Surprise! We're heading to the Mountains!!

Well, I guess I've been whining a lot about wanting to go to the mountains because Laura surprised me for my birthday with a trip to the mountains. I actually knew we were going to the mountains, but I had no idea where we were staying or what we were doing. The biggest surprise was that we were going sans-Camille. Laura had worked hard on keeping everything a secret and even conspired with my parents and Camille to make it go off without a hitch. What a great and thoughtful wife I have to plan all this out for my birthday!! I've never had my own birthday weekend...

Apparently, I was going to remain on a need to know basis for the entirety of the trip. Laura kept the entire agenda a secret. She would only reveal the next event as we were finishing the current one. This is difficult as a Cox; a great emphasis is put on what planning the next meal.

Our first event of the trip was a hour long traffic jam. Once we made it through that, Laura informed me that we were going to enjoy lunch in Morganton. What's in Morganton, you're probably asking yourself... A few years back, Our State Magazine put out a list for 100 places you must go to eat in the 100 NC counties. This sandwhich/coffee shop was on the list and it didn't dissapoint. After lunch, we finished what was a very enjoyable 4.5 hour ride to Hendersonville, NC.

Since Hendersonville is known for Apples, our first stop was at an apple orchard to pick some apples. We are by no means apple pickin' experts, but we managed to get the hang of it and brought home some delicious treats that we're still enjoying.

From the orchard, we made our way to downtown Hendersonville. At this point, I still had no idea where we were staying. Didn't even know if it was a hotel, bed and breakfast, or tent... Well, Laura did not dissapoint. We stayed in a wonderful b&b in downtwon Hendersonville. It was the biggest b&b we've ever seen with 23 rooms. But, it was still charming and we really enjoyed our stay.

After check in, Laura and I went out to explore the dowtown Hendersonville scene before dinner. For those who've never been to Hendersonville, it actually has a very happening little downtown. It is only one street, but it's full of people, music, nice restaurants, and boutique stores. We were pleasantly impressed that it was like a mini-Asheville. For dinner Friday night, we went to a wood fire pizza place which had great food and even better cold beer. It was a great choice for my first birthday weekend dinner. After dinner, Laura took me to the Flat Rock Theatre which is the official theatre of NC. For lack of a better term, it's a neat old barn that has been used as a theatre for about 50 years. We enjoyed a musical called Zelda which is a love story about F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Laura was especially creative to include this in our trip as I definitely did not expect it, but really enjoyed it.

On Saturday, the real adventures begin. After our delicious breakfast at the b&b, Laura let me know that we were heading out to do a little warm up hike at Jump Off Rock. The old Indian legend goes that a maiden jumped off this rock when her Indian warrior boyfriend failed to return from war. Apparently, she still appears from time to time, but instead of a ghost we just saw some pretty views. My favorite is Laura on the rock staring off into the distance...

 

 

We enjoyed lunch in downtown Henderson at the old fashioned soda fountain. Laura had an egg salad sandwhich and soup and I had a grilled pimento cheese. Reminded me of old times at Jonesboro-Lee Drug store.

Our next adventure took us to Dupont State Park to do some serious hiking and enjoy some awesome views and waterfalls. Now, this is way up in the mountains and we had to take some curvy and narrow roads to get there. We hiked about 6-7 miles and got to see three of the four sets of falls; High Falls, Triple Falls, and Bridal Veil Falls. If any of these look familiar to you, it's probably because they appeared in the Hungar Games and Last of the Mohicans. I've been really fiending for some time with nature so this really hit the spot.

For dinner Saturday night, we went to a fancy little tapas style restaurant. Laura really enjoys to share plates and try a lot of different types of things. So, our dinner was random, but delicious. After dinner, we hit up the Appalachain Brewery to try some good brews and listen to some music. The beer was good and cold and the band was...one of a kind, I'll say. It was three of the dirtiest hippies you've ever seen. They must have known where to score the good drugs because they had no clue what planet they were on. But they could jam... The piano player was absolutely tearing up the keyboard. We are early to bed folks these days so we stayed as long as we could stay awake and as long as we could take their stinking B.O. They music was good, but they literally stunk...

On Sunday, we enjoyed one last breakfast at the b&b. We were both ready to get home and see our little Monkey so we took off right after breakfast. It's funny that when you finally get away, you find yourself missing your children and rush back home early to see them...

