Georgia on my mind!

Greetings! A few months ago, my mother-in-law invited us to attend her annual family gathering in north Georgia. We happily agreed to go but as the date got closer, I must admit I was a bit anxious about how my two little crazy kids would do in the car for that long of a time. I’m happy to report; we took 3 little ones in our ‘school bus’ and everyone made it there and back without any tears or screaming in the car!!



We decided to break the trip up with a stop in Gainesville to visit with a good friend. It was great catching up (although we stayed up way too late)! The next morning, we loaded up the coolers, kids, and distractions and took off. Now that I’m writing this, I think I should have taken some pictures of the chaos in my car with it loaded down with 4 adults and 3 kids – and our orange & blue cooler on the back!


Our trip brought wonderful visits with family we hadn’t seen in years (or had never met!). It was great to spend time with everyone in such a beautiful place. We played cards, read, went on ‘treasure hunts’, camped, had a chili cook off, napped, and my favorite – caught fireflies! It was so fun to watch Jay get excited as he zig-zagged through the woods trying to catch them. I remember being a kid on vacation in the mountains where I discovered the magic of these strange bugs that lit up! It was a jam packed fun weekend.


Jay got to spend one of our nights in Georgia in the camper with Grammy & Papa. He was so excited to get to really ‘camp’!! We play camping a lot around our house! And he’s decided that he and Daddy are going to build a camper (Jay’s responsible for building the wheels). He had some older cousins to play with that drew him maps and hid treasures for him to find. It was so fun watching him run around, looking at the map, and trying to figure out where the treasure was!


Lily has been quite a slow walker and Steven and I were disappointed that she wasn’t really walking by the time we left. Our disappointment quickly dissipated as we watched our nephew (who is a week younger than Lily) run all over the place as his parents chased him. Although I wasn’t crazy about her crawling all over the ground, I enjoyed not having to worry that she was running down the hill or into the road! No worries – she has since started walking and it really does change life (for her and us!).


Rarely do Steven and I take time to just sit down and relax. We were able to do this on our trip and it was great to just spend time together as a family. We need to be better about making time to do it because it really does recharge the batteries!


I have to share my favorite story from the whole trip… Jay calls a walkie-talkie and ‘okie-dokie’. I have no idea where that name came from and this trip was the first I had heard him say it. So we were in the midst of naptime negotiation with Jay and I left the room and told him to keep his eyes closed. A few minutes later I went in to check and make sure his eyes were closed. I didn’t expect them to be closed but I also didn’t expect them to be as large as they were. I asked him why his eyes were open and he looked at me wide eyed and said, ‘Mommy – that okie-dokie said something!’ I couldn’t help but laugh and needless to say that was the end of our naptime negotiation.


The trip was great and I can’t wait for our trip in the fall! I’ve added some pictures – I wish I had taken more!!

It was a great trip! You'll notice Jay has a patch on his eye - I'll save that for another post but he's having some eye issues (so he gets to be a pirate!). We're praying they're resolved when we see the doctor again next week. In the grand scheme of things - it's a minor issue.

Until next time!!