tipping guam over: Biltmore Estate

Everyone that is less than one week from moving out of their house decides it's a good time to take an overnight trip 4 hours away, right? ....Perhaps not, but that's exactly what we did. We've hit a point in our move where everything is really out of our hands so beyond finding 18 million things to try to organize there's not much left for us to do here. We've wanted to go to the Biltmore since we moved here, and figured our anniversary was a good excuse.

Despite the weird timing, I can not state enough how glad I am we went. It was amazingly beautiful, and a great history lesson for all of us. We all read articles I printed about the Vanderbilt family from the Encyclopedia Britannica and the estate website here during breakfast before we went to the house. Once there, the Estate was offering free audio tours which I found isolating and distracting, so I opted to have the kids take turns reading aloud the Biltmore guide for each place we saw to work on their reading skills. Spending time on the history before going, made them much more interested from the onset when we got there, and they seemed to learn and retain quite a bit. The great food for lunch, wine tasting, and beautiful flowers in spring bloom all added to the experience!

Here are a few pictures from our day, note they are all taken outside. Pictures are forbidden inside.