Family Reunion

As you know I have a huge family. Every year we have a reunion with my grandmothers family at NACO and Thousand Trails Resort near Hohenwald, TN. This is off of Natchez Trace and is in the middle of Amish country. It is SOOOO beautiful there. It is amazing how many activities and things there are to do...let me tell you that plus my crazy family equals one non-stop weekend....I am SOOO tired and have to get up and go to work in the morning as tomorrow is the first day of school! So for those of you who want to see a huge old fashioned family reunion...I will give you a glimpse....
We left Thursday night after my drawing class and headed to Smyrna to stay the evening with my parents. On Friday morning we got up early and headed down to the park and met up with my cousins who also got there early. Austin and I headed out with my cousins to do some shopping in a few of the shops in Hohenwald...
We visited a bookstore and this

Really cool antique store. I fell in love with this stained glass

and this painting

they are fabulous and I loved them, but they didn't love my wallet :) However, I did end up with a couple of fabulous things. I found this

gorgeous quilt top that I am going to quilt in all my spare time...lol! And this

gorgeous necklace from 1850...I just love it and it looks good on me too...yay!

We then started to head back and saw signs for a winery and decided that we would take a look. We found Amber Falls winery and were blown away by the atmosphere. The people were so friendly and the raspberry wine is to die for.
Here is what the winery and outside sitting area look like...

Here is the guard dog...a weimie :) She was sooooo sweet!

This is the casks that are located in the wine tasting cellar

the wine tasting area

me and my cousin purchasing some wine *note: do not do a lot of wine tasting on an empty stomach....whoa was I giggly*

Some of the beautiful grapes on the vine...


While there I mentioned loving blackberry wine and the man told us to check out another winery down the street...so of course we headed over. The scenery was not as great as Amber Falls, but the wine was AMAZING...they had so many I wanted but settled for the peach and blackberry. They have won several awards for their wines and you should check them out if you live in or are traveling through middle TN (duh...there name is Keg Springs Winery)!
We finally made it back and everyone had arrived. We ate dinner, sat around the fire, joked, laughed, roasted marshmellows, fished, and had a great time. The next day we drove around the Amish area and bought some homemade doughnuts (heaven), a candle, some quilted Christmas stockings, and looked at all the wonderful stuff the Amish made to sell. We made it back in time for the big lunch

Where we continued the laughs with the family. One thing that got us really tickled was a poster they made for one of the previous reunions, it was a pic of my uncle and his family that someone tried to fix his red eye and he came out looking CRAZY! We saw this and about fell out in the floor laughing so I had to get an up close so you could see the funny...lol!

After lunch we had our big auction. The big ticket item this year was this quilt made by two of my grandmothers 1st cousins. It was GORGEOUS!

Finally, we headed back to the campfire and hung out and took pics. Here is one of me and my little brother. We hardly have any pictures together...

and Drew caught this really cool looking pike fish

Finally, after it got late and the people began to leave the fire we headed to the cabin where I stayed with my cousin and played the singing bee until really late. Then it was off to bed and then a rushed morning as we had to pack quickly and get back on the road to Knoxville. It was a fun and fabulous weekend!