I have like 1 million pictures from my wedding that I am still trying to organize and scrapbook. It will be the death of me to finish it. I always say to people that when I am rich I am going to... something something. I figure if I say "when I am rich," and not "if I am ever rich." then maybe I might just be rich one day. Optimism!! Wouldn't that be awesome, to finally have some mulla. haha Anyways, my "when I am rich" thought today is, that when I am rich I am going to pay some incredibly crafty person to scrapbook my photos for me. That way it won't take 2 years to get done.

But every time I look through these darn photos, I remember how fun it was. Ohh and stressful too.

Nathan's Family arrived as the Atlanta Airport on July 27th at like 7:00 in the morning.

We hiked Stone Mountain first thing. It was really hot, but worth it when we all got up there. It is so beautiful.

That night we attended the Stone Mountain Lazer show. It was great.

Nathan and I at the Atlanta Aquarium

Everyone in the Peterson Party. Except me cause I took the picture.

That is 7 of Nathan's 11 Brothers and Sisters.

The Atlanta Temple is being renovated, so we have to drive to Birmingham Alabama to go to one. Here we are.....I can't figure out how to flip these darn pictures.

This is after shopping. Nathan and I finally got Braves Hats!!! Waahoo

CHURCH

Tailgating before the Braves Game.

TURNER FIELD

This is Braves game #2 of the trip. If you can believe it, I was dancing crazy in the stands to get on the Huge TV. AND I MADE IT! I made the cut, I got on the screen. But what made me so mad was that Nathan had just left to go get some food, and he missed it and didn't believe me. But being that I had 10 other witnesses, I think we convinced him.

Sleeping conditions. They were a little cramped in my one bedroom apartment. But we had fun.

4 air Mattresses, 1 Hammock, 2 people on the floor, and 1 bed= Hard to get to work on monday, tuesday, and wednesday.

and also = good stories and grumpy kids

Overall it was a really fun trip. We saw a lot, and had a lot of fun. It was good to share our new little adventure with family. Being that it is going by so quick, I doubt that a lot of people will even be able to come and visit. But we are having so much fun here. We love our families so much, but it is sure nice to have some space for a bit. Be on our own agenda!

Well I better get going.... or in Southern Drawl... I better start fixin to get off this durn computer. My dadgum fingers are givin me all sorts a trouble. See ya'll later

A week worth of adventure

It was my birthday on July 2^nd, so Nathan and I decided to take a road trip. My boss was gracious enough to give me time off, and Nathan had a break in school. And at this time in our life, time together has been few and far between.

The fun all started on the 1^st of July because my boss took me out to this delicious dinner. They treated to me to one of the best meals I have ever eaten. (I am starting to salivate.) At dinner, they handed me a card. Inside the card was all these cute little things that the little girls I nanny wrote. Like “Happy B-day Jana! Funk this party out!” and “Your party is know!” I think she meant “now!” Haha. Anyways it was cute. Inside the card they gave me a gift card to the iTunes store. Then a couple minutes after they handed me a smallish box. Inside was a i-touch!! WOOOHOOO I almost started crying I was so excited. Then they proceeded to tell me a bunch of really nice things, and it just warmed my heart!!

That night I went home and Nathan had got of work a little early. When I walked through the door, he greeted me with and ice-cream cake! MY FAVORITE! So we dug into that, packed, slept, and then we were ready for morning. I really wanted to go country dancing in Nashville, so that was the plan. When we arrived in Nashville we went to the hotel and then headed off to downtown. It was so cool there and I couldn’t believe how many musicians were there. Every bar we passed, and there are a lot, had a band or a single singer in there entertaining. We heard this really loud music playing by the river, so we went to check it out. It actually happened to be Chuck Wicks preparing for a concert. (He is the guy that sings “Steeling Cinderella.”) So low and behold there is a free concert that night honoring my birthday!! Haha J/k Actually honoring a boats 25th birthday, if you could believe! So instead of country dancing we went to that, but I made Nathan promise to take me on the way home.

So off the Columbia, Missouri we went. That is where my cousin Kera lives. It was so good to see family, and to be with them on the 4^th of July. The 4^th was a lot of fun. All of her 5 kids just loved the fireworks. We went to see a neighboring neighborhood’s firework show. I thought it was going to be kinda lame, but it was one of the best I have ever seen. The must have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on it.

Monday morning we woke up early and left for Nauvoo, Illinois. We got there at about 11 so had a whole day to cram stuff in. We started at the visitor center, then had a wagon tour. Then we toured all around all of the houses of the LDS Pioneers. I learned that a lot of saying we have today come from the print shops. Such as being called a “ding bat” or the phrase “mind your P’s and Q’s.” The p’s and q’s one is because the had to enter the letters in one by one, and if they didn’t do it right p’s and q’s could quickly turn into b’s and d’s!

I loved Nauvoo, and I plan on returning there again one day. I have never quite understood the hard work that the Latter Day Saints put into this land when they moved from Kirtland. The town went from tiny, to huge in less than 6 years. It went from a marsh to a fertile and beautiful piece of land. And all the work was done with faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ. The reason why the knowledge of how hard they worked affected me so much, is because without understanding there efforts, it is hard to understand how big of a sacrifice it was for them to pack up and leave everything they had worked so hard for. There is a trail on Parley’s street that represents where the Latter Day Saints lined up their wagon’s, waiting to cross the Mississippi River. We took a walk down that trail and I started to really feel for the pioneers. They were so righteous, and so willing to do what the Lord asked them to do. They literally left behind 6 years of hard work, which included an beautiful hand crafted temple, homes, farms, animals, businesses, and precious belongings. Most of them never sold their homes. They literally left them to people who had been hateful, and who killed their friend and Prophet. When they patiently waited to cross the river, they looked back upon this great thriving city that they had build, and I am sure with tears in their eyes, gazed upon the most beautiful temple, and said goodbye.

