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I’ve been tagged by Marie (a good friend of Amanda and one of her bridesmaids) to list 10 things that make me happy. So, here they are in no particular order (well, maybe after the first four):

1. Tommy–he is truly my best friend. Good thing too since we spend so much time together. He very rarely grumbles when I ask him to turn the truck around so I can take a picture or when we’re driving in the mountains and I tell him to drive in the middle of the road. :)
2. Amanda–and through her, Evan. They are so much fun to be with!
3. Hall–and through him, Sara. I am such a lucky lady to have such a great daughter-in-law and son-in-law.
4. Bubba–it’s hard to believe that he’s been with us for less than 2 years. We found him online in north Georgia soon after Beau died. He came to live with us and has made himself at home here. He is such a goofball.
5. My Nikon camera–I absolutely love having my camera in my hand.It also makes me happy when people like the pictures I take.
6. Road Trips–I love to travel, as long as I don’t have to fly. Getting off the interstates and seeing rural America is so very interesting.
7. Friends–we are fortunate to have some really great friends. Some of these friends we see weekly and some only now and then. But no matter how often we see them, we enjoy it.
8. Mountains–I’m not sure how it is that I’m a “mountain” person as opposed to a “lake” or “beach” person. But just the thought of heading to the hills makes me happy.
9. Going out to dinner on Friday nights.
10. Pedicures
11. My new Mahjong Set–kind of silly to be happy about a game, huh? My sister-in-law Anne gave me a beautiful wooden set. I feel like I’m “official” now that I have my own set. Thank you Anne.
12. Genealogy–I have worked on my family tree since about the time Amanda was born. I love doing it and get really excited when I find something.
13. Lots more things make me happy, but I’ve gone beyond 10 so I will stop now.

If Hall reads this, I would like for him to share 10 things that make him happy. I bet Sara is at the top of his list! :)

I started out last week by playing Mahjong with my sister-in-law Anne, Linda and Deb. What fun this game is. We usually play 4-5 hours at a time and it’s never quite long enough.

Saturday night was the annual Brownell side of the family get together for dinner and Tripoley.

I would say that this is my bowl with my winnings. But, unfortunately, I had about twice this much when I started. Good thing I play for the fun of it!

Hall’s, Amanda’s and Tommy’s alma mater, the Darlington Tigers, played in the semi-finals of the State football championships last night. So Tommy and I decided to go up for the game.

We left home early and went to Schroeder’s for a bite to eat (a must when in Rome). When we walked in we saw Michael and Marie, Amanda’s good friends. After inviting ourselves to join them we caught up with them while enjoying some pizza and fried mushrooms. Yummy!

While I am still much more of a soccer fan, I absolutely love high school football. It must be the fact that so many people of the community get involved in it.

This was as far into the playoffs that Darlington has gone since 1998 (Amanda’s senior year) when they won State. Last night Darlington hosted Savannah Christian who had nearly as many fans as the home team. I’m glad I didn’t have to get back on a bus and ride to Savannah last night. However, it was a happy trip for them. Unfortunately Darlington lost 24-10. Well, there’s always next year. :) And, with only losing 7 seniors and a quarterback who is a freshman this year, things could be good in 2010.

My dad would have been 100 years old today. I so wish that he’d lived a much longer life.

Our Turkey Day plans included visiting one more waterfall. Our route took us up to the Blue Ridge Parkway and then down Hwy. 276. It was a beautiful day for hiking 2-3 miles to find Log Hollow Falls. There were actually two different falls–the first one being Log Hollow Branch and the second one is not named, at least from what we can find. It was warm as long as we were in the sunshine, but when we got into the shade it was pretty chilly.

Looking Glass Rock seen from the Parkway.

Log Hollow Branch Falls:

Bubba and Tommy on part of the trail between the two falls.

The no-named falls.

As we were heading back out, I happened to look down and find this lone flower. It must be pretty hardy to still be blooming.

A variety of milkweed. Butterflies lay their eggs on these plants.

The directions we have found on the internet don’t always help us that much. Either they give us the mileage from a certain point and the odometer in the truck doesn’t work (it works sometimes) or they say walk 7-10 minutes. I can guarantee you that Tommy and Bubba can cover twice the distance I can in the same amount of time. So finding some of these falls hasn’t been really easy.

