We woke up this morning after a crazy storm last night. Something I didn’t quite know…when you combine a big storm plus an ocean-
 Thanks to McGuire's for the great dinner and for sponsoring our site! side work site, you get COLD weather. My genius self, convinced that I would get tan and buff on this service trip, packed nothing but cut-off shirts and ONE hoodie for the trip. That was stupid.
We got to the site and immediately started working. Today’s job was getting the trusses up on the roof. I thought it looked like a house yesterday, but after completing the entire roof and all interior walls today, it REALLY looks like a house now.
 After an exciting discussion this morning, LeAnne makes a new friend named Adam and finds her true calling. Of course, we did the work, but it’s the play side that I really enjoy reporting. We switched up van riders today, and Lucky LeAnne joined the situation for our morning ride. Somehow, we got on the conversation of cleaning port-o-potties, and LeAnne was put in charge. As we worked today, the port-o-potty cleaner arrived at the work site to, ironically enough, clean our port-o-potty. We immediately went to say hi and make a new friend. He let us take a photo with him, and LeAnne got her chance to help!
Here is an update on one of those “changes” I’ve been working towards this week. We left the site at 3:15, and we had to be ready to leave for dinner at McGuire’s by 4:45. There are 16 of us, three showers, and VERY little hot water. I have to congratulate myself and my boys as we all four showered and got ready in less than 15 minutes TOTAL. That is a HUGE improvement for me. And though it was approximately 40 degrees and I had a polo and cargo shorts on, no jacket, and flip flops (attempting to look good and impress), I was still ready.
McGuire’s Irish Pub was amazing. Because they are sponsoring our site, we got free appetizers and desserts! Everyone ate a TON…we were so full afterwards, but still managed to make the dinner trip memorable. We sat in a back room with two other full
 Hanging under our new roof! We did work today, it was great! tables of Marine graduates. Carly and some of the girls decided to start some conversations and we found out one of the Marines was from St. Louis. She ate some of his DISGUSTING garbage burger and we chatted them up for a bit (Zink, the charmer he is, may have caught one of their eye’s as well…). As we left, St. Louis Marine was walking out of the restaurant, we rolled down our window, and had him shout his number out for Carly. She didn’t write it down, and we couldn’t remember it…but we tried to call what we THOUGHT was the number. It was a lady, she wasn’t happy.
Now it’s game time again…it seems to be a recurring trend.
 McGuire's dinner was so good. Check it out and look for our dollars hanging on the wall!  We all looked good after QUICK showers tonight...
*title is a reference to playing Name that Tune in the van.
I definitely jinxed the weather in yesterday’s blog. It was a bit cool but sunny for most of the day. Then it seemed like as soon as we got back in “The Situation” and “Vegas” to come back to Pensacola Shore, the sky clouded over and the wind started blowing at like 575 mph. Or something like that. (Good thing our beach house isn’t kind of on stilts….although I understand that’s a hurricane safety precaution, when you are in your bed and can feel the house sway, it’s not all that convincing.) So anyway, our polar plunges and beach runs have been temporarily postponed. At least until the sun demonstrates a little more consistency.
I don’t know what was more exhausting; spending a 1/2 of the day hammering nails in and 1/2 of the day pulling nails out, or trying to learn the mystery rules of the card game Mao. (Thank you, Justin!) If you haven’t heard of it, don’t feel bad- until tnoight, neither had I. And if you ever get the chance to play, end up losing, but don’t know how you lost; well, you’re not the only one. In a game where the purpose is to get rid of all your cards, I ended up with about 85% of the deck. =]
Since Joel’s already filled everyone in on our progress from today, there’s not much else to say. We are currently playing Mafia and it is getting pretty intense. I’m the detective at the moment. Oh, and by the way, speaking of detectives, we had a visit from the sheriff tonight. He wanted to make sure we weren’t robbing the beach house, since apparently there have been a string of burglaries in the area. Those darn Maryville vans must have given us away. =] Next time we’ll have to paint over the Maryville logo so they can’t track us down as easily. The visit came during our fantastic spaghetti dinner, but we didn’t think to invite him in until after he’d already gone. Sheriff Pensacola missed out, though. In addition to delicious spaghetti, we also had salad, breadsticks, cookies, brownies, and 30 packets of Parmesan cheese, courtesy of Pizza Hut, filched by Zink and Kristen.
Hopefully tomorrow it’s not raining so we can get some more work done. Today we got all the interior and exterior walls up…I was very impressed. I managed to avoid a sunburn and I didn’t hammer my thumb once. That was even more impressive than the fact we got all the walls up, I believe. =]
We also took a lot of great pictures, which can be viewed in Joel’s blog from today and we’ll be posting more tomorrow! Check back then!
