First, the pictures start with a sunset that we saw on Sunday night, next are flowers I took pictures of while down there. I haven’t played around with those pictures yet, but plan on doing something with a few of them. After that, begins our adventure. It is mostly in the order of what we did… from Monday to Saturday and our trip home, but Flickr flipped a few orders around while uploading, so some are a bit out of their place. That’s okay though.

I’ll just go day to day on here. We left at 4:30 pm on Friday, March 28th, after picking Jeremy up from the train station and dropping the cats off at the boarding place. We bought the kids special sippy cups for the car, so they would have non-spillable cups in the van. I bought a gallon of lemonade for $1.49 and we just poured it in their cups during different stops. It lasted for both the trip down and back up, since we didn’t need much for the trip down since they slept most of that time. That saved us a LOT of money. We didn’t have to buy drinks at our meals.

On our way down, we had a few detours/pauses, so we didn’t get there until 4:00 am our time, 5:00 am there. There was an exit closed in Louisville, KY with no warning and we had to find our own detour which took an hour. Then there was a wreck on I-40 just west of the NC border on our side of the interstate. It wasn’t too bad, just the front bumper and a few other front pieces of an SUV were ripped off, but parts of those were scattered all over both eastbound lanes, so they had to shut it down to clean it up. We sat there for at least half an hour. Jeremy put his seat back and caught a quick nap. The good thing was that this woke the kids up, so by the time we got to my parents’ house about an hour later, they were ready to lay back down.

On Saturday, we just rested a bit. We did head over to Asheville for a little bit to get some shoes for Jeremy and Noelle. Jeremy’s were worn out and would have been no good for hiking and Noelle’s were getting too small. When we moved, I either threw out or gave away all shoes that weren’t fitting the kids at that time, so I had to buy Noelle new shoes this time.

On Sunday, we went to the early service, which is a Praise and Worship service at my parents’ church. It was nice. After the service, we attended Sunday School. We were in a class that was just starting to study the story of the prodigal son. It sounded like it is going to be a good study. After church, we went home and a few of us changed into different clothes before heading out to a nice little buffet in Waynesville, NC. I kind of napped in the afternoon and then we went back to the church for a youth sponsored dinner of sloppy joes. They started showing Cheaper By the Dozen 2, but we didn’t care for it too much. Too many times of focusing on female chests, so we left and let the kids watch an Adventures in Odyssey movie at the house.

On Monday, I did a few loads of laundry in the morning and went outside and tried the swing that my dad and James put up this last summer when James was visiting them. In the afternoon, my mom came home from work and watched the kids while Jeremy and I walked around downtown Waynesville and explored a used book store. I found a book there that I’ve wanted but couldn’t find, so I was happy.

On Tuesday, we went to Dillsboro, NC. It was somewhat closed up because the tourist season hasn’t really started yet, but it was still pretty to walk around. We stopped into a pottery shop and watched a guy make what I think was a vase. I forgot to take pictures though because I was holding Noelle so she could see and talking to her about it. After Dillsboro, we headed over to Sylva and stopped at a playground there. The kids got a good amount of energy out while there.

On Wednesday, my friend Colwyn met us in Cherokee, NC. We hiked up to Mingo Falls and then went to a park there (the name of which I think starts with an O, but I can’t remember it) After wandering through the bamboo forest there and letting the kids throw rocks in the river and play in some sand, we walked around a little of the touristy shops and got the kids ice cream (pretzel for James). It was nice seeing him again. I’ve known him since my freshman year in college. He was in the choir with me back then and good friends with my roommate the second semester, so I got to know him fairly well back then. He found me through the internet later and we’ve been good friends since.

On Thursday, both my parents took the day off. Mom stayed home with AnnaBeth and Noelle. The rest of us went up to the Blue Ridge Parkway to hike. It was very foggy up there, so there was no view to see, but that helped us focus more on the things close to us, like the dew drops on some budding plants and all those little streams that criss-crossed the path. I took a bunch of pictures and had to dump all my pics onto a CD because I used up all the memory on my camera’s card that day and wanted room for more. This was Christine’s first big hike and she did really well. She was tired out by the time we were done and had gotten the bottom of her pants wet in the stream, but she really enjoyed it. Just as we got done, the rain started. We got a little wet, but not too bad. Because of the fog, there was hardly any traffic on the Parkway. We stopped in the middle of the tunnel and I got out of the van and took this picture, which I totally love. That’s the B&W version. The color version isn’t much different, but I like the B&W better. They are both on Flickr. After a bit of rest, we headed out to Asheville and went to Ryan’s to eat.

On Friday, my dad took a half day off, so once both he and mom were home and we’d eaten lunch, we went to the Asheville, NC Nature Center. It’s kind of like a little zoo. After that, my dad wanted to buy each of the kids a book, so we headed to Books A Million. Amie got the first book in “A Series of Unfortunate Events” by Lemony Snicket and James got “Ironman” which is based on the movie which will be coming out. Christine got a book with a story about a ballerina in it as well as a bunch of crafts like tiaras and how to make your own tu-tu. AnnaBeth got “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein and Noelle got “The 500 hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” by Dr. Suess. The last book is one of my Dad’s favorites and apparently Noelle loves it too as she has had it read to her many times since then. After we got home, I did some laundry and packing up.

On Saturday, I finished packing up and we headed out. Other than bathroom breaks almost every hour, the trip was fairly uneventful. We did have a dense patch of fog on the TN/KY border. Thanks to my dad, the trip home was mostly quiet. Amie read and finished her book and James read more than half of his book. The other girls had their books read to them at least once during that time. Christine spent a lot of time looking at the crafts in her book and planning which ones she wants to do first. We got home in time to get the kids ready for bed.

We had to wait until Monday to pick up the cats. It was weird coming home and not having them here to greet us. Mittens and Charlie have been extra lovey to me since coming home, so I know they missed us too. Charlie didn’t leave the room I was in all day yesterday except to eat or use the litter box. They’re feeding was different there. They probably were fed about the same time in the morning, but they were fed earlier in the afternoon than I normally feed them, so they have been begging for their food a bit early in the afternoons yesterday and today. They’ll get back on their schedules soon, I’m sure.

AND there you have it! It was such an awesome week. I have missed my parents and I’ve missed the mountains and waterfalls and hiking and all. It was so very good to be down there. Now, to get back into our regular homeschool routine.