Walking Tacos!!

Eternal thanks to our amazing cousin, Mary, for introducing this to us!

Boy time

That's my Kermit sock on the right. :)

The day after

Val's showering, Kas is cooking, & the rest of us? Well, it's vacation!

The view from the back balconies

That's Mike waaaaaay down there grilling our dinner. Cam's helping. Sort of.

Gossamer @ the goats!

This was earlier today - I thought I blogged it already but apparently not. :)

The top of the driveway, looking down

Contrary to what one would expect -due to the steepness of the slope -
it's not necessarily easier going down than it was coming up. Getting
to the point at which we are currently parked was not admitting
defeat; quite to the contrary, it was a huge victory!

The gravel road leading to this was...well, let's say it was
memorable. I'm not ready to talk about it yet. Ugh. Suffice it to say,
Val nearly had a panic attack and I nearly had a heart attack. Un.
Pretty.

Soooo.....

We're here! I know you know that based on the previous post. Still though. We're here. We've had an interesting start to the vacation so far. I had a moment far too embarrassing to share here. I also fell down (first fall of the trip!). The funny part is that I fell down after going to look in a window on the back of the cabin. Val had mentioned it and had specifically said, "I wanted to go look in there, but I knew I'd fall down if I tried." In a burst of tragically misplaced confidence, I went to go look in the window. Mike came with me and even helped me walk back down the hill. But just as I was stepping to the solid, level ground I hit some mud and fell right smack onto my bottom.

Other than that, though I'm pretty sure one of my sisters have mentioned it, the road up to the cabin is pretty much absolutely terrifying. Mike wasn't sure if our car was going to make it (it did). The van? Not so much. Mike went and helped them by driving (us Tucker girls have zero mountain driving experience) while everyone got out of the van and took the luggage out. Mike, Jen, and Mac ventured back out to go to the grocery store for a few things. They said it was less terrifying the second time. Personally? I'm still a bit scared of the next drive (both down and back up).

After all that excitement, we were happy to get the sausages and hot dogs on the grill. Mike was getting everything ready on the grill and called up for some matches. (And I do mean called UP. The cabin is on a hill, so the basement is level with the back ground and the grill is about 10 or so feet lower than that. So the grill has got to be 20-30 feet lower than the main level of the cabin. It makes me a little dizzy to look over the balcony rail.) Anyway, I asked if anyone had some matches. No one had matches. We scoured the place and found nothing. We tried using things in definite off-label ways, such as clamping a straight iron onto a paper bag to try to set it on fire to then light the charcoal (no go) and sticking some dried grass into a space heater (also a no go). My brave husband eventually lit a candle by putting it against the heating element in the oven. Unsafe but it worked! (And dinner was delicious!)

Anyway, that's about all the coherent thoughts I have left. Even though I did sleep a decent amount last night, I'm stupid and slap-happy tired at the moment. Looking forward to tomorrow! (But not looking forward to driving down this mountain!)

Buddha & Mac eating dinner on the screened-in porch

Did I mention? That we've lost it?

5:30 update!

We have totally lost it.

Ned Nedervander is filled with the meaty aroma of slim jims. The sun is rising in a very cloudy sky as we pass Davenpot Alabama on I-65. Jen is still driving, everyone else is asleep.

According to the GPS, we'll make it to Goats on the Roof around 11.

We're rollin!
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Hourly update: we've lost our minds

In honor of Bubba's tendency to say 'aught' instead of 'off', there's been a lot of that. "Aught the chain", "turn that aught", etc. It is way funnier than it sounds.

Also, I asked Jen (who is driving) if she needed a snack, asking her if she wanted to "slap into a snim jim". She did not want to do so.

We are watching Cars, and the tractor scene scared the pants off of us, even though we knew it was coming. Good times.

We have had to reiterate some rules - Bella started singin earlier, which is a no-no. We had to establish a blanket farting policy, for reasons I won't go into here.

