Friday night I was at the track to see Adam compete as an intermediate for the first time.  He came in third out of three all of his races, but he hung pretty close with the older, more experienced guys.  It was his first time using clips on his shoes so he was proud – but it does take some getting used to, I understand.  Here he is coming in toward the finish line.

Mason spent the night with us, so got to go to the track, too. Then Adam came back for a sleepover, too. These cousins make me laugh all the time.

Thursday when I went to Rock Hill to see Momma I was finally able to get some trail walking in again, back on the Piedmont Medical Center Trail.  Since Charlotte’s & my fun trip to the mountains, I was really excited to see the river and the train trestle 🙂

We celebrated after Leesy’s Clapping Out at JP’s Restaurant in the Westin Hotel in downtown Charlotte.  It was good, and so fancy dancy.  Elise wanted a cake, which was only fitting.  Here she is while we are singing Happy Graduation to You 🙂

Wednesday evening Elise officially ended up her time at cosmetology school at Paul Mitchell in Charlotte.  It really was cute.  They don’t have a ceremony, as such, but all the other students line the stairway and hallway as they come down for the last time and cheer and clap for them, give them flowers and hugs, and a few close friends had presents.  We just stood at the back watching all that happen, and it was surprisingly emotional.  Of course it was.  Elise’s favorite is sunflowers, so that’s what most people had to give her.

Got a family group photo on the stairs out front afterwards.

This past week I started babysitting again, for little Keaton.  He is the baby of friends of Lindee & Jackson – his dad is the Clover Rec Dept director, which is how they know each other.  He is two months old, and his mom is just now going back to work at Belks.  Between both of their changing schedules, and his grandmother keeping him on her days off, I will probably only have him a day or so a week – Denise is keeping him half the time, too.  Tuesday was my first day to have him, and he was SO sweet.  And Clara was SO excited to see him in the car with me when we picked her up after school. She played and played with him when we got back to their house.

Lindee got home pretty early that afternoon. Come to find out she’d gotten a last minute phone call at work that Clover Middle School was instituting a brand new award – Athlete of the Month. And our girl was the winner of the inaugural award! We are pretty proud, needless to say 🙂

On our way out of town Monday to head home, Charlotte & I headed back to the Nantahala Outdoor Center for lunch at the River’s End Restaurant there.  I’m not going to lie – the food was only OK in my book.  We both really wanted trout while we were in the mountains, and hadn’t had any yet, so both ordered the trout cake sandwich.  Meh.  The view, though, was out of this world.

As was the tableside décor. What a cool way to end our trip.

Charlotte & I headed home from Bryson City on Monday, but first we went back to hike to the third and final waterfall at the Deep Creek entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Even thought it wasn’t a really long hike, it was by far the most strenuous of the hikes we’d taken, so we were glad we hadn’t tried it before on the day we’d walked to the other two.  The hill was pretty steep getting to the top, and then we had to go down this trail to get to the viewing area.  And wouldn’t you know it, I’d left my hiking stick in the car.  Sigh.

After we left the park, we made a visit to our final museum of the weekend: The Smoky Mountain Trains Museum. The ticket to the museum was included in our train ride the day before, and it was as cool as everything else we had done that weekend. When they were telling us about it on the train, they said that there were over two million dollars worth of trains there. I thought that was the craziest thing I had ever heard, but then when we got inside to check it out, I could well believe it. Some of these model train cars cost over $1000 each. I had no idea. Very interesting.

When we were on our train ride Sunday we had a layover at the outdoor center for maybe an hour.  That gave Charlotte and me a chance to get our picture made with the conductor…

…and to check out a little bit of the sights there. Surely were a lot of cool activities going on, but one of my favorite was sitting on the porch and rocking at the Stone House.

Sunday afternoon of our birthday trip Charlotte and I hopped aboard the train.  It really was so much fun.  This was the first thing we’d bought tickets for when we planned our trip, and it was just a good time.  We decided to go with the steam engine, which was very cool.  Here it is as it pulled into the station before we ever started loading.

Even without any fall color, the scenery was lovely on our ride. Here we are passing over Fontana Lake. Obviously they have already lowered the water level for winter – and still it was so pretty.  It was interesting hearing them talk about the houseboats that are on the lake, and how they are grandfathered in – no new ones can be brought in.