Friday Foto Friends! Where Do I Begin?

Happy October!!  Here it is the 6th of October already, and I am running way behind in most everything!  As you know, we were out of town all this past week, so that alone is enough to make my head swim!

I am thankful for these truths above...it's comforting to know that God's Word will stand forever...He never changes, and He is always always there for us! No matter WHAT!!

So with that in mind, I give Him praise for being with us yesterday during hubby's medical "procedure". It was a VERY long day, but the good news is that the Doctor gave a very good report at the end and we feel confident everything will be fine. Hubby just needs to rest and heal now...and I need to try to rest sometime too, in between everything else...I know now why I never became a nurse...LOL. That's all I'll say about that!   Thank you to all of you who offered words of encouragement and prayer on our behalf. They are MUCH appreciated.  

I promised to share more about our trip with you in bits and pieces.  One thing we did while in the North Georgia mountains was go to an Apple Orchard.

I was expecting a small family run orchard with bushel baskets of apples and maybe some apple cider and fall decorations.  But Mercier Orchards (click link for website) was HUGE!  It definitely had all what I expected, but on steroids! LOL. 

It was a beautiful place and we enjoyed being there...but it was definitely an eye-opening experience!

Here's just one of the pictures I took inside the huge building, which was full of not only apples of every imaginable variety, but all manner of gifts, jellies, jams, apple butters, cider, fall decor, you name it!

Here they are sorting the apples. We were able to watch through glass windows into this very large area. It was amazing to see this whole place in action!

After sampling several slices of different varieties of apples currently available, I decided on buying a bag of "Johnagold" apples, which is a combination of a Johnathan and Golden delicious apple. You can see one of the apples below. They were huge!  I made a bowl of "Waldorf Salad" today, with apples, grapes, celery and walnuts and mayonnaise. It was yummy!  We also bought a gallon of fresh apple cider, which we drank before we came home, and we bought some fresh apple cider donuts, which we also ate before we came home! LOL. They were GOOD!

In my last post HERE, I shared some pictures of the many inspirational signs that were in the cabin where we stayed in Georgia, but I didn't share any pictures of the cabin itself! So here are a few that will give you an idea of how nice it was:

This is the back side...

And the view below looking from up on the back porch down onto the firepit.  The only thing missing here at this cabin was a really good mountain view.  However, there were many views all around the area, so we definitely got a lot of good views of the mountains.  The leaves had not really changed much yet, but I hear this week is supposed to be beautiful. We just got there too soon!

Oh,  and also it was too warm last week to use the fireplace or the firepit, so we didn't get to make s'mores!  I was disappointed in that, but it's okay.  My son and DIL have a nice firepit at their house and they've promised me we will do s'mores here just as soon as it gets cold enough for a fire!

Someone asked me for more information about renting this cabin, so HERE is a link to the website, and there are many more pictures of the interior of the cabin.

Here's another sign I didn't share yet:

And this one was in our bedroom:

I loved this bear paddling his canoe:

We did enjoy the downstairs gameroom:

Rose loved playing Pacman and other arcade games:

She was good at it:

The guys enjoyed watching her:

Rose and I enjoyed a cup of tea on the back porch...

And Benton and the doggies joined us...

I loved this huge king size log bed in Benton and Rose's upstairs bedroom:

Oh, and some very dear "old friends" of ours came to visit one evening and we all went out to supper. We've known Ken and Cindy for over 43 years...we served in the ministry in churches near each other back then, and we became very good friends and even now that we are all retired, we continue to stay in touch. They live in a town in Georgia about an hour away from where we stayed. We feel so blessed to have such dear "old friends" after so many years. 

One of the other little "daytrips" we took while in GA was actually to a little mountain town just north of there in NC, "Hayesville, NC".  It was such a sweet little town nestled in the mountains where it seemed like time has stood still.  We walked around the town square and visited some of the little shops. Here's a few pictures...

This was a monument celebrating the town's quilting heritage:

And there were these "Barn Quilts" scattered all over town on different buildings. These are just a couple of examples:

This mural of a Cherokee Native American greets you as you come into town. This part of NC is rich in Cherokee history.  

This sign was outside of a little gift shop named "The Lazy Llama"...LOL.

Mountain view down the street...

One of the stores we visited was really special and unique. It was an old original  clothing store and a drug store building attached, complete with original wood floors that squeak...

A sweet kitty cat...

And an old soda fountain much like I remember in my hometown growing up. I loved this!!!

This was hanging in the clothing store..."Just a reminder of the good old days"...a lady's corset:

There were some old hats from the 50's, along with photographs all around the store of the way things used to be:

Who remembers "Ship n Shore" blouses?  I sure do...

