.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go to the Biltmore. Keith is going to be taking any people not burned out on nature for another walk through woods or some such while the rest of us going see how the rich and famous have lived. Feel free to guess which group I'll be with.

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