Well, well, well, 2020. Let’s see what you had in store for the Thomas family.
We kicked off the year with June’s 4th birthday and an epic “day of fun” to celebrate (including her favorite, gem mining!). Sadly, we also experienced our first (though not last) ER visit this month, also for June. Work continued on the Cultivate office, and our Peloton arrived!
Valentine’s Day brought lots of fun celebrations, like the Lovebug Dance (complete with corsage) at our church for John and June and a tea at the Carolina Inn with friends for me. We unveiled the sand table on our front porch and my newly-painted desk, played in the snow, completed our second ER trip (this time with ambulance ride!), and celebrated my birthday with sweet deliveries from friends.
On March 2, we officially moved into Cultivate’s new offices. On March 5, we had a photoshoot. On March 8, we ate our last meal inside a restaurant – for the year. On March 11, the NBA canceled their season, we officially began working from home, and John said, “I think you’d better go to the grocery store” (which I did, two carts later, along with almost everyone else in our town). On March 16, our kids’ school closed indefinitely. Empty grocery shelves, a new juggle of work and childcare (with babysitters added into the mix toward the end of the month), fear and uncertainty… and also penguins roaming aquariums, days off spent with our kids, hikes and car picnics. Weirdly, I published a North Carolina bucket list on the blog this month, ha!
May was more of the same: more bike rides, more hikes and creeks, more strawberries, more porch deliveries, and so many snack trays. We punctuated our days with a backyard campout (!), a new porch gate, and the sweetest Mother’s Day celebrated with picnic and scoot in downtown Raleigh. My parents were also able to visit for 10 days or so, which was a huge blessing for everyone (especially when our car was broken into and wallets stolen…).
On the blog, I shared a pair of posts about meal planning: my recipe binder and my routines!
As you can see in June in June, we continued to make the most of our time together at home, with ice cream, hikes, another campout (this time with Mama!), Father’s Day celebrations, trips to the Eno, and a backyard kiddie pool. We also spent much time thinking, reflecting, and talking as the racial justice conversation exploded. The tomatoes continued to roll in.
July had a LOT of highlights: road trips to Maine (with a beloved stop in the Berkshires along the way) and Connecticut (with a celebration for Shep’s birthday), so much family after such a long drought, John’s birthday, and progress on the Advent calendar (finally!). We have SO many sweet memories from this month!
Thankful for cousin visits, bike rides, trips to the Museum, and a cozy Thanksgiving just the four of us in November. I shared what we planned to give our kids for Christmas, always a popular post.
We ended the year with a really wonderful December, complete with a miraculous Christmas shrub glow-up, a visit from my parents, and plenty of magic for our first-ever Christmas morning at home, just the four of us (a fitting end-cap for the year).
Friends, thank you for indulging me. No matter the year, these posts are such a treat for me to write, and always some of my favorites to look back on years later. They help me to notice the good things, do my best to facilitate more of them, and remember to thank God for every delight (and for being with us in the struggles) along the way.
I know I’ve said it before, but I am SO excited for what we’ll discuss here in 2021. Thank you for being here, and for sharing so generously with me! It’s one of the delights of my life. Wishing you a healthy, happy, and abundant new year. I’ll see you soon! :)
December tends to be a bit of a clean-up month around here, as I hustle to share in the same calendar year anything of note that hasn’t quite made it to the blog! As such, I’ll occasionally serve up posts that are a bit out of season – but we’ll just consider them inspiration for the seasons ahead :) In this spirit, today I’m sharing a few photos and stories from our eighth annual family camping trip with the Rays. Hold onto your boots – it was a cold and wet one!
For our eighth year, we returned to Blue Bear Mountain Camp, outside of Boone, North Carolina. As always, our car was absolutely stuffed.
This was our third trip to Blue Bear, and it never disappoints – it’s a lovely campsite, with friendly people, and decent bathroom facilities (ha!). Sadly, we had to postpone from our original weekend due to weather, and we did not get our top choice campsites upon rescheduling. The sites were actually pretty inconvenient, especially for families with small children – down a steep hill from the cars and bathrooms, and with a fairly steep (though wooded) drop-off on the other side. But we made the best of it!
We arrived on Friday afternoon in gray chill, which eventually progressed into mist (the photos of our site were all taken the next morning!). The grass was already wet from rain earlier in the day, which made hauling in our gear tricky and resulted in wet feet almost immediately. Thankfully, John and I were well equipped thanks to his excellent suggestion to wear our Bean boots, but for some reason we didn’t extend that logic to our kiddos, so they quickly were complaining of cold, wet feet – not pleasant, and I don’t blame them one bit! In fact, I felt terrible we didn’t think to bring their rain boots – total parent fail.
