alyson rae FOTO: July 2009

Okay, so I know you all have been anxiously awaiting to hear about our trek across America, well the southeast...I know, I know we've been back a while but I had over 300 photos to go through and edit and it seems like we've been SO busy since the moment we arrived home. Well, I finally got to sit down and go through all the pictures this week so here's a little portion of the trip, I'm gonna break it down into a couple of days. Let me start out by warning you that this trip had a lot of ups and downs. It seems we were under attack the entire time, I learned a lot about myself that I never realized and a lot about what it means to be a "camper" in the southeast.

Shortly after we arrived at our first stop we all hopped out of the truck and began our set up process of plugging stuff in and leveling and what not. BTW, we ROCK at this, we definitely look like pros out there. After Steve hooked up the water and turned it on we ran into our first "surprise". Water filter was busted because we were lazy this year and neglected to winterize the ol trailer...bummer. Well, I'm a trooper! I sucked it up, put on my happy face, cracked a couple jokes in true Aly style and grabbed my toiletry bag and headed for the bath house. No biggie, I've been a tent camper before and this how I used to roll all the time. Well, back in my tent camping days I didn't have a 32 year old, mama of four babies, body that needs to take a nightly 3am potty break. But I soldiered on, I layed in bed until 3:30 when I gave up trying to hold it and grabbed a sweatshirt and slipped into my flip-flops and hiked to the closest bath house just a few trailers down from us, praying that no critters would greet me on the way. Not so bad really, kinda nice, had the joint to myself and saw some pretty stars on the way back. Crawled back in bed with dusty feet and woke up at 5:30 to repeat the process. Steve apologized profusely and promised to hit a local Camping World to get the stuff he needed to make the repairs so that this would not happen again..."Ok baby, thanks, you're the best!"

We stayed in Stone Mountain, GA which is just outside of Atlanta. Stone Mountain is this really, really cool "resort" (for lack of a better word) it is comprised of hotels and an enormous campground that is built around this enormous...stone mountain. There is a golf course and a lake, hiking trails and the coolest nightly laser show I have ever seen.

Day one in Georgia we were taking our Marine Biologist and shark expert son, Weslee to the Georgia Aquarium. But first we needed to find an urgent care, Steve believed he had some kind of UTI, he was having some low back pain & urgency and frankly, I was pretty worried, he had his tough face on, so I knew he was much worse than he was telling me. We found a local CVS but after waiting quite a while they informed him that they don't treat UTI for men, only women. Steve felt guilty about making the kids wait all morning so against my pleading we headed to the aquarium.

It was incredible! We petted sharks and rays, watched as an enormous Whale Shark swam inches from our faces, laughed at the otters and oohed and aahhed. Surprise #2, we took a bathroom break...again. Steve walks out of the bathroom with a smirk on his face and clutching a paper towel in his hand. He states "It's not a UTI" and opens up the paper towel and inside is the BIGGEST kidney stone I have ever seen! WOW! We were both immediately thankful, it could have been so much worse, he's had stones half that size that caused 10 times more pain.

On the way back to the campground we picked up the stuff we needed to fix the water filter and headed "home" and grilled some burgers and dogs with Uncle Jeff and took a dip in the pool, showered and headed up to watch the laser show. They blasted music over the field and we boogied while we waited with a couple hundred other folks, for the show to start, Kolby played some sweet air guitar on his light saber and entertained us all. It was a beautiful, warm, breezy evening. The show started and they played music by artists from GA (B-52's, Ray Charles, Sugarland, etc) and music about Georgia, they did a tribute to our soldiers and finished off the show with some fireworks and a little "Devil Went Down to Georgia". It was so cool!

We said goodnight to Uncle Jeff and crashed hard that night exhausted from a very busy day. Unfortunately, Steve wasn't able to get the water thingy fixed because he had the wrong size whatchamacallit so I trekked to the bathroom again around 3am and did my business, this time with a little less enthusiasm but still kept my game face on so as not to hurt my poor husbands feelings, he was not happy about this either after all so, me having a stinky attitude wasn't going to help anybody.

We all slept in the next morning and took our time over breakfast and began packing up to head to Myrtle Beach, SC, where hopefully the water filter would get repaired and we could get settled in a beautiful campsite by the beach. HA!

I was dropping something of at the firehouse for Steve last week when I overheard the guys on the radio working an apartment fire nearby. I wanted to check on Steve to see if he was okay so I drove around until I spotted the flashing lights. Once I spotted him and saw that he was operating the pump and NOT inside the fire I whipped out my camera and watched him do what he does.

We were approached by one of the police officers who was keeping everyone back from the scene, he noticed all my kiddos sitting on the grass watching it all and said "What do you guys think about all these firetrucks...pretty cool huh?" They looked at him with a blase look and said, "That's our Dad" It was pretty funny.