The best things in life are the people we love…the places we’ve been… and the memories we’ve created along the way.

Family Mountain Weekend 2015 has come and gone yet again. We anticipate and plan from the second we leave the year before, and it comes and goes so quickly every year. I guess you could call Lake Junalaska my second home. It holds such a special place in my heart. To hear the two words “Lake Junalaska” uttered, makes my heart skip a beat. It’s nothing special to some, but it is everything to my family. A small, three bedroom-one bath house with a screened in porch that covers the whole length of the house is part of what it’s all about. The other half is the richness that happens inside the walls of such a simple place. The bunk-bed room that once housed all of the young and crazy cousins has now moved to the crazy fun sleeping arrangements with us all lined up on mattresses and nuzzled deep in sleeping bags on the screened in porch in 32 degree weather. You can hear belly aching laughter that runs wildly through the night. We eat and prepare more food with love than you can begin to even imagine and we eat until we can’t eat anymore. We gather around the big wooden table, every single one of us and enjoy each and every second that we are blessed enough to spend together. Life has gotten all to chaotic. We embrace the slow down and make memories that we never knew we were making in the first place. One of my favorite times is waking up in the wee hours of the morning when everyone is still fast asleep and walking to the dock to watch the sun rise over the Blue Ridge Mountains. This is another one of those moments where I realize even more at what a marvelous artist God is. He puts colors in the sky that shouldn’t be there sometimes and it takes my breath away. In the quiet of the morning, the only sound to my ear is the rustling of the leaves in the wind and of the geese talking amongst each other. I love to just sit and ponder on the beauty of life at that very moment in the stillness. And then I walk back to the house and watch all of the sweet faces of my family wake up one by one. Another one of my very favorite times is the devotion that my Papa leads every morning with the crew. This is so dear and close to my heart. He is our anchor and the rock to our family. To watch him lead the entire room in a time with God means more than anyone can even imagine. It gets messy, and we cry, and we laugh, and we heal. That’s one thing I love about my family is that we are real, and we don’t pretend to be perfect. We talk about our imperfections and how hard life can be, and then we lift each other up. I have watched hearts turn in that very room and family open up like I never thought they would. To say the least, words can’t describe those very intimate moments that will always be cherished. This is a tradition that has been strong since my mom, and aunt, and uncle were growing up. I am thankful that I have a family that is strong and that has held us together as tightly as they have. I am thankful that we have traditions such as this that I can firmly say will never go astray. The cousins have made an agreement to always keep this strong for generations to come. We may have to expand to tents outside the yard, or finally win the bribing of the neighbor to buy their place, but nothing will come between this sweet-sweet weekend in October every single year. Until next year, Junalaska!