Cannonballs and more cannonballs

This blog is a tad long...but I'll blame it on the pictures! :) This blog is from July 3rd...but I was too tired to post it yesterday...so you get it this morning instead!

I didn't mention this in my introductory blog yesterday, but when I arrived last night, Keith's mom told me that the nieces were really excited about getting to meet me...so excited in fact, that they had insisted upon making me a cake. They made this cake all by themselves with minimal supervision from "Mimi" and what resulted was an amazingly delicious "death by chocolate cake." They had mixed up a chocolate cake mix and dumped chocolate pudding and chocolate chips in the batter! Yummy! They had also decorated it by themselves: lots of flowers and a message that read "Welcome to SC, Monkey" with a large picture of the state of South Carolina. ("Monkey" happens to be a nickname that Emily and I both share...to her delight.) The funny part was though that after they'd baked it, they decided it looked too good ("My mouth was watering!" said Emily) so they each cut a piece out of my cake to eat...before they gave it to me! Kids are so fun! :)

Here's the yummy cake with my two pieces missing!

Today was a fantastically fun, but thoroughly exhausting day. Keith and I both slept in and felt refreshed when we left the house about 10:30 am for a tour of downtown Columbia. Our first stop was the state capitol building, which was unfortunately closed for the "State holiday" of the 4th of July. We walked around the grounds and I got the Reader's Digest condensed version of a South Carolina history lesson. The statue of George Washington out front of the building is missing half of his walking cane...the statue was vandalized not by rowdy teens of Columbia but by Sherman's soldiers as they passed through the city during the Civil War. Soldiers also fired on the still-under-construction capitol building not to destroy it, but to see how far away the city was from their encampment. The capitol building was hit by cannonballs in 6 different places, and when the construction was completed, instead of repairing the granite, large brass stars were added to mark the places where the cannonballs had hit.

Me next to one of the cannonball hits at the capitol building!

Two old men in suits were loitering in front of the building with picket signs (although they had them laying on the pavement so we couldn't see what they said...not a very effective picket line)...Keith suspected that they were there to lobby for the resignation of the South Carolina governor. Anyway...we never did find out why they were there, but got quite a laugh when we heard one man sigh a deep, satisfied sigh and say to the other man, "it's a beautiful day for freedom, isn't it?"

After the capitol building we drove around the campus of USC (where Keith attended his freshman year of college) and then headed to the river walk which was beautiful, although a bit hot! We strolled along the sidewalk and ventured out into the low river to wade, climb a low-hanging tree and jump from boulder to boulder out into the river. From there we headed back to the house with a quick side trip to see the house that Keith grew up in.

Keith the raccoon hanging out at the river walk!


Climbing out on the river rocks!

When we arrived back at the house, Keith's brother Mark and his wife Angela and daughters Emily and Abigail (who I hadn't met) were there to eat lunch and go for a swim. Emily and Abigail are two of the sweetest girls I've ever met, but also two of the most energetic! They thought I was a great pool toy and we dove and jumped and swam and raced and splashed until I could barely stand up. Emily's favorite game was to convince Keith and Mark and I to all cannonball into the pool with her at the exact same time and see how big the waves were when we surfaced again. Abigail isn't a fan of the deep end at all but liked to jump off my legs in the shallow end and pretty much clung to me every second that I was in the pool.

Bombs away! Emily and I jumping into the pool!


Abigail and I hanging out in the pool!

Late afternoon Emily decided to give Keith and I a "tour we'd never forget" of "Mimi and Paw's" land and the adjacent land of various members of Rick's family so we loaded up the golf cart and off we went. Emily was not only our chauffeur, but our guide as she narrated the entire tour in this hilarious pseudo-British accent. She gave out both factual information ("and on the left you'll see the home of Paw's parents', the Browders") and a hilarious running commentary of big words and not entirely accurate information ("now we are entering the deep woods of the famous Egyptian princess Cleopatra where many mysterious creatures live like squirrels, stinky deer that poop everywhere, and dogs which are also called mammals.")

Emily gives us a narrated tour of the Browder woods.

After our tour, we enjoyed a little more pool time and then I showed the girls my violin and played for them because Emily is going to take violin at a week long music camp at a local church in a week or so. Rick cooked an amazing dinner of grilled beef and veggies picked from the Browder garden and the kids watched a movie outside while the adults sat out onthe patio for dinner and "chit chat" (Emily's words again.) After the kids went home Keith and I mangaed enough energy for a trip to Wal Mart to buy ammo and clay pigeons for skeet shooting on the 4th and then both collapsed about 10 pm, thoroughly exhausted.