FOFO

Christian told us on Sunday that he’d have a base pass all weekend in celebration of his graduating. We went through every option, every airport, Matt flying, me flying, driving back home and flying back, not going at all, and finally decided we’d leave the beach a day early and all travel down to Georgia together. Matt got to talk to Chris for about 5 minutes and I was in a meeting and didn’t even get to, and then we weren’t able to talk to him again all week. We decided that no matter what happened, if we got to see him or not, we had no expectations. We were going to go and make the best of it, come what may.  

He texted around 9 Friday morning and let us know they had revoked his base pass. Whomp, whomp. But he thought we should still be able to see him. We met him at a tiny troop exchange and had to be super covert about it. After a few minutes we all went around to the back of the store and we got to give hugs and say hi. 

It was so good to see him!

He still looks like a little boy playing soldier to me. 

They’d had their graduation ceremony that morning. Christian is last in this row. 

He was pretty nervous that a drill sergeant would spot them or someone would tattle. We hung out for about 30 minutes and then had to say goodbye. 

Jeanne stayed at the hotel to chat with Chris since he had his phone all day and the rest of us headed out to one of USA Today’s 12 Crazy Man-made Adventures. We went whitewater rafting on the Chattahoochee River and it was so fun! We got there just as one group left, so we had 2 hours to kill. Columbus is a super cute little town! The area around our hotel most definitely is not cute, but downtown was adorable. And right in front of our excursion was a cute little park. 

And a fun spray park that we enjoyed cooling off in. 

We were right next to Columbus Universities pretty little campus. 

Those Rays. Going bananas. 

Since Matt had never been to Alabama and we still had an hour till our adventure, we walked across the bridge to Phenix City. 

We put Matt’s phone on the ground for these. 

We could hear someone having a little mental breakdown, so we took some pictures and took off. 

Bye Alabama!

It was over 90° with a heat index of 11 and we had to leave everything in our car so we were hot and thirsty. We got helmets, vests, and paddles, boarded buses and vans and were off! We drove about 10 minutes up river where we were assigned river guides. We got Drano and he was awesome. Matt said it was just like Boy Scout camp, everyone cutting up and with silly nicknames. 

We put off into the river right in front of a big dam. The water felt amazing and was clear and clean. We hit some Class 2 rapids pretty quick and that was fun and just perfect for us since we were all a bit nervous. 

The guides were fun and silly and splashed us a ton, which felt amazing since it was crazy hot. Drano took us around one rapid and somehow got the nose of our raft in the water so the water just poured in on us. It was so fun!

My favorite part was when we got to jump out of the raft and float in the “lazy river.” There was a small current that pushed us along as we floated “nose up, toes up” down the river. I was seriously tempted to drink the water, but just being in it was so refreshing. We floated down to a little shore and got back in the raft, very gracefully, I might add. We were taught what to do if we capsized, including not having a FOFO - a full on freak out. That is Matt’s new favorite saying. I’m fixing to have a FOFO if he says it again. 🙄

We floated 12 and a half miles, mostly calm. We saw lots of turtles, ducks, and even a blue heron. When we were almost back to where we boarded our busses we hit the class 4 rapids. We all had to row in unison and it was amazing and nerve racking and we all laughed and squealed and loved it! Drano and his brother Waffles both work there and their parents had come to see them where the big rapids are, so Drano pulled us over and we watched Waffles raft go through. And they tipped! The whole raft, it was so shocking to me, but D assured us it happens at least once every trip. Adi was sad it didn’t happen to us, but I would have been so nervous! We rescued 2 of the overturned rafts passengers and were able to get them back on their original raft. Then Matt spotted their paddle and said we should go get it, so we all paddled over and rescued that. We’re basically rescuers. 

Everyone loved the trip. 10/10 would do it again in a heartbeat. Columbus is a super cute city and we loved our adventure. 

After that we grabbed dinner and swam at our hotel pool. It was a great day.