Week Ending 8-2-15

 All of the kids sleeping on the trampoline the night before we left California.

 Makenna and Samuel on the flight home.

 Alexis, Aunt Lori, Kylie. It was so great to have my sister on our flight home. She did all the work with the kids and I mostly worked on a needlepoint stocking.

 We landed at 1am Thursday morning, July 30th. We slept in until 10 and then went swimming. After lunch Lori gave us a tour of Gaylord Opryland Hotel where she works. It is so huge and beautiful. I should have taken more pictures, but we had a lot of fun.

 Reaching out the window to touch a waterfall that was pouring down. We were in some kind of tunnel with the water flowing over it. It was pretty neat.

 Friday, July 31 we drove all day to Waynesboro, VA to meet up with our good friends whom we haven't seen in years. They generously used their Marriott points to get us 2 beautiful hotel rooms. When I went to bed Spencer and Makenna were sleeping in this couch bed the right way with Spencer on the left and Makenna on the right. When I got up Saturday morning this is how they looked. 

 Thomas chose the chair to sleep in. 

 Kaitlyn, Samuel, and I tried many times to wake them up. They were still on CA time, so it was hard to get up.

 It had a gorgeous full kitchen. I wish we could have stayed longer. 

 A separate bedroom where Kaitlyn, Samuel and I slept. Kylie, Madalyn, and Alexis slept in the other room with our friend's 2 girls.

 Saturday we found a little visitor center on the Blue Ridge Parkway and had a picnic lunch. The weather was perfect and it was so fun to be with our friends again. We met when I only had 2 children and she had 1. Now I have 8, almost 9, and she has 5.

After eating we had a neat little tour of this old farm, garden, and original log cabin.

Then we hiked for a couple of hours and saw amazing views, but our camera battery was dead. I'll have to get pictures from our friends. We had a delicious picnic dinner and left Virginia at 8 pm to drive back to North Carolina, getting here at midnight after being gone for 5 weeks and 2 days. It's good to be home!