mountain trip & dad's birthday

We had a wonderful trip to the mountains this time! It was a time of celebration...my dad's birthday! We are so thankful for my dad and all that he means to our family. We are also so thankful that he is done with his radiation treatment!!! Those eight weeks are now behind him and is moving on and will continue with his medication for six more months. I am so proud of how well he has done through this hard time. It made his birthday celebration even more special for me! On Saturday we had a very fun filled day! We went to West Jefferson and had a wonderful birthday lunch at a great restaurant there...Frasier's. Dad and I actually got the same thing...a blackened tilapia sandwich that was so huge and so awesome!!! After lunch we walked through some stores and two art galleries that are downtown. Claire and Ava got to talk to one of the artists at one of the galleries, which was really neat! She gave them two prints to take home and some pointers on working with acrylics and sponges. Then we drove up to West Jefferson State Park, which was literally up a mountain. It was beautiful there with all the different colored leaves below. They had two different lookouts that we stopped at and took pictures. When we left the park we went to another Church of the Frescoes that is in West Jefferson. This church had a painting of the crucifixion of Jesus. It was a beautiful painting and a great reminder of what Jesus did for us on the cross. That afternoon the girls did what they had been dying to do all day...play with their new friends that they met...Bella and Sawyer. These cute kids and their parents were staying across the street from the cabin for the weekend and Claire and Ava just hit it off with them. They played for awhile that afternoon and then we went back over to roast marshmallows with them that night. Claire and Ava literally cried as they watched them head back home on Sunday morning. The other fun memory of the weekend was the puzzle that mom bought and we worked on. Jay was pretty much obsessed with it and mom and I helped him a lot too. My dad is not much on games and puzzles, so we left him the last piece to put in and of course I had to document that!!! We love you dad and were so glad we could celebrate with you in the mountains!!!