To old Rocky Top & back -

Hi, ya'll! How I've missed you all, and missed writing. :)

You may have noticed I haven't blogged in 10 days, or maybe you just danced around gleefully that I seemingly ran out of things to rant and rave about and ate marshmallows while singing "Sweet Caroline" at the top of your lungs. I'm sorry. I haven't. You have my pity. Have another marshmallow on me. :)

The truth is - my family and I were on vacation in Tennessee, and of course I couldn't tell you, because what if you broke into my house and stole our DVDs of the entire 1st season of Hogan's Heroes?! *gasps* You see how awful that would be .... so I kept it quiet. :) And it was a blissful 10 days of no internet, no FB, and no e-mails to sort, I barely wrote, and how I missed that. But it gave me time to just have .... TIME. And I took 1,351 pictures. So it's all good.

are you choking? on that marshmallow? Don't choke. There won't really be 1,351 after I sort them. There will only be around 1,200. ;) We had a wonderful wonderful time, and yet are so thankful to be back, to be home, to live out of our house again, and see our sweet puppy baby.

So we went up and down Ole Rocky Top, up and down and careening (carefully) and weaving (sickly) and curving and staying on the road instead of tumbling down a 40 foot pass (not cool, Dave), and laughing because our stomachs were going swirly whirly .... and then gasping all over again by how close our side was to looking straight down with no railing and into the river.

and I sang Jambalaya on the Bayou by Hank Williams Sr. about 900 times.

and Daddy took this picture of me (totally unposed) in front of the Great Smokies. :)

Which brings me to one more thing. :) My watermark!! :) I'll write a more in-depth post soon about how long it took me to cast it, and also decide on it. It took me forever, until coming home, I just decided to DO IT, and when I got home, I did. After I sang Jambalaya about 3 more times, and kissed my puppy about 28 times. It's really special, and I made it in about 25 minutes. Awesome.

One note: It won't always be that big or stand-out, I just wanted you to be able to see all the neat Paisley font and everything. :) So let me know what you think! Or just eat more marshmallows and sing or dance joyfully because Jesus has redeemed you.

and He's not ever ever letting us go, and won't ever stop loving us.

My love to you, sweet special friends,

~ Jean Marie ~

"Jambalaya an' a crawfish pie an' file gumbo,

'cause tonight I'm gonna' see my ma cher amio,

Pick guitar, fill fruit jar, and be gay-o,

Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on de' bayou."