At Carmen's, we sat the girls down and gave them the envelope with the "poem/ticket" in it. We figured that Scarlett, being the youngest, would be the most excited. Summerlyn read the poem aloud, and Scarlett was excited. "We just saw the Polar Express (movie) at my school yesterday!!!" Ahhh.... 
a home run! (These pics were made in Dillsboro - temp was really cold)... Summerlyn always wants to take a picture of MeMe. It has been only recently that I've allowed her to "handle" my camera.Gave Lukie a gift so he wouldn't feel left out, and then headed on our way. We had lots of ground to cover.
First stop was at Rita's Bakery in Fountain City for batches of the BEST thumbprint cookies on the planet. We bought each little
gal her own box and one larger box to split among us three adults and of course Papaw had to have other pastries as well.Out on the highway, we were headed to Dillsboro first - figured we'd shop a little. It had been years since we'd been to Dillsboro, NC.
Along the way we sang Christmas carols to the top of our lungs... laughed... played games (made up by Meme out of desperation - ha!). One game was the Christmas Alphabet. Each child and adult had to take a letter of the alphabet and name a CHRISTMAS word beginning with that letter. Scarlett had "A" and the word was "angels" of course. We then named everything Santa was wearing and then everything Mrs. Claus was wearing. Hilarious!
The BEST game was story telling. The girls named MeMe as the "Story Starter", so I would begin a new story each time... for instance: "Once upon a time, there was a
little girl named Sarah who lived high in the mountains in a log cabin. It was Christmas Eve and the snow was falling outside. Sara wondered how Santa would be able to find her house with all of the snow falling, but she put cookies and milk on the hearth anyway and sat by the fire and waited. Soon she fell asleep but was awakened by pounding on the front door and tiptoed over to see who was there. Sara cracked the door a little and to her amazement, she saw......." and the next person picks up the story and adds to it.
The kids LOVED it. I think they had Sara clinging to a polar ice cap before it was over. We played that game over and over any time we were in the car.Finally we made it to Dillsboro.... made a pitt stop, ate a few cookies and snapped a few pictures. Decided to make our way on up to Bryson City early. We had to pick up our tickets by 4:00 PM.
