Here, there and everywhere

Okay, so I have been looking forward to blogging for a while now.... buuuuuut the pictures and stories have been piling up so that I have put it off until: TODAY!
First of all, we need to go back in time a bit... to before my last post...
Steve and I were driving randomly about town one Thursday night and we ended up downtown at the river. We started at this cool park with a nice fountain and pretty views of the skyline.


Pictures in front of the foutain!

Pretty lights!!!

Then we walked across the blue bridge (see first picture) and wandered over to the Jacksonville Landing, a collection of shops and restaraunts. We had really been wanting to go dancing and we stumbled across a club that was having Latin night! After a really fun time dancing, we were quite tired and decided to try our luck and catch a ride on a skytram they have that crosses the river. *BUT* it was in the other direction of the way we came, so it was a bit of a gamble (and my feet were HURTING!!!) When we got to the tram station, it was locked and we found the schedule that said the last train was about 2 minutes before we got there! Noooooo! We walked around to the other side of the station and happened to see an attendant locking up. I asked him if we had missed the last train and he paused a moment and asked, "what station?" Well, he ended up giving us a FREE ride all by ourselves over to the other station. It was GREAT!

I didn't want to annoy the guy who was so nice to us, so I just took his picture as he walked away! Thank you, Jax Skytram man, whoever you are!

All in all, it was a really awesome time!

Okay, now we are back up to speed with where I left off after my last post. This is the trip to Stuckey. First stop, road-side boiled peanuts! Mmm.... tasty.

Next stop.....

Vidalia, home of the sweet onion. Seriously, they are all about onions. Exhibit A: (outside our hotel)

Sunday morning we went out to the old Joiner homestead in Stuckey. Before we headed out to church, we did a little photo shoot. (Don't worry, we won't be late... the church is down the street!)

Here's Stephen, contemplating country living.

And, the neighbors! (Aunt Susan and Uncle Lloyd)

Then we headed over to the church. It was a special Sunday because it was homecoming AND it was the church's 100 year anniversary.

After church, what else? CHURCH POTLUCK! Yessssssssss! They even have a separate ROOM down that back hallway for the desserts!

Once we were back at the house to relax, we did a little science investigation to discover how pecans grow. I had really never thought much beyond the fact that they grow on trees. It was cool. We even ate a few. The pecans are found inside the casing part shown below.

Ah, good times with the fam. It was a nice trip, as expected. This is the Joiner Clan. I have to give a special recognition to my great-Aunt Parah-Lee (in front) who is 93!

Now, the next weekend after Stuckey, Stephen and I ended up going to DeLand/Central Florida for the weekend so I could do wedding stuff with my mom. Stephen played golf with my dad, aunt and uncle. On the way there as we were heading out of Jacksonville, we noticed that I-95 northbound had been completely shut down! We weren't sure what was going on until the motorcycles started coming... and there were hundreds and hundreds of them! Maybe thousands! For a good 10 minutes they drove past us in a big motocycle parade. It's not the best picture, but all those headlights are motorcycles. It was crazy!

On Saturday mom and I had a marathon wedding planning day I hope I won't ever have to repeat. Starting at 8AM we went to the rental store, the wedding/reception location, the florist, and finished the day with 3+ hours at the print shop doing the invitations. THEN, we went to the place we are having our pre-wedding party at and met Stephen's mom and finished our evening at the restaurant we hope to use as caterers. Yikes! Anyways, here are pretty chairs for the wedding...

And pretty flowers... I think these ones are Delphiniums... so pretty!

THEN, to finish off our whirlwind weekend, we went to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure on Sunday. Because I work for the public school system I got in free and Stephen got in for half price! Yeah! This is us there:

AND, last but least exciting, about a week after that Stephen and I were headed to Publix when another driver ran a red light and hit us. Boo. My poor car is still not fixed yet, but I think we are getting close. (We have been waiting on insurance stuff, of course...) So anyways, life goes on. Hopefully I will have new pictures to post again soon... we are going out of town again this weekend to see family/friends/do wedding stuff... Until then!

Georgia on my mind

Ah, Georgia. What a good song. I have held a soft spot in my heart for this song even before that movie "Ray" came out. Hahaha. I'm sure I've always felt rather attached to it because I was born in Georgia and my Dad's side of the family is from there. When my grandma passed away, I was in college, and while I was home with family cleaning out her house, I was able to acquire some very cool old family photos. I finally got around to scanning them the other day and also was able to talk about them with some of my Dad's family. They are such cool pictures and I am glad to have them as a reminder of my heritage. When I was a child, I remember envying friends and people I knew who had what I considered to be exotic and interesting grandparents from other countries. And if their first language was something other that English, oooh, that was even better. So, it surprised me just as much as anyone when, upon exploring more of this Earth than I had before, I realized that "Southern" is disticntive enough to be considered its own cultural heritage when viewed by someone from say, Canada. :-)

This first picture is of my grandma, Irene Barnard and her Aunt, Mildred. Or so I've been told. Apparently my great-grandma's family were very musical and several of them played the Mandolin. My grandma is the one with the dog.



