Field Trip

I was looking through some old pictures and ran across these. Emily and I took a field trip one day (on our lunch break) to this old creepy abandoned building in Irondale. These pictures are from that field trip. We had done some researching and couldn’t ever figure out what this building was, but Brad recently heard that it used to be a very nice country club that closed down after someone drowned in the pool many years ago. Who knows if it’s true or not.

While it was creepy it was kind of neat looking around. We saw the pool (which appears to have a path straight though the cat tails for some rather large animal that enjoys going for a dip), the grand staircase, the locker room, bathrooms and lots of small rooms (meeting rooms possibly). Each room was completely dark in the basement area so lots of these pictures were taken without us actually knowing what we were taking pictures of. One picture especially below kinda freaked me out (you’ll see a chair in a corner and my imagination went crazy and thought there was someone down there sitting in it).

It would be really neat to one day find out the true history of this place.

The Art of the Dance

Check out David's mad dance skillz. He has some pure talent. I'm thinking he could audition for So You Think You Can Dance, Season 27.

My personal favorite...Oops! Maybe he's not quite SYTYCD material.

We picked apples...sorta

We stayed at Jellystone Campground in Cherokee, NC and it was great...from the trick or treating with Yogi to the river 20 feet from our campsite to the very friendly staff. I called a couple weeks prior to our arrival and asked the lady who answered the phone (Beth) if she knew of an apple orchard in the area where we could pick our own apples. This is something I have always wanted to do but have never had the opportunity to do.

Beth was super helpful and said she would give us information when we checked in about an apple orchard about an hour and a half away. SO...when we checked in last Friday Beth's husband handed us a business card to the apple orchard.

While reading the information on the business card I said to Brad "This place better be an apple orchard and not just a fruit stand". If I had only known. So we plugged the address into the GPS and off we went to Waynesville, NC. Did you know that 35 mountain (curvy/hilly) miles takes a LOT longer than 35 highway miles? Well, it does.

So the drive was nice (this was one of the only days of our entire vacation that it didn't rain)...and I was SO excited about running around an orchard with David. The trees were beginning to change so we got to enjoy some nice leaf peeping. On a side note - have you ever heard of leaf peeping? Odd term, I think. But it's a for real thing...I've heard it on the radio a few times lately. I thought I was all cool and hip for saying we were leaf peeping. Brad thought I was a dork.

We get to the orchard and guess what? It's a FRUIT STAND. Seriously. See?
I was so mad (well, really disappointed) that I just wanted to cry. That only lasted about 10 seconds because crying over apples is kinda stupid. So once I got over my pity party we decided to buy 20 pounds of apples (without experiencing the joy of picking our own apples) from a bin at the fruit stand. 20 pounds for $8. Can't beat that...or sometimes you can if you find 5 pounds at the store for $1.99. It happens. But it somehow felt cool getting them from a fruit stand (with an apple orchard in the back yard...an apple orchard that we were not allowed to pick from....how rude....okay, I'm done).

I asked someone at the fruit stand if there was anything ELSE fun to do in Waynesville. The nice lady said "Oh, you have to go to Lake Jenaluska, it's fun and you can feed the geese". Well, we have geese in Alabama but if that's what Waynesville has to offer then I'm game. We discovered just how lame Lake Jenaluska was. Very.

So we brought our 20 pounds of apples home with us. I shared some with a friend and will cook the rest. I make apple butter during fall each year, so I might make some this week. Tonight I made fresh applesauce that David asked me to make then told me it was gross. Awesome. I do have a recipe for a great apple strudel muffin...I'm sure I'll make some of those too. I'll share the recipe, if I can remember, later.

Trout Fishing

I have way too many pictures to post right now (almost 600, in fact....but don't worry I won't post them all...I just need to go through them to decide which ones I do want to post).....so I'm just going to share some pictures from our day at the trout farm.