If that was not enough for me to think about, I thought of how they new how risky this was, and how they and their children might die in the effort, but the pressed forward anyways. And the most impressive part, is that very few times did anyone ever complain. How amazing is that. I have so many luxuries, yet I still find time to complain. This gave me a new outlook on life.

So after that extremely amazing day, we decided that it was better to sleep in our car rather then to pay 80 buck-a-roo’s for a hotel. So we did!! That is another long yet hilarious story, but if you ask nice I will tell you all about it. (I am just getting sick of typing today.) Then we took a tour with the reorganized Mormon Church, or actually now they are known as the Living Christ Church. They own Joseoh Smith’s house and a few others that we wanted to see. It was so frustrating to hear some of the crazy stuff that the tour guide had to say. WEIRD!! But it was great to see. Then off to Carthage Jail, where the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed. Once again incredibly spiritual.

After all of this we went back to Kera and Dan’s house and stayed one more night. Then back home we went. But I never did go country dancing! Nathan promised me another time though. Maybe even in Nashville! Over all it was one of the best vacations I have been on. It is crazy how you can go on vacations and they are usually always awesome, but there is something about going just you and you best buddy/ husband that makes is way more enjoyable.

Okay so I will tell you the funny story about us camping in Nauvoo…

So, we decided to sleep in the car instead of paying for a dumpy hotel. So I got everything situated and folded my seats down and tried to get comfortable. (did I ever mention my new car, it is a hatch back, so not toooooo bad for camping but still way small especially for Nathan.) We had one blanket, one pillow, and one roll of toilet paper. We also had some camping chairs and a cooler that we had to put outside because there was no room for them in the car. I gave nate my pillow and I kept the blanket. I filled a shirt full of dirty clothes and used that for a pillow…I was set.

Our night was rather long, because we were so uncomfortable and about every hour we had to start the car and turn on the air conditioning. Anyways, Nathan can’t sleep, and finally it is like 5 in the morning and he just decided that he was going to go find a laundry mat, and wash his clothes. Not that he didn’t have clothes to wear, but he had a outfit in mind for this hot hot hot weather. So we go to the laundry mat! (keep in mind that I am sleeping in the trunk curled up in a little ball and I have no idea what is going on.) I remember him asking if I had change, and I said no. Apparenty we only had a 20 dollar bill so that kinda frustrated Nathan. So what does he do?? He turns the 20 bucks into quarters. He gets everything washed and dryed and then we head back to the camp site. I asked nate if he remembered the cooler and camp chairs, and unfortunately he didn’t. So we head up to our camp site to pick them up and then we were going to be on our way. Well, right when we get up there, the camp ranger parks right behind us and boxes us in. He gets out and comes to talk to us. He asked us if we had stayed there and if we had a parking permit? Yes and no we responded. Then he proceeded to charge us 20 bucks for the camping site we parked on. Of coarse we were upset and we argued a little.

We said “dude we slept in a car, we could have parked anywhere and not got charged.

So the dude says to us “sorry, I can’t make exceptions for anyone. If you would have parked down the hill a little you would have only been charged 10 dollars, but you are in an electrical camp site.”

By this time we knew he had his panties in a bunch, but we still asked “Just cut us a deal, we came in at like midnight and it was pouring down rain and we couldn’t see anything, and besides that, you can tell, that we didn’t even use any electricity and there are like 40 more campsites open, so it is not like we took someone’s spot.”

So he proceeds to tell us no no no, and I told nate just to pay so we could get on our way.

So we are both kind of frustrated that we got horrible sleep and ad to pay 20 bucks for it. While right next door these guys are sleeping like kings in there million dollar motor homes. For some dumb reason we thought that the church owned it, and it might be cheap. Our mistake! haha

We don’t have towels, so we each took showers and dried off with our clothes we wore to bed! Nate put his new clean outfit on, and I felt refreshed from my nice shower. So already we are having quite the morning, and trying to not to be too grouchy. The very next thing I did, is ask nate to take the food out of the cooler and throw it away, it was no good. So what happens next… Nathan walks to throw away the food and slips on this muddy slime stuff that cover the cement in Nauvoo. At the time I was eating my breakfast of champions of a Snikers bar and a banana, and started laughing to hard I started seriously choking and almost died. What had happened is that when he fell his whole side got covered in this muddy slimy mess on his new clean clothes. So that was about it, Nathan by then was in a bad mood. He told me that he was just going back to the laundry mat and he was going to throw his clothes in the dryer. And I argued with him and finally convinced him that he couldn’t put muddy clothes in a dryer because blab la bla. Not that this next thing is too bad, but because the whole morning and night before were crazy it was the cherry on top. He grabbed some new shorts to wear and the zipper broke off. Then I grabbed for the water in the back seat and spilled it all over his seat and his hat!!

The day turned out to be not too bad, but trying to be in a good mood after all of that way hard. I don’t know if I can really give the story justice writing so quickly, but it was the morning from H. E. Double hockey sticks! Haha

Hope you enjoyed!

Jana