Gilkes Journal

Monday, January 7, 2008

Georgia Vacation

This year we vacationed for the week of New Years in the Georgia Mountains. We joined my two aunts, uncles, cousins and Grandma on the trip, so there was a total of 11 of us.

A real "FAMILY" vacation!

It was so beautiful. J.J. had never seen mountains before! Every few minutes on the car trip I kept saying to J.J. "You don't see that in Florida!"

Our first stop was in Helen, Georgia. It's this cute little town that has a definite German theme to it as you can see in these pictures.

In Helen, Georgia there was the Habersham Winery, we sampled a few wines and purchased a few too!

Our next stop was our cabin in Blue Ridge, Georgia. A beautiful 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom cabin.

It even had a game room that had a bar, jukebox, pool table, fuse ball table, and several video games (no money required)! Can you guess where the kids (and the adults) spent most of their time?

Our very first night at the cabin (we were there for 4 nights) we got SNOW!!!!!! This was J.J.'s first time seeing snow also. It only snowed the one night but the ground was still covered the next day and even when we left 4 days later there were still areas with snow on it. We all rushed out side and started collecting the snow off the vehicles to have a mini snowball fight. It was great!

Then we we left to start to head home on Saturday we stopped off in Atlanta, Georgia to see Stone Mountain. Most of it was closed down due to Inventory and the winter season but we were able to still ride the sky ride to the top of the mountain and look around. It was incredible.

We also were able to "Ride the Ducks". It was so much fun. It's this open like bus that drives on land and then drives you into the water for a cruise around the lake. Our tour guide was soooooo funny! While we were cruising around the lake he took each kid up front one by one to drive it and he told so many jokes. We were all given these "quackers" that were like duck bill shaped whistles but sounds like a duck call. (We had to set the rule that J.J. could not use it once we got back to our car)

All in all it was a spectacular trip!

posted by Gilkes Journal at 1/07/2008 2 comments

Friday, December 28, 2007

Merry Christmas

Kyra & JJ got to see Santa at the mall.

Our Christmas Eve tradition...Dad & Elaine come over to our house and read Twas the Night Before Christmas to J.J. (this year J.J. did most of the reading!) Then we all go outside and set out carrots for the reindeer and sprinkle magic dust on the ground to help Santa see our house. Then we set out the milk and cookies and then it is off to bed so Santa can deliver the presents.

posted by Gilkes Journal at 12/28/2007 0 comments

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Kyra's Scrapbook

For the past year I have been working on a scrapbook for my niece, Krya. Since her parents passed away while Kyra is so young I wanted to give her something special to help her not only remember her parents but also to see that even though they had a short amount of time with each other they made the most of the time they had. Here are the pages of the scrapbook.

Kip & Cindy