Day Trip to Old Towne Alexandria, VA - Dec. 5, 2009

What a day it has been!

Yesterday Andrew asked me if I felt like going on a "day date" to which I of course responded "YES!" So we got up this morning, we had some breakfast, we got ready, and we headed out to Alexandria, VA. We had heard that the weather today was supposed to get pretty nasty with quite a bit of snow but it wasn't supposed to happen until much later in the afternoon. It started snowing really big, fat, wet snowflakes about 10 minutes before we left...but we decided that we would brave the elements and go for it anyway. We are SO glad that we did.

Andrew chose King Street in Old Towne Alexandria because he had met a lady at one of the Performing Arts Center's events and she had told him of her art studio there. He thought it would be a fun trip for us to go down and see her studio, have lunch, and walk around the town. What a gorgeous little place! And what a fun weekend we chose to go down!

After we found a parking space on a side street, we walked up into the center of town to the sound of bagpipes being played. There was a Scottish parade going on! Tons of men wearing kilts, Santa Claus riding a fire truck instead of a sleigh, and probably 20 or 30 bagpipers. It was awesome! The snow had really begun to fall at this point but we weren't the only ones that decided to brave the cold. The town was buzzing with tons of people watching the parade and window shopping.

We stopped into Cobblestone Gallery first and we were very impressed with Ms. Steel's work. She is a very talented artist and a really sweet lady. She took our coats and offered us hot cider. We browsed her gallery for a bit, made a couple of purchases to start our Christmas shopping, and we headed out to see the rest of Old Towne.

After a while of walking on the red brick sidewalks, we decided to find somewhere for lunch. The options were endless...we passed public houses, Thai places, Sushi restaurants, Italian Bistro's, Irish pubs...

We finally decided on The Wharf - a nice seafood restaurant. All I can say is...wow. The food was delicious. We each ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio and started studying the extensive menu. We decided on bacon wrapped scallops for an appetizer - they literally melted in our mouths. Andrew ordered the shrimp po'boy with fries for his meal and I chose the shrimp and scallop gratin. Everything was cooked perfectly and to say that we thoroughly enjoyed our meals would be an understatement. The next time we visit Old Towne, we will definitely return to The Wharf. Delicious!!

After lunch, we went back out to walk around more. We stopped at the Alexandria Visitors Center because they had a nice raised covered porch and we thought we might be able to get a good picture looking down the street into town. Picture...successful. I won't post it here because I'm pretty sure we're going to use it for our Christmas card this year. :-)

We walked around a bit more but the sky was getting darker and the snow had picked up quite a bit. We decided we better head back to the car to get home before the roads started to accumulate snow. People out here are bad enough drivers in normal weather...we didn't want to have to fight the roads too.

Stopped at Blockbuster on the way for a few movies and we're going to hunker down at home for the rest of the night.

An awesome day and a really fun winter adventure! :-)

Only sticking to the grass so far...

No one was around to take a picture of both of us so it's just me

The "view" from the porch of the Visitor's Center

Andrew's lunch...yum.

My lunch...yum again.

One of the many bagpipers

Santa's "sleigh" for the parade

Flag bearers at the parade...I bet their legs are FREEZING!!

Adventure to Skyline Drive at Shenandoah National Park

We saw red trees, green trees, yellow and gold trees...but only one blue tree!

After our trip to Virginia Beach, we took it easy for a couple of weekends. The weather was cold and rainy so we made a couple kinds of chili, stayed in sweats all day, played board games, listened to records, read, and watched movies. Although we love a good adventure; a couple of weekends staying in and just hanging out weren't too shabby either.

This last weekend was supposed to be cold and rainy again...on Saturday that proved to be true, but on Sunday we woke up to blue skies and a warm fall day. Based on the recommendation of one of my co-workers, we hopped in the car and headed for Shenandoah National Park in Northern Virginia. There is a road that runs all the way through the park called Skyline Drive and we had heard that the colors and scenery this time of year are spectacular.

The park website says that from any of the four entrances into the park, it takes about an hour to get to an exit. We thought that sounded so nice, a leisurely drive through a National Park and then we'll head to dinner at Andrew's aunt and uncle's house...be to their place by probably 6:00 at the latest. Home in bed by 10:00. What a great day!

We were wrong.

Turns out, half of Maryland and all of Virginia had the same idea that we did when they woke up Sunday morning too! It was supposed to take us an hour and a half just to get to the park. We pulled in a little over 2 hours after we left our place. "Okay, no big deal. We hit some traffic on the way here, this will still be great!" we thought.

Wrong again.

We sat. In line. And we waited. And we waited some more. After 30 minutes in line (which probably should have been our first clue), we finally entered the park. Which, by the way, was beautiful. The views from the car weren't "spectacular" as I had heard...but it was a very pretty place. We especially enjoyed the view of the line of cars that stretched out ahead of us FOREVER. The park website talks about how the speed limit on Skyline Drive is 35mph because there is a lot of wildlife and 35 is fast enough to make it through and see everything but slow enough that you could stop if a deer or any other creature decided to cross the street in front of you.

The drive was painful. Our average speed the entire time was 4. Every "scenic overlook" (and there were like 50 of them) was PACKED. They had little "parking lots" set up at each one where there were probably 6 to 10 spots for people to pull their cars in to take pictures. There were at least 40 cars in each "parking lot" trying to inch their way into spots where a BMX bike couldn't fit. Which meant that the tail ends of their cars were sticking out into the road. Which meant the rest of us...were stopped. It was almost comical. Almost.