All in all, we were extremely impressed and pleased with our trip to Hendersonville. Again, I've been really longing for a mountain trip so this one was right on time for me. My wonderful wife put a lot of thought and effort into making my birthday weekend perfect. At least I've got 9 months to plan hers...

Birthdays Galor!

We had a full weekend full of birthday celebrations. It all started on Saturday morning at Pullen Park where we celebrated Camille's buddy Corey's 3rd birthday. We couldn't have had better weather (80+ degrees!). It was cute to see all the kids at the table together. A lot of them are from Camille's class at school, so they had such a great time together.

After the celebration, Corey treated all the kids to ride tickets for the other park activities. Camille & Madelyn buddied up for that! The carousel was so fun (and surprisingly fast). Camille insisted on riding the tiger since he didn't go up & down. She said she wanted to go fast, not up. :)

Since the mommies got to ride the carousel, the daddies wanted to ride the train.

Last stop, the boats. Camille and Madelyn loved ringing the bell and pretending to steer.

As if that wasn't enough fun, we headed home to greet Mimi, who was coming to play with Camille and spend the night so that Nick & I could go to the NCSU game. Since Mimi just celebrated her birthday, we got to enjoy taking her to church and lunch on Sunday to keep the celebrations going.
Then, we got a visit from Pops, Marla, Michael, and Daniel later that afternoon! Despite the huge drop in temperatures, we still had fun playing cornhole outside. Gran had sent some beanie babies for Camille, so she took a picture on the cornhole board showing off her new "loves."

Since Nick's birthday is this week, the McNeill clan kicked of the celebration. We had a great time at dinner together. It's not often we remember to get a group shot in.

So another busy, yet fun weekend...... more birthday celebrations to come..... Camille is already on the countdown to her 3rd birthday. She keeps asking me if it's November yet. She is VERY excited about her upcoming celebrations that she is fine to skip right over Halloween!

Green Acres is the place to be.....

It has become an annual tradition to visit the pumpkin patch at the start of fall. This will mark the second year going with The Gardners. Mary & Camille have so much fun together! This year, we opted for Green Acres Farm in Cary, a bit closer than the farm in Youngsville we visited last year. Thought not as big as Hillridge, it is certainly less crowded.

What a day we had! I don't know who had more fun, the adults or the kids.

As you can see here, Nick had fun milking Bessie... a pretend cow to teach kids (and adults) how to properly milk the cow. Camille wanted nothing to do with that activity and said it looked gross and scary.

The farm had several bounce houses which were a hit with the girls. One bounce house even had a barnyard theme.

There were also plenty of tractors and farm equipment for the kids to play on. The dads were quite impressed they would let kids play with such nice machinery.

Next stop, pony rides!! The girls loved picking out which pony they wanted to ride and then telling us they could do it by themselves :)

The farm is known for their complex corn mazes, so we thought we would give it a whirl..... Camille wanted to be the "line leader" for the track, but between 4 adults and 2 kids we couldn't make our ways to all 10 checkpoints. We made it to 4 or 5 of them and then the girls thought it was boring and we had to try and find our way out.

The coolest part to me was the mini train track, conductor and all! Camille LOVED riding the train. It went much faster than I thought it would. Camille was smiling ear to ear the whole time, but Mary wasn't sure what to think about it until the ride was over, then she decided she liked it.

We then ventured along to the spider web. Camille and Mary were both excited to attempt crawling on the web, but quickly decided it wasn't as fun as it looked and wanted out.

There was even a swing set on the farm- perfect for a quick break between all the activities.

There were some rather friendly goats too, but Camille said they were too stinky to pet.

Nick & Megan opted for the adult trail ride, a 30 min venture around the farm on horseback. Nick mentioned his horse has previously bucked someone off so he held extra tight to the reigns. Matt & I were left with the girls, but quickly found the sand pile to buy some time :)

What fall farm visit isn't complete without a hay ride? You will notice that Mary found the face painting area before our ride. Camille opted not to get her face painted. She explained to Mary that face painting gives you rashes on your face :) haha

The funniest part about the whole visit : we forgot to pick pumpkins! I guess that will be another adventure ahead... After all the playing, we were all hungry and ready for dinner.

Happy Fall!