Beach Trip 2008

We had another fun week!

The first part of the week Mark had meetings for his entrepreneur program. He was presented a ton of different business ideas and had to choose 3-4 to investigate further. I think his top picks are 1. Spider silk from silkworms 2. Nano-sensor technology 3. 3D image scanning 4. Hog Waste. The one I hear about most is the spider silk idea, but his options are still open.


Saturday I got to go to my first concert ever! Mark had found out that Trace Adkins was coming to Danville, so Susan & David came with Mark & me to his concert (thank you for the tickets Susan and David that was So nice of you)! Ever since watching The Apprentice last season and his song called Your Going to Miss This I have become a big fan of Trace Adkins. It was so cool that my first concert was getting to see him, and I really LOVED it!

Sunday Michael drove with us to Myrtle Beach, SC for the Smallwood beach trip. Mark missed the beach trip last year because we couldn't afford the plane tickets and I started school to soon. This year Mark has been counting down the days. Every morning we went down to the pool and simply relaxed. I finished the book New Moon by Stephanie Meyer, and then started the 3rd book of the series called Eclipse. I tried so hard to finish the 3rd book because I was borrowing it from Debi (step-mother-in-law) who had bought it for Amber (her daughter). While I didn't finish I got really close and ended up reading over 800 pages between Monday morning and Wednesday night.

I worked on my tan every day also. I am really tan (okay my skin is still the whitest in the whole family, but I am way tan for me). I didn't get too burned, which is always a good thing, just a little on my back and legs. I have so many freckles on my face, I can't help but wonder if that makes me look more tan than I really am, but oh well I will take what I can get. Mark on the other hand, is Super tan! I am so jealous of how quickly and how dark the Smallwood's tan. I sure hope our future kids will get Mark's skin type rather than mine, otherwise they will always be 20 shades whiter than their cousins.

The beach was definitely a good ending to the month of July (thank you very much Gene and Debi). Today Mark starts his New Student Orientation. Lucky for me there is another couple that moved from UT the same week we did that lives in the apartments and are part of the ward. We have become really close friends with Missy and Spencer and get along really well! Both Missy and I have joined the "Partners at Duke" club so there will even be things for us women to do this week together so we aren't chilllin on a huge and unknown campus all by ourselves.

For anyone interested in my brother Scott, who is on his mission in Bolivia, I have gotten a few family emails with some interesting tid-bits.

1. He is eating all sort of "new" things. So far he has actually tasted and swallowed Lizard Skin Soup and Cow Intestines. Yuck! If anyone knows my brother very well they will know that this is the kid who's diet consisted almost completely of chicken nuggets, waffles, PB&J, pizza, milk, and corn before going on his mission. So the fact that he eats these things are a BIG DEAL!

2. He had 2 baptisms within his first week in the country.

3. There is a house near his apartment where the owners keep a jaguar as a pet, and in his last letter he said: "This week I got up the guts to pet the jaguar in the front yard of someones house. It took a few swipes at me with its claws and showed its teeth and tried to act tough but I was untouched. Haha its an awesome animal."

4. In his area there are 600 members of the church, but only 60 are active. And that number is, in part, because the Elders walk 8 miles before 9 am every Sunday to personally invite the members out to church that week.
And people call this part of the country the "mission field." Ha - the members in Bolivia would LOVE to have 5 wards within an hour of their home. Wow, this is truly a world wide church and I am so happy to be part of it!