Madison's 1st vacation!

Alan was taking some time off work last week and since Madison is sleeping through the night in her bassinet and Wilma has healed up from her surgery 3 weeks ago, he mentioned that we should go somewhere. I get on my favorite site, VRBO, and start looking and quickly realize I don't want to go to the same ole Pigeon Forge or Hendersonville that we tend to lean toward every time we go somewhere. We also knew we didn't want to go to the beach since we like the beach in the Spring(and have already been this year). So we picked Helen, Ga. Random? Sure but why not?! There's mountains and neither of us had ever been. Plus we found a nice cabin for reasonable and it's under 3 hours to drive there.

We get there around 2 on Monday. I got zero pictures of the cabin but it was nice. You can go here to see the VRBO listing, which has pictures. Hottub on the porch and plenty of room for Wilma to roam around without a road being nearby! We quickly learned that January is not the best time to visit since all the restaurants(the few that were open) closed at 6pm. That night we drove about 10 miles away to a local spot and had supper. We make a vow to not eat at chain restaurants when on vacation so our mission is to find good local spots.

We did spot this monster bunny just sitting beside a parking lot eating. He was huge. On our trip we saw 4 other wild bunnies. Or maybe resident bunnies. One was bigger than this one but I didn't get a picture. Weirdest. thing. ever.

Tuesday, we lounged around until 2 and went into town. Alan had seen a pizza place and we called and he closed at 5. We ate a yummy pizza and then went back to the cabin.

Wednesday we took Madison into Cleveland to visit Babyland. This is a "hospital" where Cabbage Patch Kids are "born".

When we got there a birth was about to take place so we waited for that to happen. See the "IV" of Imagitocin? This is where the 'birth' takes place..

To say this place takes birthing and dolls to the extreme would be a slight understatement. They have nurses, a nursery, cribs with babies in them and the "birth" itself was something else.. They wanted the audience to name the doll so I yelled out the little toddlers name that was there(we had spoken to them while waiting) and Madisons name. So she named the doll Madelyn Madison. If you think that's strange, you should see some of the dolls names in there. One doll was Happy July. Enough said. She put that doll in the nursery to be adopted and after being told it was $300 to adopt her, she stayed in the nursery too. She is an Original which means she's all soft material(not a plastic head like in stores) and she's all handmade in Cleveland, Georgia(the others are made in China)That wasn't enough to sell me on dropping $300 on her.

The infamous doll.

Nom nom nom.. Is this for me?!

So we picked out a brown haired, blue eyed plastic headed doll made in China, named her Madison Grace, gave her a birthday of September 6, 2011 and went on our merry way :)

Which one is the real Madison?!

Thursday, after a long night with Wilma getting and staying up around 3:30am, we got ready and left the cabin around 11. We went to eat and went into the Town of Helen since the locals said Thursday the traffic would start picking up a bit. We parked and walked and found nothing! I did manage to find an ornament since that's my mission everywhere we go. We got on the road for home around 1. We both wished we had stayed one more night but when we called the cabin we stayed in, it was already booked for tonight.

So we can mark Helen, Georgia off our list of places to see. If we ever do go back, it will be for Oktoberfest since it's a mock German town and the locals say it draws people from all over! That's a HUGE if though.