Thank you all for your good travel wishes … our trip to Thomasville was amazing! I hesitate to call it a “day trip”; door to door, it was 15 hours for me (and several of those hours were in the dark), but I was able to sleep in my own bed.

First good thing – Katie drove. I navigated, managed the audiobook (The Book of Goose – we loved it!), knitted, texted our friends arrival details.

We got to Thomasville just after 10:30 and met our friends for coffee before heading to The Bookshelf. It was simply wonderful to meet Maddie and her mom Betsy in person and we could’ve easily spent hours just chatting. But … bookstore! The Bookshelf is also just as delightful in person as we expected and narrowing down our purchases was hard. We do have a few local bookshops, but I feel like I know The Bookshelf staff better (so I trust their recommendations more). Here’s what I “saved for later” and what I came home with (those two books on the bottom row of “my books” are advance reader copies – you got to choose one if you bought a book and Betsy gave me her choice so I got two).

We met Felicia, The Bookshelf’s community manager on our way out and she was kind enough to take our photo – and to take a photo with us.

I told Felicia I was coming back in April for a girls weekend ((have I shared that with y’all? yes! there will be five of us – more to come) and she was almost as excited as I was … we exchanged information and hope to plan something fun.

Next was lunch. no photos. Thomasville was BUSY on Saturday and our first and second choice restaurants had hours long waits. Still, we found sandwiches and it was fine. After lunch, I went next door to The Fuzzy Goat for some yarn and the others went toy shopping.

The Fuzzy Goat is also just as delightful in person as it is on-line. I met Cadence (the owner) and she had more ideas for our girls weekend. We are thinking a knit-along might be fun, something quick and easy. Choosing the pattern might be the easy part … there’s a lot of yarn! That’s my purchase on the right – the yarn is dyed locally and the colorway (Georgia Skyline) is special for The Fuzzy Goat. The “Don’t knit your tail” pin is also from there.

We all met back up for a little more shopping and then Maddie & Betsy said good-bye. Katie and I visited another little boutique and bought make-up (a very fun mother-daughter thing!) … can you tell?

Then after a leisurely (half) glass of wine … we drove home. and that part was thankfully uneventful.

It was a wonderful day and the perfect itinerary to help plan a longer return trip.

Back home … it’s Ash Wednesday and freakishly warm (nearly 80!) Our lenten roses survived the Christmas freeze and are doing great! I know many of y’all are seeing snow – we’re thinking of you!