PCB 2017

The week after the 4th of July, the kids and I loaded up with my parents and went to Panama City Beach. Lance didn't get to come cause we were selling chickens the day of and the day after we left. He hates the beach anyway, so no big deal, lol.

This was both kid's first summer vacation to the beach that didn't involve a peanut conference.

 The obligatory "we're at the beach on the balcony" picture.

 The kids loved the beach.

 They loved the water even more. I bought both of them a boogie board. Reed turned into a little surfer dude, and Jade could've floated on hers all day long.

 It showered occasionally, but we got to see a few pretty rainbows from it.

 One day we took a pirate cruise. I highly recommend it if you have kids!

 The kids swabbed the deck, had water gun fights, sword fights, found buried treasure, had a conga line, did the chicken dance. It was a lot of fun.

 And you can't go to the beach without visiting an amusement park and racing some go karts. Jade wasn't tall enough to ride anything, but Reed rode a few rides with me and got to drive a go kart for the first time!

What's a beach trip without airbrush shirts? It was a great trip and hope we can do it again next year! And maybe one of these years Lance might join us. 😂

An Anniversary Trip...

This past October, Lance and I celebrated ten years of marriage. Yep, seems a lot longer to me too. Ha. Since Lance was smart enough to let us get married during cotton picking season, so we would never have time to celebrate, we have never gone anywhere except out to eat. We honeymooned in the Smokies. It's our favorite place to go. I've always told Lance that when we got to ten years of marriage, I wanted to go back and stay in the same cabin again.

I knew we wouldn't be able to go on our actual anniversary, so I planned on a January trip. Because we also have chicken houses, we have to wait till the last minute to plan anything. Before I got to book our cabin, it burned up in the huge fire in Gatlinburg and the National Park in late November. Talk about upsetting. You can't plan something like that for ten years and not be upset.

After that, I wasn't sure where or when we would go.

So many cabins had been burned,  we decided to go a different route. I found a place called "Bearskin Lodge on the River" in Gatlinburg that looked pretty neat and told Lance about it. I always drop hints, nag, and flat out beg for stuff like this, but he usually ignores me and tells me to quit planning. This time he surprised me by booking a room! (Won't happen for another ten years).

And it wasn't just any room...it was a suite! And he surprised me with roses and chocolate! Who is this guy?!

The room had a great view of the creek, and you could even see the Gatlinburg strip around the corner.

We could also see the Ober Gatlinburg tram go by every so often.

We found our new favorite breakfast place. "Crocketts Breakfast Camp." Lance's food was served in an iron skillet, and I had the biggest cinnamon roll pancakes I have ever seen.

We rode around looking a fire damage for a while. This is all that's left of our cabin. It was called, "Journey's End." Fitting.

We went to one of our favorite places, "The Island," in Pigeon Forge and shopped till we dropped.

Or at least shopped till we found the ice cream store.

And what's a trip to the Smokies without visiting the park?

Before we had kids, we camped for a week in Cades Cove each summer. We hope to start back this year!

We walked the Gatlinburg strip. Bubba Gump's is one of our favorite places. For our first Valentine's together, I bought Lance a "Life is like a box of chocolate" box of chocolates from Bubba Gumps. Haha.

We also found a new place we like to eat at. The Cherokee Grill. We were looking for somewhere to get all fancied up and have a "date" at. We don't ever have dates. We ate a lot on this trip. Can you tell?

This was our first time going in the Hollywood Star Cars Museum in Gatlinburg. We were looking for something we hadn't done before and picked this. Me being a huge race fan, and Lance just being a man, it was great. In case you can't tell, I'm standing by Barney Fife, lol.

Oh, and Lance's outfit (and my outfit in the above picture, including the boots that are hard to see) are from Stages West in Pigeon Forge. We are obsessed with that place. I'm pretty sure we could spend an entire day there.

These shooting galleries get Lance every time. He can't pass one up!

