Goodness, what a February!

We have surely had a FULL February!!  Our friend, Stephanie, came to visit the first part of the month.  We so loved having her here again!  We enjoyed her company, her cooking, her talent, and Banjo and Tabbie Hoffman enjoyed having her here during the day and snuggling with her at night.  In fact, Banjo started sleeping in the guest bed after she left because he missed her.  Awww!  

We celebrated Ami's birthday at Olive Garden here in town on the 4th and it was so great to have everybody together.  We had a blast!  

My baby sister is 40.  So incredibly hard to believe.  Life is so short, getting shorter every day, so we need to make the most of every day.  Love on the ones you love today because tomorrow is not promised.

I took a couple of days off work to show Steph around a bit.  We went to the Museum of Aviation, Wilson's Bakery and thrifting one day.  I was checking out at the thrift store and all of a sudden, I heard this beautiful music playing!  I looked around and saw Steph sitting at a piano, just playing away.  Stephanie is a musician, after all, and has her own band, so naturally if there's a piano nearby, she's gonna play it!  It was such a treat.  She had the whole store in awe.  We went to a couple of really good estate sales on another day and there was a piano in one of the houses.  Sure enough, Stephanie played!  One of the estate sale employees did a video of her playing and she said she was going to show it to the lady of the house, who is now in a nursing home.  She told us she'd be happy to know that somebody was playing her piano.

I love this picture I took of Stephanie at an estate sale down in Perry that Friday.  I bought this plastic flamingo and when Stephanie left here, she flew to Cancun, Mexico to bird watch the flamingos!  We joked that this was her first flamingo sighting on her trip.  Ha! 

We took her back to Atlanta on the 12th, to a hotel, since her flight to Mexico was really, really early on the 13th.  We stopped in Juliette and had lunch at the Whistle Stop Cafe (fried green tomatoes, of course!).  Steph and I had the Bennett's BBQ sandwich and I declare, that doggone Frank Bennett is still delicious after all these years!

We walked McCrackin Street, browsing in the little gift shops and I swear, once, we caught a glimpse of the bee charmer.  I'm sure of it.  It may sound silly, but every time I'm there, I can feel the spirits of Idgie and Ruth.  I just love that story so much!

After we'd found some vintage goodies and sampled some fudge, we left Juliette and headed north to High Falls State Park.  It was a beautiful day to climb some rocks and put our feet in the freezing cold water.  Well, maybe it was just me doing the feet thing.  Larry and Stephanie climbed the rocks.  :)

Stephanie and I took this selfie in the car on the way to Atlanta.  It pretty much summed up how we were feeling.  It's never goodbye though, just see ya later! We're already looking forward to having her come see us again.

Larry's and my 18th wedding anniversary was the 13th and we'd already opened our presents to each other AND our Valentines.  We're awful.  We do that at birthdays and Christmas, too.  We just can't wait.

Larry got me (us) a Google Home and we have had the best time with that thing!

We play music and make shopping lists and play trivia and get her to tell us jokes and sing songs to us and we get the weather forecast every day before we go out.  It's awesome.  I'm trying to get "her" to say "I love you" and her responses to me telling her I love her (and I do it every day!) are getting more and more friendly.  She was saying things like "you're not so bad yourself" and now she says things like "I love helping you, even more than I love searching."  

She's playing hard to get.



Larry has always gotten me traditional anniversary gifts and for the 18th, you're supposed to give porcelain.  He found this beautiful girl for me at an estate sale.  Isn't she so elegant??
 

 

He also gave me this BLUE Fire-King relish dish!  The blue is kinda rare and I'd never seen one in the wild (only online, eBay and various Pyrex/Fire-King groups) and I was tickled to get it!!  I have a couple of the white ones and a couple of deviled eggs trays to match but I didn't have a bluuuuuue!

We've just celebrated all month.  Our anniversary, Valentine's Day and Larry's birthday, which was Friday.  I got a new piece of Pink Daisy Pyrex and a pretty blue Fenton hobnail vase, too, and I gave him a remote control drone with an HD camera so that he can take aerial photos!  I also got him the last two ghost division Army patches that he needed to complete that set and some new clothes to run in.  He gets up every morning now and runs for an hour and a half.  Bless it.  

We went to our favorite local Mexican restaurant on our anniversary and Larry had set it up for the waiter to bring me a rose and card during our dinner.  Soooooo dang sweet!!

Yesterday, we went to Massee Lane Gardens down in Fort Valley to continue our birthday celebration.  It was such a gorgeous day with even more gorgeous blooms!  We spent almost two hours walking and taking pictures and smelling the flowers.  Well, maybe that was just me smelling the flowers.

And when we got home, we found that one of the little tulip bulbs that I bought at Christmas and planted on MLK Day last month had bloomed while we were gone!  I've never grown tulips before and I am so happy to have this little one.

Be our guest!

