"Vacation"

A friend of Chris' told him when Eli was born that once you have kids there is no longer any such thing as 'vacation'. He's right in a sense, we often end up more tired at the end of any extended non-work time than when we started. But, I think in another way, he's quite wrong. Sure, we didn't have a relaxing 3-day weekend, but I think we did have a great one (if you are careful to mentally edit out the time-outs, cry-fests, and stubborn-kid moments).

One of the things we love about where we live is its relatively close proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway also goes through the county where we grew up and was a favorite haunt of ours during our high school days. We hadn't been out there in a long time, but we ventured forth on Saturday and had a great trip.

Eli loved the historic agricultural exhibits at Mabry Mill and we found an excellent place to picnic at Rocky Knob, where a huge field and big rocks kept an active 2.5-year old nice and busy. The big shade tree kept Ezra and I equally happy.

Here's our ode to one of the most photographed places in America.

Eli couldn't believe it that this wagon wouldn't have been pulled by a tractor!