Packing it in

For our second weekend in the mountains the rest of our family joined us. Having all of us in a trailer was quite a fun experience and Shawn and I didn't sleep the entire time they were visiting. My 6' 1" husband, myself and sometimes Liam in a full size bed was not an easy task. One night we had a severe storm come through and we lost power for hours. We didn't have anything for light and it was really dark. We had to borrow light up toys from Laura to be able to see!

We did get to spend the entire day on Sunday hiking and taking photos:

The Lump Overlook



Cascades Waterfall




Hiking the Linn Cove Viaduct trail.


Flat Rock Trail




Mystery Hill


Found the house and land we want to buy.



Pure exhaustion.



Can you believe we did all of that in one day!?

The future is surreal.

We are home! It's so good to be back. And so weird to walk into your home after being gone for almost a month. It's surreal. The house doesn't look like my own. The walls don't look like the same color I remember them. The carpet seems a lighter beige than I thought. It always takes a bit for me to get used to being back. But I am thankful all the same for the opportunity we have had to take Liam to get oxygen treatments.

Liam has done great so far. I can't believe he is giving out high fives now. That is surreal to be sure. We have dreams of what Liam will do one day and watching anything play out is amazing.

It's amazing to watch him think it through and watch him work out how he's supposed to get his arm up to hit my hand. It's neat to watch him process things. It's a big deal for him. He now knows he actually does have control over his arms. Even though his control is limited, he is started to grasp concepts of purposeful movements.

This week started our "intensive" therapy. He now will be getting therapy for 4 hours a week. The most we've ever had was three so I'm excited we are getting an extra hour. We do have to drive 45 minutes for him to get there but I'm just thankful he's getting it so regularly now.

Liam also started speech therapy (this time it's one on one). We are working on teaching him bubbles and pop along with the motions to pop the bubbles. He really likes to watch them and I'm hoping after this last round of oxygen treatments the barriers in Liam's brain will start to fall away so he can start to make sounds.

Liam is getting to a good place where he would benefit from intensive physical therapy at a center that would work with him for hours a day for weeks on end. We are still in the research stage because when you shell out 12-16 grand on a center, you want to make sure it's the right one for you. We got the go ahead from out PT today and she said that within the next 12 months would a be a great time...especially after Liam doing oxygen treatments. She said if God made things fall into place and we could raise the money and get in sooner then by all means we should go now.

So...

We are praying about it. And we are trying to figure out how to raise that kind of money. God is able to break down the barriers to make it happen if it's truly what Liam needs. We are excited for what God is going to do in the very near future.

Visiting

Judy (Bob's wife) brought her pet bird, Jazzy, over to visit with the kids yesterday at the chamber. He was a big hit. I wouldn't want to own one but it sure was cute when someone else was taking care of it. It said 'Hello' and 'I'm Jazzy'. Liam really enjoyed petting it.

Ancestors

A few weeks ago I was researching my family tree a little more in depth when I came across some exciting facts. On my mom's dad's side, leaves were popping up (I use ancestry.com) and for the first time I was able to take a male parental family line and follow it for generations, eventually all the way back to the 1500's into Scotland!

I found out that on my grandpa's lineage, his great grandparents, were major players in the founding of Burke County in NC. They owned thousands of acres, 34 slaves and he was a sheriff and coroner. Because he was so rich and influential and because a town out in western NC is named after them, there was numerous articles about the Greenlee family online. One of the articles stated that a cemetery near here had many of my ancestors buried there. Since it wasn't far from Miracle Mountain I knew I wanted to go see the cemetery when we got out here.

When I got to researching where it was located I found information stating that the cemetery was listed on the national register of historical places and was now closed to traffic. I called the number listed for the society and asked if we could come see it. She said sure and said she'd keep it unlocked so we could go through the gate and to just lock it when we left.

I was excited. A cemetery all to ourselves!

This is the entrance.

The cemetery is at the very top of a large hill on a large chunk of land that had been in the family. You can see the slant of the ground in the photo below. Once you get to the edge of the markers, the ground slopes steeply and on the north side is the Catawba River. It's amazing to think back to the 1700's and how they had to carry their dead up to the top of this hill, to a beautiful spot, for their final resting place.

It's probably creepy but I love cemeteries. I love looking at the lives that have gone and I think, wondering about who they were and what their life was like. And to go to a cemetery with ancestors of mine from the 1700's was incredibly fascinating. There were several babies. The baby/children markers always get me. I feel like I have a connection to the emotions that that family experienced and I think of how that tragedy was dealt with in that time and place. Did they talk about them. Did they honor them on birthdays? What did they do?

We had the cemetery to ourselves and after looking at all the markers we sat down for a relaxing lunch in the shadow of family.

For the most part the markers were in decent shape. A few had been broken and the stones eroded of all words, but if you do enough online research you can find the surveys done of cemeteries showing the information that you can't find on the markers anymore.

After lingering for a while and taking pictures we decided to head out.

It was definitely a neat stop for our first Sunday off.