Labor Day Weekend SPECIAL REPORT!

Hello faithful readers and newcomers! There is a lot to discuss this beautiful labor day weekend, so let's get started.

Well the honeymoon was great. Even though we didn't get to go where we'd planned due to the hurricane we had a fantastic time in Chattanooga, Knoxville, Gatlinburg, and North Carolina. I'll get some pictures up as soon as possible, although I gotta tell you we didn't take that many. Sorry to disappoint. We would like to give major thanks to Nathan Johnson who went above and beyond the call of duty and got us rooms in both Knoxville and Chattanooga. The Chattanoogan was A-MAZING! Thank you so much for all you did for us. We would have been staying in the basement of one of our parents' houses if not for you. So thank you again and again.

School started this week, and it's going to be an interesting year to say the least. I have six kids in my class, and they range from accelerated to non-English readers, to well, to everything else. I'm excited to see how this year is going to pan out. I was so used to having more than 20 kids in my class before I got to Virginia, then I got used to having thirteen last year, and now six. I think we'll have SO much time on our hands that it will be scary. That means I have to work harder at keeping them occupied. We'll see what happens.

This past weekend Sarah and I decided to take a walk in old town and decided we'd head into the "Shop around the Corner", or as it's known here, Winchester Book Gallery. It's just a little book shop on the corner of old town. Some of you may have even been in there. Sarah was looking around, saw some photos and paintings from locals and said, "I wonder what you'd have to do to get your own photos in here? I'm too shy to ask though." Good thing she married me, cause I'm not shy and I asked them directly, what's up? How do we get her stuff in here. Well turns out they do "First Fridays" where they bring in local artists, and show all their stuff on the first Friday of each month. They even bring drinks and food. We're excited to check it out this Friday and maybe even try to get some of our own stuff in there next Month. Something else interesting also happened there, but I'm gonna save it for the end, because it also has something to do with the blog.

Today Sarah and I had a jam-packed Labor day. We had a picnic with our friends from church. We went to Sherando Park near Winchester, we had hot dogs, beans, watermelon, and peach tea! It was an extravaganza of food! Then we went for a walk through one of the nature trails. Finally we ended up on the tennis court. There were six players and only four rackets so Sarah and I just shot some hoops for a little bit. Then the others came and played basketball while we went to play tennis. We had so much fun playing tennis that we thought we'd go buy some rackets next week and make it a weekly thing. We were having so much fun playing singles and doubles that we played for about an hour and a half. I didn't even know I could play that well, but I felt pretty confident after a while.

Finally I have one more little piece of information and a fun little weekly game for my visitors to play. You may have noticed the poll at the top of the blog. I got the idea from several things this week. When we went to the book store the owner and I started talking about how we lived right down the road. He started a mini-movie rental in his shop called The Underground, and he started it especially for people who lived in the area. He had quite the large selection, their were all bought according to his taste, and he and I have very similar taste. He's a little more into foreign films than I am, but action, comedy, drama, and indie, we're spot on. We talked for a while and struck up a quick friendship. We'll probably be spending a lot more time in there now. That got me thinking a lot about al the movies I've seen. Anyway, Sunday I wore my new suit to church. We ended up having a church picnic and we were outside. Needless to say I left my coat in the car hanging up nicely. It reminded me of a movie I hadn't seen in forever! It took me a day to figure out what the name of the movie was, but I finally pulled it out of the black morass of my mind. Because of all this it's time to introduce a new addition to the blog, it's the Everything I Need to Know I Learned from the Movies quiz! Just check it out in the top right hand of the blog. Each week you'll get a hint, and then several choices one of which is correct. I'll put a new one up and let everyone know what the guesses were from the last week. Make sure to come back each week to find out the answer and see if you got it right.