Christmas Decorations 2016

Today we decorated for Christmas!

This coming Monday, we all have to go back to school (half of us as students, half as faculty) after having a week off for Thanksgiving; decorating helped make that fact a little more bearable.

Thanksgiving Feast at J.C. Magill

Today I went to the girls' school to have lunch with Elyse for their Thanksgiving Feast! And afterwards Elyse and I went to the book fair, though that was a bit of a disappointment since it was an Usborne book fair and not a Scholastic book fair, and Elyse wasn't impressed with their selection. (She still managed to spend nearly all of her $20, though.)

(Unfortunately, I couldn't go to the Thanksgiving Feast yesterday with Jessica's class because I had to teach. Under other circumstances I might have cancelled my class to have lunch with Jessica, but this was the last class meeting my Tuesday classes would have before their research papers were due, and the next-to-the-last meeting for the whole semester, so I really couldn't cancel.)

Stone Mountain Christmas 2016

Today we went to Stone Mountain for the opening day of Stone Mountain Christmas for 2016. It's not that we are so taken with it that we had to go on opening day, it's just that we could get free passes this weekend for up to four guests, and we had three guests in mind: Granny, Pa, and Jeff.

We enjoyed it. Jeff hadn't been to Stone Mountain in years, so the Crossroads area was all new to him, as was Snow Mountain (which isn't open yet, but is nearly finished). We road the train, and for the first time (with the girls, anyway), we rode in a closed car, which is if nothing else warmer than being in one of the open cars (it was slightly chilly today).

Jessica didn't bring a camera, so there aren't any pictures of me, but here are some of the pictures I took:

(How can you look that unenthusiastic when there are giant cookies in front of you?) 

(Climbing on the giant rock in the parking lot is as much a draw for our girls as anything else.) 

Vines Gardens Haiku 10

The path before me
curved and strewn about with leaves
Solitary walk

Vines Gardens Haiku 9

Vines Gardens greenhouse
comes noisily crashing down--
Misty fall morning.

Trick-or-Treating

Tonight we went to Granny and Pa's house to go trick-or-treating (or at least so Jessica and Elyse could). This has been our Halloween tradition for eight years now, but this year was a little different: Granny and Pa weren't there. Mom and Dad were on vacation in Myrtle Beach.

Still, it's our tradition to trick-or-treat in their neighborhood, and we wanted to continue that even if it was just the four of us. (We all agreed, though, that's it's much better when Granny and Pa are there.)

I didn't take a lot of pictures, but the girls were in the same costumes they were wearing last Friday night. The first picture below is me and Elyse waiting in the car while Anna and Jessica went into Subway to get their supper for the evening.

Halloween Costumes

Tonight we went to Granny and Pa's house for supper (sesame chicken -- as Elyse calls it, "Chinese chicken" -- and sweet and sour chicken from Oriental Garden), and then we tried to go to downtown Lawrenceville to do trick-or-treating on the square, but, oh!, the traffic, and, oh!, the hundreds of people! (Maybe even thousands. No kidding, it was BUSY!) So instead of stopping in Lawrencville--I'm honestly not sure we could have found a parking space anyway--we turned round and stopped at Publix and got Halloween cupcakes and Halloween cookies and came home and watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Elyse was terribly disappointed we didn't get to go trick-or-treating, but she would have been miserable standing in the lines that snaked all the way down the sidewalk just to get a tiny bit of candy.

Even though we didn't get to trick-or-treat, the girls did get dressed up ("I got dressed up all for nothing!" Elyse said in the car as we drove home, butI told her she got dressed up so Granny could see her in her costume, since Granny and Pa will be in Myrtle Beach on the real Halloween. Elyse didn't find this convincing.). Here's what they looked like at Granny and Pa's house:

Elyse has had her costume for weeks, but Jessica just got hers this afternoon at Walmart. Anna was dressed up for her pirate-themed book fair at school.

Vines Gardens Haiku 8

Beaver or vandal?
Either way, the tree is dead.
Sad chilly morning.

Tallulah Falls

This weekend we went on a short road trip (under 200 miles altogether, in fact) to Commerce and Tallulah Falls. Our real destination was Tallulah Falls and Tallulah Gorge State Park; Commerce was just a place to spend the night and not have to drive all the way from Loganville to Tallulah Falls on Sunday morning.

(Actually, all the other hotels anywhere near Tallulah Falls were all filled up (Octoberfest in Helen is a big North Georgia draw); the fact that the Comfort Suites in Commerce has an indoor heated pool and a hot breakfast was a big bonus.)

Saturday morning Anna and the girls went to a Girl Scouts STEM event at the Gwinnett County fairgrounds, so we didn't actually head out until a little after 2:00, but since Commerce is so close, we were at our hotel by 3:30.

After we checked in and got the car unloaded, we went out to the Red Hound Antique Market and looked around for a while, then spent some time at the used bookstore just next door, after which we had supper at Sonny's BBQ. Then we went back to the hotel so the girls could swim and I could not swim.

Sunday morning, after helping ourselves to the free hot breakfast (biscuits and gravy and sausage and scrambled eggs and a waffle and lots of coffee for me; I fairly gorged myself), the girls swam some more and I went out for a short walk, during which I snapped the picture above and the picture below.

The indoor heated pool also included a spa, which the girls said was very hot:

We came back to the room so the girls could get ready to go:

and we headed north on U.S. 441 (my favorite road).

It's impossible -- or at least inadvisable -- to go to Tallulah Falls without stopping at the Tallulah Point Overlook to look over the gorge, peruse the rustic offerings in the store, and get a snack.

(It was much busier than this picture implies. There were quite a few cars parked behind me that you can't see here.)

Then, loaded down with our drinks and my Moon Pie and the girls' peppermint sticks, and also three T-shirts, we went to the park and spent some time out in nature:

(I wish I'd brought one of my real cameras instead of just my cell phone, but these pictures aren't too bad.)

At one of the overlooks, Elyse got out her pen and sketch book to draw the view:

I had forgotten that to get to the south rim trail, you have to walk along the bridge where 441 crosses the river, cars and trucks and occasionally really loud motorcycles whizzing right by you. The walk made me nervous and terrified Jessica, but Elyse skipped happy along, holding her mommy's hand.

We only walked along the south rim trail for a little while, some of it under heavy protest from our tuckered out daughters, before we climbed back in the car and headed for home.

Despite their complaints that they were "so tired!", both girls stayed awake all the way home (about a two hour drive), and thankfully so did I (though we did stop at a QuikTrip in Gainesville to get me a cup of coffee, or I might not have). Anna dozed off and on all the way home.

We listened to the audio version of Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls, Book #1: Moving Day by Meg Cabot on this trip (it's really good; I recommend it), and it ended just a couple of miles before we made it back to our house. Perfect timing. (Or almost. Jessica did say, "Do we have another audio book?" but I told her we weren't going to start something new when we're five minutes from home.)

Two Vines Gardens Haiku

Mid October cold

Does not deter these flowers--

But I wear a coat

Fall affects some leaves

Before it touches others--

And colors me, too

A Visit to Sleepy Hollow with Granny and Pa

Today is Columbus Day, and the girls didn't have school. Anna and I both did, however, so the girls spent the night last night with Granny and Pa, and today they drove up to Blairsville to visit Sleepy Hollow, a "whimsical fairy garden" created by a former Disney artist.

It sounds like a great place; I wish I could have gone. I'm glad Jessica took some pictures to share with us, though:

And here are some pictures from Granny and Pa's camera: