We’re blessed with great weather on this trip. 
Blue skies during the day with nice breezes, chilly air at night.This trip is pretty laid back. Lots of book reading and chilling out. 
For some reason when we’re at the mountain house, Molly glues herself to CSP and forces him to hold her pretty much 24/7. Cracks me up.
Bless Your Heart
Living out loud in the Carolinas
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When we stay in the mountains the pugs get a little clingy. Here’s Zoe & Molly using CSP as a human ottoman.
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My nephew Jacob in his Cub Scout uniform. I asked him all about his patches on his shirt. When we got to the patch of the American flag I said “What’s this one mean?” He said “That’s the Pledge of Allegiance flag. Aunt Shanny, would you like to buy some popcorn?” Who could resist that little face? I’ll be receiving our $17 bucket of popcorn in a couple weeks.They sell popcorn to help pay for their uniforms and trips and activities. They are going on the coolest field trips! One of the trips (if they raise enough money) is to spend the night on an aircraft carrier! Another trip is to spend the night inside the fish tunnel at the Atlanta aquarium! I wanna be a chaperone! Except I use a CPAP machine & mask at night. Can you imagine the horror as a bunch of 6 year old boys try to go to sleep with this in their midst?
Making that Darth Vader noise? There’s an express ticket to therapy! -
I received the cutest Halloween treat in the mail!
Sandy made it! Sandy is one of the sweetest people in the entire world and on top of that she’s also extremely talented! I love this so much! It looks great on my fridge. I put my magnetic pen next to it. 
So handy! Thank you Sandy! xoxoGo check out Sandy’s Etsy shop!
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My favorite month! I love the weather in Charlotte this time of year. Blue skies, cool breezes. Plus there’s Halloween!
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There’s one main road that leads into Valle Crucis. While we’re in the mountains we drive back and forth on this road constantly. It’s the only way into town (Boone). While we were there this last time I noticed a donkey in a fenced off area on the side of the road.
I LOVE donkeys. LOVE. I want a mini donkey so badly. Anyway, each time we’d pass the donkey I’d want to stop to pet it and photograph it but it was raining. I made sure to remind CSP each day that we’d have to try and work in some donkey time if we drove past his enclosure.
After we took the pugs to the park we drove down to see if the donkey was out. And there he was! I was so excited! I got out of the car, got my camera ready and headed over to see him. But first I stopped to take a picture of a flower.
All the sudden I heard CSP yell out the window (he stayed in the car because once again, he was convinced I was trespassing. I have never been arrested, by the way.) “The donkey’s leaving!” OMG! NO!
So I take off chasing the donkey. There was a fenced in hallway type thing that led from the donkey’s roadside enclosure to a big field behind the barn. I knew if I didn’t get to him before the field I wouldn’t be able to pet him or photograph him. So I started yelling “DONKEY!” you know, to get him to stop. He went faster! I kept calling for him and running after him around the barnish building looking thing. At this point I think I was on private property but I didn’t have time to check.
I made it to the fence where the pasture started and the donkey finally decided to humor me and come over for some petting and pictures.
He was so sweet! I had to be careful of the electric fence, and I noticed a deck, sliding glass door and some furniture on the other side of the glass. I snapped my pics 
and headed back to the car to find CSP laughing hysterically at me. He said “I’ve never seen a jackass chasing a donkey!”
Apparently the deck & glass door go to part of a bed and breakfast. Some poor tourists were probably trying to get a nice nap in and here comes this crazy woman yelling DONKEY! right outside their door. Oops. Welcome to North Carolina! -
When we are in the mountains we chill. We might go check out some of the touristy stuff every now and then, but mostly we just hang out. We watch movies, read books, play games, sit on the porch and watch the tourists at the store across the street. I get a lot of knitting done in the mountains.
There are a few things we always do, no matter what, when we visit.
- We go grocery shopping at Ingles.
- We browse through the Mast General Store, usually a few times.
- We have breakfast at the Mountain House restaurant.
