Wow….what a great weekend. Seriously.

Saturday morning, my little sis and I drove up to Lake Lanier to meet
some friends at their lakehouse. From there, we drove two
hours to Lake Ocoee in Tennesee where ensued some wild and quite
amusing goodtimes. Now, I’ve never gone white-water rafting before, but
for a first time, this was quite the experience. I was seated
left-front in the raft and would soon discover that this was the best
place to get completely soaked. It didn’t matter, though, because
before we had even made our first strokes downstream, it was pouring
rain. Thunder, lightning, the whole shabang. And this before we even
reached a class 3 rapid! So it was a 10 mile trip overall with three
segments–a portion of which was included in the ’96 summer
Olympics–and some awesome rapids. We never went beyond class 4, but
they were still pretty rough and incredibly fun. Even though we were
freezing and quite tired by the end of the day, it was a great
experience and I couldn’t think of a better way to help bring my summer
to a fun end.

And today, after a great sermon at church on the sixth petition of the
Lord’s Prayer (if you’re interested, feel free to ask)  we headed
to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch as an early celebration of my
b-day….including a lovely rendition of “Happy Birthday” performed by
my family and several servers as well as a very cool gift. It was goodtimes, indeed. I mean
seriously, how can you beat lunch with the fam at a place that has
amazing cheesecake??

Not to mention a phonecall from the one and only Gregory Stokes that
just made my day/weekend complete. I love talking with you Greg! Only 6
more days till I’m back in Chillsdale with all those cool folks.