Daddy Daughter Dance

We found out in March that there would be a Daddy Daughter Dance at school the week after spring break. That meant that Afton was counting down the days a month in advance! She was SO excited. In her mind, she pictured it being along the lines of a royal ball. She had Dan practice lifting her up in the air while she lifted her legs like a ballerina. Oh, man. She is so funny. She wanted to wear her Sleeping Beauty dress and she wanted Dan to wear a suit. (Dan said that a lot of people were dressed nicely, so that's good. I was afraid other girls might tease her or something.)

Apparently they played fast music pretty much the whole time except for that Eric Clapton song "Wonderful Tonight." Afton saw some girl slide through her dad's legs, so Afton asked Dan to do that to her a bunch. A lot of her friends were there just running around. Afton hung out with Dan most of the time, I think. Dan should write this post! Afton had a really great time. Only 12 more months until the next one!

Spring Break 2016 Part 3

After hiking Hawksbill, we took the dirt road a ways further and found Table Rock, where the road magically became paved and there were non-gross bathrooms. This was our last hike of the trip. A nice short hike.

 Above is looking back at Hawksbill.

Despite the crummy weather, we had a great time! We drove to Bristol, Virginia that night and stuffed ourselves at Olive Garden and Dairy Queen. The next morning we headed home to pick up the kids. And of course the weather was gorgeous when we were in the car!

 A lot of the highways were lined with beautiful redbuds in bloom.

Grandma and Grandpa sure wore these kids out! They had a great time.

Spring Break 2016 Part 2

Okay, friends. On to part 2 of our trip. The forecast for the next day (Friday) was looking pretty grim - rain most of the day. Fortunately when we woke up that morning, the forecast had changed to rain in the morning. So we switched things around a little bit and decided to see a waterfall in the morning so that hopefully the skies would be clear for the other two hikes I had also planned for that day.

Our first stop was Linville Gorge - northwest of Asheville.

We took a short hike to Linville Falls and were the only ones there.

The water was pretty brown because of all the rain.

So if you can tell from the panorama a few pictures above, you come down these stairs and the two waterfalls are on your left. Then to the right the river flows down into a canyon. Really pretty. Here's where it flows down.

Kind of hard to tell, but there was a lot of water rushing around these rocks. There were a few other trails you could take to get a better look at the falls. Here's our view from the first one.

Stunning. So we decided to try the other trail, too.

 Much better.

Can you see someone in orange near the top? That's where we had been before. The water winds around these rocks and then that's Linville Falls.

 Here's the view down the canyon.

After the falls, we drove to our next spot - Hawksbill mountain. It took us a while to figure out how to get there. You had to drive through a neighborhood and then the houses end and the road turns into a dirt road. We took that for a long time without seeing anything, so we turned around to try and find cell reception somewhere (I had written down vague directions, but we didn't want to waste a bunch of time). Anyway, we got back to the neighborhood and figured out that we had been on the right path all along.

So we turned around and tried again. Eventually we came to pull-offs where hikes began. Some hikes were well marked. Ours not so much.

The hike was nice - steep, but not too long. We passed one couple coming down while we were going up, but other than that, we had the place all to ourselves.

Once we were basically to the top, we saw a good sign which confirmed we were hiking the right mountain.

This picture and the one before show our next hike, Table Rock, in the distance.

The clouds started rolling in pretty fast.

And the view looking the other way.

It was so beautiful up there. Definitely my favorite hike that we did. While we were up there, we heard some thunder and high-tailed it down the mountain while the heavens opened and the rains came down.

Spring Break 2016 Part 1 (Picture overload - You have been warned)

Dan and I decided to selfishly use spring break as an opportunity to go on a little trip and leave our kids with my parents. Before we did that, however, I tried to be a good mom and do a few fun things around town.

Saturday we went to the temple and made great time. We learned that if you leave the temple by 1 or 1:30, you have enough time to hit the toll road before it closes at 2 and starts heading the other direction. So that's made a big difference for us.

