Girl's beach trip-2012

 This year's beach trip started with an invitation to 7 friends but only 3 of us ended up going due to other commitments but Jennifer, Cindy & I had a great time!

There are very few photos since we were so busy doing nothing that it was difficult to pick up a camera.

A few of the highlights...

Thunder storms.  There were a couple of doozies and this photos of the pool shows just how much it rained.  It filled up the pool to the rim!

Also a note...we didn't even get in the pool at the house once!  How did that happen?

Another highlight...sushi.  Thanks Will.

We headed for a beach walk on our last night and tried to take a few photos.

Not bad.

 

We asked a random beach walker to take our photo

 

Random beach walker struggled to take a photo because she was trying to manage the camera, 2 dogs, a cast on one arm and a cigarette.   Poor choice on my part.

 

Dolphin

 

Other highlights that were not photographed:

Eating out for every meal (with the exception of breakfast)

Lots of talks

Fixing the world's problems, not to mention a few of our own

Not taking care of anyone but ourselves

Wandering downtown

Chubby Hubby ice cream

Laying by the pool at the Club

Finally getting the right radio station at the Club

Sleeping in

Wearing sweats & not wearing make-up

M&Ms

Funny (or possibly drunk) hibachi chef

 Finally getting cable and internet back after one of the storms caused a power surge

Thanks girls for a fabulous get-away and thanks to my in-laws for letting us get-away at their lovely home.

A couple of videos...

Blackberry Farm

Back in July I received this email:

okay...

i want a daughter trip. i think this is the place! who is available to come either oct 20/21/22, or oct 27/28/29. look up the place...it is wonderful. spa, hiking wonderful food. if there are enough, i can rent the 4 bedroom house. let me know. lots of birthdays for us this time of the year.

love, j

Well, you don't have to twist my arm too hard to get me on board! It seemed like such a long time away, July to October, but now it's come and gone and we had such a wonderful time. Blackberry Farm is located just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee in the Smokey Mountains.

The group consisted of my mother-in-law, Judy, sisters-in-law; Jennifer, Kattia, Annie, Lisa, Judy's two sisters, Nancy & Amy and Nancy's daughter, Sarah. 9 lovely ladies to spend a long weekend with out jobs, spouses, kids or responsibilities of any kind. My kind of vacation.

Here's a photo of all the girls!





The girls from Atlanta (the others flew in) drove up on Thursday, October 27th and we got there just in time for me to change my clothes and head over to the barn for a 2 hour horse ride with Amy. It was a perfect day for a ride and it was so much fun. I was, however, sore since I am not accustomed to riding a horse that was too big for me for 2 hours.

Me riding VW (Van Winkle)



By the time we got back to the house, it was time to shower and get ready for dinner. All dinners are served in The Barn and let me just say...the meals were a.maz.ing! Every single thing I ate was delicious and the presentation was fabulous! The only downside was that it took like 3 hours to eat dinner and that was a bit long.


Our house:



Our bedroom:



The Dinner Barn



Friday six of us were scheduled to go kayaking but the weather was 100% chance of rain and it was cold! As luck would have it, they canceled the kayaking trip and we were all able to get a spa treatment booked. I chose a facial and it was seriously the best facial I ever had. She even brushed out my hair as I was laying there.

One of the special perks of Blackberry Farm was the ride service. All we had to do was call and say we needed a car brought around to pick us up and shortly a black Lexus SUV would be there to take us where we needed to go. I wish that service carried over to my real life.

The sweet ride:




It seemed as though we were eating non-stop at BBF! Lunch & breakfast were served in another house and it was fun to try all their amazing food.

Lunching:



Friday was also our photography day. We hired a professional photographer to take our photos as a group for Judy's birthday gift. The hard part of course was the weather but we managed a few good photos.

On Saturday, we all went to yoga, a first for me, and it was fun. We then walked over to eat breakfast, again! Jennifer, Kattia, Annie and I then took the golf cart to the trail head and we hiked for about an hour which was really nice. Afterward, I met up with Sarah and we toured the grounds in the golf cart and it was amazing! It is such a beautiful place. We came home to find a bird stuck in our house and that was exciting!

