Vacation in Tennessee

So, I guess it's about time I should write another blog. :)

School is less than a month away! How scary but exciting. This semester I am starting clinicals for the first time, which is a lot of responsiblity and will be close to what I will be doing in my career for the rest of my life. So, it's a huge deal to me! I think I will have an easier time adjusting than other people I have known since I will be able to have the same schedule as Brittany AND Tori so we are at least all in this together!

Last week I went on vacation to Tennessee in the Sevierville/Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area. It was so much fun. We drove there on Monday, leaving at 4:30 AM and getting in Tennessee that afternoon. Everyone was tired that night so we basically decided who had which rooms and beds and then we went to sleep. The next day, on Tuesday, I mostly just fished and hung around the cabin. I wasn't feeling too good that day so I took it easy. Unfortunately, while I was fishing on the river rocks I still managed to get a huge gash in my toe! I used my nursing skills and cleaned it though. ;)

The next day was Wednesday. As soon as I woke up and had eaten breakfast, Jessica, Allie, BJ, Dillon, Lisa, and I left and went horseback riding. My horse's name was Pepper, Jessica had Rooster, Dillon had King Kong, and I don't remember the rest. I know Allie's horse had a really long name like Mountain Hawk or something. My horse was really slow, but then the guide gave me a stick to hit it with, and the horse decided it was going to start randomly running even without me having to touch it! I guess Pepper did not want to get beat!! Poor horsies! Well, horseback riding took way longer than we expected and we ended up going straight to Dixie Stampede without going back to the lodge to change. (Did I mention our whole family was staying in a lodge we rented out and it was on the side of a mountain next to a river?)

Dixie Stampede was the bomb dot com as usual! I got to see basically the best banjo player in the world in the preshow which was... interesting. He would play the banjo behind his back and crazy antics like that. The actual Dixie Stampede went great except for one part. The guy who jumps through a flaming loop while standing up riding with one foot on each horse fell off the horses because one of the horses tripped while jumping through the loop. The horsie had burned its foot on the flaming loop and was trying to put its foot out in the dirt in the arena. You could hear the whole audience going awwww. Everything else went excellent. I sat on the South side of course and the South won so I was super excited about that. So after that I went back to the lodge and it was nighttime by the time we got back.

The next day I woke up and took a plane trip over the mountains! It was unbelievably gorgeous. I hate the pictures I took because they in no way can really show how beautiful it was. The Smoky Mountains are known for being .. well... smoky, so I think that kind of got in the way of perfect pictures but it was a blast. I thought I would be really scared in such a tiny plany (it was a four seater), but the pilot was very experienced and was a Christian so that really gave me nothing to worry about. He told us several interesting stories. One of them was how a guy had come with him to dump out the ashes of his wife who had died from cancer. About a year later another man came back and dumped the ashes of the guy who had spread the ashes of his wife a year earlier. He had also died of cancer.

After the plane ride, I went back to the lodge and tubed down the river the rest of the day. I fished a little bit Friday and tubed a lot. There is a pretty big waterfall (for tubing down, anyways) and I had heard horror stories all week about how bad it was from everyone who had already gone that way. I decided to be adventurous and went down the waterfall even though everyone else got out right before it and got back in after it. It was actually really fun and I didn't even get scratched! Then right after that was a deep part of a river with a big rock overlooking it, and I jumped off the rock into the water. It was very cool! The last time I went that day I slipped on a rock and busted my hip on a rock, and there is a ridiculous bruise there now. It kind of put a damper on my fun, but not too much! haha

The next day we left at about eleven in the morning because we were afraid Bonnie was going to get bad so we did not want to be driving home through a hurricane! All in all this was a great vacation and I had the best time!

Although you've heard it before, Freedom is not free...

Heartbreaking... keep these people in your prayers, and never forget to thank soldiers and those who have lost loved ones.

Every fourth of July, Americans get to celebrate freedom. We have so much freedom, we can burn our own flag, berate our own president, and every four years, we have an option to change the leader of our country! I think a lot of times we forget that we have so much to be grateful for. Back when our country was founded, a type of country that was by the people and for the people was just unheard of. The American Revolution was not just a revolution for American, but for countries around the world. It gave the French people a hunger for the type of freedom we had, sparking their own civil unrest. Not that I think violence is a good thing, but can good come from a bad thing? If God allows it, yes.

Today, it can be easier to think of countries with people who are able to vote and decide on their future than those that can not. I think that is a small part of why so many people are going back to giving power to the government. Back to the American Revolution. It cost many lives. But do you think it was worth it? I do. I know the people of that time probably were uncertain, had fears, had their hearts crushed. Many who suffered never got to enjoy freedom as we do today. However, when the rest of the world was able to see a peaceful transfer of power (also known as a different political party taking control of the white house), it was to create a new precendent for the rest of the world.

I'm not saying that wars are good. I'm not saying that you should burn your flag or berate the president. I'm not saying you should do much of anything. I'm just pointing out the fact that you are allowing to think or do any of these because of what people who were willing to make a sacrifice were willing to do.

Much like sin. God hates sin. But he was willing to die for us anyways. He sacrificed himself for us even though we are drawn to something he is unable to tolerate. God gave us freedom from sin, something we did not have to pay for, but something we can enjoy. Just because we are loved. I am so lucky to serve such an awesome God and to be apart of a country with people willing to die for my freedom.