This is Cathey’s Creek Falls. We drove past the trail for these falls and had to turn around and go back. Along the way, we stopped and asked an old fellow where the trail was. He pointed just up the road a bit and said, “It’s a really steep trail down to the falls.” He was right. Tommy estimated that the drop down was about 100 feet. I didn’t whine or cry once! :)

Here’s a flat portion of the trail. You can just barely see Tommy up ahead of me.

I just can’t do justice to see these falls. I couldn’t get back enough to get more of the surroundings in the picture, but I can assure you the area was really pretty.

I hope you all have a very happy Thanksgiving and that you get lots of yummy food to eat. Since we had our meal on Sunday, the only traditional Thanksgiving food we’ll have is pumpkin pie. We still have some left over. Yummy!

I think we may go waterfall hunting again today. We went yesterday and found Cathey’s Creek Falls. I’ll post some of those pictures later today.

Another Irish, Terry and Kerry picture from years ago. We were dressed in our Easter duds and holding our pets–bunnies and a pigeon. Miss you Ter!

Our friends, Julian and Sue, left yesterday morning to head back home. We had an enjoyable visit with them. Sue and I went shopping in Brevard on Tuesday and then met the guys for lunch at Dugan’s Pub. After filling our bellies, we headed out for more shopping. The plan was we would get back to the house and then go to Bird Rock Falls to take some pictures. Unfortunately, by the time we got home, it was too dark and wet to go. So I convinced Sue to stop on the way out yesterday morning.

Here’s Sue taking some pictures:

The falls are called Bird Rock Falls by the locals, but the “new” owner renamed them Cathedral Falls. Why would you rename falls?

After many, many years of not paying any attention to the waterfalls all around us, we decided to hunt some out on this trip. Because we needed to go to town for a grocery store run we headed across the mountain to Hwy. 276. Part of the road we travel is gravel/dirt. It’s actually a more enjoyable ride than driving Hwy. 215 in. Along the way we found this baby waterfall. We are seeing a lot of these since there’s been so much rain in the area.

This is Looking Glass Rock right before you get to the Trout Farm.

Our first stop was at Looking Glass Falls. We really hadn’t planned on stopping here, but did because of the amount of water going over the falls.

Then we went to Moore Cove Falls. It was a 7/10 mile walk into the falls and very enjoyable. The weather was perfect–not too hot and not too cold.

Can you see the rainbow in the water below?

Can you see why these are called the Blue Ridge Mountains?

We started out this morning for a day trip thinking we would head up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. When we left the house, we could barely see the mountain range.

This is a small barn that is directly across the road from us. Unfortunately, the cows I was looking for were not there. I really want to get an up-close picture of a cow’s face.

When we got to the Blue Ridge Parkway, we saw pretty much nothing but fog. We drove a couple of miles before Tommy decided it wasn’t too smart to be driving when you could only see about 10 feet in front of you. I did convince him to stop a couple of times to take some pictures. It was really hard to get things in focus as the fog blew left, right and all over. This is Fryingpan Tunnel.

These trees were so cool looking in the fog.



Since we couldn’t drive the Parkway, we headed back down 215 to see if we could find Courthouse Rock Falls. To get there, we had to drive on a road that I usually don’t like to be on. Only because when you look out the window you see the river that is really, really far down. I get pretty nervous on roads like this.

We came across this falls that we had never seen before because we’d never been on the road when there were no leaves on the trees. It’s not a good picture and you can’t really get the perspective, but the top is probably 90-100 feet high. There were too many trees around and no way to get to a clearing in order to get a good shot.

Father down the road, we stopped to take some pictures of the river. I love this part of the drive!


According to the directions we had, you were to park at a small parking area and walk about 5-7 minutes and you would be at the top of Courthouse Rock Falls. Tommy and Bubba took off up the trail with me following.

We never found the top of the falls and what we could see was at an angle from the trail that I couldn’t get a good picture. But the river was pretty here too.

Part of our drive.

Is your Christmas tree one of these?