Sunday was Easter, which I already wrote about. Monday I took the kids swimming at our gym's pool. Eli screamed his head off, so I just sat on a bench and held him for an hour while the big kids splashed around and had a great time. Tuesday we went to the park and got ready, then headed over to Earlysville once Dan got off work.

Wednesday morning we headed out. Our first hike of the trip was one recommended by one of Dan's older, Eagle-scout toting co-workers: Spy Rock, near Montebello, Virginia.

Apparently, troops would use the mountain as a good lookout place during the Civil War, hence the name. The hike was mainly a dirt road, which eventually turned into a nice trail. We didn't pass anyone on the hike up, saw a few people at the top, and passed a lot more on the way back down.

It was a gorgeous day, but unfortunately, the foliage still hadn't caught up and everything was still really brown.

After our beautiful hike, we drove the rest of the way to Asheville, North Carolina, checked into our hotel, and headed to dinner.

Dinner was so delicious. I relied on Tripadvisor for most of the restaurants this place did not disappoint. I'm glad I made reservations because by the time we left it was totally full. Our waiter was bad, but the food was amazing.

(Note: Every other year or so, for the last seven years or something, Dan and I try to take a trip. We take turns planning it. This was my year. I didn't want to go too far away since Eli is so little. Plus I'd been wanting to do some hiking so Asheville seemed like the perfect spot! I'd planned everything down to the hour pretty much. And like a month in advance. Where to hike, how long each hike was and how long it would take to do, where to eat, where to pick up boxed lunches, etc. The weather totally messed with my plans and we had to improvise, but we still had a lot of fun.)

After dinner I wanted to try this chocolate place that everyone seemed to recommend.

It was kind of a chilly night so Dan got Mexican hot chocolate with some blueberry ice cream and I got a piece of chocolate cake. It was very cocoa-y. More bitter than sweet, but still good. We don't know if it was caffeine in the cocoa or something, but we had a really hard time sleeping that night. We woke up to rain and mist Thursday morning and decided to stick with our scheduled hikes and see how it turned out.

We headed down southwest of Asheville and hopped on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The mist was so bad in places that we could barely see in front of us.

Nevertheless, we pressed onward to Sam Knob.

I can imagine this hike is really beautiful in the spring or fall on a clear day. For us, it was fun in a different way. Apart from a tent hidden in the trees once we got to the top, we were the only ones on the trail. And it was super windy, which made it more exciting.

 I didn't want to pull on my nice camera in this terrible weather, so these are all phone shots. But I love the picture above.

Once we got to the top, the view was breathtaking.

 Only because it was so windy it was taking our breath away. Ha!

It was kind of weird to have no idea what we were missing out there. How far away were the other mountains? Was there a drop off? No idea. Here's what our view should have been on a nice day.

Kind of makes me want to weep, but it was quite an experience.

The other hike I had planned for that morning was another summit, which I didn't think was worth it since it was so misty. So we scrapped it and headed back to town the long way on the BRP. We saw four wild turkeys. We hit up another tripadvisor place for lunch:

(Dan is so sweet to put up with me!) and then visited Biltmore. I always want to call it THE Biltmore for some reason. It seems more appropriate.

We took the audio tour. It was super crowded and I felt like a herd of cattle, but the house itself was really cool to see. I loved all the different ceilings.

 (That library reminded me of the one in Beauty and the Beast.)

 This frieze was pretty amazing, too. Here's just a small part of it. It expanded over three oversized fireplaces in the dining room.

 Here's a picture from the Biltmore's website with the whole thing.

After the tour, we walked the grounds for a little while.

Then it started to rain once again, so we headed back to the hotel to shower and change for dinner.

I didn't like this place as much, but it was in a cool old home that was built by Vanderbilt to house some of his employees. That was neat. Dan liked his food more than I liked mine. After dinner we walked around and then grabbed some Dairy Queen to top off the night. At this point we were both getting majorly stuffed, but we couldn't help ourselves. I had a food baby tummy by the time the trip was over!