The First Thanksgiving

Today was Miss Eliza Grace's first Thanksgiving! She tried the yam/turkey baby food mixture for the first time, and she loved it. She especially loved the new bib she got from Aunt Lindy that says "I'm Stuffed!" Everyone else got stuffed today too. This morning Sarah, Joel, and Mom went off to play flicker ball with some of Sar and Joel's professors and classmates. I guess that flicker ball is a traditional football-type game that the department plays each Thanksgiving. The rest of us just slept in and took it easy this morning. We had a tasty Thanksgiving lunch/dinner complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, yam souffle, corn, rolls, and a wide assortment of pies and pumpkin cheesecake. Thanksgiving is surely the greatest and most delicious holiday of the year!! This afternoon we went for a beautiful fall Thanksgiving walk in the nice South Carolina weather. It really is beautiful here with all of the trees and fall colors. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Peas and Poets

Look at cute Eliza eating peas for breakfast! She loves her peas and sweet potatoes. Peas are a little messy, but they surely taste good! Today we had some fun adventures up in North Carolina. We had planned on going to the Biltmore estate in Asheville, but decided instead to go to the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock instead. Carl Sandburg was a famous poet and author who wrote the famous six-volume bio. of Abe Lincoln. We had so much fun there! It was a beautiful fall day, and the tour of the house was great. I especially loved that Carl Sandburg had a house full of books--someone who loved books as much as I do! We love visiting national parks, and this was the closest one to Sarah and Joel, and they hadn't ever been there, so it made the perfect day trip today.

After visiting the house, we went up to Historic Downtown Hendersonville for a late lunch. We ate at this really cool old soda fountain place there on Main Street. It was a fun full day, and we enjoyed seeing the beautiful North Carolina countryside. We are all excited for Thanksgiving Day tomorrow!

Fran, Family, and Fun!

Hooray--Mom, Dad, and Rich came to South Carolina yesterday! It is so fun to have them here. I was able to see Mom when she came to visit me last month, but I haven't seen Dad and Rich since the end of May. I also haven't seen the Barretts since the end of May--that's way too long!! Yesterday Sarah and Joel had class so we took Eliza to her school, then they went to theirs, and I got to hang out at Clemson University. I spent the morning at the library finding stuff for my research paper (no vacation from school work for me!), and then I went to the bookstore and skulked around campus. I even got to meet FRAN MAINELLA, former Director of the National Park Service!! She now works in Sarah and Joel's department, so they introduced me to her. It's kind of funny--she has her Park Service uniform in a frame in her office :-) Sar, Joel, and I had lunch together, then they had more classes, so I hung out for a while and went exploring along College Avenue. Clemson is a really pretty campus, and it's overflowing with history. John C. Calhoun's house, named Fort Hill, is located right in the center of campus. JC's son-in-law, Thomas Clemson, is the one who donated the land for the university. After they were done with classes, we went to the airport over in Greenville to pick up the rest of the fam. We had so much fun together yesterday evening, and Baby Eliza loved having so many people to play with. Today we all slept in (including Eliza!), had yummy bread pudding for breakfast (very Southern!), and then went off for a day of adventures. We first went for a drive through the university's forest retreat located in a beautiful setting right on a lake. The first picture shown up top is of Dad, Mom, me, and Rich there by a pretty little waterfall. Then we went to the little town of Pendleton, which is full of fun antique shops, cool old houses, and historic markers (that's heaven if you ask me!). We ate lunch at this fun little place called Farmer's Hall where the community leaders used to meet to talk politics back before the Civil War. Word on the street is that it was there at Farmer's Hall that John C. Calhoun first started discussing ideas of secession and states' rights with other politicians. We had a really tasty lunch there, and I loved the shrimp and grits I ate. Normally I'm not a huge shrimp fan, but I had shrimp and grits one time in Mississippi and loved it, so I wanted to try it today and it was soooooooo great. After Pendleton, we went over to Clemson and went on a tour of Fort Hill (remember, that's John C. Calhoun's house). I was in historical administration heaven!!! The second picture up there is of the parlor at Fort Hill. JC and Thomas Clemson gathered up a bunch of cool furniture over the years. Today we saw a chair that TC got from Leopold (with Leopold's likeness carved into the arms of the chair), some chairs from Mt. Vernon (one of which was with George Washington during the Revolutionary War), and a sideboard JC got from Henry Clay made out of wood from the USS Constitution! I love touring historic homes and seeing a bunch of things we talk about in class every day. When we went outside at Fort Hill, there was a maintenance guy up on the roof sweeping leaves off. The problem was that he was smoking a cigarette--bad idea on an old, wood home with wood shingles!! Visions of the Windsor Ruins along the Natchez Trace kept flashing through my head. That mansion, one of the biggest in Mississippi, burned down in 1891 when a cigarette was accidentally dropped on the floor. The third picture is of the cutest member of our little touring party, Miss Eliza Grace! She was so cute and happy all day today, even though she's had a bit of a cold. She is so smiley all of the time. Today while the rest of us were in an antique shop, Dad was sitting outside with Eliza and the stroller. Some really old ladies walked by and saw Eliza, and they just couldn't get over how cute she is. They were making such a fuss, and she was smiling from ear to ear. The people at lunch today also thought she was adorable--probably because she is! After hanging out on campus, we went to some of the fun gift shops over on College Avenue to find some Clemson souvenirs. There are Clemson souvenirs everywhere around here! Everything is orange, no matter where you go. It has been such a fun day today, and the adventures will continue tomorrow. We're planning to head up to Asheville, North Carolina, to visit the Biltmore--one of the Vanderbilt estates. Hooray for the Carolinas! It's really pretty here.