All was not lost, though! We had yummy beef stew for dinner that we warmed up over the camp stove, a crackling fire for s’mores, and a neat tarp covering rigged up by John and Will (that took advantage of our strange campsite!) to keep the rain off. And once everyone was in jams and dry socks in the tent, all was warm and cozy.
And the next morning, we woke up to glorious sun!! After breakfast around the campfire, we trundled off to Julian Price Memorial Park, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, for our big hike of the weekend. Though VERY muddy at times, everyone seemed to enjoy it, and it afforded plenty of rock-throwing and snack-eating opportunities. We didn’t make it the full distance of our planned hike, but still called it a success since no one fell in the water or face-planted in the mud.
We tucked into our traditional dinner of hot dogs over the fire and all the fixings (including, of course, s’mores) that evening. Then it was a warm breakfast in the morning, packing up the campsites, and lots of hugs goodbye as we headed back to Raleigh. On the way, our family stopped in Blowing Rock for lunch (which I’d highly recommend – they have a really fun new playground in the center of town!).
Friends, you know I’m always going to shoot it to you straight when it comes to camping, and I have to say I think this was our family’s toughest year so far (I think last year holds that title for the Rays). Friday’s weather was dispiriting (our first-ever precipitation on a camping trip!), I did really feel bad about the kids’ wet feet situation, the mud and terrain of our specific campsites made it hard for the kids to roam freely back and forth, and we missed one night of campfire conversation due to grown-ups who were just too tired to stay up after the kids went to bed.
Am I glad we went? Of course! I never considered not going, and never once wished we were at home while we were away. The kids seemed to have a fantastic time. But, though there were many sweet moments to be had (building fairy houses! yummy food! good conversation! a beautiful hike!), 2020 will not go down in the books as my favorite camping trip of all time. Which, honestly, seems entirely on brand for 2020 :) And you know what? That’s okay – because it means we’re stacking this year up against some pretty amazing past experiences, and every year can’t be the absolute best.
With kids aged 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 in tow (yes, really!), we are banking on the fact that it can pretty much only get easier from here. We’ll pray for better weather and our first choice of campsite in 2021! :)
P.S. If you want to hear more about our experiences camping with kids (and our best advice!), be sure to listen to my episode of the Work & Play podcast!
An annual getaway to the mountains is a beloved tradition for our family, dating back to our first fall in North Carolina. These trips have looked different over the years, from low-budget affairs in our first few years to extended-family (on both sides!) meet-ups and now, adventures with kids in tow. Our trips often center around Asheville, though we’ve visited other mountain towns like Boone and Blowing Rock, too.
This year, we booked our trip in February, a few weeks before the coronavirus appeared on the scene. I am so grateful that we were still able to take this trip even with all the intervening uncertainty, and wanted to share a few photos and details with y’all today!
2020 is John’s 10-year anniversary with his company (wow!) and one of the rewards is a few extra days of vacation in their tenth year. Because of this, we opted to take off both Thursday and Friday instead of just Friday. And with an extra day, we opted to go an extra hour southwest of Asheville, to the lovely town of Highlands.
John and I had been to Highlands once before, in the winter of 2012. We very kindly got to stay one night at the glorious Old Edwards Inn on a press trip for my work, and cobbled together the rest of the trip on a meager budget. Our big dinner out consisted of $2 cheese slices at the pizza shop around the corner and a free Dove bar apiece back at the Inn :)
What I LOVE about the mountains, though, is that you can have a magical trip on a big or small budget. From that visit to this one, the things we loved stayed very much the same – gorgeous waterfall hikes, breathtaking views, lovely fall leaves, and charming downtown shops. Even the best food is often not very expensive! (See: White Duck Taco, where we stopped for lunch to break up the drive!)
The winding drive into Highlands along the Cullasaja River sets the tone, especially when the leaves are as brilliant as they were in our October 22-25 visit. We arrived on a perfectly sunny day and had all the windows open, pulling in the crisp fall air!
We stopped at Dry Falls on our way in – it’s an easy stair step down from the parking lot that pays off in a big way with a walking path behind the falls. The falls were roaring when we visited and the mist was floating in the air!
Where to stay in Highlands, NC:
We settled into our Airbnb in the early afternoon. Once again John’s researching skills struck gold – I couldn’t recommend our cozy cottage more highly!
Every detail was attended to, from the snacks left as a treat to the comfy bed, storybook bunks for the kids, heated floors in the bathroom, and cozy screened porch where we ate breakfast most days.
It was so fun to page through the guest book and read about all of the anniversaries, birthdays, girls’ trips, and family weekends that have been celebrated in this special place!
