Thomas is from a little town in the mountains of Southwest Virginia where much of his family still lives. Tazewell (pronounced Taz-well) is a beautiful little town with a population of about 4,500. In our pre-children lives, we made a point to visit Tazewell several times a year, usually every few months and every other holiday. Since we've had the babies, we've been up there 0 times. That is, until this weekend! Thomas's sisters, Tara and Ashley, and their families were planning to visit Tazewell this weekend and convinced us to come up as well. It's always more fun when the whole family is around!
Summer is by far my favorite time to go to Tazewell. It is SO GREEN up there and the weather is usually absolutely perfect. It will be nice and warm but with a gentle mountain breeze. It is seriously like heaven. Thomas's family has a lot of land, and it's so beautiful to wake up, look out the window and see the horizon full of mountains. It's so serene.
Views from the deck of Thomas's house where he grew up!
In the picture above, do you see that little path on the right hand side? It's a road that leads over the hill and the view is incredible. We love to walk up there (we used to let the dogs come, too) over the hill. There are even more hills to walk once you get up there. It's a great workout - no joke. Cardio, baby! There are lots of cows grazing over there out of view from this picture. One winter, we all threw on snowsuits and lots of fun clumsily walking up the hill and playing around up there. Good memories.
The last time we were in Tazewell was almost exactly a year ago. We were honored with a couples baby shower for the boys. The shower happened right before I went into the hospital for bed rest. It does not seem at all like a year has gone by since then. It was such a beautiful shower. I looked back to try to find my blog post dedicated to the shower and realized I never wrote one! What a shame! Here are a few pictures from that fun afternoon.
Anyhow, the drive to Tazewell is somewhere between 4 and 4.5 hours. It's a beautiful drive through Asheville, Bristol and then on to Tazewell. We tried to time it out well so we wouldn't have to stop too much for the boys. We made one stop around Unicoi County, Tennessee to give the boys a bottle and change their diapers. It only took about 15 - 20 min. and we thought that was pretty good! The boys did well until we were about 20 minutes away from Tazewell and they started to fuss. I was able to placate them with some Puffs. :)
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| Feeding the boys in the van |
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| Makeshift diaper changing station in the floorboard of the van |
When we got to Tazewell we went straight to MaSha's house to eat supper with her. Ashley, Taylor and Anna were already there.
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| MaSha with William and Ryan |
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| Stokes and Aunt Ashley |
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| Cousin Taylor with William |
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| Ryan and me |
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| Ashley and MaSha feeding the boys while Taylor and Anna look on |
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| Thomas holding a mini Coors Light and William |
After a nice dinner and some quality time with MaSha, we headed over to Abby's house. Here's a pretty view of the mountains on our drive.
Tara, Matt and Leece got caught in some awful traffic and the drive took them a realllllyyyy long time and they missed dinner at MaSha's. We got to see them when we got to Abby's and hung out for a while before calling it a night. The babies all slept well on Friday night. Woo hoo!!!!
The next morning, we let the boys hang out with their cousin Leece! The babies were so cute playing together. I love that they're so close in age and will grow up together.
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| Leece looking at Ryan |
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| Sweet Leece! |
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| William and Stokes |
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| Leece, Stokes and William |
After we got everyone ready and let the kids take a short nap, we headed over to Thomas's Granddad's house. Mag, Fifi and Jerry met us over there, which makes it much easier to see a lot of the family without having to take all the kids to several different places! The loading and unloading is a bit labor intensive. We'll leave it at that haha!!!
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| Time to feed the babies & lots of helping hands! |
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| Playing |
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| Granddad with his great grandkids |
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| Granddad and Ryan |
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| Fifi and Stokes |
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| Ashley, Ryan and Granddad |
We went outside to enjoy the gorgeous weather!
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| Granddad's house - isn't it beautiful?!?! |
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| Fifi, Stokes, Tara, William and Thomas |
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| Matt and Leece |
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| Taylor and Anna |
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| Leece |
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| William and me |
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| William, Jerry and Fifi |
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| Leece |
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| Anna, Thomas, Stokes and Taylor |
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| Our family! |
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| Granddad and Leece |
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| Thomas and Stokes |
After visiting at Granddad's house for a while, we went back to Abby's for lunch and to put all the babies back down for a nap. The adults and big kids got to relax and hang out on the deck. Thomas and Matt played corn hole and us girls got to talk.
