Christmas morning we ate breakfast with my parents and then headed over to the Garland’s to open presents. Grandma Q. came over as well and brought her carload of gifts. Anthony is known for his creative wrapping. One present for Dad G. was about 6 feet tall and in the shape of a “T”. Dad unwrapped the top part and found an empty wrapping paper tube filled with paper towel rolls. He unwrapped the rest of the present and found an umbrella hiding inside. It was pretty funny. We went to lunch at BJU with both of our families. After lunch we opened presents with my family. We got a lot of nice gifts. Andrew’s favorite gifts were a George Forman grill, ESV study Bible, and several books from his Amazon list. My favorite gifts were two snowmen cross stitch books, a hot water bath (for canning), and a pressure canner and cooker.

Friday was a busy day. My family was busy packing for our annual trip to Michigan. Andrew and I attended the funeral for Mrs. Hadley, the mother of one of my good friends. We spent the evening with Andrew’s family.
Saturday was a long day that began at 4:30am. We followed my family for the 12 hour trip to Grandma and Grandpa Erickson’s farm. That area of Michigan had been getting a lot of snow, but Friday and Saturday were a little warmer and it rained so most of the snow melted. We did get a few more inches of snow halfway through the week.

Sunday was our only busy day of the vacation in Michigan. Grandma wanted her whole family at church so she could show us off. We took up 3 pews (most of the rest of the family lives in the same area, but they go to different churches). After church we headed over to Uncle Brian’s and Aunt Annette’s where we had our big dinner and then opened our gifts. Since there are so many of us we draw names for gifts. Some of the women like to do small things for everyone. This year my mom made caramel corn for all the guys and cookies in a jar for the women. Tricia made a small loaf of friendship bread for all the guys and Bath and Body Works handsoap or lotion for the women.

On New Year’s Eve we all went back to Uncle Brian’s for supper. Then some of us younger adults went into town to go bowling. We had a good time and enjoyed watching some of my cousin’s friends come up with creative ways to bowl. The funniest one was when the two girls (who were terrible bowlers) decided to roll the ball together. They got a strike. We got back to Uncle Brian’s about 9:30. Half of the group went downstairs to Uncle Brian’s home movie theater to watch an action movie and eventually everyone else went home.

The other days were pretty slow although there was always a house full of people, especially at meal time. All of us from out of town headed home Saturday morning. It is wonderful to have family we both get along with and enjoy spending time together.

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Tuesday: We headed south when Andrew was finished with work at 4pm

Wednesday: Andrew went to his parents’ house most of the day while I stayed at my parents’ house and helped my mom make food for Thursday. The Keys and Jessica got in that evening.

Thursday: Thanksgiving dinner #1 was at Grandma and Grandpa Boone’s house around 12:30pm. My family was there as well as Grandma and Grandpa, the Ridleys, the Keys, and Jessica. Thanksgiving dinner #2 was at Grandma Q’s house at 5pm. Andrew’s family was there plus grandma and a family Mom Garland works with.

Friday: Andrew helped Dad Garland and Anthony do some work on their new property. I stayed with my family and we went downtown for awhile. It was a beautiful day. We ate supper and spent the evening with Andrew’s family.

Saturday: I helped my parents pick out a Christmas tree. We went out to lunch and spent some time with Abby and Lincoln. We spent the evening with my family.

Sunday: We went to Hampton Park for church and ate lunch with Andrew’s family and our friend Erica. The Keys and Jessica left. I helped decorate the Christmas tree. We headed back to Radford around 3:30pm and had heavy traffic the first half of the trip. It took us more than an hour longer to get back.

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On Saturday we kept busy. In the morning we went over to school and looked around. My family kept wanting to go inside buildings, and I was surprised at how many of them were unlocked. We even went in several that I had never been in before! We were able to look inside one of the dorm rooms. All I have to say is that students at BJU have no right to complain. BJU’s dorm rooms are SO much nicer than this one that we saw. After lunch we took a long walk down to the river and went to some stores. I think most of us ended up taking a nap later in the day.

We celebrated my birthday Saturday night with ribs, salad, baked potatoes, green beans, and sourdough bread. I opened my presents and then we had cake that my mom made. It was yummy.

My family left soon after lunch on Sunday. I think we were all tired out, but we had a nice time together. I’m so thankful they were able to come visit.

