We have returned from our cruise!

We had a great time. Having never been before, we didn’t know what to expect. When we boarded and went to our cabin, we found a “Happy Anniversary” cake sitting on the table by our bed. Lyndsay was thrilled–she gave me a big hug and said “That’s so sweeeeet!” in her really high pitched giddy voice. I said “You’re welcome” thinking “…how did this get here? I didn’t order a cake…” I thought through it and realized that our travel agent must have set it up. Lyndsay kept asking how I arranged it all. I continued to take credit for it, but refused to tell her how I arranged it. After all, our travel agent wasn’t there, so why let all that thoughtfulness go to waste?

The food was excellent! We ate and ate…and ate. Snack here, pizza there…we ordered two entrees at dinner sometimes, just because we could! How awesome is that? Going the week before Thanksgiving was a bad idea though…I ended up gaining a full 10 pounds in the week and a half of cruise and turkey day. Yeah. Pretty crazy.

While on the boat, Lyndsay kept wanting to go and lay out in the sun. As you can see in the picture, she got quite tan. My skin, on the other hand, hadn’t seen sunlight in about a year, which made me burn really easily. After the second day, I would sit out by the pool with Lyndsay…wearing pants, long sleeves, and a towel over my head to keep the sun away while I read my book. People might have stared at my goofy-ness, but who cares? I couldn’t see them through the towel anyway.

We went on an excursion in Cozumel where we rented Jeeps and drove out to see some “Mayan Ruins,” along with a reef to go snorkeling. It was a lot of fun. The “ruins” turned out to be about the size of my desk…not the grand temples I was envisioning (and a bit of a letdown. I always wanted to see the Mayan Temples…Star Wars Episode 4 made them look so cool). The beach and the reef were great! We ended up snorkeling a full mile looking at all the fish and other undersea life. All in all it was a very neat day.

We had a great time, and it definitely made for a memorable celebration of our one year anniversary. You can see more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/scottandlyndsay/20061116CrewsCruise.

To celebrate the fall being here, Lyndsay and I went with our friends Jake and Diane to pick out pumpkins! In Tennessee, pumpkins are a big deal. In SC and AL, you just went to the grocery store, grabbed a pumpkin, and went home. Not the case here. As soon as it starts to look like fall, every piece of land around middle Tennessee pops up a pumpkin patch. I’m not even kidding.

We decided not to play around with any second rate pumpkin patch…so we went to “Walden Farm,” apparently the who’s who of pumpkin patches. We drove out to see what all the hooplah was about and let me tell you, there was some serious hooplah. Pumpkins everywhere. Everywhere. and farm animals. and a corn maze (something else I’ve discovered since moving to TN). and a crafts store where you can make/buy pumpkin crafts. Yeah. That much stuff.

We had a great time, and we got a pumpkin with the high hopes of carving it out before Halloween. …we ended up leaving it on our doorstep to decorate, and throwing it away a week ago when it started to smell funny when we’d walk outside.

So that was fall. Fall is my (Scott’s) favorite season. We had a pretty good one this year. Great colors, good weather…overall, much better than the last two. Now it’s time for winter. Lyndsay informed me that actually before winter starts, another season is upon us…Christmas. On Lyndsay’s calendar, Christmas season runs from November 1 to January 15…meaning that we are already well into Christmas season. So what have we done to celebrate? Well, so far we’ve watched “Elf” and strung lights around a fake ficus plant. But that’s only the beginning. There is plenty more to come, I’m sure.

In other news, we leave tomorrow for our 1 year anniversary CRUISE! We had to delay the anniversary celebration a bit until I could get off work long enough to celebrate. …but the time has arrived. Let the celebration begin! We’re driving to Mobile tomorrow to board the Carnival “Holiday.” We’ll tell you all about it when we return! 

Yeah, yeah, so it’s been a while since we posted anything. Why, you ask? Because now that we’ve been married for a year, we’re are officially a lame married couple. Just kidding.

Actually, life has been pretty crazy here recently.We celebrated our one year anniversary on September 24th…kinda. I (Scott) had to be in Hattiesburg, MS that day for an event, so I had to get up early and leave without getting any time to celebrate. We did get to celebrate a little, though.

Since we moved in, Lyndsay had a place on the wall she had been saving for the piano at her parents house that they had offered to her. Unfortunately, it’s super heavy and really old and fragile. There was no way that I would be able to get it out myself, so I knew we’d have to pay to get it moved. We’d already spent all of our budgeted money for the month on paint, and there wasn’t enough left over to get it moved anytime soon.

Much to Lyndsay’s surprise, she came home from work on Friday to discover the piano sitting in our living room! Being the budget keeper/enforcer in the relationship, I moved some numbers around and figured out a way to get it over.Without her knowing, I had called around Nashville and found someone to move the piano. They also tuned it! (which was good, since the piano just turned 100 years old this year…it kinda needed it)

A funny story about the piano movers. I hired them because they had good rates and seemed pretty knowledgeable. I never actually met them in person, though…only on the phone. Lyndsay’s dad met them first, because they showed up that morning to pick up the piano. I got a call around lunchtime from Lyndsay’s parents telling me that the piano movers had just come, and to be careful while they were in my house. They kind of had a tone in their voice as if they’d just said goodbye to their piano, and watched it get packed on a truck and taken off into the sunset to never be seen again

….turns out, the piano movers possessed a strange resemblance to the thieves in the Home Alone movies. No kidding. Not that piano movers are supposed to wear suits to work anything…but I would assume that they get their hair cut every now and then. Anyway, they turned out to be really nice guys. They showed up on time, got the piano delivered with no problems, and tuned it up so it sounds great. It was a good personal lesson in not judging based on appearances…because if I’d met them in person first, I probably wouldn’t have let them within 100 yards of my piano.

So here’s Lyndsay enjoying her piano. Yay. Happy Anniversary to us. 

I (Scott) just returned from my first “Freedom Experience” event of the fall. FX is a three day event where we take Brock Gill (the illusionist that I work for), pair him up with a BMX bike team called Chaos on Wheels, throw in some music groups, and rock out with the purpose of telling others about Jesus Christ and His love for us. It’s a ton of fun. Think “Billy Graham Crusade” on a MUCH smaller scale, with people sailing through the air on bikes and some crazy stunts. Got it? Good.

Our first event this fall was this past week in Palm Coast, FL. It was awesome to be a part of. We walked into a pretty scary situation–a hurricane sitting in the gulf headed straight for us–but we went to work and prayed that it would die down, go away, or something.

Each night was awesome. We had two music groups with us, Eleventyseven (who coincidentally are from Laurens, SC, and graduated from a high school that my high school played football against) and Group 1 Crew, a new hip-hop group on Word Records. They both put on an amazing show. We also had freestyle skateboarder Tim Byrne there, along with Brock and Chaos on Wheels. All the groups would perform for about 15 minutes, leading up to Brock. Brock would go last. He’d start with a series of illusions, and then end it with a big trick. One night he made a girl disappear. One night he was chained up and put in a coffin filled with water and he escaped. And then one night he caught a bullet in his mouth. Yeah, that’s right. In his mouth.

That night was the most worrisome for me because I have to fire the gun. That always freaks me out and gets me all worked up. Luckily for me, he caught it (meaning, I get to keep my job AND I don’t have to go to jail for murder. Yippee!).

Each night after doing a big illusion, Brock speaks about how he was changed after he began a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He realized that up until that point he was living life for himself, and that he was believing a lie that he was “good enough” for heaven, when the Bible says that Jesus is the only way to God and heaven, and that being “good” actually has nothing to do about it, because we can’t ever be “good enough.” Brock’s a great communicator…he does a great job of saying very clearly what awkward people like me will stutter around and not really know how to express. Hence why I like working for him so much.

Anyway, the event was incredible. Over 5300 people showed up over the 3 nights. We packed out the local high school gym. And God showed up in a big way–over 280 people (most of whom aren’t the church-going types) decided to put Jesus in charge of their life. It was awesome. One of the coolest parts was that Ernesto “mysteriously” dissipated into nothingness, redirected itself away from where we were, and only began to regain strength after the event was completely over. It goes to show you that prayer is an oddly powerful and effective thing.

