It's All Recorded in the Expense Notebook

I sat down to blog and Allie reminded me that if I forgot about anything we did today it's all in her notebook. Handing her receipts after each purchase has become automatic and honestly, I wish I had her to take care of our day-to-day finances.

So let's take a look at her notebook:

-Two Brothers Italian: $42.01 w/$8.00 tip. Deb guided us to this place that had fantastic pizza and a good staff. Allie said, "I really like our waiter's energy." The freakin' garlic knots were freakin' good and our breath could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon after we ate them.

-Foxfire Mountain Adventures: $87.80. This place had some of the highest zip lines we've ever seen. Scary stuff compared to our past zip line experience. Fortunately we were there just to check out their trails and maybe take advantage of the rope course.

We wound up marching up the mountain and crossing what they claim to be the America's largest swinging bridge. Allie was a little hesitant, especially with me and my weight bouncing on the thing. Julia says, "I loved it, even though I hate heights." By the time we made it to the top of the trail we were drenched in sweat. The sights, sounds and smells (maybe even the money) made it all worth it, particularly the waterfall. That said Deb doesn't like to sweat. She prefers to glow. If she claims that she was "glowing" on this hike then I'm sure they could have seen her from space.

-Smoky Mountains Knife Works: $35.00. For some reason it was important to me that the girls get a knife on this trip. I know. I'm scared shitless that they'll wind up opening a vein and bleed out on a remote trail later in the week. But I had a knife when I was even younger than them and it just seems like a rite of passage. I get the strangest impulses sometimes.

This knife store is enormous. A little unsettling, too. There's a portion that seems devoted to stabbing and gouging and dismembering with bright, neon-colored weapons. I'm sure that if you pulled one of these things out to open a package, people would call the authorities. There were also confederate flags available for purchase. This prompted discussions about racism that revealed just how little I can offer to explain why it exists.

The girls wound up with single-bladed Swiss-Army knives with pink and purple handles. They can take solace in the knowledge that the object that will rob them of their index fingers fits in nicely with their sense of fashion.

How Deb knows so much about Dolly Parton I'm not sure. During our drive thought the area, Deb walked us through the significant economic impact that Ms. Parton has had on this area. The kind of growth Dolly has spurred was evident when it took us 45 minutes to travel a mile and a half to get to our hotel.

Now we're here and we've rinsed off the mountain in our room's shower. Deb asked the girls if they were sore from the hike. They gave her a nice, slow blink and assured her that it would take a great deal more to knock the wind out of their sails.

We'll see. . .