Charlottesville Trip Report, part 1

Ahhhh...Will and I just returned from a much-needed 3-night escape down to Charlottesville, VA. Our 8th anniversary is this week, so we wanted to take a little trip to celebrate. Somewhere not TOO far away since we were leaving little kids behind, but somewhere far enough away that it actually felt like a getaway. Somewhere with wineries and breweries and hiking and tasty food. Thanks in no small part to Kath from Kath Eats Real Food, my blogging hero who makes Charlottesville sound so wonderful (And who I got to meet! Extremely exciting!) we decided to head down to check out "C-ville".

After making sure the girls and the dog were delivered to various grandparents' houses on Thursday, we headed south...straight into vicious thunder storms and tornadoes! The drive was harrowing, and I kept looking for funnel clouds as the sky kept turning strange shades of brown and green. Will made fun of me, but we found out once we got there that we had narrowly missed at least one tornado that ripped the roof off a house that was directly on the road we had traveled on! Scary!

Finally clearing up around Leesburg

See any funnel clouds?

After a long and tense ride, we arrived. We wanted to stay at a nice B&B, but in order to save a bit of money we spent our first night at a plain ol' Comfort Inn since we were arriving late anyway. It was decent, but soggy. The air in the room felt very damp, the carpet was damp, even the "egg patties" served at breakfast the next morning were soggy.

What ARE these anyway?

But we took off early Friday morning, and headed over to Monticello.

Visitor's Center

The Man himself

The weatherman had promised that it would clear up, and so it did! As our tour entered the front of Monticello we could see a tiny bit of blue sky peeking through...

...and once we finished our tour and emerged from the back of the house the blue sky had taken over, come to stay with us for the rest of the trip!

The tour was ok. It was cool to see the inside of the house, but neither of us are really tour people. I remember coming to Monticello back when I was 16 and being really impressed with all the ingenious gadgets Thomas Jefferson had used in his house, but this time our tour guide was much more focused on the architecture. No matter. We did a quick tour around the grounds now that the weather was nice

then headed over to Jefferson Vineyards for some wine tasting!

The tasting room was empty when we showed up, but quickly filled until it was really crowded! The people standing next to us turned out to be the parents of a woman who works at the Fredericksburg, VA paper and has almost the same job Will has at our paper! Will and I have met her boss before at conferences; small world! So once we finished our tasting I got a glass of the Pinot Gris (which is funny, because I don't usually prefer Pinot Grigio wines but this was my favorite here!) and we escaped the tasting room to sit down and enjoy the beautiful view.

Everyone was perplexed when a school bus full of kids rolled up

MY school never took field trips to the winery :-(

It turned around and left though as soon as it arrived, and we decided to follow suit.

A quick ride into Charlottesville, and we were at our B&B!

It looks nice from the outside!

Buuuuuut, we were the only ones there. We arrived a bit early for check-in. Oops.

No matter! With the Downtown Mall within easy walking distance we set out to explore and find Will the shot of espresso we had been unable to obtain at the two previous places we'd tried.

Interesting statue just down the hill

Will prospecting for potential new clients

The lovely people here provided Will with his long-awaited espresso!

When we arrived back at the B&B Amanda was there to let us in! And what a beautiful place it was!

Our door

The Altamont room

Beautiful bathroom!

Loved all the little touches, like fresh rosemary sprigs in the bathroom, and locally made organic toiletries!

Thoroughly enjoyed this shower/steam room. If I had one of these at home I think I'd never come out.

Our patio area

Fireplace! Nice for the chilly fall nights.

The hat from the website!

I like to think I pull it off

So many cute little walkways and alcoves

They have a stinkbug problem down in Virginia too, it seems

Oh, to have such an adorable, bright, airy kitchen at home!

Gathering area

I love walled gardens! And Will loved the "water feature"

Hmmmm, they still charged us to stay here :-)

How sweet!

As Will put it, "eclectic" birdhouses

After a brief rest, we headed to an early dinner at Beer Run. They weren't serving dinner yet (boo!), but we got delicious sandwiches (and a plate of extra house-made pickles after Will tasted and fell in love with the one that came with his meal) and delicious beer.

