AS THEY NAP: Vacation day 1

September 10, 2012

Today we started our trek to the mountains. We pulled out of the driveway at 4:15…in the morning. Who does that?!? People with small kids that want a quite ride. Well, for most of the time. :)

When we pulled out everyone was a little excited and couldn't settle back down. Mike and myself were kinda stressing. Did we wake up at 3am to have our kids sleep in the car and them stay awake the whole time. What were we thinking… then finally we had a little talk about how it was dark outside and we cannot see out the windows and it was kinda boring. "So if you go to sleep right now then when we get closer the sun will wake you up and you will be able to see what is going on and won't be tired since you got some sleep". AND IT WORKED!!! So, from about 4:30-7:30 we had a quiet ride. At 7:30 all bets were off. They were ready to go. So we grabbed something for breakfast at the gas station. Real healthy. :) Then out came the activity kits.

I made activity kits for everyone. It had all kinds of fun stuff in there. Bingo, pipe cleaners, dice game (math), dry erase boards, dry erase activity books, coloring books, and the list goes on and on. The favorite thing of the day was the pipe cleaners. Who would have known???

They played with their activity kits for hours. They loved them. We stopped for lunch and bathroom break and then we were almost there. As we were driving down the road. Renee starting giggling. Then we smelled it. YAY!! When she notice that we knew she said "I stank". Really we didn't notice. :) Mike decided to roll down the windows and get some fresh mountain air. We started a movie about 2 hours out but they were more so listening to the movie and watching the mountains. Every once in a while Mike and I would hear "WOW"!! It was fun.

We stopped at the North Carolina sign to get a picture. As we were getting out of the car a guy riding a bike stopped to get a picture as well, so we asked him if he would mind snapping one of us. Trust me…not everyone knows how to take a picture. It was just about as bad as giving my mom the camera. (I love you mom.) After we let him get a little down the road we decided to prop the camera on the back of the car. (yes, we didn't bring the tripod, what a great thing to leave behind…note the sarcasm) After finally taking the picture we continued on. We had about 30 minutes left to travel.

We finally made it. Franklin, North Carolina. We were staying in a cabin in a private neighborhood, with a commons area located on the river. Once we arrived and unpacked and looked throughout the house of where everyone would be sleeping. We loaded up in the car and headed to the commons area. You can walk down the side of the mountain but with 3 young children and a steep mountain we chose to take the car. :)

This place was amazing. They have a fire pit, 2 docks, a playground, bathrooms, swings, and along the side of the river was rocks to stand on and put your tube in. We headed back to the house to blow up the tubes, get our bathing suits on and spray ourselves down with sunscreen. We rushed around to do that so we could get in the water. We loaded up (in the car again) and spent several hours on the river. The freezing river. We put the tubes in past the dock and floated for about a 1/2 mile until we decided to get out and do it again. Spent some time on the swings, then decided to call it a day. Went home and got cleaned up and headed out to dinner. We were told about a bar-b-que place that would make you drive there just for the ribs. So we stopped and naturally ordered the ribs. Boy were they right. We didn't want to eat them all just so we could take some ~~home~~ to the cabin. Right beside the restaurant was a grocery store, so we loaded up on the things we would need for the week, coffee, coffee, coffee, and a few other things. (We did most of our shopping before we left for the trip so we didn't have to get that much.)

Came home and got settled down for bed.

Man, what a day. Can't wait for tomorrow. :)