More Asheville photos (somewhat out of order)

Asheville, outside, short drive!

That was our chant for much of our trip this weekend. I took a big exam (fingers crossed that I passed!) on Friday and this trip was our reward and my first time visiting Asheville. Our plan was to leave after dinner/bath time and drive straight up. We'd arrive late in the evening (as in nearly midnight) transfer our baby to her crib and climb into bed ourselves at our lovely B&B. We'd booked a suite (after our previous experience trying to share a room with a baby who needs lights out and quiet from 8 to 6). Next morning after breakfast we planned hiking in the mountains with perhaps a drive to the top of Mount Mitchell. Seeing the city. Dinner at Salsa's. Maybe a visit to a brewery. Whatever we didn't do Saturday, we'd complete on Sunday and then we'd leave during her nap time on Sunday and head home. That was our plan. Well... remember how I've posted before on flexibility?

The first part of the trip started out as planned. She fell asleep before we left the city limits. We drove through the evening and arrived about midnight. I jumped out of the car, pulled the items I knew I needed for her sleep and ran inside (they had left our check-in packet on the porch as we'd requested) while Tom circled the block so she would sleep a little longer. Everything was set up perfectly before she came in (well- except for the crib sheet which I'd accidentally packed in the wrong bag but that wasn't the issue). Only thing was that Holly wasn't up for falling asleep in a funny smelling, weird place. She wouldn't sleep in the crib. She wouldn't sleep in the bed with us. Two hours later, she wouldn't do anything except run around screaming and waking up the whole B&B. Eventually, we had to put her BACK in the car to get her to sleep. We all crawled into bed together at 2am. We blinked and it was 6am and Holly was ready to get up.

We stumbled out of bed and got dressed in a haze. Honestly, after getting used to having a baby who is sleeping pretty consistently through the night now I felt pretty rough around the edges on 4 hours of sleep. As Tom spent some time wondering around the room a little lost... I don't think I was alone. Four cups of coffee and a nice breakfast later...we were ready to hike. Only thing was, the weather had other plans. It was COLD and I was the only one with a hat. We had dutifully looked at the weather in advance and it told us high in the mid-50s. So lower 40s was a bit of a surprise. But...we made the best of it. Holly toured downtown Asheville dragging her tired parents behind her. We found them both nice hats at Mast General Store. She picked most of the flowers in the city square (sorry folks!) and found all the dogs who were ready to be petted. We finally took her to the Botanical Gardens where we restricted her illegal flower picking to dandelions and we all enjoyed the glories of throwing rocks off the footbridge. We had lunch at a random yummy place along the way. Then headed back to the hotel for naps. And I do mean plural. We all napped. It was lovely.

We awoke refreshed and again adapted our plans. We would go out for a beer at a brewery. Then head to Salsa's for dinner. Then Sunday wake early and take the long way home via Mount Mitchell. The beers were excellent while Holly drew ducks with her crayons (no- they bore no resemblance what-so-ever to a duck- but she would point at them and say, "duckie!"). Then to Salsa's in the rain. Only thing was... Salsa's was booked. A 15 minute wait for anyone is difficult when standing in a small place with no room. A 15 minute wait with a toddler who would rather be out running amuck? Forget it! (Sorry, Sam!) So we walked. We found ourselves at another brewery and had a lovely dinner. In one more exercise in flexibility, I ordered some tacos and thought they would be spicy so ordered Holly "Ham and Cheese puffs" only to discover that these weird puffy things with pureed ham and cheese on top held no allure for our babe. However, my tacos came with beans and rice...which is... the best thing on earth according to Holly. Wasted $5 on those puffs.