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I’ll give the highlights of each day below, but there were some regular activites each day. A different crew cooked or cleaned up for every meal. Andrew and I cooked two meals and cleaned up three. It was great to not be in the kitchen for every meal. I know everyone else felt the same way. Another regular event was family devotions in the evening, just as we have done on every family vacation. This summer we sang some songs, had testimonies, and the “young” guys (Michael, Andrew, Nathan, and Brandon) gave a challenge. Each night was such a blessing.

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Saturday
Uncle Dave and family took I-81 down from New Jersey, so we invited them to our apartment for lunch. After lunch Stephanie rode with us. We ended up taking NC-197 instead of the interstate. The road still got us there, but it took MUCH longer. We went up and down a mountain and ended up in a valley with several houses and a church or two. Then went up and down another mountain past some more houses and a church or two. This continued for several hours. We finally made it to the house. The driveway was almost worse than the road we had been on. It was steep and narrow, and the last section was all gravel. Brandon got his family’s van stuck on the first attempt. They had to unload some people to shift the weight to the front wheels. We were the last ones to arrive. One of the first things said to us was, “Don’t drink the water. It smells like sulfur!” Sure enough, the water had a strong stench of sulfur.

Sunday
My dad spoke for family devotions in the morning. He spoke longer than the rest of the guys (more like a church service). There was nothing planned for the rest of the day, but in the afternoon some people were going to the town of Green Mountain. I wanted to go along. Green Mountain was not very big. It consisted of a general store (which was closed), a post office, and a Presbyterian church. A few people drove by, but no one was around. My car then went into Burnsville to get more bottled water.

We celebrated Grandpa and Grandma’s 60th wedding anniversary after supper (the reason we all got together in the first place). Grandpa and Grandma, Sharon and Nathan, and Andrew and I played the newlywed game. Uncle Dave had collected questions from everyone to ask Grandpa and Grandma about their marriage. Then we watched a picture slide show and ate pound cake with mashed strawberries.

Monday
We left in the morning to go to Mt. Mitchell. First we had to go to the store to get some bread. Some of the cars needed gas. Through miscommunication, Nathan’s and my dad’s cars headed off to Mt. Mitchell while Uncle Dave’s car waited for us in the store parking lot. They finally realized we had already left and headed out…only they turned the wrong direction out of the parking lot. Cell phone reception was hit and miss, so it was difficult figuring out what was going on. We finally waited for them at an overlook of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We were amazed that Uncle Dave could have such trouble when he was the one with the GPS!

We got to Mt. Mitchell and had a picnic lunch. Uncle Dave’s family, my family, and Morgan went on a hike. We had those who didn’t hike drop our cars off at the end of the trail. It was a beautiful hike through the woods. There were a lot of raspberry bushes along the way. Most of the berries weren’t ripe, but we managed to find a few we could eat. Halfway down the trail came to a restaurant along the road. We went to see the view and took some family pictures. Morgan said, “I don’t have a family.” There was another guy standing there and he pipes up, “I’ll be your family.” Then he walked over, put his arm around Morgan, and they took a picture together. It was really funny.

On the way back we went to The Soap Shed where this guy makes soap. He had over 120 varieties. Some of the boys walked in and walked back out because the smell was so strong. We ended up in there a long time because the man talked a lot.

Andrew and I were making pizza for lunch on Tuesday, and we needed a count of what kinds people would eat. After devotions I made the mistake of starting this topic by saying, “Andrew and I have an announcement.” As soon as I started saying, “Andrew and I are making pizza tomorrow” Aunt Debbie had this big reaction. She (as well as most of the other women there) thought we were going to say we were having a baby (which is not true). It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. It became one of the jokes for the rest of the week–”We’re going to have a little pizza.”

Tuesday
We were supposed to go tubing today, but the river was really low and we were told we would have to walk some of the way. We found a public pool in Burnsville, so in the afternoon we all went there. We were some of the oldest people at the pool. At first there were a lot of people in the water, but we got some of the shallow end cleared out by doing some synchronized swimming. We swam about an hour until it got cloudy (and time for a life guard break), and we stayed another hour just relaxing by the pool.

