Ashlee's Birthday

My beautiful wife turned 25 this past Sunday! I was faithful to let her know that she is now a quarter of a century old! After church, we drove out to Dunlap, TN to eat at the Cookie Jar Cafe at the Johnson Family Farm. We rocked in the chairs, ate fried pickles (I love the south!) and admired the country side. Unfortunately, I slipped into a food coma as I drove home. Can you believe Ashlee took a picture of me? Once we got home we finished up season 1 of Lost. All in all I think Ashlee enjoyed her birthday.

Date Night @ Ruby Falls

I surprised Ashlee this past Friday with a trip to Ruby Falls. She had never been in her 10 years in Chattanooga. Of course I think the last time and only time I went was in elementary school. It was pretty interesting to learn the history of how this tour came about. This thing was discovered back in 1928 so people have been coming to see it for a LONG time. I think I heard the guide say about 350,000 people come to visit each year. The original cave was much smaller than what they have cleared out now. It took the first crew that explored it 17 hours to get to the falls and come back and I'm pretty sure it's only a 1 mile round trip. So obviously they were crawling around quite a bit. I can't imagine what it must have been like to first discover that waterfall. I wonder if Leo Lambert had dollar signs in his eyes when he first saw it...who knows.

We'll talk to you folks later,
Jonathan and Ashlee Sharp

P.S. Click on the picture to see a larger view.

We got wet...

Sloppy Wet Flag Football! Had an awesome time playing flag football at Ellis field down in Ringgold on Saturday. Of course it rained, as it has been doing for the past decade. It was an injury free day which is always exciting when has-beens get together to show case their "skills". Honestly, it was probably better that it was raining because I don't think anyone could get up to "injury-prone" speed.

While I was getting rained on playing football, Ashlee was getting rained on at the Memory Walk to end Alzheimer's. Life Care of Red Bank had the #1 team at the event and raised well over their overall goal!

FOOTBALL TIME

MTSU vs MARYLAND

Next for this weekend was of course football! Our beloved MTSU Blue Raiders were taking on Maryland for the 2nd year in a row. Last year, Maryland came to Murfreesboro and got it handed to them for the first time by a Sun Belt conference team 24-14. This year would prove to be a tougher game for the Blue Raiders as they traveled to play the Twerps...I mean Terps at home.  Their were 8 lead changes during the game, 4 in the 4th quarter! We were down by 31-29 when Maryland intercepted the ball on our 45 yard line with 5 minutes to play. It seemed as though victory was out of site. But the defense did a fantastic job of forcing a 42-yard field goal attempt. The kick was wide right and gave us the ball with 1:30 left in the game. Dwight Dasher led us straight down field (with no timeouts) to the one yard line and he spiked the ball to stop the clock with 2 seconds left!!!! Of course, Maryland chose to ice our kicker with their 2 timeouts remaining. Side note: If I had 2 timeouts left I would only take 1 because the kicker would be expecting that 2nd timeout to be called. It might throw him off...

The kick was perfect and we won 32-31!!! MTSU keeps providing the most exciting football games!

NOTRE DAME vs MICHIGAN STATE

Because the Notre Dame game was also on at 3:30pm, my dad recorded it and we shielded ourselves from hearing the score until we could get to his house and watch it for ourselves. Notre Dame played Michigan State and provided another thrilling game. Michigan State was driving with little time left to score the go-ahead touchdown when we intercepted the ball on the 2-yard line (Kyle McCarthy likes to have one interception per game...glad he saved it for this moment!). Notre Dame held on to win 33-30. This was simply way too much football excitement for one day.

MTSU vs Memphis

This Saturday we went up to Murfreesboro to see our Blue Raiders (Ashlee's dad is the safeties and punt team coach). This was the first home game of the year and also the Blackout game. Last year's Blackout game happens to by my favorite football game ever because MTSU threw a hail mary touchdown pass with no time left to win the game! Incredible! We had our good friends Bob, Priscila, and their son Lucas come with us. It was the first college football game for all three of them! We had some awesome food at the tailgate to kick things off and then headed to the stadium.  MTSU played a fantastic football game. They came out on top 31-14.  We hung out a little afterwards and ate some more food before heading back to Chatt Town.  Seriously, we love us some Blue Raider football! Here's some pictures from the game: