Interviewing my almost FIVE year old...

What's your name? Stella

How old are you? 4 1/2 

What are some of your favorite things to do? Eat frozen yogurt, have Daddy-Daughter Date Nights, eat pizza, hog the bed, be at the beach, make crafts, read books.

What do you want to be when you grow up? A zookeeper, a veterinarian, a cake decorator, a dog walker, a Mommy and a hair stylist.

What are your favorite foods? chocolate, pizza, macaroni and cheese, chicken, asparagus, vegetable soup. 

What do you do really well? swim

What makes you laugh? tickling, Daddy chasing me around the house

What are you afraid of? sharks....and riding my big girl bike. And scorpions.

What do you like to do with your family? go trick or treating, get in the hot tub with Ivy at Nene & Grandaddy's

Who are your friends?  Annika, Charlotte, Payton, Joseline, Ella, Sofia, Avery, Marco, Kai and Antonio (all classmates), Alina, Gracen & Jessica (from the beach), Wiley, Harper, Jovie and Lenore.

What do you like to learn about? cartwheels, handstands, swimming by myself and driving the golfcart.

Where do you like to go?  My grandparent's houses, Ivy's house, Wiley's house, Harper's house, Andrew's house, Alina's house, Tiny Tots (at the skating rink), Uncle Mikey and Aunt Jessica's house

What is your favorite book? The book I just made.

If you had one wish, what would it be? To fly on a unicorn princess.

What do you love most about yourself?  My heart. Because it wants to help people.

Total Eclipse of Blue Ridge

**Due to life and my phone being weird for a few months, I've been unable to upload photos and blog. This post was finished, but I had no idea I never published it. So here we go.....5 months later.

When I found out the eclipse was going to be a few days before Stella started school and that Blue Ridge would be close to 100% totality, I knew we had to visit my Aunt's cabin for a few days.  Her cabin is actually in Morganton which is about 10 or so miles more northeast getting us a tad closer to the line of totality which was even better. 

Stella and I left Friday morning with a car-load of food and some of her old baby clothes, toys, cloth diapers, etc. Our friend, Sweetman and his girlfriend, Meredeth had just had a baby boy, James Carter a week or two prior and I was going to share Stella's gender neutral stuff with them, plus bring them a meal.

They just got a new home in Cumming and since that was on the way up north, we made their house our first stop on our road trip to see the eclipse.

We arrived in Morganton mid afternoon and unloaded the car. I'd brought up a ton of food. My cousin, Jennifer told me that days earlier some of the stores were already running out of food in preparation for all of the out-of-towners that weekend. Plus, originally my Uncle and a few other cousins were possibly coming up for the eclipse so I'd unloaded our freezer of meat and such, and made my grocery store purchases in advance down here. I didn't want to just show up with food for my family of three, I thought that would be rude, so I made sure I brought enough to share with whoever showed up at the cabin. Turns out, it was just me, Stella and Donald that weekend and we were covered on food.

First thing I noticed when I stepped out of the car on Friday was: no humidity. Or at least, lower humidity. 

I brought my hammock and set it up under the shade of some trees. We ended up spending more time there than inside I think. Each morning, I'd fix a cup of tea and go out with a magazine and a blanket and just take in the cool, crisp, mountain air.  Stella would join me at all hours of the day. One morning she stumbled out onto the porch and called for me. When she heard me return, she tiptoed through the wet grass barefoot and only clothed in panties, crawled in with me and under the covers to warm up again next to me. Our plan was to be quiet and wait for deer to appear. This never happened.

Donald drove up after work Friday afternoon and soon after he arrived we hopped in the truck and headed for McCaysville, Ga/Copper Hill, Tn to look at the area. We were/are throwing around the idea of buying a place somewhere in that area or around Ellijay and just wanted to check things out. We had dinner at a place downtown and while we were eating Donald asked if I knew if Fannin County was playing that night. My cousin, Sam and his twin brothers James and Thomas play football for the Fannin County Rebels. Their younger brother, Jackson also plays, but not for the high school team.  I texted Jennifer and she said they were so we told her we would be there by halftime. Stella had never been to a high school football game before and since we had nothing to do, thought it would be nice considering the perfect weather. 

Fannin County is good and has a lot of fans so parking was a bit of a chore, but we got fairly close and didn't have to walk too far.

We decided since it had been five years since we'd tubed (HOW is that possible?!?!), we would tube this weekend and introduce Stella to it. One of our tubes had been chewed on so we only had two. We needed something for her to float on, plus somewhere to keep our cooler and a dry bag. Saturday morning, we tried Roses (yes, Roses. Go ahead, take that in) and Wal-Mart for a tube, but both places were low on summer stuff like that since it was the end of the season. We opted for a $9.99 twin air mattress which turned out to be the perfect thing.

We packed sandwiches, pirates booty and grapes for lunch. We couldn't find a "beach" to park our tubes on to have lunch so instead, we just pulled over in a somewhat shady spot and stood in a few inches of very cold water and "picnicked." It turned out to be Stella's favorite part of the experience. 

Saturday evening I'd planned on us going to The Swan drive-in to see a movie, but Stella opted for a bonfire instead. I'd brought stuff for s'mores so they built the fire and I got that stuff ready. We laid a blanket down and sat down to be warmed by the fire, listen to the crickets and cicadas and star gaze. It was a wonderful night. Stella fell asleep between me and Donald while we watched for shooting stars in the dark, night sky.

Sunday, Donald left before lunch to head back to Atlanta. He had some things to do, plus was busy at work and couldn't stay to watch the eclipse with us. 

Stella wanted to go into town to go shopping so we went in to Blue Ridge after lunch. We browsed and window shopped and Stella picked out a purple light-up ring from a store. She chose to get ice cream and I got dulce de leche fudge as well as dark chocolate-pecan-salted caramel fudge from Three Sisters Fudge.  

We killed some time between downtown and the kid's movie at the drive in with a stop by TJ Maxx. I didn't want to drive back to the cabin because I'd pretty much have to turn right back around once I arrived but there wasn't a coffee shop or anyplace like that to go and just hang out. It was a bit too warm downtown to play at the park so I figured an air conditioned store like TJ Maxx would be perfect to kill an hour or so of time browsing the aisles.

We grabbed dinner at Zaxby's and go to the drive-in about 10 minutes before the movie started. The Nut Job 2 was playing at 8:30. Apparently just that week, during one of Donald and Stella's Daddy-Daughter Date Nights they watched The Nut Job on Netflix so that was perfect timing.

Monday morning I gathered up our things and straightened up the cabin. Then at lunch we headed down the to Jennifer's house. Luckily, she had two extra pair of eclipse glasses and shared them with us. Her boys were out of school for the eclipse so we sat on her front porch and watched one of the coolest things ever. I'm so happy we could experience this together and with family.

We figured traffic would be crappy coming back in to the city so we hung around and ate dinner, then headed back home later that evening. Stella went to sleep and I had a peaceful ride home.