Beautiful Family.

Right now I am watching my 3 year old niece Rachael dance around our large rental lake house to reggae music. My brother in law Peter and my sister in law Joscelynn love their reggae. They have a heart for Jamaica.

And as I glance out the window, all I can see is dark green foilage covering the Smoky Mountains and the sun peeping out of the sky, reflecting on top of the lake. Every time a boat speeds by, it creates little ripples that hit our bottom deck.

My father in law is boss at creating great family vacations. Jos and Pete loaded up their kids from New York and met us Floridians here is the gorgeous state of North Carolina. The beauty is overwhelming; we've been here 2 full days now and all I want to do is lay on our bed and soak in the views and praise God for creating something so spectacular.



It reminds me of home, but it's different. The Mountains are more round, more green, more lush. Plus, I don't feel the cool mountain breezes here that I love because of the humidity but life is still oh, so good. It's always good, but this week especially. I don't want to go back to Florida... is that a bad thing to say?

And don't even get me started at the place we are staying. Three stories of interior-decorated rooms and beautiful paint jobs. It is a dream house.
Yesterday we enjoyed a full day at the lake. And remember in my last post when I said I was so ready to take a jump into a lake? Well, I wasn't being literal but it happened...literally. Our second story has a deck you can jump off of and we did exactly that. My brother in law Tyson said it's about 16 feet but it feels so much higher when you are falling and you are mid-air looking down and thinking, "Why the heck did I just jump? Now I'm going to hit this water and it is going to H-U-R-T."
The first time was fine.
The second time it hurt. Bad. I ended up swallowing a bunch of water, and water went into my left ear. I wasn't able to hear until a few hours ago. Ha ha ha... oh, the joys of taking risks. :-)





Today we went to this AMAZING 8,000-acre estate called the Biltmore. Mr. Vanderbilt created the Biltmore as an escape from everyday life and it is exactly that. Even the servants of the house were waited on... shows you how well they treated the people who worked for them.






I've really enjoyed talks with Joscelynn about my future with kids. For those of you that don't know, David and I are planning on waiting about 4 more years until we have children. But just months ago I had a "baby splurge" where I really wanted a baby and I didn't know why but my heart was aching to get pregnant. I really gave it to God and said, "If I'm not meant to have children right now, please keep my desire but lessen the passion right now so I can focus on what's better for my marriage, my life, and my relationship with you (God)." See, one thing I know about God is if you ask for Him to take something out of your life if it's not meant to be, He will. He delights in you trusting and giving control to Him.
Since then, I have really felt at peace for not having kids right now.

I've always wanted to be a young mother but I still have YEARS before I'm not young anymore... I want to soak up every moment with David before we have a precious life enter the world. I'm giving it to God. One day we will have our own blessings, but for now we enjoy our niece and nephew! :-) They have been such a joy for me these past few days. I actually think I will be very sad when we have to part ways and they go back to New York. But it gives me something to look forward to when we reunite on New Years.









And for our Southern family photo:

Loving life here in North Carolina. -Shaylee