the canyon, the mirror and zumba

we look forward to the weekends so much because we get to spend a lot more time together. lance had a lot of late nights last week, and this week will be even more. (for instance, today he didn't have to go in to work until 11 a.m. but he won't return until after the sun comes up. not exactly sure what time. boo. but i am proud of what a hard worker he is - he puts in crazy hours.)

every weekend has been packed full of amazing memories since we've been married, and i love it. this saturday we went to providence canyon state park, which is about a 45 minute drive away from us and known as "georgia's little grand canyon."

the weather right now is PERFECT, so we are trying to do as many fun things as we can outside before it gets disgustingly humid for the summer.

i really am sitting on the ledge of an overlook at the canyon here, not photo-shopped in like it looks. i should probably take some pictures of us not hiking or hanging out at home so you don't get the impression i always look completely disheveled. i also do not wear black all the time. in fact i've started wearing more bright colors, because that's how southerners roll and i like it.

lance LOVES a good pun. any pun, really.

when we hiked to the bottom of the canyon it looked like it was going to be really sloppy, muddy, red georgia clay that we weren't sure if we wanted to walk through - but it was actually just a firm damp sand. phew.



hmm, already tired and our adventures had only just begun. ha. driving home from the hike i suggested we go pick up the floor length mirror i'd spotted on sale at a store. (i didn't buy it at first sight because i wanted to make sure lance liked it.)

lance loved it and thought it would probably fit in our car. it's about seven feet high and three feet wide, so lord knows it would fit in a truck or suv just fine, or maybe even a decent sized car. but not a dodge neon. 

i sincerely wish we had video to show you the process of us trying to fit this thing into the neon, because i was cracking up at our clown car antics.

we rolled the seats down and slid it through the trunk- not fitting. pushed the front seats all the way up ... and it was still sticking out the back. off with the cardboard protectors on the ends. closer, but still hanging out. "if we just had our bungee cords or some string to close the trunk ..." "what about my hair tie!" so mr. knot-tying-expert finagled the trunk shut with only a wee bit of the mirror sticking out.

 we could barely fit in the front seats and i laughed nearly the entire ten minute (usually only five but we had to take it slow) ride home.

to top off the adventure, while we were unloading the mirror to carry it inside to our apartment a woman was puking in the parking lot.

now at last, the mirror looks lovely in our living room. were it a video-recording mirror i would already have clips of lance doing lots of push-ups and me doing zumba moves in front of the mirror. we are goofy.

i only did zumba a few times in lancaster, but i've been getting into it here and going a few times a week. i am the ONLY white girl at zumba here. do you know what that's like? it is everyone suddenly being an instructor, trying to help you. and it is getting cheers from the rest of the people in the class when you finally start catching onto the routines. you feel silly being new at zumba in the first place, but among a group of all rhythmically inclined dancers the silly feeling is more than a feeling. sure, some white people can dance, but i am not one of them.

lance said i'm getting a lot better. but i was showing him this one move that i cannot get the hang of, and when i looked over he was practically not breathing he was laughing so hard. i mean i knew i looked ridiculous but i had no idea it was that bad! yikers.

here's to being goofy and trying new things anyway - because it's fun! and now i have a way to make lance laugh in an instant.

first impressions of columbus, ga

the south is really different. i like it, but it's weird to me.

when i lived in maui, i felt like i belonged. it was totally different than where i grew up (lancaster, pa) as well, but i could easily get into the rhythm of hawaiian culture and i loved it. i don't know if i can see myself ever quite fitting into southern culture. or maybe it's that i don't want to, because the main difference i've noticed so far is diet. fried food and southern comfort foods are featured in the grocery stores. tons of crisco, grits, and other things i wasn't used to seeing line the aisles of grocery stores in pennsylvania.

i have never seen so many fast food places in such close proximity, and i have no idea why anyone would need this many waffle houses or mcdonalds. yuck.

last week when i asked our waitress about a dish i was considering ordering (caesar salad with thai fried shrimp) she said, "it's fried! it's good!" it made me laugh - as if frying something means it is automatically good. but then i am probably in the minority for not agreeing with that sentiment. i ordered it and it was delicious. so help me God if i start eating like a southerner. eek!

other first impressions of life in columbus, ga ...

