Weekend in Asheville

Just got home this evening from a bachelorette weekend in Asheville, NC. It was a nice, much needed weekend away with my best girl friends. My girlfriend from college who happens to have also been one of the photographers for our wedding, Annie, is getting married next Sunday.

So we all took off to the mountains this weekend to celebrate "Hell Freezes Over Weekend." Because since we have known her, she has sworn she'd never get married. Well, what do ya' know? She happened to meet the right guy and has been forever changed.

Asheville is such a great little town. The downtown area is so great, with tons of cute boutiques and great restaurants. Friday night we went to an Indian restaurant called Mela. I have to be honest - when Miranda first told me we were going to be eating Indian that night, I was a little disappointed. Of course I wasn't going to say anything, but Indian is not my favorite. But I figured I could find something that I would be able to handle.

Oh, man. If you are ever in Asheville, you should try this place. It was so wonderful. We started with some appetizers, one of which was an Indian version of fried chicken tenders that were served with the most wonderful sauce of cilantro and mint. Heaven! So, so good.

My entree was grilled chicken that had been marinated in cashews, yogurt, cream, saffron and cardamom. It was served with a pineapple mango chutney. Wow. I'm going to puree pineapple and mango and dip my grilled chicken into it for the rest of my life now. It was so good and refreshing!

Everyone loved their food. We all had said that we would all kind of share our meals, but halfway through dinner we realized no one had offered to share anything because everyone was so into what they were eating! Not only did we not want to give up any of our delicious food, but we didn't care to try anything different. I highly recommend it.

Saturday morning we headed to a spa. We each had a facial and a massage scheduled. Since there were 7 of us, we couldn't all be serviced at the same time. There were only a few of us being treated at one given time. Not to fear for the rest of us who weren't, though, because we had full use of their heated pool, sauna, and hot tub. Of course, I wasn't able to take advantage of the sauna or the hot tub since that's a pregnancy no-no, but I did put my legs in the hot tub. It was seriously hard to keep myself from just getting on in. Really, I had to keep telling myself that it wasn't worth risking the health of my baby just to feel good for a few minutes. But it was like having a big piece of warm chocolate cake with a scoop of cold ice cream in front of you and being told you can't eat it. Gosh, I don't know which would be worse. But let's hope I'll only have to be faced with one of those situations in my lifetime.

Also making the time pass nicely was the great food that Miranda so graciously brought for us to snack on. She and a couple of the other girls stopped by an Earth Fare on the way over and picked up some fresh fruit, olives, cheese and crackers, hummus and pita chips, sandwiches and orange juice and champagne for mimosas. It was so good! And the ladies at the spa were nice enough to take it and transfer it to nice serving trays and bowls. We pretty much took over the spa for the afternoon. It was quite the experience. We all walked around all day in big fluffy robes and sandals, sipping on hot tea and mimosas, getting our faces renewed and our bodies massaged. What more could you ask for?

That evening the ladies partied it up, but being preggo, I decided to abstain from the festivities. I joined them for dinner but headed back to the house afterwards. I had some sleep I needed to catch up on anyway. It was fun listening to the all the night's stories this morning, though. They had a good time even though it sounded like Asheville may not have been ready for that rowdy bunch of girls!

I was glad to get back home today. Josh and Bennett picked me up from Miranda's this afternoon and I was so glad to see them. They both had huge grins for me when they saw me.

Josh's parents were at our house with them this weekend. We had a closet project that needed to be addressed, so Josh thought it would be a good opportunity to accomplish that while also having a little help with Bennett while I was away. Steve and Lynn were happy to come. Steve is a huge help when it comes to carpentry projects, and Lynn is fantastic with Bennett. He absolutely adores her. They must have had fun - he didn't take a nap at all yesterday! His little engine just kept on running, and they let it, since as soon as Bennett laid down it would mean the work would have to stop. The closets that were being worked on were right next to his room.

Anyway, thank you to Lynn and Steve for all your help, thank you to Josh for being a wonderful dad and husband, and thank you to my girls for helping me relax for a weekend! I love all of you!

The Conversation Went Like This:

Woman at Grocery Store: "Oh, look at you!" (admiringly) "How much longer do you have?"

Me: "Til May."

Woman at Grocery Store: "Til MAY?!?!!"

It's a good thing comments like that don't offend me in the slightest.

But yes, I'm pretty big. I don't have my 24 week appointment until next week and I already look like I did when I was 8 months pregnant with Bennett. Go figure.

