A Day of Exploring Friday, June 30, 2006

Today, Erik and I decided to go exploring the island. We had read about a beach called "Step Beach", but on all of the local maps it was conspicuously missing! We had an idea of where it might be, so we took a chance and set out to find it. On our bike ride that day, we found a local gal who knew right where it was! This is a picture of me on the steps on the way down to "Step Beach". It turned out to be a lovely place, very calm and beautiful water. We napped on this beach for a few hours today.

After the beach, we set out on our bikes again. We happened upon this amazing bike trail. It went for miles, all through woods and grasslands! If only we had found this earlier in the week, I have a feeling we would have made this a daily ritual. It was so much fun! It's hard to tell in this picture, but Erik is way down at the bottom of a hill after speeding down. This was definitely one of our favorite spots.

Ok, this picture is cool because we set the timer on the camera and in only 10 seconds, Erik ran to the tree, climbed it, then posed! Dude, he must be part monkey.

Dos Beaches Were Cold, Mayn Thursday, June 29, 2006

We spent the morning on the Beach in Madaket. Ate some lunch, ran around, threw sand in Clint's eye...it was a lot of fun. The waves were huge and there were even some people surfing. Here's a terribly-staged slow-motion Baywatch-esque shot for your viewing pleasure. (Is Erik going to throw up?)

On the ride home, Sonya and I hopped off of the bus to tour a little bit of the island on our own. The rest of the crew hit the chocolatier in town...AGAIN!! Sony and I visited the oldest house on the island, which was built in 1686 and belonged to Jethro Coffin. After that we met up with the group and biked it out to the Sankaty Head lighthouse to get some night shots.

We stayed up playing our new favorite game again. Sonya lost the first Farkel and was introduced to the Pen 15 club (you'll have to ask her to explain). Another consequence was for the loser to allow everbody else to slap them in the face with a piece of lettuce. Clint lost that round. We tried our best to bruise him good, but Erik swung and missed - forfeitting his turn. Here's a great action shot of Rachel laying a good one across his cheek. And you'd think she'd have gone easy on him with it being their 4th anniversary and all.

A Night in Town Wednesday, June 28, 2006

We Spent the evening in town shopping and indulging in chocolate covered cranberries! Downtown Nantucket is really neat, with it's cobblestone streets and historic homes and churches.

We ate dinner at "The Tavern" down by the wharf. It's official...Erik now enjoys seafood! Especially Alaskan Halibut. We also grilled some fresh Nantucket Flounder the other night, which he was very fond of. I ended up liking it too, after I doused it in lemon juice. (If you know us, you know that we usuallly HATE seafood!)

As a nice ending to our evening in town, we took a stroll down the piers to see all of the huge boats in the harbour. What a beautiful place!

A Special Visit Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Our friend Tonia Hayes came out to the island today for a visit! She lives in Rhode Island, so she just took the ferry in for the day. We had so much fun catching up and seeing some of the sights in downtown Nantucket. This picture is taken in front of an old church, with one of the most spectacular views of the whole island from the steeple. We climbed all 94 steps up to the top. Here's a view through one of the binoculars...

We ended the evening tonight with our nightly ice cream run to the Sconset Market.  We've been throwing down the Ben & Jerry's every single night!

Biking to Quidnet Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Yesterday we biked to Quidnet Beach (about 3 miles one way). What a gorgeous day! We had to stop along the path to get a picture in front of the Skanky light house again.

We found some cool sand dunes at this beach, so naturally we decided to hurl ourselves over the edge and catch the action in mid-air.

Erik Is The Biggest Loser Sunday, June 25, 2006

Our day began with a trip to town for breakfast and shopping. We ate breakfast at Downyflake Doughnuts, which was spectacular. Just a tiny little place that has become a favorite for the locals (and us too). I was just bummed that, being known for their doughnuts, none of us even got one. I guess that's just an excuse to go back before we leave. After breakfast, we went to the Stop-And-Shop and loaded up on about 20 paper bags of groceries. Mind you, it was a total downpour the whole morning and we had a half mile walk to get to our bus stop to get us back out to 'Sconset. We made it to the bus stop, but had to wait 49 and 1/2 minutes for a bus!! Despite our morning "swim" home we had an awesome time and made some memories.

Below is a picture of the lighthouse at Sankaty Head Point (Skanky Point, as we call it) that we rode our bikes to that afternoon. It had cleared up a little and was a great ride out to the point. However, the fog was so thick that you could hardly see the ocean from the lighthouse.

The guys made taco salad for dinner and, I must say, it was excellent! After dinner Sony and I learned a new dice game called "Farkel". We played a different variation than the Wiki site, which consisted of only 5 dice and 1 Consequence. The consequence was basically something one might choose as a dare for the Truth or Dare game, which had to be done by the loser. The consequence for the game we played was for the loser to drink a concoction of any ingredients picked by the non-losers. There was one good thing about the consequencec, though...the loser got to see all of the ingredients beforehand and pick one that they didn't want to have mixed in. I bet you'll never guess who lost. Oh yeah...that's right...It was ME!! I totally lost and had to drink a shot glass full of red wine vinegar, Tobasco Sauce, Non-Fat French Vanilla CoffeeMate Creamer, and Pace Mild Salsa. It was chunky and I had to chew it rather than just throw it down. At least I was able to keep it down. Here's a picture of my consequence...

Nantucket for a WEEK! Saturday, June 24, 2006

We left Knoxville yesterday and made it up to Connecticut before heading out to Nantucket this morning. Our group of Nantucketer's include friends from college; Luke and Katie Dean and Clint and Rachel Spencer. We all got up at 4am to make it to Cape Cod by the 9am ferry out to the island. What an experience! First of all, it has rained ALL day, which is OK, we've enjoyed the foggy views and the rain-soaked clothes. The above picture is us on the ferry, arriving at port. The New England charm of the houses and buildings was already beginning to come in to view!

Here's our cottage! It's so awesome, and plenty of room for the 6 of us ALL WEEK. We love the quaint cottage life-style :) Nantucket has so much rich history and we're looking forward to drinking it all in. We're staying on the East side of the island called Sconset. The beach is less than a mile from our cottage, so we're hoping for sunny skies soon!

A Quick Trip to Nashville Friday, June 09, 2006

What a sweet boy! Gaines is getting so big...We drove to Nashville this past weekend to help our friends Will and Shawna Tucker get some yard work done for their open house. Erik and Will power-washed a porch and poured a concrete step while Sonya and Shawna got their hands dirty in the dirt (which was actually pure manure!!!!!!!!!) Gross.

Here's a picture of Gaines eating some of that dirt...

Diet Coke + Mentos = _______ (fill in the blank) Friday, June 09, 2006

Whilst perusing a favorite technical site for help with Cascading Style Sheets, I came across a link for this site...

EepyBird.com - Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment

I've seen some cool stuff with Diet Coke and Mentos before, but this takes the cake...or takes the freshmaker (whichever you prefer)!

Memorial Day with the Emersons Friday, June 02, 2006

Wow, we are SO high-tech now. After months and months of ignoring this super-fly site, we are now committed to updating everyone on the events of our life.

We were blessed to have our dear friends Brett, April, and Caden Emerson stay with us this past Monday and Tuesday. We always have so much fun together. Their 7 month-old son, Caden was a little bundle of joy! He's always smiling...(minus the car ride home from Babies R Us!)

We are going to miss them SO much when they leave for Africa this August. We are praying for their safe travel as they go to France first, then on to Africa to help bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the Kabiye people. Keep the Emerson's in your prayers.