She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain

It was so nice to be on fall break. My mom, Dot, and I drove out East to see my sister's new house and bring a carload of her things that have been stored at my parents' house while she and her husband lived in an apartment. Poor Dot was a little crammed for space in the back.

The boxes fell a bit when we took a turn.  This only happened the once. 

It's a 9+ hour drive and I didn't sleep for a moment. It was nice to have so much time to just chat with my mom and sing along with the radio. I was driving when we got to the mountains and was apologizing to Dottie about the turns. There's a funny story about my mom when she started singing She'll be Comin' 'Round the Mountain and forgot some of the words, but as I've tried to type the story for you, I realized two things--1. it's probably not very funny with the length of words to set up the scene, and 2. we should probably be more concerned about the situation--which is what we said when it happened.  But we were cracking up for an hour or two over it.

When we finally arrived, Dottie was reunited with one of her best buds, McFly! They love getting to be together; they are both very laid-back dogs and don't irritate each other with hyperactivity.  I hope that when we get a puppy--nope, not for a while here--that it won't annoy the crap out of Dottie.

While we were out here, I had my first IKEA experience.  What a fun little store.  You really can get so much for so little. It's exciting that there is a plan to build one in Indiana

We also had a nice dinner at an Irish Pub.  I don't know why my family has an affinity for Irish Pubs. We consistently note that Irish food is not as the top of our list, and yet, we opt to go there anyway. I was more than thrilled to find out that this was a legitimate Irish establishment.  The workers and most of the patrons all had thick Irish accents.

On one of the days of our visit, we drove up to Barrel Oak Winery for lunch, which is dog friendly, so McFly and Dottie got to join!  There were two dogs from a neighboring vineyard that also joined us.


While we were there, I was introduced to the biggest dog I've ever seen in my life, a Leonberger

My mom, her girls, and granddogs

It was just a 3 day trip, and McFly and Dottie were stalling when we packed up to leave. But it was so nice to spend time with my sister and brother-in-law