Girl's Weekend!

I have always wanted to do a girls weekend.  My husband has been doing guys trips for as long as I've known him, but until recently I'd never done a girls trip.  I was determined to make it happen but to be honest I didn't really think it would.  Trying to coordinate schedules was hard and then there was the budget and then of course childcare for our combined 16 children (yes, one of us has 6, 2 of us have 4 and I'm the oddball with only 2).  The husbands were able to be convinced though and we have one single mom in our group so she was able to get her parents to help out with watching her 4 kids and it actually happened!  I really wanted to see some fall leaves and we wanted a place between Ohio (where everyone else was coming from) and Florida.  We picked Asheville.  I know, I just went there over the summer but the whole time I was there I kept thinking it would be the perfect place for a girls trip and it was.  I was originally going to fly there and the other girls were going to drive down and meet me, but the flight schedules weren't working out so I ended up flying into Cincinnati and road tripping down with them to maximize our time together.  I can't tell you how nice it was to have so much time for uninterrupted conversation.  I mean, that hasn't happened in like 15 years!  We talked about anything and everything from 'gaper's delay' to old boyfriends, homeschooling to changing churches, our kids to our husbands, motherhood to money, you name it and we probably talked about it!  

We stayed in the cutest log cabin in a town called Waynesville which is just outside of Asheville.  I was just secluded enough without having to be scared of bears.  Okay, so it was still a little scary, especially at night and the fact that they had left a note about making sure your garbage was contained because of bears.  You had to drive through a creek to get to the cabin which was my favorite part.  The cabin had a little bit of a grandma vibe to it which was fine with us and it had a great screened in porch on the front that we didn't get to use but once.  It rained almost the entire time we were there but it didn't deter us.  We went to a street craft fair in Waynesville, shopped at all the shops, and had dinner at some Italian restaurant.  In Asheville we went to shops too, and drove around a bit looking for a certain flower shop I had gone to in the summer and when we finally found it, of course it was closed.  We had coffee at the coolest bookstore and talked some more.  We never seemed to run out of things to talk about.  We had dinner at the Lab aka Lexington Avenue Brewery (I only remember that because I bought my husband a shirt from there) and it was so fun.  I can't remember every detail of what we did, I really should write my blog posts sooner.  I do know we stayed up way too late talking and we cooked ourselves a nice breakfast one morning.  Oh, and we went to the Tupelo Honey Cafe on our way out of town and went to some more shops while we waited for our table.  Asheville has some of the cutest shops I've ever been to.  It's a very artsy town which I love. 

I didn't take my nice camera because I only packed the tiniest carry on that had to fit under my seat. I got some phone shots though. We never did get a good photo of the 4 of us, maybe next time.  I hope to make this an annual tradition!  I had a good time taking nature shots because as much as I love Florida it is so fun seeing landscape that is totally different but just as beautiful in its own way.  I do miss fall when living here but taking a weekend trip seems to be the perfect cure for it.  

I can't wait for our next trip!