Meeker Family Vacation 2021--Charleston, SC

     We drove into Charleston late afternoon on Friday.  We had a GHOST TOUR at the Old Charleston Jail booked for our only night here.  HOLY MOLY!  The BEST GHOST TOUR WE'VE EVER BEEN ON!!!  

    In all seriousness, this place has a TRAGIC past.  Unbelievable HORRIBLE things have taken place on this property so there's NO DOUBT in my mind that this place is truly haunted (Yes, I'm a believer of ghosts.  Always have been).  Our guide was incredible.  She's done hundreds of tours of this place and has been involved in hundreds of formal paranormal investigations (on many TV many times).  We were in a group of about 15 people.  There was a mom by herself with 3 teenage kids.  Her one daughter was on crutches.  The tour had been going for maybe 10 minutes with this poor teenage girl began hyperventilate and started to pass out.  I immediately called Chris over to help her sit down while I took her crutches (her mom was aware but really wanted to snap a few more pics before attending to her daughter😂).  So no biggie, our guide was a pro--NOT her first time dealing with a situation like this.  We got her calmed down, sitting down, water to drink, and then she and her family exited the tour with another guide.  (I told the mom that if her boys wanted to finish the tour that I would watch over them but the brothers were SUPER freaked out and wanted to leave immediately).  So that put a definite "chill" into the rest of our tour.  I snapped a lot of pictures but I'm only posting the ones that I "may" have caught my own evidence.

    Throughout the tour, Chris stayed right by me--because I didn't let him get far from me--but Max and Tatum kept near the guide.  Max has always had an overactive imagination and can be extra "twitchy" when uncomfortable but apparently he was super extra twitchy this night that our guide was actually "keeping an eye on him."  The last area of the tour was in the "solitary confinement" area.  The guide was telling us about how for a time, this place was not only a jail but also an insane asylum (many times these people were kept in the solitary confinement area).  She also talked about one of the "regular" ghosts that hang out in this area.  It's a man that crawls around on all fours and likes to touch the bottom of people's legs.  Right at that moment, we hear Max yell, "OH YO!!!!"  Apparently he had been being touched ALL night by this guy.  The tour guide even commented on how she KNEW he was being messed with and she had been keeping an eye on him all night😂👻

Our Ghost caught on camera???:  

I snapped the following two pictures within seconds of each other of the same location--WHAT is that bright blob in the lower left corner of the second pic???👻💀

    An unforgettable tour for sure.  This ended up being our most favorite event of our entire trip.  The jail is apparently going to be closed for the next five years starting in August for some much needed renovations--good luck to those construction workers for sure😂. I'm so glad we were able to do this while it was still open!

Meeker Family Vacation 2021--Macon/Savannah, GA

    We were so excited to finally use our flight credit from last summer.  Instead of going to Hawaii (like we were supposed to last summer and it seemed that EVERYONE was headed there this summer) we decided to check out the south.  Myrtle Beach has been on our bucket list for years so we made a trip of it.

    We flew into Atlanta, GA.  On our way to Savannah, we stopped in Macon, GA to visit one of my most favorite college roommates--Jill S.  It was so great to catch up with her and her hubby, Rob (also one of my favorite friends from my NMSU days:). We were eating outside and then heavy rain came out of nowhere it seemed.  So we quickly wrapped up our dinner and conversation and I forgot to take a pic!!!  UGH!!!  So anyways, it really did happen and I LOVED seeing Jill & Rob.

    We drove in the heavy rain (hurricane Elsa I believe) into Savannah.  Quickly ran up to our hotel rooms completely drenched but happy to be out of a plane/car and done traveling for the day.

    We woke up the next morning and hit the ground running.  On our to do list:

1-Bonaventure Cemetery 

2-Downtown Savannah--find the Forrest Gump bench

3-Eat at "The Tattooed Moose"

Bonaventure Cemetery:

Just an old cemetery (first burials in 1850)--I know, probably only our family would visit a cemetery first.  It was BEAUTIFUL!  I loved all the Spanish Moss in the trees.  Fun Spanish Moss facts:  It's not harmful to the trees and it got its name because it looked like the Spanish Conquistador beards:).  Thankfully the rain stayed away so we enjoyed a beautiful/cool morning walk around.  Using Google (seriously HOW did we live without cell phones before???) we were able to visit the most famous grave in the cemetery--Little Gracie Watson who was the only child (daughter) of a Hotel Manager in Savannah.  Gracie was adored by the guests and hotel staff often performing songs/dances for them.  She passed away on April 22, 1889 at the age of 6 after a brief episode of pneumonia.  Her grief-stricken father commissioned a sculptor to create a statue of his beloved daughter.  We even found a small Meeker family lot!  

