Where We've Been

It's amazing what you remember on accident, some times. Take for instance, yesterday afternoon. I was cleaning out the boxes we'd placed all of our desk belongings into in the great office shuffle of 2010 and early 2011. We are collectors in more ways than one, the both of us, so that makes our stash of random things rather interesting.

In a set of nondescript folders were about a million and one little receipts, brochures, and paper itineraries form about half of the trips we've ever taken together. When you spend as much time as I do planning journeys, I guess the proof - or at least the work that went into it all - seemed valuable enough to keep at the time. I decided to keep only those guide magazines from places we have dreamed of visiting again, and pitched the rest. At this point in the game, I think I've proved my resourcefulness to the extent that an old car rental confirmation print-out isn't really something I'll need one day.

But all of that rifling got me thinking.

We've been a lot of places, together.

And if there's one thing we've kept going since well before our days of sharing a last name, it's our love of travel. It's our love of taking in pieces of a place we've never been, or rediscovering the things that are so wonderful about places we've been before.

I thought it might be fun to lay it all out here. Disclaimer: there are a few trips in between these which involve visiting family (in VA, MD, NC, NY and even here in TN) and are not cited - and a few of these actually include those, particularly where we made efforts to sightsee in our own hometowns for the sake of the other.

East TN (Cleveland & Gatlinburg), 2004 (Met his family!!)

Maryland (D.C. & Baltimore), 2004 (Met my family!!)

Virginia (Norfolk & VA Beach), 2004 (Met my family!!)

California (LA area), 2005

Knoxville, 2005

Annapolis Rocks, 2005

Chestnut Mountain, 2006

Arkansas & Texas, 2006 - no photographic evidence

Big Frog Mountain, 2006

Memphis, 2006

Kansas City, 2006

Utah (Park City), 2006

Big Frog Mountain, 2007 (Proposal!!)

St. Lucia, 2007 (Honeymoon!!)

New York (Long Island), 2007

Florida (Grayton Beach & Panama City Beach), 2008

Memphis, 2008

Tampa, 2008

Grand Cayman, 2008

Mexico, 2008

Belize, 2008

Honduras, 2008

Wyoming, 2008

Chattanooga, 2009

California (San Diego area), 2009

Washington (ALL OVER), 2009

Massachusetts, 2009

Oregon (how abstract! Portland & Hood River), 2009

Colorado, 2010

Germany, 2010

Arizona (GRAND CANYON), 2010

Gosh, that's incredible.  I mean, I know it because we did it - but sometimes I forget. And I'm sure there's something in there I'm forgetting, as it is.  But I love seeing even seeing just this and knowing that there's a lifetime of journeys ahead for us!

Home Purchases & Other Things

Well, we did it.

We closed on the house this morning and we're the proud owners of a couple of tiny keys, a ranch home, and a nice little mortgage. But gosh, this is so great. I'm just giddy everytime I think about it, really. Our sellers, you know, those people who used to own our house, will be out tomorrow so it's not ours to sleep in just yet (though with the keys, wouldn't it be funny if we did show up tonight?) but I'm working on trying to convince Cliff that we should bring up sleeping bags, order a pizza, and stay there tomorrow night... you know... just for the simple beauty of it all!

Because while we'd love to be there tomorrow, there's some work we'd like to do and since we've got time to do it, we might as well. We'll be putting up new crown molding and painting, namely. Cliff's parents will be coming in to help over the next week or so and we've got just a little bit of work ahead of us, but it's going to be great.

Speaking of painting, we've made our final decisions on colors and here's what we've settled on:



It's a funky pallette with a few "random" choices, but if you could see these colors up close and the layout of the house you'll see how it works. You never can tell what something truly looks like from a computer screen (every heard of monitor calibration). Who wouldn't want to do laundry in a room as bright and cheery as that anyways (and let me tell you this is one heck of a laundry room... it'll double as storage and pantry as well)? And when an extended family member has NINE GALLONS of Benjamin Moore paint in shades of colors you were already looking at, you make it work!

And finally, if you'd like to get one of the "We've Moved!!" postcards I'm designing and have never received a Christmas Card from us (I'm telling you, we send one to everyone in our mailing list), send me your address in an e-mail and I'll try to get one to you!