Weekend Getaway

This last weekend Raif's company had a holiday retreat/getaway to The Grove Park Inn in Asheville North Carolina. When I first heard about this I thought this place is going to be empty because who the hell vacations two weeks before Christmas - the answer is everyone in NC. The place was packed. It was a beautiful old resort reminding me (I am showing my age a bit) the hotel in Dirty Dancing. They had an enormous fireplace and Christmas trees everywhere and apparently hold a national gingerbread house competition every year. While I think we would have had more fun in the summer (the mountain activities are geared more towards nature and I just wasn't willing to spend the morning at the outdoor nature preserve in 40 degree weather) we had a good time wandering around Asheville. There was a band each night and the kids danced to the music and had fun looking at all the Christmas decorations. Here are a couple of pictures from our weekend. If you are interested in looking at more (especially to see the gingerbread houses because some of them were AMAZING) you can go to Raif's smugmug page here....

http://sailrace.smugmug.com/gallery/6841277_RJZot#437353875_25L5c

The view of the back of our hotelNow that is a fireplace...

Damn my children have rhythm.