Autumn's "Best" Weekend

We spent the weekend in Canaan Valley, WV for TFC's fall retreat. It was gorgeous weather, beautiful surroundings, and crazy busy with set up and take down in two different venues. Not quite such a retreat, but still nice to be there for their peak color day...and to drive back home and realize that we're nowhere near our peak color day so hopefully we'll get to experience it twice this year! :)

West Virginia is definitely a different culture from northern Virginia.

Anyway, here are some representative pictures from our weekend.

Wow. Once you get off 66 there is barely anything. This was the gas station where we stopped. There were people eating breakfast in the gas station. :) Yum.

I don't know if you can see it, but the restroom key was a picture of a man with "women" written under it. Further investigation revealed that the woman's skirt was colored in.

   It was a really pretty drive.

  

The surroundings were really pretty!

This is Jenny. She and I are in small group together. And yes, this is AFTER the summer. Kind of scary to think about how pale I'll be AFTER winter.

Ah yih. Its amazing how exciting it can be to drive a golf cart. Ha ha.

Finding out that the guitarist for the Saturday service back at home forgot to show up.

I watched the 3K race with Brian and Doug. :-)

Jamie passed the young girl just in time to win 3rd place in his division. I was proud! :)

And there's Florence, Doug's daughter and our friend!

One of zillions of pictures of them setting up or tearing down or something with all the equipment.

My husband the rockstar. After the evening's entertainment, the guys in the band stuck around to jam. It was super fun.

M Bizzle.

Steven Law. John Yates called him Liberace on steroids. Ha ha.

    

Dancing. :)

    Bill on electric, Jim on bass

 

This is such a classic Bill look, I think. :)

Jamie and Mike sharing keyboard space.

  Later, some relaxation in the lobby.

On Sunday morning we had probably 10 minutes practice time, total. So, we sat down to talk through who would sing what.

   FLORENCE! :)

      And then began tear down. This doesn't look so bad, right?

Not too bad.

OK. This is why I spend my time coiling mic cables.

This is Sophia. She belongs to our friend Aaron and Amy.

This is Olivia, her older sister. It was such a nice diversion to hang out with their family for a few minutes before we all left.

This is Joshua, the youngest of Amy and Aaron's gorgeous children. Isn't he snuggly?

    

This is Aaron and Amy. They have one other boy - Caleb, who comes between Olivia and Sophia. He's the dancing boy if you scroll up a bit.

Don't you love the protective big sister-ly arm around the younger sister?

Can you say gorgeous? Then I asked her to smile...

Ha ha.

I asked Olivia which Disney Princess she wanted to be. She said Jasmine. I can actually kind of see a likeness here...just pretend Jasmine got super pretty blond hair. :)

  

so, then we drove home. We stopped at this restaurant...which was VERY, um, rustic. But they hadn't even taken anyone's order (the restaurant was full) after about 20 mins, so we left because we were HUNGRY and figured we could be driving while we waited and then eat at approximately the same time, just further down the road.

So, we stopped at a Pizza Hut and ate. And then we drove home. Yay!

The end.