this is the story.

Happy August!

It's hard to believe that July is gone and August is now here. July was just a blur of activity. It seems like we were just celebrating July 4th, and that's been almost a whole month ago.

Last weekend, I took a fast, unexpected trip to South Carolina with my grandfather (that is him in the picture below with his niece). He got word that his 85 year old sister had been in a car accident and was in the hospital. He couldn't make the trip by himself, so since I'm still unemployed, it worked out quite well for me to go with him. We left Saturday morning and arrived in Dillon, SC (about 20 minutes from Myrtle Beach) at about 7:00pm. It was a verrry long car ride. I was quite glad to finally get to our hotel room. The next day, we went and visited with his sister (who had gone home - she had a couple of cracked ribs and a bruised up ankle), his niece, and a couple of other family members. His niece found out my birthday was later on that week, so she bought a cake and we had a early celebration for my birthday!
Chocolate cake with yummy frosting! And yes, I'm now 28 years old. Seems SOOO hard to believe that I will be 30 years old in just 2 years....eesh.

His sister lived in a very rural part of Dillon, SC. She had a big horse pasture out behind her house. A momma and her baby were very friendly....the little baby was SO cute!

This is my great Aunt Ruby's house. My grandpa lived here as a young boy growing up - so, it was really neat to see some of the history from his childhood.

Another shot of the momma and her baby. He took me all over Dillon and showed me where he went to school, another home he lived in, the different places he went fishing with his dad and friends and we also visited the graves of some of his siblings and his father. He had 8 siblings and only he and Aunt Ruby are left.
We left early Monday morning, and drove all the way back (10 hour trip). I was SO glad to get home and get back to my own bed and bathroom. I don't like hotels. At all. I probably only slept like 2 hours the whole weekend.

Thursday was my actual birthday. We didn't do really anything that day - we did have some grilled steaks, baked potatoes & broccoli for dinner -it was quite delicious! Friday evening, we celebrated at my Grandpa's house - we had pizza and wings and my sister made a hot fudge icecream cake. Yummmmm! I have pictures, I just haven't loaded them onto the laptop yet.

Saturday, I went to a new scrapbook store that opened in Pensacola. It was a pretty decent store with a wide variety of product - and she had really great prices, some of the cheapest I've seen. I got a few things there - then I headed over to Michael's and JoAnn's. My sister and her husband gave me a gift card to JoAnn's and my brother and his wife gave me a Michael's gift card! I got a few things: three new Adirondack dabbers, misters, a new corner rounder, and some chipboard. That afternoon, I met my sister at Target - then we went over to the Chick fil A and got lunch and then headed back to her house to watch movies. We watched Nights in Rodanthe and Hope Floats. I was disappointed in Nights in Rodanthe. I had high hopes for it after having seen Message in a Bottle & The Notebook. I had already seen Hope Floats, but my sister hadn't. We were going to watch The Illusionist as well, but ended up not watching it. My husband, father, brother, and brother-in-law drove up to Atlanta, GA, for a Braves game, so I ended up staying at her house until they got back. Troy and I didn't get back home until 2:00am. I was very tired....

Well, this has been a VERY long post for me!

Happy Week to all!