Here, There, and Everywhere

birthday, mom, rolls, cookies, target, futon, sad, roadtrip, grape juice, chapel, timeshare, scared, sideways, adrenaline, magic, tigers, terry, 3 hour tour, pressure, sad again, zebras, pigs, ark, huge, 44 oz steak, 9:00, sunshine, british guy, pasta, clothing, late.....and that sums up everything we have done lately. The End.

Ha ok just kidding. I will give some detail for those of you who are more interested. Well there has been so much going on that I literally have not had time to sit and write it all down. One thing after another has just given me more and more to talk about so this may be quite an extensive entry. The 21st of September was my Golden Birthday! Finally a true adult, able to do all the adulty things except rent a car but hopefully I won't really be needing to do that anytime soon. Actually nothing has really changed besides me being able to say I'm 21 ha. My wonderful Mother came to visit the weekend of my birthday which was wonderful news. She got here on Friday and stayed until Sunday. Friday night we wandered WalMart (with all of the arkansas characters from the hills that come out during the weekend) and Mom taught me the good things to have to keep a pantry stocked instead of my week old bread and peanut butter (no, it wasn't really that bad but it was nice to have help to know what things were needed to actually cook). We were there for quite a while and returned home and got to put everything in its place - is it weird that I love doing that? I really do. I love putting everything away in an organized manner. Guess thats a good thing, i just bet Mom and Dad would have never guessed that seeing my room growing up. It was so late after we had everything put away that we just sat in the living room and talked for a little bit -- there was this show on tv, I don't remember what it was but it was the guy that went to a national park and lived with the animals for several years and then got eaten by one of the bears he called his friend....anyways he recorded everything and it was quite humorous. He was running around with these foxes like they were best friends when really they were wild foxes running away from him, and his crazy mind was telling him they were playing together. SO if you ever see that on tv, just watch it for a few minutes and get a good laugh. [OK just as a disclaimer...this post is going to be quite lengthy so go ahead and get comfortable if you aren't already......] Saturday we woke up and started in with the oh so famous Cavender rolls that I had to learn to make in order to consider myself a cook at all. It takes a total of 3 hours to make the rolls because they are completely from scratch - it was a lot of fun. It is funny though, how much I really don't know - like random things you spray on that helps something not get to sticky or putting this in the mixture to prevent so and so...not sure if that made any sense but maybe someone will understand what I'm saying. Basically all that to say im a newbie and am slowly learning so stay tuned for great stories. OK so rolls got finished and looked phenomenal - they were the perfect brown on top, and just so you can get a visual...

I think the total number was around 37? Anyways those are definitely gone and have been for a while. We destroyed them and had probably half of them eaten by the end of the day - and that is no joke. Afterwards we headed to Little Rock to get some things from Target and do a little shopping :) Ended up not getting anything because it was "one of those days" where nothing worked and if you don't understand then you are lying, or I am very jealous ha. After Little Rock we headed back and Mom and I cooked a meal! We made salisbury steaks, broccoli rice and cheese casserole, and already had the rolls. Steven ended up coming over and we all ate to our hearts content. It was a good meal - thank you mom. We sat around and just talked and talked and it was one of those times where everything that was said was just the funniest thing you've ever heard and our faces were red and our jaws were sore. Great birthday celebration! Steven then busted out his french press and we all partook in this new thing we had never tried. Even mom, who hates coffee, had a cup! Although her cup consisted of about a centimeter of coffee, half a cup of creamer, and hot chocolate mix to top it off. Basically it tasted like chocolate creamer but she fell in love with it and was so excited to see she liked coffee. Hilarious. Then came Sunday, and Mom and I ran (yet again) to Wally World and picked up some frozen stuff we had neglected to get on our adventure on friday. It was so fun having her down and being able to show her our mostly set up apartment (and yes - i have pictures now so they will be up soon, stay tuned). It was sad to see her go but it had to be done, I'm sure sitting around while we went to classes for hours wouldn't be too exciting. And I'm sure she was missing all the animals at home :). Sunday was my actual birthday (woo hoo!) but since we has Branson, MO planned for the next weekend we didn't really do anything big. We actually rented Cool Runnings because Chad had never seen it. Let me just say that movie will always be good, and having been to Jamaica made it even better. Chad got me some BEAUTIFUL little hoop earings that have dangling see-through blue spheres that hang down which he gave me on thursday before my mom got there, and ALSO a Cardinals Ankiel jersey which I have wanted for quite a while and that was given to me on our one month anniversary half for that and half for my birthday :)

Alright break time, get up, go to the bathroom, eat some snacks....there is much more to come.

Tuesday we randomly decided to take a trip over to Memphis! We left after classes and had a wonderful dinner of grilled chicken, hash browns, rolls and sparkling grape juice (love love love that stuff!). We then did presents which was so sweet because I wasn't even expecting anything and then moved on to cake (funfetti with chocolate fudge icing...if you haven't had it, go buy it after you finish reading this. it is amazing) which we all ate and loved, of course. The next morning we left around 7:30 to try and get back in time for chapel but we forgot about a tiny detail called traffic which there was a lot of, and then construction back up as well so it set us back a little and we pulled into harding at about 10:07 (chapel starts at 10) so we didn't want to skip because who wants to waste a skip when you are already up? My skips consist of me turning off the snooze and deciding to sleep in an extra hour. Anyways we ran in and made it to chapel and that was our wednesday.

