This weekend we rented a cabin in the N. Georgia mountains – both as an excuse to get away from the house for awhile, but also to help celebrate Josie’s 8th birthday.

We picked up the kids after school and made the 1.5 hour drive north, getting to the cabin about 6:00pm. As per Josie’s choice, we had “fruit and cheese plate” for dinner.

The cabin had 3 bedrooms and 3 baths – with 2 satellite TV, internet access and plenty of equipment allowing us to make ourselves at home and relax. We stayed there for 2 nights.

View of the backyard from an upper deck.. We had a fast running winter creek, campfire, hammock, picnic tables, grilling area and lots of woods to explore. Saturday morning was cold (20 deg) but clear and we all had a good time getting out and working up a sweat getting the campfire going. 

Kids in the Jacuzzi – they enjoyed themselves for awhile until Holden dropped in 1/4 bottle of chlorine “Shock” chemicals, rendering the hot tub a toxic mess. The kids had to immediately get out and shower off, and that was the end of Hot Tubbing this weekend.

Isabella loving the hammock.

Waiting for the fire to start. We brought hot dogs and ingredients for Smores. It took more than 1.5 hours to get the fire going … the wood, sticks and leaves were all wet and frozen. The fire did NOT want to start and even after we got it going, it took pretty constant care to keep it running. We did manage to cook our lunch and have a snack, but after Adam walked away from the fire for 1/2 an hour, it quickly died.

Doing some exploring, Isabella found some icicles that the kids broke off and began throwing at each other.

Proof Adam was there, too. (He’s always behind the camera.)

Josie and the s’more she made for me.

Cabin main room. 

After lunch, we headed out to explore…..

… and then the snows came. In all, we got about 6″ of snow. This was an unexpected treat/problem; the kids had an absolute blast playing in what for them was the most snow they’ve ever seen. We were a bit worried about how we were going to get home.

Isabella refused to give up her hammock fun.

And then the rest of the afternoon was spent throwing snowballs, making snowmen & etc.

My absolute favorite picture of the weekend: 

On our walk this morning… low hanging trees partially blocking the path we wanted to take to drive out of the mountains. We figured we could make it anyway …

… until we came to this. The road out was completely blocked by deep, swiftly-moving runoff. We had to find another way from the cabin out to the highway. There was only a dusting of snow once we made it to Ellijay (nearest town). The snow was completely gone another 10 minutes further down the road. It’s 55 degrees and sunny here at home this afternoon.

Me scraping snow off the car. The old Alaska plate Adam bought for me on ebay finally looks like it belongs here.

When the snows began, Adam drove the truck up to the top of the driveway – the house was situated at the bottom of a very steep hill. He was certain that we would never make it back up as long as the snow and ice was present. On leaving, we had to trudge up the hill with all our luggage. It was very slick and Adam fell twice owing to inappropriate shoes.