We found a fantastic rainbow trout farm just outside of Bryson City, NC. On the way to the farm we saw some beautiful property...including this one. I could definitely live here.

The man who owns the property lives there in this cute little cabin. Love it.


We were there for over an hour but actually fished for about 15 minutes. We caught 7 fish in that time. The fish were sure biting.



We caught almost 12 pounds...as indicated by the scale. At $4.50 per pound plus the cost to filet all 7, we spent about $4.30 per filet...not too bad.




We had a really fun time fishing and will definitely plan to do it again next time we visit North Carolina. And if you ever go up there don't waste your time at an actual river...a couple guys I talked to fished several hours one afternoon and caught NOTHING. And look what we caught in 15 minutes. I know, I know...some people enjoy the thrill of the catch. Not us...we just like actually catching something! :)

I'll post more pictures from the trip shortly.

Vacations are awesome

We are in Cherokee, NC right now - on vacation. It's fantastic. Since David has been around we've never taken a long vacation before. All of our vacations were either long weekends (often to Gatlinburg) or to Florida to see family. That's fun and all...but there's nothing quite like getting away for 10 whole days. Ten days away from work....hallelujah! Ten days away from Highway 280 traffic. Ten days away from house work (well, I still have house work to do on the camper - dishes, sweeping the dirt out, laundry - in a laundry room, ewwww). And ten days to do whatever we want. Love that last part!

Normally I find myself happy as Thursday night rolls around knowing that there is only one more day of work...however this week I'm so sad. This means that our vacation is almost over. We leave Cherokee tomorrow morning to drive to Stone Mountain, GA. We'll spend the evening with my dad (who will just drive over for a couple of hours since he has to work early Saturday morning), spend Saturday there doing the Stone Mountain stuff and leave Sunday morning to drive home. See...vacation is more than 3/4 over. Sad. But I'm thankful for this time we've taken off - so I shall not complain.

I have a fabulous and amazing friend who is house sitting for us this week. Laura takes great care of our pups and cat. She's awesome. By having her at home I don't worry for a second about the animals. Love her.

I'm typing this on a laptop and don't have any pictures to share. I'll have a post coming up soon with pictures of David's b/day party from 2 weekends ago and then from this vacation. We've done a lot of things and also a lot of nothing at the same time.

David's 5th Birthday Weekend

Last week/weekend we celebrated David's birthday....pretty much every day. Sunday we went to dinner with some girlfriends (David was the only boy, but he didn't care). My friend, Amy, was moving out of town so a couple girlfriends went to dinner. The band (of a couple of guys and a big water jug) sang Happy Birthday to David. The jug didn't sing (and I'm not meaning one of the guys was a water jug....I mean they used the jug as a drum). They served him a sopapilla(?). It was pretty good...and he thought it was cool.
Me, David, Amy, Lila (her twin, Grayson, stayed home that night), Heather and Allison.
Tuesday I took off at 2:30 and went to David's school to celebrate his actual birthday with his class. I made a killer cookie cake and another mom brought in cup cakes (a friend of David's was born on the exact same day as David).
Cayden and David (Cayden is the boy who shares David's same birthday).
Ms. Maria is David's 5k teacher. She's super sweet.After we celebrated with his class we left to go to the park for an hour or so. Then we met up with a friend for dinner at Pettrucelli's. The waitress knew it was David's birthday (the helium balloons I brought in and sat on the table gave it away) and after dinner she brought him a great big piece of cake with ice cream. Cara and I sang him Happy Birthday (quietly, so we didn't embarrass him).

On Thursday night David's Pa Pop rode his motorcycle up from Florida to spend the weekend with us. He stayed home on Friday with Pa while Brad and I went to work. They had fun hanging out (went to breakfast at IHOP, then Lowe's, then met me for lunch at my office, then to the BMW motorcycle store, then to the park).

I'll share pictures of his b/day party later. I'm heading to bed now.

Can't believe my boy is already 5 years old!