We had such a great trip to the Mountains! Gabriel became very familiar with the animated Thomas the Train show. This has now replaced Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Dinosaur Train as go-to show to watch. He never even mentions the other two now, although he still plays with his Dinosaur Train toys. He is very much in a train phase, which is fun. I have to admit though, that I would much rather him watch the other two shows (a bit more substance and learning), but oh well! When we finally got to our Mountain adventure house, mommy and daddy were in awe! What an a beautiful house, and it had the most incredible views! The builder was inspired by the homes in South Carolina. He was determined that a home could in fact be built off of a cliff. There were beautifully high ceilings, lots of wrought iron and chandlers. It had very few walls without a large number of windows and doors. I think we counted 12 doors on the bottom level alone. I can't imagine why one would need so many doors on one floor. Windows, I completely get, but 12 doors? Anyway, we went through and locked ever single door in the house since they were ALL unlocked when we got there. That made me feel really good about the safety of the area. Mommy and daddy had the top floor (the main living area), Amelia's room was on the 2nd floor and Gabriel had the bottom floor. I had a hard time with having the kiddo's so far away and in a house with so many windows and doors, but I got less paranoid every day. Amelia didn't know any different, but Gabriel knew he was on the bottom floor and did great! He was such a brave and big boy! The house also had a hot tub on the lower level outside. It was pretty cool, literally! It finally heated up to the temp we wanted it at by our last night there! It had wrap around porches on each of the 3 levels facing the mountains and not much of anything else. We were literally on top of our own little mountain. It wasn't the most child friendly home, but we made do. The kids LOVED having the room to run around in. It had to have been at least 3500 sq feet. We ran around, crawled, and took pillow and blanket rides (often falling off) on the floor. We took a trip to the train museum, hiked, and took a ride on the Choo Choo! It was Polar Express time! Gabriel had only seen the movie once (about 2 days before we left) so I am pretty sure he never made the connection, but it was a cool train ride! The conductor took his ticket, punched it, we were served hot chocolate and cookies. We traveled past....well, trailer parks, and some pretty scenery. Not exactly what I had hoped for on the scenery side of things, but the trip is really meant to be taken at night in the dark. I now know why! :-) We road all the way to the "North Pole" to pick up Santa. The North Pole was kinda WAWAWA, but again, maybe it was more spactacular at night. We had to go during the day due to nap and sleep schedules (Amelia has an early bed time, and she isn't the most flexible of babies). Gabriel was a bit shy with Santa, but when Santa asked him if he has been good, he said "umhum", and when asked what he would like for Christmas, he said that he wanted Gordon the train for his Thomas. Cute! We got these cute jingle bells from Santa (both did) and we sang Christmas carols on our way back. Amelia managed to swindle yet another jingle bell from one of the ladies in the car helping us. Later that week, we attended the local tree lighting celebration. They normally would have had the parade on that day, but it had been postponed because their High school boys were in the State Championship game that day. So they just had the tree lighting and a band playing. We pretty much missed the tree getting lit, being just across the street from it. They made that little of a deal of it! We just turned it's direction once and said OH! About 5 min later the small crowd in front of the band started clapping. So I guessed that we noticed before they did. On our trip back, we took it on a Sunday, which means stopping at Chick filet was out of the questions. So what was the next kid friendly fast food restaurant best to stop at? McDonald's! So Gabriel tasted for the first time in his life, McNuggets. I have unknowingly become a food snob. I didn't realize what I had become until I sat at McDonald's and said that I bet he wouldn't even eat them. I was convinced that he would say that they were horrible and would ask what they were. Instead, he gobbled them up! He ate them far better than he has ever eaten the nuggets with true chicken at Chick filet! We even stopped at this McDonald's that had dedicated entire room to kids. So we ate and played in the same big room, and the play area was huge and nice! It was very nice indeed! If only all of them were like this, I think we might make a habit of stopping there on trips! We were very excited to come home to our Christmas decorations and our own beds! It was a great little mountain retreat and I now look at the pictures and wish we were back there. Mostly for the views that we had from the house and simply for the feel of being on vacation and not having to do anything if we didn't really feel like it.
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