....2016....
It's 43 degrees in North Carolina as I sit perched in a rather chilly barstool on the porch of the log cabin my father-in-law pieced together by hand. Even the stool that props me up in this New Year was made by him. It's a good old hometown labour of love up here in the Carolinas. We are just a mountainside drive away from my husband's family's first cabin and a couple more miles away from another property they own. Down the mountain from this house are three well-fed llamas that Grandpa D (what the kids lovingly call him) rescued. The llamas produce a soft fleece that Grandma C sends westward to have woven into blankets and rugs. My children both received one made especially for them as part of their Christmas. Speaking of which, this trip rounds out our third Christmas celebration -- one at home, one with my parents, and this one.
Our new favorite way to travel with children is with them sedated. Well, not really. However, we do wait until late in the evening to depart for long trips and drive through the night so that we arrive in the morning with at least most of day ahead of us. We arrived in North Carolina at 6:30 in the morning. The kids immediate recalled how, in summer, they checked the chicken coop for eggs. Lo and behold, there were a few to bring upstairs. Then, they headed down the drive to feed Smackers, Chief, and Fernando (the llama trifecta).
We had lunches in their small little town with the locals. We ate dinner one night at E and L's favorite pizza buffet which boasts video games and tickets for prizes for them to select after they've drained me of all of my cash. We took a drive through the mountains to go hiking along the same trail to Huckleberry Bald, the site of our wedding last May. While we were there, the kids transformed a broken christmas tree into a fort to stay warm in the thrashing wind. We even visited an underground lake that was discovered in the early 1900s by a 13-year-old boy. Nowadays, they do boat tours there, but it was once the site of a prohibition watering hole. This trip was capped off with a visit to the local cinema to watch Star Wars and ending the night with a drive to Brasstown where they host the annual possum drop (in place of the celebratory NYE- glass ball).
You can read all about it here
All in all this has been a good ole' country holiday, but I'm ready to get back to suburban living, my new 2016 budget, and a sense of regular life at home.