Savannah:

We had a great time walking around downtown Savannah looking at beautiful, historic homes and sites.  We found the park bench that Forrest Gump sat on in the movie, a really old historic home that Lafayette stayed in for 2 days in 1825, and the beautiful "Gingerbread House."  We also hunted down some"Leopold's Ice cream" but instead of standing in the CRAZY long line of the ice cream shop, we found a sandwich shop that sold the famous ice cream in cups.

Spanish Moss

Cute little Raccoon!!!

    We then headed into town to find the bench that Forrest Gump sat on and to see some of the cool historic sites/homes.

Early stucco had seashells in it:)

Lafayette stayed here!!!

These stairs were crazy steep!
Really hard/unintended workout:)

Tattooed Moose:

Fun little restaurant we read about online.  We tried "boiled peanuts" here--didn't love them but hey, at least we tried:). Good food and even better live entertainment.

After seeing everything we set out to see, we loaded up and drove to Charleston, SC!

BYU Softball Camp 2021

     Oh gosh how I MISSED this trip last year and I could hardly wait for the girl's trip to UT this year!!!  So Amber and I headed up to BYU with our girls for softball camp.  We were excited to be escaping the 117 degree weather in AZ but were headed to 100 degrees in UT (which is arguably quite similar:). Well, our flight was delayed twice before we even left AZ which made us late to BYU so we were a little frazzled upon arrival but managed to get the girls all checked in and onto their teams--for the first time in 3 camps, they FINALLY got onto the same team!!!  So they were pretty excited about that:)  Tatum also had some teammates from Heritage up at camp too--Kallie B., Kierstin B., Riley N., and Dakota S.  So how could they not have fun right???

    Both Amber and I have adult children in Provo so we got to spend a ton of time with them (and use their cars too:). Carlie, Brooklyn, and Clayton didn't seem to mind having us around--they were fed well AND I was able to take Carlie out for birthday manis/pedis and some clothes shopping as well.  And we all went to see "In the Heights" at the movie theatre our last night there--it was AWESOME!!!  We also had another friends with us this year--Kati H.  Oh my goodness!!!  I've known Kati and Amber for about 15 years now and we just had the BEST TIME laughing, staying up way too late, and hanging out together shopping.  We had so much dang fun that we forgot to get a selfie of the 3 of us:(. But I just love and admire these great women and thoroughly enjoyed being with them this week.  It was just the friend refresher I needed after a year of COVID life.  These women make me want to be a better person and I just love them for that.

    Because of the heat, it seemed that the girls weren't outside as much so we didn't get to see a ton of the playing--they have underground batting cages and workout areas.  But the little we did see was great.  

This is what I get when I try to take a
pic of the cute hair Chloe did...

Aly--Tatum's team coach

    But the best part of camp is ALWAYS the social stuff.  Tatum & Chloe had the best time with their counselors and their group of girls.  

  

    

    So after a long hot week, our flight was once again delayed twice...we did NOT hit the jackpot on the Allegiant flights this year.  But honestly we had a great week.  We squeezed in so much and had a blast while doing it.  I think Tatum and I basically slept for 2 days afterwards to catch up:)

Max's Extra Credit

     Max ALWAYS needs extra credit and I always LOVE when he makes a movie.  He just cracks me up.  Love this crazy kiddo of mine:

Lake Powell

     After living in AZ for 23 years, we finally made it to Lake Powell!!!  Thanks to Papa Frank who has always wanted to do this.  He rented a couple house boats for a week for us all to hang out and to celebrate what would have been my parent's 50th wedding anniversary and my mom's 76th birthday.  

    We were only able to go for the first 3 days of the trip--Carlie even drove in from Provo to join us!  The best part (in my opinion) was riding around in the speed boat and finding cliffs to jump off.

"Ice in the Veins"--this I learned...(NOT heroine use😂)

My hubby--the MOST DARING of all!!!

Sabey, Hanna, & Tatum

Beautiful views:

    So even though it was only for 3 days, we had a great time getting tan and hanging out with cousins eating good food.  Great way to start off our summer!!!