My dad had talked to the owner of the house about the sulfur water. The owner felt really bad and came to bring us some Shock (chlorine). We needed to pour it down the well, let it sit for 10-12 hours, and then let the water run until we didn’t smell the chlorine anymore. They put it down late in the evening.

Wednesday
The water treatment didn’t work. We ran the water, but we didn’t really smell any chlorine. The sulfur smell never really went away either. My dad and Nathan thought that since the chlorine was in a powder and the well is 900 ft deep that maybe it didn’t get down there. There was nothing on the schedule, so we went to Burnsville in the afternoon to go shopping. We spent a few hours going to some of the various shops.

Thursday
We took another picnic lunch and left late in the morning for Linville Falls and Caverns. My dad had gotten directions from Google, and he was leading. We were doing fine until the road ended with a locked gate. We all had to turn around and find someone to give us directions. As best as we can tell, the road became private or something and was blocked off. We got to the caverns without too much trouble. We took the tour first. The cave isn’t very big and our tour guide had a southern accent, didn’t enunciate very well, and gave a very memorized-sounding speech, but it was a neat tour. We had a picnic lunch and then took some trails to view Linville Falls. In the evening we had a campfire with S’mores.

Friday
We had some skits in the morning. Michael began with a group song. Stephanie and Brandon did a sound effects skit. I split everyone up into 4 groups and had everyone act out a past vacation memory. There was another sound effects skit and then a slide show with pictures of the week. Then was the grand finale. Back by popular demand was Matthew as the really tall person. I was a squatty body. Matthew made jokes from the week and then we acted out Brandon and Justine getting engaged. Matthew wrote a song for it. Everyone seemed to enjoy the skits.

We noticed that the water was smelling less like sulfur and more like chlorine. We weren’t sure what was going on.

That afternoon Uncle Dave’s family, Andrew, my brothers, and I went to Little Switzerland (which consisted of a used bookstore) and Emerald Village (which was an old mine and a museum of sorts). The way back was interesting. A tractor trailer truck had gotten stuck and was blocking both lanes. We followed some other cars around the truck into some back roads. We ended up getting a little bit lost. Of course Uncle Dave had the GPS, but it just sent us around in a circle. We eventually made it back to the main road. We also stopped in Spruce Pine and went to some shops.

On the way home my mom called and asked us to stop at the store for more bottled water. When we got back home the excitement began. We didn’t have any water. We don’t know why. My dad called the owner again who felt really bad and offered to pay for our hotel that night if we decided to leave. Sharon and Nathan went ahead and left, but the rest of us stayed. The hot tub had a few inches of water left in it, so we filled up our empty jugs to flush the toilets (thankfully we had saved all the filtered water jugs we had used). We used that up and then Uncle John, Uncle Dave, and Aunt Debbie went to a nearby house and asked to fill up jugs with water. We used these the rest of vacation to fill up the toilets. Grandpa spoke for devotions. He had some great things to say. We also watched some of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics.

Saturday
Everyone headed out at various times in the morning. Andrew and I stayed until my family left about 10am (the time we had to be out of the house). We decided to take our time going home, so we drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway for about two hours. We stopped in Blowing Rock at an Outlet Mall and then had lunch in Boone. We got home about 4:30pm. We are very tired, but happy to have had a wonderful vacation.

After a short night of sleep we left mid-morning to go blueberry picking. My aunt Tricia wanted some blueberries, and my mom wanted “a lot.” Unlike last week when we picked, this time the sun was out and it was pretty warm. In about two hours we picked 32 pounds of blueberries! It was about lunch time when we finished, so we had a picnic lunch at the historic bridge nearby. On the way back home we took side trips to drive around Virginia Tech and point out my building at Radford. We were all pretty worn out when we got back, so we took showers and several people took naps.

The evening was a little more relaxing with a short walk, a demonstration of how I do therapy, and conversation. At one point in the conversation, I was accused of not having fruit in the house. I quickly pointed out that there were 32 pounds of blueberries in the fridge.

My mom wanted to leave for Greenville early Sunday afternoon, so after another late start of the day we had church at home and then ate lunch. During lunch we got a rainstorm, so the family didn’t leave until closer to 2pm. Even though the visit was short and it was the hottest few days we’ve had in awhile (which isn’t fun with lots of people in the house without air conditioning) we had a great time.

We enjoy company, so come visit if you get a chance!