Away Down South, in Dixie!

Ahhh, after my four-month stay in the Land of Lincoln, it has been quite refreshing to return to the South for a few days. I do miss the South, and I miss the West. Illinois is actually a little closer to the east coast than the west coast, so maybe they should start calling the Midwest the Mideast? Just kidding--I guess that wouldn't really work.

Yesterday was a long day of travel, but I made it to South Carolina in the evening. I loved riding the train from Mattoon up to Chicago--it was so comfy that I pretty much slept the entire way. It was kind of crazy trying to get from Union Station to O'Hare, but I made it all right and had a few hours to kill at the airport before leaving. I have a much greater appreciation now for all of the transportation corridors I passed through yesterday--after working on the transportation corridors museum exhibit project. I find that I now love train stations, towns centered around train stations, and all kinds of other seemingly weird things.

It has been so fun to be here with Sarah, Joel, and Eliza, and I'm looking forward to when Mom, Dad, and Rich join us tomorrow! Eliza was sad when she woke up this morning, but it was really cute that when she saw me she got a big smile on her face. It's almost like she remembered me from before. We've had all kind of fun today, going to stake conference, eating enchiladas, and visiting haunted plantation homes. We went to this one house named Woodburn, and the sun had already gone down, so they were giving tours by flashlight. When we went upstairs and they were talking about the ghost that lives there, Sarah and I got a little creeped out. Well, I'm totally pooped--I think that the last three-and-a-half months of sleep deprivation are finally catching up with me!

National Treasure

I think I have seen the movie "National Treasure" at least 15 or 20 times--and I still love it each time I watch it just as much as I did the first time :-) Two of those 20 times have been within the last two days! On Wednesday night, Greg and I watched the movie up at his parents' house, and tonight Laurie came over for dinner to help me eat some of my leftovers, and "National Treasure" was on TV. She hadn't ever seen it before (it should be a required movie for all history people to see!), so we had to watch it--and she loved it. It worked out perfectly for her to come over because she had the opposite problem from me--she had no food in her fridge, and I had too much, so we helped each other out. She, Dan, and I are the only HA students still in town tonight. Everyone else has already skipped town. I couldn't invite Dan for dinner though, because I think he totally despises me. :-( I think I have thrown a kink in the team dynamics for our class, but hopefully if we all have some time apart during Thanksgiving and Christmas, things will blow over a bit.

Charleston has frozen over! This morning when I looked outside, the lake behind the apartment was frozen for the first time. Maybe we could try ice skating on it sometime? It was never really deep enough (or clean enough) to swim in, but maybe to ice skate on.

Even though I didn't have classes today, it was still a busy day. I had to wrap up some things at school, and I also ended up needing to show a prospective student for next year's program around campus. She was a super nice girl, and would be in the same situation coming to Eastern that I was--coming from out-of-state, a little nervous about moving to the middle of the cornfields, worried about missing her family, and nervous about finding an apartment. I think I was able to answer some of her questions, so hopefully things will work out for her. Later this afternoon, I picked Dr. Hardeman up from a meeting and took him home. His kitty, Louise, was outside, and she is so cute! She's totally fat and friendly :-) Well, I'm off to finish packing, and then it's up bright and early tomorrow to head to catch the train in Mattoon. Greg is going to come pick me up and we'll go have breakfast somewhere before he drops me off at the train station. From Mattoon, the train will head up to Champaign and then to Chicago. It will drop me at Union Station, then I'll catch another train towards the airport, but it won't go all the way there, so I'll catch a bus which will then take me to the airport. Catherine was worried about me today because she thought she heard that there was a transportation strike in Chicago, but then she realized that she was getting things confused with the writers' guild strike going on right now. So hopefully there won't be too many problems getting to the airport. From Chicago, it's off to South Carolina to spend the week at Sarah and Joel's. Hooray for a week-long Thanksgiving break!!!