Our journey begins..........

On Friday, 13th August, our family headed off to Spruce Pines, North Carolina for Joshua and Courtney's wedding reception there.  Joshua and Courtney left on Thursday after their honeymoon to drive there.  Jim and Jessica left at 4:30am Friday morning to drive.  Samuel and I flew into the Asheville airport Friday afternoon.  Jim, Jessica, Joshua and Courtney met us there and then we all went to the newlywed's new home.  It was fun to see their new apartment and to see it starting to take shape into a first home for them.  We followed Joshua and Courtney and they decided to take us the scenic route!!!  Traffic was sooooo slow!

We then headed off to Spruce Pines to check into our cottage.  GPS is an incredible thing, but.......not always correct!  After a bit of meandering around the back roads of Spruce Pines, we found the correct destination!

It was fun to sit on the front porch.  Unfortunately, the views were not very spectacular!

This was the loft bedroom.  There was also a video game station that was a big hit with Jessica and Samuel.

 It was very comfortable, clean and had plenty of room to spread out.  The big disappointment was that Samuel couldn't play freely outside.  One of the features that attracted me to this cottage was that the reviews mentioned their young children being able to play outside.  Every time we went outside, five neighborhood dogs descended on us.  They would start to fight amongst themselves and Samuel would try and interject himself into the fray.
On Sunday afternoon Sam and I had an uninterrupted hour sitting on the porch and playing in the front yard.  
That was wonderful! 
There were beautiful butterflies flying everywhere.  So many different colors!
There was a super Walmart down the road a little, convenient for picking up supplies.  There was a poor dead raccoon on the road right by were we needed to turn into our cottage.  That was my road mark all weekend! When giving Jim directions, I was always sure to tell him, "Remember to turn at the dead raccoon!"

Sally-Ann