Hiking:



Bird incident:



For dinner that night, it was Judy's birthday celebration dinner and we had all gone in on a special necklace made with charms we each chose and it was all put together by Amy & Nancy. It was an emotional dinner and we had a wonderful time talking and reminiscing. It was sad to know that it was our last night of heaven.

Dinner Celebration:



It was such an amazing and fun trip and it was all thanks to Judy who wanted to spend time with the women in her life. What a wonderful time!

These photos don't do Blackberry Farm justice but there are so many to share:

It was such a magical weekend and a great opportunity to spend some quality time together having fun, resting and eating, eating, eating!!

A Lovely Weekend

It was the 3rd Annual Girls Trip to the beach last weekend and how sweet it was. This year I decided to take a smaller group so that we can all be in on the same conversation and I think it went really well.

This year I invited Jennifer, Teresa and Kathryn. Unfortunately, Kathryn couldn't attend at the last minute and we missed her.

The three of us left on Wednesday night at 8:15pm and headed south. We made our first stop in Savannah to use the gross bathroom and grab a Diet Coke. The best part of our stop was the awesome transvestite that came into the store for a sandwich and condiments. He/She was wearing a pink summer dress with matching lipstick and some white heels. He/she would have looked better if he would have shaved his legs. It. Was. AWESOME! The only problem was that Teresa, who was our photographer did NOT get a photo. What a wonderful start to our weekend.

We arrived at the house at 2:15am, found our beds and went to sleep for a bit. I hardly slept because one of the smoke alarms was chirping & my particular bed was not comfortable. I ended up getting up around 7:30am, dressed in one of my 7 bathing suits and laid on the couch and watched TV.

We had a quiet morning, packed our bags and grabbed chairs and boogie boards and walked out to the beach. We kept checking the clouds and they were gray and moving quickly. After about 15 minutes, we felt a drop & we decided to pack it all back up and went back to the house. We sat under the deck and watched the storm that moved in. Once the storm passed, we decided we were hungry and had a gift certificate for T-Rays and we went out for lunch.

T-Rays is a tiny little burger joint that was a former gas station. It was awesome and the burgers, fries and corn nuggets were delish. We then decided it was pool/ocean time so back to the house for pretty much "nothing" and we were good at it. We were able to float in the ocean and enjoy the warm water.

I do believe that the entire trip was based on food and we made the best of it. On Thursday night we went to Wal-mart Sushi (aka Kabuki) and enjoyed some Will-prepared sushi. We then hit the Wal-mart to find some treasures. Most evenings were spent chatting in our jammies and watching some sort of cooking show & eating M&Ms by the handful.




Friday we were up a bit earlier and Teresa and I went for a beach walk. You can't beat exercising on the beach. We spent time at the beach and at the pool & had gourmet PB&J for lunch. We then decided to go to some little shops near the house and to the antique store then back to the house. We relaxed, got cleaned up and pretty and went downtown to check out the shops and had dinner at 29 South. Pure heaven. Jennifer & I split the pork chop while Teresa got the scallops. We shared 2 appetizers; fried green tomatoes and a crostini and one dessert; krispie kreme donut bread pudding. It's just as good as you can imagine and then add coffee ice cream. Oh boy!

Saturday offered us yet another day of nothingness! We decided to spend the day at The Ocean Club where we were with very few people. We sat by the pool, read magazines, chatted, had lunch, hit the beach, tried to boogie board in the rough current, showered and enjoyed a pina colada. It was a rough 5 hours.

We came back to the house, dressed for dinner and went back downtown to hit a couple of shops that were closed the day before then had a lite dinner at Cafe Karibo. Yum. Back to the house for jammies, M&Ms and TV. It was pretty tough.

The weekend goes by way too fast but we had such a great time and are grateful for our husbands for handling things at home so we could enjoy our time. Many thanks again to my sweet in-laws who are so generous in letting us borrow their beautiful beach house.

Til next time...