Southern Babies: Father's Day Weekend at Lake Junaluska

School's out and we had a wonderful first week! I took the whole week off and spent it with the kids. I spent the morning cleaning the house each day. We had swimming lessons Monday and Wednesday evenings. Tuesday we went to our neighborhood pool in the afternoon. Wednesday we met Mimo and Aunt Anna for lunch and they took the kids for a couple hours while I ran some errands.

Thursday morning I got the three of us, and the dog, packed up and we headed out to my parents. We got there for lunch and we ended up swimming for a little bit. The kids are doing well with their swimming. Will has come a long way! We can pretty much say he is a swimmer, although he has more to learn. He usually tries to keep his head out of the water but he is even getting better at going under. Thursday at my parents' he actually jumped off the diving board and swam to the ladder!! With no floats and no help!!   Lindy has no problem going under the water and is working hard at the swimming basics. She actually swims under water much better than above water. She needs to work on keeping her nose and mouth shut and not drinking half the pool.

We got changed and we continued on our way up to Lake Junaluska for the weekend. We headed to Katie's parents' mountain house and it was good to be back. We weren't able to go last June for various reasons and the kids were beyond excited to be back. So excited that I almost had to send them packing back home.  We had dinner out and then we made s'mores down by the lake. Will got involved in a game of hide and seek and Lindy and Claire hung out.  We saw Martha so she came to say hi as well.

Friday we spent a lazy morning lounging around the mountain house. Finally the kids had calmed down a lot. We finally got ready and out the door and went to play putt putt.  We also went treasure hunting in downtown Waynesboro for a little while. We got back to the house and not long after Kris and Drew arrived. We had dinner at Butts on the Creek, a Lake Junaluska tradition, with a friend of ours.   Katie and I ended the evening walking the dog around the lake. We bumped into Martha early in our walk and she joined us for a beautiful evening walk. It wasn't a stroll - Martha doesn't stroll - but it was good exercise!

Saturday after the business sessions we headed for an adventure in Bryson City. We headed to Deep Creek for a picnic and for tubing. We have never taken the kids tubing before but we had a blast! You rent tubes and you walk your tubes up and you can get on the creek a ton of different places. It took all of us to make it work because someone had to carry Lindy and someone had to carry multiple tubes. Someone also had to stay back with Maisy, the Bryants' dog. The kids had a blast. I had Lindy tied to me each trip down the creek. We started off with Will tied but we untied him the second time. I still kept ahold of the rope because he would float to parts of the creek and get stuck because he didn't weigh much. We took three trips down with the kids and then eventually rode the tubes farther down to turn them in. We finished the evening eating dinner and walking around downtown Bryson City. We had never been but we loved Bryson City. Such a cute place!

Sunday morning we packed up, cleaned up and headed down the mountain around 11am. We had to pick the dog up from my parents so we celebrated Father's Day with a delicious lunch. We swam for a bit before finally going home.

We love our trips to Lake Junaluska and appreciate Katie letting us stay with them so many years. Last year was the first year the kids have not been there. They even went when I was pregnant! They have so much fun playing with Micah and Claire. It's so pretty and we so enjoy our weekend up there! We are keeping our fingers crossed that Katie's dad's talk of selling it will never actually happen!!

Pics of our fun weekend!

Swimming on Tuesday