We took Stephanie back to the airport Wednesday and we were all so sad!!  We enjoyed our two-week visit so much!!  She was a little under the weather the first few days she was here so she just took it easy, got some good rest and got adjusted to an entirely new climate (and air conditioning!  She wasn't used to that.).  We spent those two weeks showing her some true Southern hospitality and a glimpse into our everyday life.  We never got around to hitting any yard sales but I took a few days off work the first week and we went to a few estate sales and antique stores.  We got her all caught up on "The Walking Dead" (thanks to Netflix!) and she got to try some Southern staples like grits, boiled peanuts, fried okra, fried green tomatoes and barbecue and she got to pick some cotton and hike Georgia's leg of the Appalachian Trail.

Our Banjo and Tabbie Hoffman absolutely loved her!  We knew Banjo would be all over her 'cause that's just his way but Tabbie is different.  Way different.  He always hides under the bed when people come over.  Not with Steph, though.  He was out and stayed out from the first day on!  That is huge for him and we were so proud!! 
He fussed a lot the first night she was gone, too, like he was asking where she was.


Stephanie cooked for us EVERY NIGHT!!  I cannot even express how much I enjoyed that.  She cooked us things that we'd never had, like Sri Lankan Sambar and Borscht soup (Larry remembered it from his childhood but I'd never had it) as well as things like spaghetti, flat bread, stir fry, poached chicken, fish with the most delicious white sauce EVER, amazing salads made from cabbage, mustard greens, beet greens and quinoa and since she's a pastry chef, she baked fresh bread for us and made the yummiest fruit and white chocolate scones and chocolate chip cookies for us.  I swear I couldn't believe all that came out of my kitchen!  We attempted to make homemade butter, too, but the heavy cream I got at Kroger was heavy whipping cream so the amazing homemade thyme and sea salt butter we had planned turned out to be a Mason jar full of plain Cool Whip.  No biggie, though!  We just added some sugar and called it real.  Ha!  It was most yummy on the scones.  Anybody got a cow??  I need some real cream.  :)

One of the things she wanted to do when she was here was go to work with us.  I had class all week but she did get to go work with Larry for the day!

 

 

Steph also cut our grass for us, while she was sick!  And since she's a musician, she played guitar and harmonica and sang for us, too.  

Larry wrote another verse to "You Are My Sunshine" that she played and he sang to me.  Awwww! 

She helped him do a little Christmas shopping for me, too, and wrapped my gifts for me so she'll be with us at Christmastime, too.


We took this selfie at the airport Wednesday.  We had a half hour before she had to go through security so we got some coffee and a little breakfast at Starbucks. 

She posted this so long (not goodbye!) picture on Facebook for us right after she got on the plane.  It still makes me cry.  (BUT!!  She ran into Sean Penn at the airport in Los Angeles that afternoon and he told her "cute hat"!!)

After we got back home, we found letters and goodies she'd hidden for us in the guest room.  She left me a beautiful scarf that I cannot wait to wear!  

We love you, Stephanie.  If you ever need a place to land, you know where we are.

Amicalola

Stephanie Ballendine, our longtime friend from British Columbia, has been visiting with us for a little over a week and we have so enjoyed having her. We've had a lot of fun finding things for her to do and see and showing her some good old Southern hospitality.  For years, Larry has talked about hiking the Appalachian Trail.  He wants to do the entire thing, from Maine to Georgia at some point, so we thought we'd give it a trial (trail!) run and go up to Amicalola Falls State Park this weekend, where the AT actually begins, and hike up there some.  I knew I'd never, ever be able to hike the 11 1/2 miles with my bum ankle and Stephanie is an experienced hiker, having hiked all over the world, so it was perfect that they would go together!  So while they did that, Banjo and I hiked leisurely, taking pictures and sniffing folks.  There were lots of folks there yesterday to sniff!

Amicalola Falls is the tallest cascading waterfall east of the Mississippi.  It is 729 feet high!  The word "amicalola" is Cherokee Indian for "tumbling waters" and boy, do they tumble!

We got there later than we planned because we ran smack dab into the middle of Moonshine Festival traffic in Dawsonville!  But once we got there, we got down to the business at hand.  We walked a little while together, the four of us, and then Banjo and I hung back and Larry and Stephanie walked on.

 

This was the last time I saw them until they got back around 7:30.

Banjo and I walked a little more and then we decided we'd just drive up to the top.  I highly recommend driving! :)






Here are a few of the things we saw!

And then the view from the very tip top!

Banjo and I hung out at the top the rest of the day, visiting with picnickers and walking some 300 steps down and then back up to get different views of the falls.  Banjo was super scared because the steps are metal and you can see the ground through them.  Bless his heart.  I carried him most of the way until he got used to it and then he started going down the steps himself!  I was so proud of him.  Brave boy!  I can imagine how scary that must have been but he trusted me and followed me.  That's my Baby Banjo!

We went back to the car, shared a grilled chicken wrap and a bottle of water, listened to the rushing waterfall and took a nap!  :)  It was such a beautiful cool day.  

Larry picked up a few things for me on the trail.  He's a keeper.