Vacation to Asheville

Since we weren't going home to Michigan on post-deployment leave, we decided we needed a small vacation anyway... so on a whim we planned a little trip to Asheville and had so much fun! There are still a lot of things we want to do in the state before we move in the spring, and this was definitely one of them... although four days was entirely not enough time and we'd love to go back in the spring or summer (it's actually a longer distance from here to Asheville than it is Beaufort to Asheville... twisted NC roads) and take a 4.5 hour train ride through the mountains into Tennessee, go on the Blue Ridge parkway, visit Mt. Mitchell and explore more of the downtown area.

The trip there was quite long-it's supposed to be just under 6 hours and it took us 9 between stopping for our breakfast, traffic, stopping for her breakfast (then she threw up), stopping for gas, lunch, etc... she was a great little traveler, she slept on and off the whole ride.
Wanting to make the most of our limited time there, we headed out right away after checking in to our cabins. We went to Asheville's Fun Depot which was a blast.

We grabbed a bite to eat first thing... Maya's very into sharing right now, as you can see!

She HATED this

There was mini bowling there... she didn't understand but she threw the ball down a couple of times with our help!

By the time we had done the arcade and some games, the putt putt course was almost the last thing we did. She was getting tired of it all but did as well as we could have hoped (she just wanted to go and run around, not stay with us) but we had fun.

It was really neat-there were bible verses on each hole!

Day 2 took us to the Biltmore...

Daddy helping Maya take a first peek at the house

The lone picture I got of the inside before I was scolded for taking pictures (I didn't know...)

Day 3 we went to Pine Grove Inn to see the (national I think?) Gingerbread House Competition.

This was the winner!

As for our cabin, we stayed at the Log Cabin Motor Court... it was such an old, quaint little place but we loved it! We'd stay there again in a heartbeat.

That night we went to a yummy Mexican restaurant. Maya had a taste of fried ice cream for the first time-she loved it so much that she'd sign for more AS she was chewing the bite she had!

When we got back to the cabin we lit a nice, cozy fire... Maya did great and didn't really have any issues with messing with the fire! She also had her first taste of hot chocolate... just a tiny bit!

Before we drove home, we walked around the little downtown area a bit... we really only stopped in a couple shops (one chocolate place to get a cayenne brownie for me and lavender chocolates-amaaazing) and then we had lunch at another little bakery, I had some delicious soup and we got some sweets to take home with us. Yum!

Patrick and Maya chasing a bird...