After we had been "driving" (not even sure it can be called that?) for close to two hours, we finally ended up sitting next to a park ranger standing on the side of the road. When we pulled up next to him, I asked Andrew to roll down his window to ask how far the closest exit was. The ranger gave us kind of a funny look and said "about 30 miles that way". Oh wow.

At the end of the day, a drive that was supposed to take us "about an hour" ended up taking us 3.5 hours. We had listened to 8 CD's, gotten into one small argument, turned a little slap happy at a few points, and burned through a half a tank of gas. We did see some pretty trees and some pretty colors, so that goal was met. But the momentum of the day unfortunately just never got going.

It was not all bad, I don't mean to make it sound that way. Spending the day in the car together in a beautiful place was very nice. We were both just ready to be out of the car much much sooner than we were able.

Andrew's aunt and uncle, Jim and Denise, were sweet enough to keep dinner warm until we got there, which we felt terrible about because we didn't arrive until 8:00pm. But they are two of the nicest people in the world and they said they didn't mind a bit. Dinner was very good, as was the glass of wine that we were definitely both ready for when we finally got there. We would have liked to have stayed and visited with them longer, but we were both pretty tired from our adventure so we headed home. Back in the car we went...for another 45 minute drive home.

An adventure we wanted and an adventure we received! Boy oh boy. I have a feeling it might be a while before we return to Skyline Drive.

We found out today that one of Andrew's co-workers also went to Skyline Drive yesterday with her husband and their two kids. A 4 year old and an 8 month old. Yikes.

Look! A Deer!

4 MPH

The line of cars behind us



Andrew got bored so he started taking random pictures

Side view

Pretty trees...pretty cars?

More colors...more cars

Adventure to Virginia Beach, VA

When you live in the Midwest your whole life and the nearest ocean is thousands of miles away...moving to a part of the country where the ocean is exponentially closer is, well, kind of a big deal. We were SO excited to go somewhere, anywhere...to see the "big blue". The opportunity presented itself so we jumped at the chance.

Our great friends, the Swett's -- Chris, Aspen, and their little guy, Cypress -- have been stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina for three years. Chris was set to deploy mid October for his second tour of duty in the Middle East and as soon as he left, Aspen and Cypress planned to head back to Missouri to live with her mom while Chris is gone. I knew that the next opportunity we would have to see the three of them together would be at least a year down the road, probably longer. So I started coordinating with Aspen to see if we could meet somewhere in the "middle" for a night. It turns out that another one of Aspen's friends, Meredith, lives in Virginia Beach, VA with her husband...about a 4 hour drive for us and a 4 hour drive for them. Sounded great to us!

We headed down on Saturday, October 10th and arrived in Virginia Beach just in time to meet our group for lunch. To say it was wonderful to see them and to catch up would probably be the under-statement of the century. They are such amazing friends. After lunch, we headed over to Meredith and Jay's apartment so that Cypress could take a nap. It didn't take long for the 6 "adults" to break out the board games. A couple of games of Apples to Apples led us into a few very heated rounds of Cranium...a game that neither Andrew nor I had ever played but quickly decided we HAD to buy. It was a blast.

We ordered carry out for dinner, stayed at Meredith and Jay's until about 10:00 and we all decided to call it a night. It was a great day. We drove to our hotel about 10 miles from their place and we all crashed. We woke up the next morning to sounds of kids playing and splashing in the pool.

Our hotel was located across the street from the ocean...so no straight on oceanview...but all we had to do was lean a bit off our balcony and look to the left and there it was. We were very anxious to get down and walk on the beach and take some pictures but first we were booked to have breakfast with the Swett's. All of us had planned on walking on the beach and on the pretty boardwalk that lined the water...we were supposed to spend most of that Sunday together with them as well. Unfortunately, the ARMY had other plans for the Chris and they ended up having to take off right after breakfast to head back to Fort Bragg. We were so sad they have to rush off like that but so thankful that we had gone down on Saturday as early as we had.

Seeing as this was our first East coast ocean trip, Andrew and I decided it was absolutely still necessary that we go down into the sand. Hooded sweatshirts and jackets in hand, we crossed the street and there it was. The Atlantic Ocean. Amazing. The beach wasn't crowded as "beach season" was definitely already over....but we both maintained that we would have donned parkas if we had to...we were going to THE BEACH! We also decided that this was a place we will definitely re-visit during the summer months. It is a very cute little beach town. Lots of surf shops, restaurants, the aforementioned boardwalk that appears to go on for miles and miles, a couple of long piers to fish off of, plenty of sand, ocean breeze...the works. Pretty much everything a couple of kids from Kansas City need.

At that point we decided we better hit the road to head back into "our neck of the woods". So we got in the car and we were back to our place by 3:00 that afternoon. It was a great weekend. A great adventure. And one that we were so thrilled to be able to spend with such great friends.

YAY! We're at the ocean!!

The "view" from our hotel room

KC to DC

Late summer 2009 was an interesting time for us. Andrew was offered a job by the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland and we made the decision to pack up and move to the East Coast. While this was and is a very exciting time for us, it was also hard to leave Kansas City, the place we've both called home our whole lives.

So here we are! Andrew arrived in Maryland first to start his job as Communications Coordinator on August 31st. I arrived on September 20th to join him. The three weeks we spent apart were no fun but we made it through just fine. We're both here now and loving living in Maryland so far.

The first couple of weeks we had together here were spent unpacking and trying to get settled. Finally feeling like we accomplished that task, I thought it might be time to start the blog I had been contemplating. So here it is!

Let the adventures in Zenderland begin!