Overnight Get Away: Part I

Jeff decided a few weeks ago that he'd like to do a 1/2 marathon in Varnell, GA called "Run for God" on his birthday weekend. We thought it'd make for a fun ending to spring break and a good little overnight get away for our little family. Warning: I took a ton of pictures! So I'll try not to write too much so you can just enjoy!

We started off on Friday with my 30 week check up (a little late) and then headed on out for lunch... at a favorite..

2 hours later, we'd made it! Our little home away from home for the night.

We actually got two rooms, thanks to Jeff, who insisted Rhyan have her own room. He was concerned about having to sleep in the same room since we never have... plus, she goes to bed around 7:30 which is a bit early for us! So, i found the cheapest place to stay that was clean and had a good reputation (less than $50 per room!) so it worked out. Here is our room.

It had a great kitchenette area! Came in pretty handy!

After we unloaded our stuff and got settled, we decided to head on out to pick up Jeff's race packet for Saturday morning's race. The packet pick up was at the Varnell parks and recreation center and there was a great playground there. We had considered going to rock city or the discovery museum in Chatanooga since it was only about 15 min away, but the FREE playground was calling to us... and turned out to be great for letting Rhyan get some energy out after the car ride!

Even big "kids" need a water break occasionally :-)

There was an open pasture that she had a blast walking around!

How peaceful?! LOVE this house!

WARNING: Rhyan is about to get a little Mary Katherine Gallagher on us :-) HA!

Yes, she is for real kissing the tree! Oh, Lorddy.

Now that was funny!

Doing her "SMILE"!

Chillin in the handicapped swing at the school next door.

After our exhausting hour of play, we were all ready to eat. So we got into the worst traffic I've seen in a while on 75N (due to an accident) and chilled in it for over 30 minutes trying to go the 5 miles to the exit that had food. Cracker Barrell was calling to us!
Rhyan slept pretty decently in the car on the way, but her normal 2.5-3 hour nap was shortened to about an hour since it was a car nap. This probably would have been fine except that the same thing happened the day before on our trip home from the aquarium. So by dinner that evening, she was getting moody. There is a BIG difference in how she acts if she's had enough sleep (joyful!) compared to this evening where she was farily unpredictable. When I post about Saturday, you'll read more about her mood swings :-( But sometimes, life just must go on. So we made do.

We headed back to the hotel and got Rhyan settled in. She did great.. slept like a rock! Jeff and I were grateful to have brought the laptop so that we could explore the internet and watch tv for the evening. But in all honesty, I was pretty worn out from the day and so was Jeff, so we all called it a night pretty early to get ready for the full day ahead!

Stay tuned...