Our kids made themselves right at home :)
One other major selling point: a 20-minute walk through the woods takes you directly from the cottage to downtown (!!!). We walked this path multiple times in the morning and late afternoon, often with one parent accompanying the kids and the other taking the car into town. (Splitting up allowed us to either continue on to the day’s adventure after eating breakfast, or travel back to the cottage after a post-sunset dinner without a moonlight walk through the woods!)
What to do in Highlands, NC:
Though it was a bit rainy while we were there, we didn’t let that stop us from getting outside and exploring the beautiful mountain scenery! We hiked Glen Falls and to the top of Sunset Rock. Glen Falls is pretty much straight down and then straight back up via a set of staircases – round trip, it took us about 2.5 hours.
Sunset Rock was about 45 minutes up and 30 minutes down. Most other groups brought bottles of wine and snacks to enjoy at the top – we’ll do that next time!
We also panned for gold at Jackson Hole Gem Mine, a must for our little rock lover :) The sluice is outdoors and there was only one other family there for part of our visit, so we found it to be highly pandemic-friendly.
Where to Eat in Highlands, NC:
Our meals were the only aspect of our trip where we would have made different decisions had we been sans-kids or not embroiled in a pandemic. As it was, we mostly opted to bring takeout back to our cottage. We sampled salads from Four65 (yum!), ate on the patio at Ugly Dog Pub (yum!), picked up breakfast from Calders Coffee (yum!), grabbed sandwiches from Highlands Deli (eh), and had multiple meals from Mountain Fresh Grocery (breakfast sandwiches and muffins, pizza, and picks from the prepared meals cases – all yum!). Had we been visiting under different conditions, I would have loved to have eaten at Four65, Madison’s/The Wine Garden, Paoletti’s, and/or the Log Cabin! We also eyed the Blue Bike Cafe for breakfast but couldn’t squeeze it in.
All in all, we had a fantastic weekend away and feel so grateful we were able to do it in this crazy year. From the brilliant leaves to the waterfalls to the hikes to the cottage, we loved it all and hope to be back! :)
Today is a fun day — my first episode as a podcast guest (outside of work) debuts on my dear friend Nancy Ray’s podcast! Though I will likely always feel I’m better able to communicate in writing versus speaking, I was honored to be asked to come on as a guest and hope I did okay! We sure had fun either way :)
Recording live from the floor of my closet!
The episode is focused on camping, but don’t worry if you’re not particularly interested in camping – we touch on lots of other topics like friendship, slow parenting, how Nancy and I first met, the joint trip we hope to take for our 15th camping anniversary, and book and product recommendations. We also, of course, cover many nitty gritty adventuring tips. I hope you give it a listen! I’ll be hearing it alongside y’all for the first time later today – eek!
I mention in the episode that I am a super fan of the podcast, and I didn’t just say that to be nice – I really have listened to all 81 (and counting) episodes of Work & Play with Nancy Ray! I love it for a few reasons:
— Most of the episodes are bite-size – 15-20 minutes. Since I have a limited amount of time to listen in my week, I appreciate that she packs a punch in less time than it takes me to drive to the office. — Nancy gets specific and practical in her episodes, walking you through, for example, exactly what she writes in her journals, what she does in her morning routine, or the rhythm of her work week. As an Enneagram 5 who craves information and real-life examples, I find this so valuable and instructive! I’m not always going to follow what she does exactly, but it provides food for thought and a different perspective. It reminds me of what I was taught in my poetry classes: that the most personal is the most universal, because we can often more easily see ourselves in the little details than we can in the broad strokes. — As a host, Nancy is professional but not overly polished. Having had many conversations with her as a friend, I can truly say that listening to an episode is like… having a conversation with a friend :) — To know Nancy is to love her and admire her. I have learned so much from her about faith, family, friendship, work, marriage, and more in our decade plus of friendship, and I love that listening to her podcast each week helps me learn in a new way! — Every Tuesday, it’s kind of like spinning the roulette wheel of topics – I never know what’s going to pop up! But selfishly, Nancy’s definition of work and play encompasses everything I’m most interested in, so I’m never disappointed. If you love Em for Marvelous, you’ll probably love the variety of W&P, too :)
Today, in honor of my episode, I thought I’d share a few of my past favorites!
Find every episode of the podcast here and feel free to subscribe with your favorite podcast app!
I’d love to hear: if you’re already a fan of Work & Play, which episodes have been your favorite?
P.S. For more on camping, start here. For more with Nancy, check out our How We Do It series, starting here!And hey, if you’re new, welcome!! You can find out more about me and Em for Marvelous right here.
