My Tennessee Home

Those of you who know me well know that I love that I grew up in TN. I love the mountains, the mild seasons (except summer-too hot!), the heritage than runs so deep & appalachian culture. My Dad grew up on a farm in an area affectionately called "stinking creek", this is not a name that represents the beauty of this area. The address is actually Pioneer, TN which is much more fitting in my opinion.

I took these photos when I was home at christmas. We had our first real White Christmas in Tn since 1976 I think. It was really beautiful. We were actually snowed in for a couple of days because the area in pretty rural & it takes some time for the snow plows to make it make into the mountains.

View from the left side of the front porch.

Down the hill to the right you can see my Grandpa's old barn. Still standing.

A couple of apple trees.

View out the kitchen window up the the field. It's pretty common to see several deer or turkey wandering around up there. We also saw a bobcat this year when we were home.

Front porch center view...This is my favorite.

Now, do you see why I look forward to visiting my TN home? Wide open space with lots to explore.

More TN fun...Canoe ride for the big boy!

Since June we have been working on potty training with Luke. We thought since he was a bit older when we started training it might go faster. Well, not so much. Out of desperation we came up with some pretty lofty rewards to motivate him. His Daddy told him when he started using the potty like a big boy he could do some fun big boy things...like, go riding in a canoe with Daddy. So we held up our end of the deal this trip home -since he's now 95% trained on a good day. That's a victory in my book- it's been a long road & lots of laundry folks.

Brent & Granddaddy unloaded the canoe from the barn & transported it down to Horse Creek for launch. I didn't plan to go on this outing but decided I couldn't miss it & suspected Brent would need some help along the way. You see, Horse Creek is REALLY shallow. It ended up being so fun. The first hour we were able to float pretty easily then we hit lots of rock & trees down in the creek. This meant walking, wading & carrying the canoe in some places. Brent shouldered the majority of the the "dragging the canoe" load while I tried to keep Luke from falling or running up the creek bank :)

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Gotta love that cheesy grin!

I always thought I would have girls when I had children...I'm so glad to have my boys though. I get to explore and enjoy the great outdoors with them. Coming home wet & dirty from an outing is actually really refreshing sometimes.

Trip to TN ~ Whitestone Inn

Earlier this month we took some extended time to go to Tennessee to visit family, go to Brent's 20th high school reunion and we took a night away to stay at one of our favorite places back home. Whitestone is a beautiful place. We got married there 6 years ago this upcoming Saturday. Yes, we got married on Halloween. It was a beautiful Friday afternoon, Whitestone was unbooked so we took it. It was perfect. The Inn has a really neat story. A christian couple who had been in ministry & the business world for years had a dream to open an Inn. They are very generous in letting pastors & missionaries stay there for reduced prices (so NICE for us). So when it works we take a night away to celebrate our anniversay. Thanks to Mamma & Pappa for watching the little ones.
Here we are enjoying an amazing dinner - the food is fabulous.


We got married in the chapel on the right and our reception was in the "Lion & the Lamb" building on the left.

Our view from the room. Sunrise at around 7A, was just beautiful!

So when you hear me talk about how beautiful East TN is, THIS is a slice of what I'm talking about.