- i love our apartment and i love apartment living! we have plenty of space but not too much to clean. it was awesome when my parents came down with our stuff and we could really make it home. we had taken some essentials down with us, but couldn't fit much in my car and forgot a shower curtain so the bathroom was a mess for the first few days we were here.

- lance did an awesome job picking a place and frankly i feel like i'm on vacation sometimes. the weather is perfect this time of year. our apartment complex has awesome pools, a nice fitness center (complete with saunas i won't use and free classes i will use - yesterday i did zumba and was of course the only person in the class, ha.), and a pond with ducks that wander all over the place.

- love being a short drive away from places we go - grocery store, restaurants, crossfit, downtown, and all of my faves in ONE shopping center: barnes & noble, ross, tjmaxx and marshalls. (that's a good shopping center!)

- southerners are generally very polite and well-mannered. i love it.

- people stand on street corners selling newspapers. i feel like i'm back in time.

- store employees walk your groceries out to your car for you. again, i feel like i'm back in time. this was incredibly perplexing for lance and i the first time it happened. so much so that we temporarily forgot where we parked and had the person zigzagging behind us in the parking lot, whoops.

- my first trip to the commissary (the grocery store on the army base) has led me to call it the cuh-misery, or just the misery, instead of pronouncing it correctly. it made me really glad that lance wanted to live OFF base. the store was packed out to the max and people were ramming carts around like it was a freaking nascar race. i felt like i was in a third world country. you could barely get to the shelves to get what you wanted and the line you wait in at the end was so long they had someone directing carts to each checkout. insanity. way too stressful and aggressive of a shopping experience for me, but everything is apparently a wee bit cheaper there. so i guess i'll go back. sigh. publix is practically around the corner from us (and winn-dixie and piggly wiggly, ha.) and i like that much better.

- baptist churches are everywhere. so are goodwill donation centers. and of course fast food GALORE.

- i miss turkey hill milk and ice cream.

- lots of businesses here have ridiculous names that crack us up. i think the most obvious example is the piggly wiggly - how can anyone take that place seriously?!

- southern accents are so great. i was afraid i'd pick up a fake southern accent and it's already sort of happening. sometimes i can't help talking to lance with southern twang. it may have more to do with all the duck dynasty we've been watching, love that show.

- we found a gorgeous park near our house, and i'm excited to keep exploring and finding more gems in this area! i love finding hidden beauty! we drove past development after development, then bam! a beautiful park that stretched out for miles with waterfalls and rocks to climb on and nice trails. it was also unexpected because a recent review of it online said a man had been there with his two daughters and got mugged, and someone else said to never go there because "it's full of homosexuals at night." wow people. the anonymity of the internet is something else, personally i find that the positive reviews of places are usually much more accurate than the negative ones!

lance spotted this stork (maybe heron? we're not bird experts, help us out.) and it was perched on one leg beside the lake so still that we both agreed "it's fake ... but so realistic!" so we were walking down to get right beside it for a funny picture of lance posing by the fake stork, and we were no more than three feet away when it flew off! HA, not fake after all. we could not stop laughing. (if we were written about in old testament style, i feel that phrase would be repeated. "and they walked with God ... and they could not stop laughing.")

 it was so beautiful.we've been having a lot of awesome bird encounters lately. when we drove in my parents lane after our wedding rehearsal, i was exclaiming, "there's a blue jay! oh my word, i've officially turned into my grandma shank, getting excited about birds-" lance: "is that an eagle?!" and sure enough, there was an enormous bald eagle sitting on a branch beside the stream. 

it was the first eagle i ever saw at my parents house. it definitely made a special trip there for us. we sat watching it for awhile until we had to go because we were already late to pick up my friends at the airport. ("sorry guys, just doing some bird watching! totally normal!" ha.) God does so many cool things. ask Him to do something cool for you today or to open your eyes to what He already did for you - i am confident you will love it and He will keep surprising you if you let Him.

Sunday hike

me, alecia, and becky. two of my best friends who will be some of the bridesmaids in my wedding, woohoo! we went for a lovely sweaty hike on sunday at rocks state park in maryland.