We came home a bit late and struggled a bit with Holly over the concept of again sleeping in a foreign room. But she was soon snuggled with George in her crib while we sat in our room. Which is when we discussed the wisdom of the suite we had for ourselves. The room was set up such that you had to go through her room to get to the bathroom and the kitchenette (aka fridge and water kettle). Therefore our plans of having a nice cup of tea after dinner and using the bathroom after she went to sleep was shot. Also, all the doors in the place had glass in them. So we had to sit in our bed with limited lighting which made reading off the list. To make it work we just improvised. Our bathroom had a door that we could unlock to the hall so we unlocked that and just came in went via the hall. Luckily, our pj's are appropriate to wear in public. We had no tea which made going to bed at 9pm all the more acceptable. We all slept until 6:30am which I'm sure the rest of the B&B appreciated.

The next morning we packed up, had breakfast and found an open grocery store to pick up a pic-nic lunch for our travel to Mount Mitchel. All went well until we got up a ways out of town. Fog. Tons of it. I was struggling with asking Tom to abandon the idea (and be labeled a wuss) when we came upon the fact that the Blue Ridge Parkway had been shut to through traffic just 10 miles or so out of town. So we stopped and ran around in the fog helping the park out by removing more dandelions. Then hit the road. We were pretty sad about leaving without a single hike or real trip into nature. So I searched my iPhone looking for hikes in the area. I think we found about the most perfect hike ever for us!

We stopped at Tom's Creek Falls in the Pisgah National Forest. It was a .8 mile easy hike which was the perfect distance for someone small who wanted to "WALKWALKWALK!!!" everywhere. The falls were stunning. It didn't rain a drop. And our lunch (including a lovely quinoa salad) was loved by all. She was asleep before we headed back to the highway and she (and her dad) slept peacefully nearly the entire way home while I drove.

Our final part of the trip was the one which probably caused the most public smiles. Holly is growing by leaps and bounds. She needed new shoes pretty soon and I'm totally outraged by the price of toddler shoes. Thirty dollars and up?!?!? Seriously?!?!?! I pay less than that for my shoes! Now... granted. I'm not exactly a fashion oriented girl. I'm well aware that there is money to be spent on good shoes and do occasionally fork out for a nice pair of boots or running shoes. But I wear my shoes constantly for years. Holly will be lucky to get months out of them! Anyhow. We were all awake and ready to snack in Mebane and I figured my car had taken enough of a beating with the lunch-time hummus. So we stopped at the Tanger Outlets.

Holly received for her birthday a lovely duck on wheels who we call Roland and Holly (creatively) calls Duckie. She started yelling "WALK DUCKIE!" 10 minutes from the outlet center and was delighted when we agreed that duckie would, no doubt, like a walk. So she did. To the delight of every person we passed - not to mention Holly. We found her two pair of shoes on sale. She's now ready for spring and the outlets saved our checking account a little pain.

We had a truly fantastic trip. We were in Asheville. We went outside. And I wouldn't call this a short drive, but it wasn't too terrible. We learned a little bit more about traveling with Holly. We remembered again the value of flexibility and the simpler things. And we will all sleep well tonight. Hopefully...

The Cutest Face

All is well, we're just super busy. Here's a cute photo in the meantime.

Spinning

Busy baby

Holly's a very busy girl these days! She now has 8 teeth (including 3 molars). Her vocabulary grows by the minute. She has learned to put together puzzles and she likes to mimic us when we're reading to her. She has really begun to develop a sense of self which has meant more tears and more "no-mama/no-dada". She had a tummy bug last week but this week she seems to be making up for it by eating everything in sight. Tonight she kept demanding "more-more-more-more noodles!" for dinner. We went to the Farmer's Market last Saturday and she was a flurry of motion. She ran around a field pointing at flowers ("frower!"). She got to pet two friendly dogs ("hi doggie!"). She sampled cheese from our local fromagerie ("more-more-more-more-cheese!"). She had fresh strawberries from a local farm ("more-more-more-more stebah!"). She climbed on a giant turtle and a giant bird. She explored a culinary garden where she smelled the different herbs ("smelling" consists basically of heavy breathing). She climbed several sets of stairs -- which is something she still loves. She did a ton of dancing, reading, running and helping. And as always, she did a ton of giggling, smiling and snuggling.