I’m sure at this point you’re rearranging your schedule to attend one of our remaining FX’s, right? We’ve got three left this year: Hattiesburg, MS (Sept 25-27), Williamston, NC (Oct 23-25) and Prattville, AL (Nov 6-8).

Since I’m sure you’d like a little taste of what FX is like, go ahead and double click on the big arrow in the middle of the video window below. You can watch a video of A.J., one of our BMX bikers, landing a double tailwhip…a stinking hard trick to do…and a backflip. And the crowd goes wild… (you probably need high speed internet for this to play well…)

yay! We closed on Thursday, though we didn’t really expect to up until the last minute. We spent the weekend moving in. We hope to have some pictures up soon. We’d like to say a big thank you to Gresham, Josie, Lyndsay’s parents, and Jake and Diane for helping us move all of our stuff around.

We are hoping to get some pictures up soon, and have a housewarming party some time in the near future. As for now, we’re having a great time unpacking everything and rediscovering things that we forgot we owned. I (Scott) found 6 or 7 shirts I had forgotten about. Lyndsay discovered a wok and a waffle iron we recieved as wedding presents that had been packed away for the last 10 months.

The day after I posted here that we would be closing on Wednesday, I got a call from the builders saying that they were unable to close that day…the lawyer’s office was closed for some reason. To me that says, “Find a new lawyer for the day…” but to them it says, “Take the day off and delay everything we’re doing.”

So our colsing has been delayed again. I think it’s bad luck to post exactly when it has been scheduled for, but we’ll let you know as soon as we sign the papers if/when it all comes together.

…or maybe not. But we have a closing date again, and I (Scott) feel really good about this one. It’s going to be Wednesday August 9th at 2 PM. With any luck this could be it! (though I still told Sears not to bring the fridge until Saturday, just so I don’t jinx it)

Good things come to those who wait, right? Right….

It’s Sunday. We’re still townhomeless.

On Friday, we did our final walkthrough at 1:30 PM, as expected. Everything went great. The builders had finished everything in record time. They had to do a ton of stuff to get it all ready on time, but they did it. Big thumbs up to Blake, our contractor, and to Centex Homes. They did an A+ job all the way through to completion of the townhouse.

So now all we have to do is buy it, right? Right.

So we get the call at 2:00 PM that we need to provide some more paperwork for our loan. We race around town getting it all faxed in, and head over to our appointment at 3:00 PM at the lawyer’s office to close. We call the office ahead of time to verify our appointment, and it’s still on, so we show up.

We sit in the lobby for about 20 minutes, and then our wonderful mortgage broker calls and tells us that there’s no way we can close today, and that he can’t understand why we would even show up.

…after some time passes, I tell him that I can’t understand why he didn’t show up. We had set the meeting at three. (Everything I learned in business school said that if you aren’t going to be at a meeting, you call the people and say you aren’t coming. And then you set a new time for the meeting. Obviously, he felt that doing neither of the above were necessary.)

So now we’re incredibly disappointed, our family has flown and driven hundreds of miles to be here to help us move, and we’re stuck tootling around Nashville, wasting our weekend doing nothing.

We’re really not sure when or if this deal will ever go through now. While talking with the mortgage broker, he outlined three or four more things that have to happen before the deal can go through, all of which we’d never heard of before…confirming my original suspicion that these people have apparently never done anything like this before…or they would have been able to communicate the hurdles involved in this process long before we ran smack into them.

So…maybe we’ll seal the deal this week. Or maybe August. Or maybe never. Who knows?

Well, it’s probably the same hurdle technically. The knuckleheads at CTX have finally gotten our loan document to the Tennessee Housing Agency for approval. Since an 8 hour turn around is obviously impossible, we’ll be closing on Friday at 3. Maybe. Hopefully.

I sure hope so, since my(Scott’s) family is coming in tomorrow to help move. Since we won’t be able to move, we can instead sit around and talk about how incredibly hot it is here. …yay.