FRIDAY we left about 6:30 to head to Missouri for our "free vacation" we won about a year ago. It is one of those timeshare things but hey, we have time so why not sit through a presentation for a free weekend, right? We got to Branson and went to check in to "Branson Getaways" where they were going to give us all the information about everything included. We were then informed that instead of the Welks Resort (keep this word in mind...resort....) we were being moved to the Howard Johnson (i don't see resort at the end of that....) because they had complaints about dirty rooms. Hard to believe, but hey, nothing we could do about it. The H.J. was actually pretty nice because it was newly renovated so no complaints. We checked in and waited on Mema and Papa to get to branson (they live about 40 minutes away) so we could meet up with them. We went to Steak and Shake (one of Chad's favorite places) and had lunch and then headed out to Silver Dollar City (a.k.a. "Steal-your-dollar city" by the Burris family).'' The weather was perfect, very sunny and not too hot so walking around outside all day didn't bother anyone. We got there around 1 and stayed until about 5. One of the first things we did was this thing called "Grandpa's Mansion". You walked in and there were ghost things all around and there was a room that was completely upside down and then you made your way downstairs and the floors were completely slanted so when you were walking 'upright' your feet were actually very slanted. It was really funny seeing everyone walking around. I actually got pretty disoriented, but that is just my luck. I get that on a normal basis so who knows what my brain was thinking in that room. We walked around and did a ton of rides and I haven't done that in forever so I loved every second. Here is a little f.y.i. about myself....you know how most people scream or squeal or cry on the big rides that go fast and spin you every which direction? Yeah, well i don't do any of those things. I laugh. That's right- as my heart is in my throat and my head is slamming against my harness I am laughing the entire way. Who knows where I got that trait from.... We also went to this saloon show, watched furniture get made, watched baseball bats get made, got to see how peanut brittle is made, and went on the famous ride "Fire in the Hole" which I have heard about for months leading up to this outing. You'll just have to go visit Steal-your-dollar City to find out what its all about. I should get paid for all this advertising I'm doing, although I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate being called Steal-your-dollar City.

Friday night we went to Andy Williams restaurant he has there. It was very classy and had very good food. I got salmon and Chad got shrimp pesto pasta. We had a great time just talking and eating - got to hear a few stories about Mema and Papa growing up and their first few places they lived and about working on the railroad. I love hearing stories like that. After dinner Chad and I headed to our Magic show that was included in our package. It was Kirby VanBurch and his wife and the show was very enjoyable. When we got there, however, we sat in our seats and this other couple came and said we were in their seats....long story short, they got to sit second row but we got to keep our seats so I guess that is ok haha. No we had pretty good seats about 5 rows back or so. The show had tigers, leopards, chickens, and this little duck who wore a bowtie- adorable. He made them appear, disappear, change bodies, etc. After every trick we would sit there and analyze how it was possible, so that means it was a good show if we are bewildered every time. I did figure out one of the tricks, but I won't spoil it for all you magic fanatics. We were pretty worn out after our long day (and I think I mentioned about 5 times that day how I couldn't believe it was just friday, it seemed like we had been there at least 2 days with how much we had done) so we went back to the hotel and just chilled and went to bed.

Saturday we woke up and got ready for our oh-so-exciting timeshare meeting! Yay! The presentation started at 12:30 and was suppose to last for 2 hours. We sat and talked to this guy named Terry for a while about their services and how they are different from other timeshares and all this stuff and then we watched an informational video, etc etc. We got a tour of the property and honestly, all this stuff is pretty cool. If we were about 20 years older and had a lot of money, it would be a definite consideration. However, these people did not realize we could not write a check anywhere near the $12,000 down payment they were asking for. We just laughed at that. Anyways, 3 HOURS after we arrived we were saying we HAD to leave because our next show was at 4:30 and we had to get there early to get the tickets and seats and it was a little bit of a drive from where we were. We finally escaped and headed to the Sight and Sound theater to meet Mema and Papa to watch the production of "Noah". This was absolutely breathtaking. The stage was HUGE and the details of everything was amazing. For the second half of the performance you were inside the ark and they had tons of animals that they loaded onto the ark - zebras, camels, pigs, goats, cows, horses, etc. and they were all live and then they had other animatronic ones in their stalls. Just everything was done with great detail, it was really great. We hadn't eaten all day (since our lovely 2 hour meeting turned into 3...) so we left afterwards and headed to a restaurant called Montana Mikes because in our package we got dinner there, which was a $30 certificate. It was a steakhouse and we ended up splitting a 44 oz. steak. 44 oz.! It was so big we had leftovers for 3 meals after that. That was a lot of fun. We had planned on going to the Branson Landing afterwards which is an outside strip mall but it ended up closing at 9 and we arrived at 8:45 so that was exciting. We walked around then headed back to the hotel.

Sunday we attended church with Mema and Papa and Sarah and Todd (his aunt and uncle) and Aunt Dee (his great aunt). We went to a place called Zio's for lunch, of course I loved it since it was Italian. I got this spinach and artichoke pasta that was really good. We all hung out for a while at Mema and Papa's house and watched some football and ate some jello cookies that Papa made - soo good!. We hit the road around 3:30 and headed back to the Branson Landing planning to stay just a little while but of course I ended up having luck with clothes (random) and so we stayed quite a while...aka we left when things were closing. It was a lot of fun though :)

Whew....alright I know I left some details out but I just wanted to get a post in so everyone knew I was still here. Don't expect it to be this long before the next one. PLEASE add any details I left out in a comment!! ...or just comment ha

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