One of my plans for our ten year anniversary trip was to recreate the picture at the top of the sky lift they always take. Well thanks to the wildfire, the only swing still standing was the one at the bottom. So, here we are, ten years later. :)

P.S. This was our first trip without kids that wasn't a farming conference!

A Summer of Conferences...

I've already written about going to the ALFA President's Conference in Asheville, NC earlier this summer, but that wasn't the only conference we attended! We didn't get a "real" vacation this year, we were too busy conferencing. The last week of July consisted of two conferences, the Southern Peanut Growers Conference and the ALFA Commodity Conference.

The Southern Peanut Growers Conference was at the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort near Destin, FL. The "fancy" resort could've definitely been better, along with the 10 minute drive to the crowded beach, but hey, I'll take what I can get. Here's some of my favorite pictures...

And the very next week, we were off to the Alabama Farmer's Federation Commodity Conference! This conference consists of workshops and speakers, tours and banquets. Very educational for farmers! The location of the conference changes every year. This year it was in Mobile.

2016 Alabama Farmers Federation President's Conference

Lance is the State Young Farmer's Chairman for the Alabama Farmers Federation, which makes him a member of the (ALFA) State Board of Directors. Last week, we got to attend the President's Conference in Asheville, NC.

We started off the trip with a selfie. No point of even going anywhere if you don't throw in a couple of selfies.



Not too far out of the way, we had to make a detour to probably our favorite place on the planet, the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area. We didn't have a whole lot of time, so we decided to eat at one of those places that you always want to try, but somewhere like the Old Mill always wins out. We ate at Happy Days Diner. It was pretty good. Looks like it has good milkshakes and sundaes, but we didn't have time for that. We had to get next door to our favorite store in our favorite place on the planet.



Stages West! They have just reopened after being closed for almost a year because of a fire. Take my money! And they did. I bought a cute dress for Jade and boots for both kids. I always buy Reed a pair of boots from here. He loves his boots.

Oh, and what did Lance buy? That's not a stovepipe hat. That's an old timey device they use to measure your head in order to shape your cowboy hat correctly. That's right, Lance bought a cowboy hat and has such a crooked head that they had to bring out the big guns. The left side of his head is strangely warped up in about the shape of my frying pan. 

We finally arrived at our destination in Asheville...The Grove Park Inn. It's a historical hotel. One fancy shindig. But dang if it didn't take us 3 days to figure our way around. There's a tunnel, you take the elevator down to go up, up to go down, I'm still confused.

That night, we ate at a local farm. It was fun until the flooding rains came. Did I mention they were in a drought until we showed up? How can we make it rain there, but not in Alabama? Anyways, your welcome Western North Carolina.



The next morning, Lance had one of those important, top secret meetings he has to occasionally attend. I'm pretty sure they do retina scans and have secret handshakes. So, I hung out outside. 



Can't say it was a horrible view.

That afternoon, we ate lunch at the Biltmore and toured the house. That is one fancy house. It's always been something I've wanted to see. Now that I've seen it, I think they had way too much money, ha. We took an audio tour and heard some interesting stories about the place.



Leave your swim suit at home. Their pool has had a leak since the 80s, lol.



We just bought our new summer home! Just kidding, I really had you going there, didn't I? 

Wanting to keep up the fancy Biltmore style, we ate at the hotel that night.

Look at those teeny tiny vegetables! Bahaha!

After some more meetings the next day, we had some free time. We, scratch that, I drove the Blue Ridge Parkway (Lance napped) to Mount Mitchell. Very pretty views and 61 degrees at the top. A nice change from the 1 million degrees back home.

 



We ended the night with something we never get to do...take a picture of my feet! No! Go to the movies! But check out those seats! Couches with cupholders! There's nothing like that in the Snead Metropolitan area. We saw Independence Day 2. Lots of action, but lots of cheese. Cheesiness? Nachos. Buy nachos for this movie.

And how else would we end the trip, but with a dark movie theater selfie?!