This was the outside of those stores.  I could have stayed in there all day. It reminded me so much of stores where I grew up.

After leaving this little town (reluctantly for me...I wanted to move there! LOL), we went back to Blairsville, where we were staying, and found a place to have lunch:

"The Hole in the Wall" cafe'

It was such a nice sunny day we decided to eat outside and enjoyed the unusual and fun outside decor...

The pig wasn't very friendly...LOL. (but at least he didn't bite or squeal! LOL)

There were sunflowers everywhere:

Both real and fake: LOL

And some bright sunny faces...

all around the table...

Lunch was good...and the nap afterwards was even better when we got back to the cabin after a busy morning.

I think it's time to close this post and save the best for the next one...the day of our family reunion. There was a lot going on there  and so many pictures that it may take more than one post...so I will give you a rest for now as it is time for me to stop for the night and give myself a rest too!

Here's a Psalm to think about as we reflect on this past week of so many blessings and answered prayers:

Psalm 121

"I will lift up my eyes to the hills—

From whence comes my help?

2 My help comes from the Lord,

Who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not allow your foot to be moved;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

4 Behold, He who keeps Israel

Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;

The Lord is your shade at your right hand.

6 The sun shall not strike you by day,

Nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil;

He shall preserve your soul.

8 The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in

From this time forth, and even forevermore."

Amen.

 

Home Again, Home Again jiggety jig

 There's no place like home...there's no place like home...LOL.  We are SO thankful to be back home from our little trip. We had a WONDERFUL time visiting family, friends, and seeing beautiful scenery in the mountains...every day was an amazing new adventure...and I will try to share more in the days and weeks to come.  I don't want to overwhelm you with too many pictures all at once so will try to break it up into events and places.  However, tonight I am tired from traveling all day long, leaving literally at the crack of dawn before the sun came up over the mountains of Northeast Georgia.  After traveling for about a half an hour, this was our view at a scenic overlook:

You can still see the mist in the mountains as the sun was rising over the hills...it was absolutely stunning.

For those of you who saw my Facebook post last week on our trip up to North Carolina for the family reunion, you will know that because the rental car we got turned out to be a little smaller than expected, my DIL Rose and I had the great joy of holding two sweet grandpups all the way up to NC from Florida, and all the way back home again today from GA.  Here we were last week at the beginning of our journey...Rose is holding Spice, and I am holding Sugar.

This was the view in my lap on the way home today...that's pretty much the way we rode for all of our trip all day long, except for pit-stops.  But thankfully these pups are the sweetest and best and they fully cooperated and slept most all the way.

However, I believe the doggies were just as happy to get back home as we were! LOL.

I will cut through all the fine details for tonight and show you this picture of our family reunion:

This is my side of the family, members of each of my sibling's families and also a close cousin (Becky) and her hubby (Pat).  There were four of us siblings, and my oldest brother Russell has passed on in 2019. But his oldest son and daughter in law were there. My next oldest brother Clifford and his wife Caryl and their two daughters were our hosts for this reunion. Some of their grandchildren also we able to attend. My sister Doris and her husband Art were also there from Florida, and their oldest daughter Debbie also came. Then there was me (the baby of the family), and my hubby John, and our oldest son Benton and wife Rose.  We were each missing some of our kids and grandkids, but still this was a pretty good representation of our family.  We are so thankful that we were able to do this and hope to do it as often as possible in the future, Lord willing and as our health permits.

This is how our "original family" looked many years ago...

My how times have changed!!

I will share more pictures from the reunion in future posts, as well as pictures from the cabin where we stayed for the rest of our vacation in the north Georgia mountains.  But for tonight I think this will be enough as I am very tired, and tomorrow hubby has the (outpatient) medical procedure that we've been waiting for for quite a while. It will be a long day and I don't expect I'll be able to do much writing tomorrow...but we shall see how things go this weekend.

So I will close with a few pictures of some of the many wonderful little inspirational signs that were hanging in the cabin where we stayed. The owners of this "AirBnB" cabin have named their cabin "Our Mountain Blessing"...and I must say it lives up to its name....

I loved each of these different little plaques and signs...they truly did bless us as we spent our days there together...

I like what this says "Collect moments, not things..."   Oh yes!!!

Amen to these verses!

And I saved the best for last..."Friends are God's way of taking care of us."  

I do hope to get caught up with each of you in the days to come. I feel like I've been away forever and I haven't been able to read blogs while away due to lack of computer (and it's too difficult to do on my phone) and spotty internet.  So I know you all have your own special stories and adventures and maybe even prayer requests going on out there.  Hopefully we can get caught up with each other really soon.

Until then, 

Thank you for being very special friends.

Good Night and God Bless you all!