We picked a good weekend to visit Tazewell because they had some sort of festival happening on Main Street. The street was lined with all sorts of vendors. We decided to head up there after naptime to check it out. We also got to meet up with some friends!
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| Right after we parked, we introduced the boys to Rex and Laura |
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| Heading into the action |
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| Main Street is lined with these beautiful hanging pots |
We met up with Joey, Lisa and Davis. Davis is about 2 weeks older than the boys and is so adorable! He's such a cute mix of his mom and dad. Joey is one of Thomas's oldest and best friends. He met our boys a while back when he came down to SC but Lisa hadn't met them yet and this was our first time to see Davis in person.
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| Abby and Joey |
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| Davis Ward Pruett |
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| Seriously...how cute is he?!?! |
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| The boys and (most of) their babies |
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| Cruisin' Main Street |
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| Abby and William |
Funny story....there was a booth with fresh homemade ice cream run by two Amish guys. They looked so quintessentially Amish and I was intrigued! We got some ice cream and I wanted to get a picture of them. Thankfully, I asked if I could take a picture before I just started snapping away and totally made them mad, because when I asked they politely declined and offered to move out of the way so I could take a picture. I forgot that they don't "do" technology. OOPS! I didn't really want this random picture of their un-manned ice cream booth, but how could I not take a picture of it after they moved out of the way so I could capture this image?!?!? I'm dumb. I committed a big time Amish faux pas!
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| Amish ice cream booth |
p.s. Their ice cream was good!
After checking out the festival, we returned to Abby's house. Taylor and Anna jumped right in to help feed the boys.
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| Anna feeding Ryan and Taylor feeding William |
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| Stokes and Thomas |
Ever the adventurers, Ashley, Taylor, Anna and Abby took a canoe out on the pond behind the house for a little canoe cruise.
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| Carrying the canoe to the pond |
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| family adventure |
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| it's a beautiful day for a canoe ride |
The rest of us hung out on the deck and in the living room with all the babies.
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| Tara, Leece, Lisa and Davis |
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| William, Thomas, Stokes and Joey |
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| Me with William and Ryan |
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| Joey and all the boys! |
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| Davis and Stokes playing together |
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| Lisa, Davis and Stokes |
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William riding this bouncy thing called Cresta
(named by Taylor and Anna) |
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| Joey and Davis |
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| The first picture of Abby and all 3 of his grandsons |
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| The boys loved their visit with Abby |
That night we got takeout from a well-known restaurant around Tazewell called
Cuz's Uptown Barbeque. It's everyone in our family's favorite place to eat when we're in town! The food is awesome and when you go to the restaurant, there is no shortage of things to look at. It's a very eclectic converted barn with brightly colored spray painted walls with pictures of pigs, international masks hanging on the wall, and interesting artwork on the menus - which all look different, by the way! We would definitely recommend going there if you're ever in that part of the world! So anyway, we enjoyed some Cuz's takeout at Abby's house on Saturday night. Unfortunately for us, Stokes decided that he was ready to PAR-TAY all night long and kept us up quite a bit. He's a little stinker...you probably already knew that though!
Sunday morning, we went back over to MaSha's for breakfast before hitting the road back to SC. Breakfast was delicious and some family and friends came over to see us off. I didn't get very many pictures, but Peggy (aka GranO) was there, as was Bonnie White. Granddad and Anna Ward also came by to see us and hang out with all the kiddos. It was a lot of fun.
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| Leece and Ryan |
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| William, Granddad and Taylor |
On the drive home, we ended up stopping at the same exit where we stopped on the way there. We got the Bumbos out and fed the boys a little lunch in the shade of a tree. Meanwhile, Thomas and I stopped in at a little drive thru called Pal's. Never heard of it? Neither had I. It was really pretty good! I liked this exit because there were trees with shade and part of a little walking path. You don't see that on Interstate exits very often!
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| Stokes and William |
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| Thomas holding Ryan. |
The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful...except the last 45 minutes or so. Stokes got cranked up and was getting bored of all his toys really quickly. I ended up giving them a bottle in their car seats while Thomas kept driving. Let's just say we were all ready to be home!
I think the boys' first trip to Tazewell was a smashing success! I love feeling the accomplishment of going on a road trip without any major disasters or mishaps. The boys did really well and loved seeing their friends and family members. Thomas and I had a great time, too. Tazewell, we'll be back!
Just remember...
AND...
TRIPLETS!