Will tasting and Google-ing

Beer Run is a restaurant and also a beer store, and our beer run after the meal cost more than the meal itself! But they had some not-to-be-missed unique selections, and now we're set for awhile.

The lucky winners

After that it was back to 400 High for a brief rest, then BACK out to check out the mall in the evening. We were hoping to grab a spice-a-rita at Mono Loco, but it was closed for a private party :-(  Instead we ended up at  Commonwealth Restaurant and Skybar (forgot to take a picture, sorry!) and enjoyed some great beer and equally great people-watching from above while we waited to feel hungry again. Since we had had such a late lunch we wanted something light for dinner. Sushi sounded perfect! We made our way to Ten Sushi and were seated outside immediately. The only problem was, we were seated RIGHT next to a group of teenagers who were in the process of being arrested for fighting by some bike cops. With the whole outside section COMPLETELY open we're not sure why the waitstaff decided to seat us here, and in their defense they did offer to move us when the arguing got a bit loud, but by then we were absorbed in the drama. As you can see, we really did have front row seats:

Dinner AND a show

The mall seemed to be completely overrun that night by middle schoolers whose main goal it was to bellow loudly to each other over long distances. We never did figure out why, and our waitress assured us it was not the normal state of things on the mall, but our dinner was fantastic (the escolar and the spicy hotate rolls were particular favorites) and the entertainment was interesting, if a little louder than we would've liked.

Just writing about all of this is exhausting me, and experiencing it first hand was no different! After sushi we made our way back to our home away from home and passed out!

To be continued....

Part 2, Part 3

And then we ate apple pie

Today, I had a new "first" as a mother.  I chaperoned my first field trip!  I love that I am able, as a stay-at-home-mom to do things like this, and I love that Emily still WANTS me to do things like this, so when I heard about the trip to the apple farm I signed up immediately.  I even got my car detailed last week because there was a possibility that some of her classmates might need a ride and I didn't want them to get stuck to a seat by the powerfully sticky mix of dried juice and bunny cracker powder that usually coats the entire interior of my van.  It turned out that we didn't need to give anyone a ride (much to Emily's disappointment), but her spirits lifted once we got there.

The weather was quite ominous, but the rain held off long enough for us to get in our hay ride and apple picking.

Hayless Hayride

Overcast, but still pretty

Lining up for an apple picking lesson

Twist, THEN pull

This is harder than it looks

Success!

Emmy and Mommy headed back

It was damp and chilly, therefore the walk-in fridge was NOT a hit...

Let me out of here!

...although it DID make it feel wamer outside in comparison.

Finally, the playground!

In an effort to avoid buying one of the delicious but incredibly unhealthy pies they were baking and selling at the orchard, I bought a box of seconds apples and promised Emily we'd make our own (secretly healthier) pie when we got home.  The problem is, I've only ever made about 2 pies in my life, and it has been years since I made those.  If you've ever made pie before you'll know that pie crust dough is tempermental in the best of circumstances and here I was trying to make our pies healthier by using whole wheat flour (I may have even accidentally used rye flour, I'm not positive since I have about 10 unlabeled bags of various types of flour in my pantry).  My helper was a little girl who had not had much lunch and had spent the whole morning exhausting herself running around an apple orchard.  There were many tears and once she spotted me trying to take pictures there was even some angry flour-throwing, but dang it, I wanted to document our wholesome and educational activity.

No pictures Mommy!

Stop it!

Once Emily realized the crust dough was tasty and didn't have raw eggs in it she focused on stealing and eating pieces of that for awhile.  With her blood sugar levels thus raised I was able to calm her down and we got to work.

Aaaaaaaand she's back!

Any story that ends with "And then they ate apple pie" is a happy story in my book.

Phew

An Open Letter to Payless (Shoe Source!)

Dear Payless,

I appreciate that you offer low-cost shoe options for those of us who enjoy shoe quantity over quality.  I also appreciate that you offer site-to-store shipping for those of us who are too cheap to pay shipping costs.  These services led me to believe that you understand your target customer demographic.  However, over the course of my last 2 orders I have come to realize that you must not fully understand your customers, because we differ a bit in the ways we define certain business practices.

