a little surprise trip

My husband and I love to surprise the kids when we take a trip! (That sounds like we do it all the time, and in reality it's only happened twice.  But hey, that's how traditions begin right?)  We're in year round schools so my children were starting their three week track out and my husband had already decided to take a few days off work.  He and I got to talking and decided we needed a little excursion up to Boone.  We  booked a hotel, planned what to do, and packed everybody up…well he packed himself up and I packed up the everybody else, isn’t that the way it always go?

Monday morning the kids were all grumpy about not having anything fun planned for the day and were begging for a chance to go to either the zoo or into downtown to walk around the museums.  We told them we had do clean the house that day, we just garnered more groaning and complaining but they got to work cleaning up.  I hate to come home to a dirty house after a trip.  Then when everything was set I told the kids to grab a book, visit the bathroom, find their sunglasses and hop in the car.  It wasn’t until we were halfway there did we finally tell them where we going!  They kept trying to guess… beach? Mamaw and Papaw’s? Virginia?  Great Wolf Lodge?

Going to the mountains is like going home to me.  I grew up around Asheville and went to college in Boone at Appalachian where I met the mister.  When I go there, I feel more free, lighter somehow, as if a burden has been lifted.  I’ve been living down off the mountains for over 9 years now, and I still don’t feel “at home”.

  There’s something about the beauty of the mountains, the smell in the air, the cooler weather and just the attitude of the natives that touch my soul in a way that no other place can.  The mountains get in your blood and take hold.  I feel like my true self when I’m there.  Even though my husband says he loves the place just as much as me, and I don’t think it’s possible.  He only spent a few years in college up there and he isn’t tied to the mountains like I am.  I would love to go back.  I’d go back in an instant, no looking back and running the whole way. 

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