Allen Family Vacation 2009

Amanda and Nate came to visit from Hong Kong in late June.  It was GREAT having them back home for a few weeks!  We started their time at home with a family vacation to Cherry Grove.  It's been our tradition for over 20 years.  This picture represents one of the views that I love, it is a few blocks away from my grandparents' beach house.  I am probably overly proud of this picture, but I felt like I used a somewhat artistic angle, or object placement... who am I kidding... I don't know photography terms.  Oh well, you get the point. 

Brett and I spent a long weekend with my parents, Amanda and Nate soaking up the rays of the sun and catching up on life.  It's difficult having our family so spread out but that makes the time extra special when we are able to be together!  It is somewhat hard to make out what this picture is, but the dark spots are lots of little crabs on the shore at the boat dock as the water lowers with the tide.  
My parents took us all to see a wonderful show at the Carolina Opry called Good Vibrations (please excuse poor quality of the next few pictures).  The musicians in this show were extremely talented. They played some of the greatest hits of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.  
Here are my adorable parents! This was their second time at the show.  They loved it so much that they wanted to take us to it!  
Every two minutes of the show they switched to another song.  This went on for an hour and a half.  Brett and I knew all but 3-4 songs!  It was so much fun!  At one point, guess who joined in...that's right KISS!  
They had the Blues Brothers, Elvis, and Beatles impersonators, as well as their band playing hit songs from one of my fav classic bands - Journey. We really did have a blast!  
I wanted to throw this picture in because this is what has grown from the land that used to be Barefoot RV Resort. I worked there as a junior and senior in high school during the summer. I made tons of memories, met lots of great people, and I learned an appreciation for spotless bathhouses.  We had a lady named Mary who was the lead custodian.  We had to keep the 6 HUGE bathhouses on the campground spotless...what a task when you have hundreds of random people showering, and doing other things that I won't mention in the buildings.  We would have weekly skit shows where all of the "Summershiners" would act and perform.  That was probably one of the best parts of the job.   
As the finale of the skit show we would do "if we weren't staffers, we'll tell you what we'd be...if we weren't staffers____"  then we would each take a turn coming up with a rhyme of what we would be.  My favorite was when I was a nurse.  My rhyme was something like "A nurse I'd be.  I'd look real cute, lie real big and say 'this won't hurt a bit.' "  Ok, so the rhyme didn't really have to rhyme and this by itself may sound boring. But, I dressed like a nurse and my dad made the most awesome 3 feet long syringe out of PVC pipe with a huge silver needle on the end.  As soon as I said the last part I pulled it out from behind my back and everyone laughed.  After the show, people kept complimenting my dad's creation.  To this day, we still have this wonderful prop. I think it goes down in history as the and most creative prop.  Way to go Dad! 

Ok, enough reminiscing... thanks for sticking around.  The truth about this land is that a part of me is sad that the family camp is gone.  But for the sake of making money, they took paradise and put up a parking lot...what a concept!?!  I'm not bitter, even if I sound like it.  Maybe it was time to start with a clean slate and build something that will make new memories for other people.  No, the owners really did this just for money, but the building looks beautiful so I'll try to cut them some slack.  

Let's move on. Here's another one from the view at the boat dock at sunset.  There's just something about the glistening water that has a calming effect! I love the picture below.  Amanda enjoys experimenting with her new camera.  I stole this idea from Candace and Daniel (our wedding photographers) as they tend to include pictures of each other as they capture moments and memories.  

Despite the fact that we didn't take a family portrait...I promise that we were all there! It was a great trip and I am so glad that we could enjoy it!  Well, after a few days it was time to come back to reality.  Ally and Gary (the trainers) boarded Cali while we were gone.  She loves them, but once we picked her up... I think she was happy to be back home in my (our) arms...but I'll let the pic speak for itself.