After a day of work – the house looks amazing already! I cannot believe how much work we got done in one day. They told us that it started with a concrete slab and then by Thursday, it’d be a house…but I was naive. It already is starting to look like an EXCELLENT place for a family to live.
 Some of the gang lifting our very first completed wall. This entire space was empty when we arrived this morning. The group here is amazing. We have so much fun working and joking around and becoming better friends. LeAnne and I have become “Screw Up” buddies. We spent most of the day correcting mistakes that WE made…but it’s legit, and we both know it. Everyone is working hard and playing harder (Currently, an intense game of Mao is growing, thanks to Justin…and we’ll be killing each other off in mafia for a good portion of the evening after that).
 Workers begin to put up the final wall of the frame. We did all of this in one day! The weather was awesome. I’ve already started a great base burn. By then end of the week, I expect to be awesome and tan, but don’t tell Nurse Pam or Ashley cause they will get on my case about sunscreen and blah blah blah…
Thank you to KQ’s family for making an excellent dinner this evening. Justin and I had a great time learning how to use our new kitchen while warming up our spaghetti dinner. With game time getting more and more competitive, it’s time for me to go play.
 Hanging out in the hallway!
We made it to Pensacola alive! I’ll give you two different overviews of our day:
Here is the quick one – two vans left from Maryville. We got breakfast, lunch, and picked up dinner, got to the AMAZING house, and here we are.
Here is the good one – all important details will be included. We left at 6:25. I made sure to get a good seat in the van. KQ, Zink, K Dobbs, Meg, Justin, Jess H., Carly and I boarded what we call “The Situation”. Jess V., Lauren, Ashley, Chelsea, John, LeAnne, Sam, and Pam took off in “Vegas”, or what I refer to as “Hot Mess Express”. We headed down to Pensacola, with some excellent stops along the way. After McDonalds, “The Situation” decided it was time for some Battle of the Sexes. Justin, Zink and I decided to be gentlemen and we let the girls win. At some point, we stopped for lunch, we saw a truck completely covered in mud, and then we finally heard “Carry Out” on the radio (but never heard Tik Tok…that would be my only disappointment thus far).
Later on in the afternoon, we got the news that Canada may have defeated USA in Hockey (thank you, to my texting informant…good looking out, Mr. Leise). At some point, we ended up somewhere along Mississippi, or Alabama, and we found the greatest radio station ever! This station, 107.3 The Groove, will be played in “The Situation” all week long.
 John, Joel, Sam, Jess V., and Zink attempt the plunge We got to the “Pensacola Shore” house at 7:30. After a quick pizza dinner, and an AMAZING tour of our place, we decided to go down to the beach. The cool kids decided to get in the water. The lame ones (mostly Justin) decided to stand on the side. I’m keeping my eye on little Ms. Sam. She already brought some stranger into the house AND let him get to second base. Actually, Sam was the lucky one that got a small fish stuck in her cleavage after jumping in the ocean. We all needed some laughter, and that was the best kind!
Everyone is really excited for tomorrow! It’s going to be a really early morning, but it’s going to be a great experience.
So, after thirteen hours of sleeping, Catchphrase, Battle of the Sexes, Name that Tune, and trying to find the US vs. Canada hockey game on the radio (we failed), we have finally arrived at Pensacola Beach. Thanks in part to the excellent navigational skills of KQ and Nurse Pam, and the two sturdy Maryville vans, lovingly nicknamed “The Situation” (Jersey Shore, anyone?) and “Vegas”. And the two walkie-talkies we used to communicate between vans. If today is any indication of how this week is going to go, there will be a lot of laughs and a lot of great stories. Now I have been on my fair share of road trips, but I wouldn’t be lying if I said this has probably been the most entertaining so far- and it’s only Sunday!
Our beach house is beautiful. And it is literally right on the beach. Like, you walk outside and BAM! there’s the ocean! We just finished testing it out. By we, I mean John, Joel, and Zink. And by testing, I mean they ran straight into the water, which after wading in up to my knees, I determined to be about 40 degrees….maybe 45. I traded the Pensacola Polar Plunge for a few short runs up and down the beach. =] I think I’ll give it a try tomorrow when the sun is (hopefully) shining.
So now we’re all settled in, the groceries are put away, lunch for tomorrow is made, and everyone is relaxing in the comfy living room (except for Carly, who is sound asleep). I’m sure they are all as excited as I am. Tomorrow, 8 am….HAMMER TIME!
For a more detailed entry, see Joel’s post. I’m tired and he’s a bit more entertaining. =] And check back tomorrow to see how much trouble we manage to get ourselves into.
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