All-in-all, it's been a good start. Bubba has drifted off to sleep, so that's one down! Now here's hoping the rest of us (save Jen, who is driving and therefore should not sleep) can go noi noi.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Aaaaaaand we're off

Its 2:55AM and we're outta here, baby. The toddlers are happily(-ish) ensconced in their car seats, the older kids are in their seats and so glad to be leaving that they're not whining or complaining - yet. Kas seems comfortable, trooping it up in the notgun seat (notgun is the seat behind shotgun). Jen is driving, and I'm riding shotgun. So far, so good, although Jen and I have a case of the silly giggles. The expedition begins! Mountains, ho!
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Gossamer is ready to go!

Heh. Val says this explains his expression.

MY (Val's) Photo buddy

Take THAT, Windows XP
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Aaaaand there's no van?

As anyone that read this blog knows, the van reservation was made in
September of last year. I do like to plan ahead.

Val & I walked into Hertz @ 8:58am. There was no van in the parking
lot, and I won't lie - I freaked out on the inside thinking maybe I'd
made the reservation for the wrong date or something. Not the case.

The guy helping us realized something was amiss when there were no
minivan keys there. After much "well, it was here last night!" and
"look harder!" and the like, someone asks if it has satellite radio.
Why yes, it did. "well, if that's the case, then Chris probably took
it home last night."

... I will pause here to let you digest that.

So Chris has it, and everyone's embarrassed. They call Chris to find
out he sick...and not planning to come in today.

... I pause again.

So now what? Everyone scrambles around, calling other Hertzs to find a
van. I've been offered a mid-size SUV (HELL no) and a Tahoe so far.
The Tahoe would be nice, but we'd spend twice as much on gas.

3 guys left for the airport to "acquire" a van from them. They'll pay
it back when Chris finally comes in this afternoon. Ollie, the guy
helping us, has been very apologetic & very helpful -I have nothing
but nice things to say about him. It's not his fault his boss did
something really, REALLY dumb & left him here to swing for it.

It's now 9:35 and still we sit. Val had to leave to go to work, so I'm
hanging out waiting. I plan to call Hertz & AAA once I get home to
make sure everyone knows exactly how I feel about the situation.

Not an auspicious beginning, eh?

Sent from my iPhone

Halfway to TN!

Well, we're four hours into the first drive of the trip. The plan was to leave at 3, and we were in the car, leaving the driveway at 3:09. Lulu slept some but not much. I drove so far and listened to 3 of the 8 cds of an audio book. We were behind a GA dept of corrections bus as the engine exploded/seriously malfunctioned. I thought it was a church bus at first and felt bad, but then I saw it was a dept of corrections bus and it felt like something from a movie, so I was happy to drive on. We've stopped once for gas, potty breaks, and to let Charlotte walk around some. She's spacing out beside me at present, so I'm hoping she'll sleep some more. Oh, and if the picture shows up, it was an exit for Thompson Road. Wish that was where we were going!

Lulu loving on Mike

Even though we aren't leaving for another 14-15 hours, we spent a lot of time in the car this morning - dropping Mike off at work, dropping Mabel (our Boxer puppy) off with her vacation family, and making a Walmart run. I had to stop back by Mike's work to take him lunch, and Lulu was so excited to see him, that she grabbed him and hugged him. This is cute because Lulu has only recently learned how to hug, and she usually prefers to do her hugging on animals (especially 1 very adorable and funny looking black pug).

Mostly though, I'm posting this so I can go back and prove to myself in a day or a week or whenever that she was, at one point and time, happy in her carseat.

Mac's photo buddies

Meet Alvin (left) and Bruce (right). Please don't say anything about
Bruce's enormous overbite-he's very sensitive about it.

Someone's excited!

Buddha sings this a lot. He may not know what a mountain is, but he can't wait to get there!

Jen's photo buddy

I got Gossamer at Six Flags this Spring. He was coming on the trip
before the photo buddy plan...he's a traveling monster.

Hello, Shelly

The kids each got a trip buddy this afternoon, and this is what Bella picked out. Bella insists she is a girl, although I think she would make a FABulous boy. I'm sure Shelly will pop up in photos during the trip.

Also, we haven't even left yet, and the kids have already made us crazy. HELP US.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®