impossible.

It would be impossible to sum up a week of Nothing and a week of Everything in one little blog post.

I’m not even going to try.

We stayed here.

And it was fabulous.

A mountain house in the woods of Georgia.

Graciously loaned to us from some unbelievably kind friends.

Enough beds for everyone.

A private suite for Otto Fox.  (Also known as a giant closet.)

A screened-in back porch overlooking a creek.

I need not say more.

Throughout the week London learned  to play chess under the tutelage of Grandpa and Daddy.

She was such a good student, in fact, that by week’s end she had her moment of triumph – defeating first her father and then her grandfather.

We participated in the following activities, in no particular order:

Spent a day tubing behind a pontoon boat on Lake Burton, visited Babyland General Hospital – the home of the Cabbage Patch Kids, hiked to Anna Ruby Falls, tubed down a lazy Chattahoochee River where Otto was allowed to ride in his own tube, traversed over 2,000 steps to the base of Tallulah Gorge, ate at a handful of local dives and took the kids putt putting for the first time.

What I learned, in an order coordinating with the activities mentioned above:

Tubing behind a pontoon boat with Riley is so much fun and so much more draining on a thirty-eight-year-old body than I imagined, I’m still a sucker for a doll that comes with a birth certificate, when your son drops his favorite giraffe over the edge at a waterfall you’d be surprised the dangers you will face to stop his blood-curdling cry of sadness, it is possible that I have never enjoyed an hour more than the hour I spent with my tube linked to Otto’s tube watching his pure joy at being in his own miniature watercraft, 2,000 steps up and down a steep gorge is too much with a baby strapped to your back, sometimes you get the best food at a local dive -and sometimes the worst and each kid was amazingly able to get at least one hole-in-one.

We had planned to spend some time in the according-to-the-website-very-cute little town of Helen.  After an evening’s stroll through the streets and London asking, “Hey – why does this town smell like cigarette smoke?”, we altered our plans and found other ways to occupy that time.

Pretty much, if you have the opportunity to visit Helen – you shouldn’t take it.

But it was pretty fun to take pictures of ourselves not enjoying the town.

Despite the air-brushed buildings of Helen (not to mention the tarantula museum), we could not have enjoyed our week more.

The people were my favorite, it only rained at night, the thermometer rarely registered above 88 degrees, my dad was there to join us and we cooked eggs and sausage in iron skillets.

What more could anyone hope for a vacation to deliver?