Ready to See My Buddies

Ready for the fam to get back.  Laura and I are going on a trip soon and she realized that her passport was expired.  So, she took the kids and headed south to New Orleans to walk the passport through the process.  I got positive confirmation today that she’s officially got a valid passport!  Woo Hoo.

On the way to New Orleans, she dropped the kiddos off with my parents in Jackson.  From what I’ve heard, they’ve had a ball.  I’m just excited to get them back!

How cute is this girl!

Shiloh

Yesterday I got a chance to do something I’ve never done before.  I went with Lance Tabb, Larry Little and Chad O’Neal to Shiloh, TN.  This past week marked the anniversary of the battle of Shiloh and there were demonstrations this weekend where the actual battle took place.  It was really interesting talking to some of the guys that did the demonstrations.  Some of the cool things I learned were:

• The South won the first day, the North won the second
• There was a pond called “bloody pond” that actually took on a red color from all the blood that was in it.
• There were right at 110,000 people involved in the Battle of Shiloh…it lasted two days.
• About 3,500 soldiers died in battle.  About 16,400 were wounded.  About 3,800 were missing.
• There was a significant loss of life in the 2 days of battle considering only 4,000 lives were lost in the American Revolution.

One of the more interesting demonstrations was the artillery.  In one skirmish, there were 75 canons involved.  If you’ve ever heard a cannon fire, you know it is unbelievably loud.  It was said that the noise could be heard from 50 miles away.  We learned that during the heat of battle, one canon could fire about 3-4 times per minute.  With 75 canons involved, that means the loud booms occurred about 3-4 times per second.  Truly amazing. 

We were able to see some pretty neat action and we also saw some interesting characters.  I never knew so much Confederate flair that could be worn at one time.  We also saw a UT fan that was rocking some bright orange shoes.

He is Risen!

Happy Easter!  What a great weekend we’ve had.  Laura and I actually got to go on a date Friday night.  We haven’t been on a date in a while.  We started out at Firebirds and went to pick a movie afterwards.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a movie we wanted to watch unless we wanted to stick around the theater for 45 minutes.  So, we went to Wal-Mart and called it a night.  We did manage to watch about a half hour of TV before turning in.

Saturday morning brought spring cleaning.  We decided that if we had items we hadn’t used in over a year (and they weren’t “kid” items that we may need again), we’d get rid of them.  We’re going to list some of the stuff on Craigslist this week and what doesn’t sell will go to Goodwill.  Good riddance!

Haley and Trey were up this morning and ready for Easter.  They both seemed to enjoy their Easter baskets.  We decked them out in some duds that a friend’s grandmother made for them and we were off to church.  We even managed to have a little time to squeeze in a few pictures before the service started.

Right now the kids are napping and we’re getting ready to hide eggs.  Should be a blast!