But the good thing about being so obviously pregnant is that people are so nice to you. I was at Sam's today and a guy that works there came up and unloaded all my things onto the check out belt for me. Another guy met me at the exit and offered to load my car for me.

I remember when we went to Vegas with my family when I was about 6 or 7 months pregnant with Bennett. If I walked up to a crowded roulette table, there would almost always be a guy that would give up his chair for me. And if any of them were smoking, they would put their cigarettes out. It just gives you a little hope in humanity, you know?

Christmas Card Chaos

I knew I wanted to send out a photo in our Christmas cards this past year. We did it the year before and I was quite happy with the photo:

It was a happy accident, for sure. It was rather difficult to get little man there to sit still and cooperate long enough to get a good shot... hence the upside down approach.

Well, one year later it wasn't much easier. We got together with Greg one evening and tried to get a decent shot. These first few are test shots, obviously, because they are blurry and Josh-less. But I love the way Mr. Man is sitting there on the couch with his legs crossed.

We didn't want to hurt her feelings, but we felt it might be a little weird to include Elizabeth in the family photo...

And we felt that Bennett's face is a whole lot cuter than the bottom of his shoe. So, it wasn't happening that night.

We tried again about a week later and were a little more successful, but not without numerous attempts:

Of course, it wasn't always Bennett's fault:

We even tried some couch silliness:

But finally wound up with a nice shot that we were happy to share with our friends and family this year.

Even Newer Layout

Yeah, scratch that last 'New Layout' post. Rather than try to find a way to make the font more legible and justify putting a fall themed background up in the middle of winter, I decided to change it up again. I feel like this one suits me better anyway, and that I'll be happy with it for longer.

A Frustrating Relaxing Bath

I decided to take a relaxing bath yesterday afternoon. It wound up not being quite as relaxing as I would have hoped, but still nice.

I like a hot, HOT bath. I want to have to slowly ease into the water because it's so steamy. That's a big no-no when you're pregnant. So, I had to settle for just warm water. Well, stupid me decided to go ahead and get in the tub as it was filling. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it were a normal tub in a normal house with normal water pressure on a day with normal weather. This is a very old clawfoot tub (that has two separate faucets for hot and cold, both very small in diameter, letting little water pass through at any given time), in a very old house that's hard to heat and whose water pressure is dwindling, on the day of the first snow of the season. I was quite chilly sitting there in that tub waiting for it to fill.

I was mostly mad at myself for wasting that time. I mean, I could have been in the bedroom putting away some clean clothes or cleaning the bathroom while the tub filled. But no, instead I was sitting there freezing my pregnant booty off waiting for that lukewarm water to slightly take the chill off. Ugh. And since it took so dang long for it to fill up (really, those faucets are little), by the time it was full the water was much cooler than when it came out of the faucet.

But it was still relaxing. It felt good to lie there and clear my mind for just a second. It didn't hurt that I got to look out the window and watch the first little flakes start to fall. That made the water seem a little warmer, I guess. Just knowing how cold it was outside.

We got a nice little dusting of snow last night and had a good time playing in it today. I'll post a few pictures soon. Our computer is not wanting to read the memory card today for some reason. When it decides to cooperate, I'll share our snow fun with you.

Mmm... Yogurt.

Bennett used to eat yogurt all the time. I would buy the Dannon plain yogurt and mix just a tad of preserves into it and he ate it UP!

Well, since he's started Montessori we haven't bought or eaten any yogurt. He eats his snacks there, and I don't want to include any in his lunch since it sits out from 9am until about noon. Another reason is because every time I look at it at the store, it's never on sale. And I refuse to pay almost $3 for it.

After picking Bennett up from Montessori today, we went to Kroger. We grabbed our milk and eggs, and I noticed that the yogurt was on sale! Finally! So I picked up two of the 32oz. containers. I hesitated as I put the second one in the cart, because I wondered if he would like it as much as he used to. It has been a pretty long time since he's had any, plus he's in a weird food stage right now, unfortunately. You know, the kind of stage where one night he'll eat his dinner like a champ and the next three he refuses to touch anything. It's so much fun, let me tell you.

I bought two anyway. I fixed him a bowl when we got home and this was him, not long after I set it on the table:

I think he liked it.

New Layout

I figured a year with the same layout and picture was long enough. So, with the new year comes a new layout and a new family picture. It's a bit fall-ish, but I like it. Maybe towards the spring I'll change things up again.

I'm still playing around with the font colors, because I feel like this is a little hard to read. Give me a little time and maybe I'll get it all perfected. But you know there's that slight chance that it will remain exactly like it is because of all the other things running around in my head these days. :)