- We stop by the pet store so I can visit the birds.
- We play games at least one night.
I like having this wonderful place to return to every year. Even though we keep to a little bit of a routine, there’s always something to discover. This time when we went grocery shopping I found this:
I couldn’t believe it! CSP & I first learned about the Beacon Drive In on the Food Network. I think it was Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. We’ve been wanting to go there ever since. I’ve never seen Beacon Iced Tea in a store in Charlotte (and CSP is a grocery store manager so he’d know) so we were surprised to see it in a grocery store up in the mountains! I bought a bottle of the peach flavored tea and it was so yummy! The Beacon is off hwy 85 on the way to Atlanta. Ever since IKEA opened here we haven’t had a reason to go to ATL. Maybe we’ll have to make a special trip! -
While we were in Valle Crucis with CSP’s mom (MIL) it rained 90% of the time. As soon as it cleared up for a couple hours we jumped at the chance to take the pugs to the park. The park in Valle Crucis is CSP’s & my favorite place in the world. It’s just gorgeous. HUGE, with soccer fields, a field for families to picnic & play, a big playground, a sheltered picnic area, a fishing pond, and a walking path
that goes all around it and down by the creek 
where you can go tubing when it’s warm. Papa’s daddy has a memorial bench there and we go to visit it to say hi to him each time we’re there.
The pugs love it there too.
As soon as Molly gets out of the car she about hyperventilates with excitement. 
So many things to smell & see. Kiki loves to bark at everyone 
& Zoe wants to give everyone kisses. 
More pics here. -
CSP’s Mom’s (MIL) birthday was September 18. We had planned on being in the mountains for the week so we invited her along. She was really excited to get away from work and get some mountain pug love! MIL & I are both interested in old churches so I made sure to take her to see two of Valle Crucis’ oldest churches- St. John’s Episcopal est. 1862 & the Church of the Holy Cross est. 1842. We went to St. John’s first
and found it all locked up. So we climbed over the gate and were looking at the church 
when a man pulled up in his truck.“Are y’all trying to get in the church?”
Uh…No? Please don’t arrest us! I’m SURE committing a church crime will get you sent straight to hell! – this was going through my head as he yelled to us:
“Cause I’ve got the key & can let you in.” Score! Such a sweet, charming church!
CSP wouldn’t come in. I think he was convinced we were still going to hell even though we had permission. It backfired on him though because while he stood outside enjoying the view,
the church dude let me ring the church bell by pulling on the rope. 
You really have to put your weight behind it to get it to ring. Scared CSP’s pants off! ha! Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor??While we were there a couple pulled up. MIL immediately made friends. They were visiting from Indiana for their anniversary. So I took some pics of them for them. I know how it is to travel as a couple and not be able to get pics together. All our vacations look like CSP went traveling with a hired photographer.
While MIL chatted with the Indiana couple CSP & I explored the cemetery.
There were graves there from the 1800s. Such beautiful script carved on their grave stones.We weren’t able to get into the Church of the Holy Cross
as there was an event going on. But MIL still liked seeing the outside of it. 
On her birthday night we took MIL to Vidalia in Boone for dinner. It was SO good! She & I got a little tipsy on martinis.
Mine was a pomegranate martini and her’s was a vidalia onion martini. I’m not a fan of onion cocktails but mine was delish! I had yummy shrimp & grits, 
she had trout & CSP had beef with bleu cheese. For dessert she had a basil blueberry ice cream cake with chocolate crust & raspberry sauce.
Odd combo but fabulous flavor!She really enjoyed her birthday and we were glad to be able to have her with us. So were the pugs! Kiki especially got spoiled with Grandmama lap naps!
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Recently a friend of mine told me “You’re always on vacation!” Which isn’t entirely true. But, vacation & travel rank very high on our list of things we like to spend our money on. There are tons of things we have to spend our money on. So when we have any left over we are very picky about how we spend it. (more…)
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Bless Your Heart 