Blue Ridge and Other Things

Happy Thanksgiving week!  I am sure everyone is gearing up to cook and/or eat lots of food here in a day or two.  I, for one, am super excited about spending Thanksgiving with my family!  I haven't spent Thanksgiving in Florence since I got married so I cannot wait to see a lot of relatives I haven't seen since my wedding and introduce Mason to everyone.  I am also very much looking forward to my Aunt Marva's macaroni and cheese and my mom's seven layer salad and my grandmother's (Mamaw) chicken and dressing, fried okra, and potato salad!!!!! I am so pumped! (Big Fat Fatty)  Notice I only mentioned the food and nothing about the thankfulness.  I am very thankful for so many things, but I will save that for a future post, Lord willing I have time to do another one soon.  

Now, let me wrap up the Blue Ridge vacation with these pics from the last full day we had at the cabin...

Here we have Ben's artistic photography capturing his "perfect s'more."

Ben and Mason are going to kill me for putting this one on the blog, but I love it!!! Mason doesn't favor us in many ways physically (the bright blue eyes and blonde hair), but he has so many of our other characteristics.  I love their sleepy head looks early this morning.  We didn't get much sleep on the trip because Mason had a hard time sleeping through the night for some reason.  Special thanks to mom and dad for staying up with him a couple of nights.

Ahh, I am so sneaky capturing this picture of Matt.  Cara brought her cool travel hammock and I think I need one of those as well... maybe for Christmas.

Cara was forcing Matt to share the hammock with her.  

Not exactly the correct focus, but I think this picture of Berkley is hilarious.

Mason is always thrilled to walk around.  I am learning to shoot on Manual and I forget I have the camera set to manual and just start shooting.  This pic is over exposed and unedited but I love the expression captured on Mason's little face.

Berkley Boo my mountain dog.  He is such a rugged poodle.

The sun made the leaves light up like they were glowing!  I love fall because of all the beautiful colors!

It was all in all, a wonderful trip and we had so much fun! I definitely recommend Blue Ridge as a fall vacation spot for any family.  I wish I had captured a few shots of down town Blue Ridge because it is such a quaint little town.  I also need to share our experience at the store "Gypsy Eyes, Mystical Shop." Yes, didn't know that was the name of the shop until after we went in there.  You can just imagine....

I would also like to share this link with you.  It is from Women's Bible Cafe which I stumbled upon while searching for a good Bible study.  The Women's Bible Cafe offers several on-line Bible studies that you can follow along with every week.  I did Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World and I loved it! I highly recommend this website if you don't have time to meet weekly with a group or another individual but would like to participate in a study.  It was a blessing to me even though I did struggle to keep up with the reading.  The link I shared is a really uplifting article about gifts that we can all share with others such as Joy, Strength, and Peace.  It reminds me that "small" things, as simple as praying for someone or just being there for a friend going through a tough time can have such an impact on another person.  Check it out if you have time!