Weekend getaway.

Jon and I had a little weekend away in Asheville, which is probably our favorite place to escape to if we get the chance. We went up for a concert, so we spent just one night, but it was nice to get away and relax for a bit. We stayed at a new place (literally -- it just opened this past April) called Brookstone Lodge. It was really nice! We were a little leery about staying somewhere so new, but our room was great, and the people were more than accommodating. Plus, as we found out once we got there, it's locally owned and operated, and we like to support places like that whenever we can.

We had a great dinner at Barley's, as is our tradition, followed by a cream cheese brownie and Boston creme cupcake that Jon and I split from The Sisters McMullen. We wandered around downtown a bit, and I got some adorable tie-dyed pajamas for Ella at one of the head shops.

Yesterday, we had some time to kill between checking out of the hotel and the show, so after a yummy lunch at Mayfel's, we headed out onto the Blue Ridge Parkway for a few hours. It was a great day for a drive...the leaves were just starting to turn (we saw more color the higher the altitude), and despite some spots of rain, and literally driving through clouds at some points, it was really beautiful out. A few pictures:





While on the Parkway, we went up Mt. Mitchell, which is the highest point east of the Mississippi. Since it was a pretty overcast day, the cloud cover was low in the sky, and by the time we up to the summit, we were actually walking through the clouds, which was pretty neat. Of course, the visibility was not the greatest...



...but it was still neat to be SO high up, and the blue sky even peeked out a little bit.



(If you want to see more pictures, click on my Flickr badge over to the right.)

All in all, a great weekend, but good to be home...aside from that whole work thing.

Death By Garlic Pasta

I tried a new recipe tonight.

-1/2 cup olive oil
-10 cloves garlic, minced
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
-3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
-1 pound dry penne pasta
-1/3 cup grated Romano cheese

1. Cook pasta according to directions.
2. In a pan, brown garlic in oil. Add salt, pepper, and parsley and remove from heat.
3. Toss penne pasta with garlic mixture and Romano cheese and serve.

The prep and cooking was easy enough...all in all, it probably took about 20 minutes.

I was a little disappointed with the dish itself. It seemed like it was way too oily, it needed more salt (and seasoning in general, I thought). An overall rating of "eh".

Jon hasn't tried it yet, so I'm not sure what he'll think.

I'd try it again, but with some modifications.

Musik für die Kinder.

Today was Ella's first Kindermusik class! There were 7 other babies there, I think, from about 4 or 5 months on up. She hasn't been around a lot of other babies, so it's interesting to me to kind of see her peering around at the other kids, and interacting with them a little bit. We did some singing, some playing with instruments (egg shakers and drums), and some marching and dancing. She seemed to enjoy herself, so that's a good thing, since we've got 7 more weeks :)

I heard a rumor that Kanye had something to say about my blog...

Can you believe this?

Random stuffs.

I was just busy getting myself all ramped up over a great deal on hockey tickets -- 3 games for the price of one. Considering they're charging $70-80 for lower level seats this season, the 3-for-1 seemed like a really good deal.

Then I get to the fine print. Well, I guess it wasn't THAT fine. It was pretty much staring me in the face the whole time. "Minimum purchase of 10 tickets." Well, dang. So much for that idea.

Anyway. What else?

I've got a bunch of Ella's teensy clothes from last fall on the kitchen table ready to go to consignment. Only I'm not sure if I'm ready for them to go to consignment. It's hard getting rid of those itty-bitty things. And I mean, they don't take up THAT much space, right? But I know it's like a 99.95% chance that we're not having another one, so I guess I really should take them.... *sigh*

We went on a walk yesterday over at Guilford-Battleground Park, and we saw 3 deer on the trail! Really cool. Of course, it was the one day I forgot to take my camera with me...go figure. They stared us down, and then bounded off into the woods. I didn't realize their tails were so long.

Oh, I found a new Internet radio thing. I'd been using Pandora, but it was getting really terrible, always playing a bunch of crap that I don't like. So I switched to jango.com...MUCH better, so far anyway. I've only been using it a couple of days, so the crap-factor may increase as I use it more.

14 months!

-She actually took a couple of steps the other day to get to her daddy! That's the closest thing we've had to walking so far. She crawls like a speed-demon, and she cruises around just fine too. We think that because her head is so big in comparison to the rest of her body that it throws off her balance a bit. I figure she'll walk when she's got somewhere to go :)
-She's still a great eater. We've recently tried both raspberries and blackberries, and both are very popular, and the girl LOVES some refried beans.
-She has about 5 or 6 signs that she can do now. "All done" at the end of a meal has greatly reduced the tantrums that we were having.
-She's into books right now. She'll bring me one (usually the same one) several times a day, and she likes turning the pages.
-We've been working on learning body parts -- she can get nose, toes, mouth and (with a little prompting) eyes, ears, and tummy.
-She can give a high-five now, which is about the cutest thing ever.


And speaking of cute things...

Sweet new ride.

At least it stayed off the fan...

Things started off good this morning. Jon took the morning shift and let me sleep in, 'til almost 11am! Woo! He'd come back to bed when Ella laid down for her morning nap, and both of them were still snoozing when I got up. I took the monitor and went into the living room to check email and wait for the baby to get up.

Soon enough, I heard Ella stirring around in her crib. She'd actually turned back on her Sleepy Sheep, which she's done a few times lately...this amuses me for some reason. Anyway, she wasn't making much noise herself, so I though maybe she'd laid back down, but I figured I'd go peer in on her anyway.

As I opened the door, I could see that she was awake, standing by the side of her crib, smiling sweetly. Her diaper, however, was outside the crib, crumpled on the floor.

And my dear, sweet, darling, angelic daughter, was covered in poop.

It was so not good.

You guess correctly if you guess that her crib, mattress, and the walls were also covered (although not as much as Madam herself). Even poor Sleepy Sheep wasn't spared.

It really was one of the less favorable situations I've walked into in my life.

Needless to say, I got Jon in there in short order to help with the clean-up detail. I took the girl, and he took the room.

The new rule is: no naptime without pants.