What We Did In the Mountains:

Well, the first evening, a big storm came through (as usual), and zapped our electricity. Instead of movie-watching, we lit fifteen candles in the living room (yes, my mother had 15 candles in the living room, plus two we didn't light). She's just that kind of girl! It was very Austenesque. My mother and I are both excellent talkers, but I noticed that during the evening, conversation lagged just a tad, a couple of times. We all need to practice our conversational skills, for events like these. You never know when you might need them, when modern technology fails you.

We each took a candle to bed, which was exciting. The electricity came on just as we were nodding off, of course. You can see that we did some damage to her wax stores!

Her grocery store (Ingles) has a fabulous salad bar. Frankly, it's an entire lunch buffet. This is a picture of ONLY the olive section! There are also roasted garlic, mozzarella balls, artichokes and other delectibles in this stretch of food.I like to get Adam a container of olives, one of his favorite snacks.

No matter how often I go to the mountains, I must take a picture of this: mist in the valleys, in the morning.

As we were leaving town this morning, they were having their White Squirrel Festival, an annual event. We did not join the festivities, but I couldn't resist a photo of this -- a real soap box derby! The brown car says, "He man woman hater club" on the back. Hmm.

I think perhaps we can see why the fathers are enthusiastic about the soap box derby. When else does a grown man get to jump on his four-wheeler and rev it up, on Main Street?