-When my order arrives and some of the shoes are missing, as with the first order I placed a year ago, I call that sloppy.

-When my order confirmation email this time around says "Shipping Method: Ship To Local Payless Store (14-17 days)" and then it turns out those 14-17 days are from the time my order leaves the warehouse, not from the time my order is placed, I call that annoying, but understandable.  I'll take the blame for that one for not reading the fine print hidden on your website.

-When YOUR associate calls ME to say my order is in, and then it turns out my order is not, in fact, anywhere to be found in the store, I call that careless.

-When I call 18 days after my shoes have left your warehouse to try to find out where they are and you tell me that those 14-17 days are actually business days, even though I cannot find anywhere on your website that actually SAYS you mean business days, I call that just plain lying to get me off your back.  And I call THAT insulting, not to mention terrible customer service.

-When you cannot get a pair of shoes from your warehouse to one of your stores within a MONTH of the time they are ordered, I call that pathetic.  With a supply chain like that, how did you ever expand to almost 4,500 stores worldwide?


So now that we're on the same page, I would like my shoes.  The shoes I ordered and paid for OVER A MONTH AGO.  The shoes I ordered because I wanted to, you know, own them and wear them, preferably before the end of the season.  Or if they are, as I suspect, lost somewhere (which we won't know until the absolute longest amount of time you can stretch "14-17 days" to has passed and you decide to actually help me locate my order) I'll take a refund.  There are plenty of other cute and painful shoes in the sea.

Sincerely,

An extremely irritated customer

The Busy World of Sara Randall

We've had a jam-packed few days, luckily it has all been fun social engagements, which definitely makes extreme busyness easier. I had brunch to catch up with my friend Kim who has been in Italy for 3 weeks and whose husband Brad (who was one of the best men in my wedding) is currently hiking Mt. Killimanjaro. On Saturday we did the gym as usual, then Will did a relay for the opening ceremonies "tapping of the keg" at Oktoberfest (which I thought was a running relay, but which actually turned out to be a beer-chugging relay).

Yeah

In the meantime, I was home, sending Emily off with our neighbor to go see The Lion King in 3D.  That was a weird feeling.  I've never handed off Emily and her carseat to anyone outside the family and watched her drive away, and she's only ever been to the movie theater once before.  Luckily she did a good job behaving herself (according to our neighbor), even though she did return sucking on a 20+ oz cup of sugar dye juice.  She spent the next 30 minutes hopped up on sugar manically pacing the floor, then it was time to go to my friend Wendy's house for a Mary Kay party.  Emily and my friend's daughter Sam spent their time dressing up as Snow White and eating marshmallows (Snow White's favorite) while Wendy and I put about 16 layers of various creams and sera (The plural of "serum".  I looked it up.) on our faces.  Then it was home to host Chris (Will's friend from work), Beth and their daughter Nora for dinner, playdate and beer-tasting. Well, some of us played, and others of us tasted beer anyway.  When they headed home Will left too to go to ANOTHER friend's house for the evening, and I crashed gratefully into bed at the end of my long day, pleased that we hadn't had to cancel any of our engagements like we usually tend to have to do on super-busy days, and even MORE pleased that neither of the girls had melted down over the course of the day.  Will came home around midnight, fell right asleep, and all was quiet.

Until we awoke at 2:30AM to the alarming sound of a seal barking Emily coughing in a suspiciously croup-like manner at the foot of our bed.  Time to set up the vaporizer, procure some honey tea, and stand in a steamy shower with my coughing, crying girl.  Emily, for the record, is a terrible patient.  Depsite my excellent Google skills and 30 years of experience with being sick myself and watching my younger sisters go through croup, strep (x1000), slapcheek, chicken pox, and even scarlet fever (and no, we did not grow up in the 1800's) Emily is extremely mistrustful of any relief-giving measure I offer.  She is very fond of waking me up in the middle of the night to treat me like crap as I try to help her, and that tendency is doubled when she's sick.  So I spent the rest of the night with a night light in my face having my covers stolen by a girl who would emit an earth-shaking cough, then sit bolt upright in panic and have to be calmed back down every half hour or so.