This photo is also of my grandma, Irene. I love this picture, because even though I didn't meet grandma until a lot later, this picture is a great reminder to me of her spirit.



This fishing picture (probably in some canal in coastal South Georgia, I've been told) features my grandfather, Wilbur Dorsey Joiner in the foreground. Everyone laughs at this picture because it's one of the very few I've ever seen where he still has hair. My grandfather passed away a few years before I was born, so it's so nice to find pictures of what his life was like.



Another cool family story is that my grandma went to work in a shipyard in Savannah during the 1940's as a welder. I like to invision her as a real-life Rosie the Riveter. And, it was during this time that my grandparents met, at the ship yard. This photo has my grandma's handwriting on the back labeling it as: "Dorsey's crew". Look at that TANK!




This is my grandfather's youngest brother, Robert (Bob) Joiner. I believe this was him in uniform during his service in the Korean War. He still lives in Atlanta with his wifa, Sylbra.



This is a picture of my great-grandmother, Granny Barnard. I don't know what her first name was because I only ever heard anyone refer to her as granny. She passed away when I was a child from Alzheimer's so I was so pleased to find with photo of her out for a row-boat ride.

I can't remember who this is, actually. It's someone on my grandma's side. Probably her Mom or Aunt. But I do know this picture was taken in downtown Savannah. The city where many years later, I was born!

This is my grandfather in later years. It's funny to me how much of my Dad I can see now in this picture. And I guess since I see a good bit of my Dad in me... I'm in there somewhere as well.

I LOVE this picture of my dad. I'll have to ask him again about the story behind it, because I've already forgotten. But there's something about him being at his grandma's house and something about that cake. But still.

So this weekend Stephen and I will be off with my parents, Jim and Debbie Joiner, my Aunt and Uncle, Lloyd and Susan Joiner, and Aunt Susan's mom, Betty Wilkins, to meet up with some other family and probably my sister in Stuckey, Georgia. It's a very small town situated near Vidalia (known for it's onions) and some other tiny little places known for having strange names (Alamo, Scotland, Santa Claus, Lumber City...) There we will find a few hundred people, if we're lucky, an old tiny Baptist church, the old Joiner homestead, the graves of my granparents, as well as some other people I'm probably related to somehow. It's the yearly Homecoming Sunday there and I'm looking forward to spending some more time tracing and remembering the roots of our family. Hopefully this rain will finally stop so I can take some pictures. Until then...

on the road again

not only is that a really great song (see above), but this post is also dedicated to Stephen, my partner in singing this song over and over again while driving... even though we don't know most of the words. (everybody with me now: awwwwwwww...)

Soooo, think real far back. Really FAR. Like back to my last lonely post. I was in Memphis, remember? Well, as soon as I got back from TN, Stephen picked me up and took me back to Lakeland (well, Plant City) to meet up with Casie, her dad and Stephen's brother, Dani, to go deep-sea fishing. Ooh. We left very early in the morning. See?

Once we got the boat in the water, we stopped en route to our "spot" to catch some bait fish. Although, it turned out to be more like stopping to let the poor, confused bait fish leap willingly onto our fishing lines. Seriously! Not to downplay the boys' skillz, but this kept happening as soon as they put the poles in the water! These lines had four little hooks on each line, so it didn't take us very long to stock up on bait!

We caught some other smaller fish and Dani had a little "heart to heart" with one to let his friends know we were coming for them. Mean, I know. ;-)

Once we got out to "the spot" (which turned out to be a shipwreck-reef where the fish like to congregate about 20 miles out) we turned our sights to the big fish. This was a fish Stephen caught pretty early, I forget what kind of fish it was though. We ate it later, so I'll just call it tasty-fish.

Yes, that's right, we strike fear into the hearts of fish everywhere.

This is the very pretty (?) grouper that Casie caught. It was about 17 inches long and they have to be 20 to keep, so he got to live to swim another day. But, not before his close-up.

After a while, Dani got something BIG on his line. Seriously, he is a really good fisherman and it was totally working him. But, of course, after a while Dani tired the fish out... and as he finally was able to reel it out of the water, we were shocked to see that it was....

a SHARK! It was just a regular looking sort of shark (grey shark? nurse shark? sharky shark?) that was about 3.5 feet long! Crazy! Well, we threw him in the ice chest with the others to join us later... for dinner! Mwa-ha-ha!!!

Then Stephen caught another BIG nice-looking grouper... Sadly, it was like 19.25 inches long- still just shy of the limit! We even tried to stretch him out to be longer... but no such luck. However, it turned out to be a tremendous stroke of luck for the grouper. He rejoined his friends in the gulf.

Aw! Isn't he cute?! I mean Stephen, of course. The fish just mostly looks scared... but then again I would look scared too, under the same circumstances!

Just to prove I was really there, here is a picture of me and Casie. And you want to know what I caught on our trip? I caught it all on film! Or, well, microchip I guess... Anyways, I fished for a little bit but did not catch anything. I was totally okay with this, however.

Now, the following Friday Stephen and I drove to Atlanta to visit with my sister. I think we took some pictures during this nice weekend, but they must be on someone else's camera. Then on Sunday after church, the three of us headed up to the mountains of Western NC for our annual family reunion. Woo hoo! It was Stephen's inaugural run, and it was so fun having him there. He played golf every morning with the guys and then we did fun stuff in the afternoon with my cousins. Stephen actually had the good idea to play croquet, and it was very intense... intensely funny, that is. Here is our official Dart family croquet photo. It's definitely one for the record books.! PS- I know I look very small, but this is just an illusion. I am standing on the downhill slope. I just wanted you all to know, I have not shrunken. Nor are my cousins giants.

Stevie and I at family dinner (all 20+ of us) at Fat Buddies. Yes, it's really called that. No, it's not named after us. :-P

The next day we went out to the stream where we used to go when we were kids. The water level was pretty low because of the drought, but we still had a fun time... even though it was raining most of the time. When I started moving stones around in the stream, Kevin asked what my objective was... and you all know the answer: dam it! (Har Har) But seriously, we spent a good 25 minutes working on our little dam (you can see the pool we were making just to the left of Stephen and me) and it would have been awesome except a storm came and brought some pretty fierce lightening and so we couldn't finish. But it was fun while it lasted.

This is Stephen as a younger, maler, nakeder, wetter version of Mary Poppins. Hahaha. But, you can tell he had definitely had his spoonful of sugar that day. :-)

After dinner on Tuesday, I needed a little consoling. Why, you ask? Let see if you can guess!

A. Because I got a really bad mullet hair cut.

B. Because Stephen is choke-holding me

C. Because I am full from eating family dinner at Granny's Chicken Palace.

D. Because no one believed me when I told them there was a place called Granny's Chicken Palace.

Well, the answer is C. Although D is often true and from this looks of this picture A is a possibility. But neither A or B are true in actuality.

For the reunion we all stay near a house my grandparents own in a lakeside community and it is pretty there. Exhibit A:

My family is pretty funny... especially Kevin. We were more than happy to make him a member when we figured out he is as nuts as the rest of us. NC was having a hot spell and Kevin was up for using any means necessary to cool off. (For anyone who can't tell, that's a fire blower/stoker thingy.... it pumps out air)

Yay for family good times! Dad and Shelly, looking sharp!

It was kinda of foggy and overcast this day, but the trees up there are just so lush (that's for you, Shelly) that they take good pictures anyway.

Then, on Thursday, Stephen and I drove back to Jacksonville where he met up with friends to ride down to West Palm Beach for his roommate John's wedding on Saturday. I went back to Lakeland to finish moving out of my apartment and then drove down on Saturday morning to meet up with everyone for the wedding festivities. It was a very lovely wedding and we all had a good time. (It was also very helpful to get wedding ideas while I was there!)

John and Katie Kananen- June 30, 2007!

Stephen was the best man, and as such had to give a toast. He did a great job, even though John is totally not paying attention. He's actually looking at the cake in this picture. Geesh, priorities people! Hahahahaha.

Cute man in a tux+ me= pretty sweet!

On Sunday, as we drove back to Jacksonville, Stephen and I stopped in the Daytona area to scout out a few potential wedding locations. Sad to say, we had no luck. You'd think for Florida we'd have more gardens... but no. Just jungle.

On my first day as a Jacksonville resident, it rained. And it has rained every day since then. BUT, on my FIRST day in Jacksonville, it also rainbowed.

One of the great things about being in Jacksonville so far is that I have been able to catch up on my sleep some. This is Olivia and she is MUCH cuter than me when she sleeps, so she can be my sleep-representative in this picture.

In another sign of good fortune, Stephen found a lady bug on my car. And he looks like he might eat it! Thankfully, he didn't. And then it flew away.

Whew! Just writing about my adventures has tired me out (TLC how do you do it???) but I hope you have enjoyed our travels. Also, I'd like to say a big shout out to two other friends who recently got married: Nick and Sherry Tobin! (Nick is one of Stephen's other roommates and they got married on the 4th of July!) Yay! Okay, TTFN!