Today she's ok-ish.  Nothing being confined to the couch with juice and a constant stream of My Little Pony won't fix.  I am lucky my kids are generally very healthy, and even though I was up most of the night, I am still feeling happy today.  Happy that these up all night marathons are few and far between now that my kids aren't teething, breastfeeding infants anymore.  Happy that they're old enough now that Will and I can start getting back into having a social life.  And especially happy that I am not yet into the up all night waiting for my teenage daughter to come home phase.  Kids are incredibly effective sleep-thieves, but despite last night I feel like we are in the good years.

Now I am going to go join Emily on the couch for a nap.

Potty time

There is once again a potty sitting in my living room

Photographic evidence

A couple weeks ago we decided Emily was old enough to handle the responsibility of getting herself to an actual bathroom in the middle of the night instead of keeping a little potty in her room for her to use. Having the potty in her room was easier for her at first, and easier for us to just give her a water bottle and a potty, tuck her in and say "You cannot, unless you are injured, come out of your room at night until your clock turns green". Now she's old enough to use a full-sized potty with ease, and she understands "Ok, you can come out of your room when your clock is not yet green but ONLY to potty, then go right back to bed". I moved the potty from her room to the downstairs bathroom and figured I'd just leave it there until Charlotte starts to potty train.

Charlotte was not showing any interest at all, until Sunday night. She had diaper rash something fierce, so we were letting her have "naked time" to help her heal. Right before her bedtime she accompanied me into the bathroom, and then just sat down and used that little potty. We fell all over ourselves praising her and applauding and she was pretty pleased. I figured it was a fluke, slapped a diaper on her and put her to bed.

The next morning, after breakfast she pulled off her diaper and used the potty again. Huh.

So I bought some pull-ups, and decided we'd give it a shot. I bought generic pull-ups because they were discontinued and pretty cheap (score!), but it turns out they are kind of confusing and awesome. At least I know now why they were discontinued.

Shrek princesses...neat-o

The first pull-up we selected was just fine

Yep, those sure are Shrek princesses

But then things got weird

Yep, those sure are...NOT Shrek princesses. 

 

 

 

 

 

Cinderella?  Ok, I'll take your word for it

 

Why does Snow White look like an Indian Goddess?

I think I've seen this tattooed on a guy's arm at the gym

Aaaand, that's it.  I don't know where the other three princesses in the picture are.  I don't know WHO the other three princesses in the picture are.  What I DO know though is that they work, so I guess that is good enough for me.  Maybe I should keep them and they'll be worth something one day, like first-edition books with typos.

Anyway, back to potty training.  I have been through the ringer before, and it is bittersweet. Sweet because, well duh, once your kids are fully potty trained you don't have to deal with their poop on a daily basis anymore (hopefully). Bitter because it is MONTHS and YEARS and gallons of pee to clean up off the floor of Toys R Us and four star restaurants and floor model playgrounds and HOURS of squatting on the floor of public bathrooms balancing an indecisive toddler on the nasty toilet before your kid is ACTUALLY self-reliant enough to use the bathroom all on their own. I'm not mentally prepared, I thought I'd have 6 more months of being able to drive somewhere without pulling over 3 times for my kid to pretend to pee!  This time around I had decided to be all zen and give it plenty of time and let things happen when they happened. They're just happening a lot earlier than I had thought.  I started potty training Emily at 27 months at the pediatrician's recommendation, and here's Charlotte now at 20 months using the potty all on her own and having very few accidents...it'd be pretty dumb to not take advantage of all her interest.  This girl never ceases to amaze me.

The only problem is that while she is perfectly able to run to the potty and use it while naked or while wearing just a dress, she doesn't have the motor skills yet to pull her pants/undies/pull-ups up and down by herself. That makes gym daycare-type situations very tough. I am guessing it's just going to take longer to get Charlotte fully trained. Which kinda sucks because potty training was long and arduous enough with an older child last time around, I have no wish to make it take even longer. We'll just have to rely on pull-ups more this time around, I suppose.

So I guess I need to go get some more packages of the multi-ethnic NOT Shrek princess pull-ups before they run out.  Trying to use anything else after experiencing these babies would just be boring!