Columbia Bound!!

Again, I'm still playing catch-up, so though it's Thursday as I post this, this is an account of our Tuesday.  :)

We decided to sleep in again Tuesday morning, and since the huevos rancheros wrap was so darn yummy....we headed back to Starbucks for breakfast.

Before bidding Asheville goodbye entirely to head to South Carolina for some family time with Keith's family, we decided to stop by Camp Cedar Cliff which was formerly the Cove Camp.  Keith spent 6 summers there growing up as a camper and then as a counselor so it was so fun for him to get to show me this place that has so many memories attached to it!  Camp is gearing up for the summer so we got to hang out with Hugh and Nicole, some of Keith's friends from his camp days who work there, over a lunch of watermelon and corndogs.  It was so fun to meet them after hearing so much about them and fun to see the camp and walk the trails that Keith walked as a teenager and college student.

(Keith and I hang out with Nicole and Hugh on the dining hall porch at Camp Cedar Cliff)

Then it was back on the road again to Columbia, South Carolina to Mom and Rick's house where we had a leisurely evening of smoked chicken and pasta and some good chit chat and soaking time in the hot tub before we curled up in bed for the night.  Leg 2 of our vacation is officially upon us!

If it's Monday, it's Biltmore and chocolate....

So I'm a few days behind in my blogging!  I've gotten completely caught up in the vacation-itis where you forget about all the things that happen in the real world...thus my blog is a few days behind.  :)

Monday was a glorious whirlwind of a day.   We started off by sleeping in and venturing across the street to Starbucks where we had the yummy new huevos rancheros wrap (A-mazing!!!) and morning coffee to kickstart our day....we had lots planned so energy was vital!  :)

(Keith drinks his coffee and lounges on the Starbucks patio.  Our hotel is that cool building in the background)

After breakfast we used the 12 month passes that I'd bought us last week to head back to the Biltmore Estate where we spent the next 6 hours touring the extensive gardens and house, taking the official "behind the scenes tour" and the moving on to explore the new Antler Village where we did a free wine tasting and took a much needed nap in the grass and listened to a local musician pick and grin.  (I think the guy who took the photo of us that appears at the top of the blog must have hit the wine tasting early....as the photo is a little lopsided.)

(Keith and I pause to take in the beautiful gardens and greenhouse)

  (Taking time to stop and smell the roses)

After our Biltmore adventure was over, we headed back to the hotel to take a nap and get dressed for dinner.  We felt like something light and exotic so we drove downtown and walked to Zambra for tapas for dinner.  It was absolutely amazing...our favorites were a pan-seared trout and a braised chicken taco.  Mmmmmm.  Despite the rain, we walked to French Broad Chocolate Lounge where we fed our sweet tooths with the liquid truffle "sipping chocolate"(my mouth is watering as I write this in the memory of it's goodness) and munched on a few truffles (early grey, Hawaiian, chai tea, and cayanne pepper) before retiring to the hotel again for the night.  I highly recommend a stop there if you ever pass through Asheville.  Heck.  Even if you aren't going to Asheville....it's worth the trip!

 (sipping chocolate and truffles.....mmmmmmm...........)

The Grand Bohemian & The Grove Park Inn

We arrived in Nashville last yesterday afternoon after a loooong drive to Asheville (thanks to a wreck on 40, construction and my car's need of an oil change) and checked in to our fabulous hotel, the Grand Bohemian which is right across from the main entrance to the Biltmore Estate.   It's a boutique hotel and Keith and I are loving the rich decor and the amazing art that is displayed on every floor.  Here's a picture of part of our room.....

For those of you who might not know all the details of our engagement story, Keith followed up his proposal at the Overlook at The Cove with an amazing brunch at the Grove Park Inn.  For a wedding gift, our sweet friends Nate and Heather gave us a gift card to the Grove Park, so we decided last night was the perfect chance to take advantage of their gift.  After settling into our hotel, we headed over for dinner on the "Sunset Terrace" where our candlelight table for two had the best view in the house!  The weather was perfect, the view exquisite and the food...well, the food was just fabulous.  We each started with a tomato and fresh mozzarella salad, then Keith had the "steak dianne" and I had the "duck marsala."  For desert, I had cheesecake with strawberries on top and Keith had a key lime pie.  The whole meal was amazing.   Somewhere between the mozz and the duck, I realized it was May 23rd, which meant it was the 4 month anniversary of our marriage!  Such a fun coincidence to get to celebrate at such a special place on a special day!   (The pictures don't do the evening justice as it was dark and all we had were our iPhones...but trust me....amazing!)

I know this puts me a day behind, but tomorrow I'll blog about the amazing day we had today (Monday the 24th).  (I'm exhausted and hey...one post a day is enough!) We've decided that this little trip is the first of many "2nd honeymoons" that we'll have over the course of our life together.  Tune in tomorrow......

Asheville bound!!

So Keith and I hit the road again this morning for a 3 leg vacation. The first stop is Asheville, NC (yes, I know I was just there) for two nights at the Grand Bohemian hotel which happens to be acros the street from the entrance gate to the Biltmore. Good thing I bought us each a 12 month unlimited pass when I was there last week! We're planning on just hanging out, enjoying the Biltmore some more, checking out Filo pastry shop and French Broad Chocolate. Mmmmm. I'll let you in on legs 2 and 3 of our journey as we get there. :)

In other family news, we gave the cat a proper name and got him a tag yesterday which bears the inscription, "Winston B. Bordeaux". The "B." of course stands for Booger. We just couldn't bring ourselves to drop it all together. :) The Winston part is after Winston Churchill, sort of. We're already missing him lots and lots. As you can tell by the picture, he didn't want us to leave this morning and refused to get off the top of Keith's suitcase for quite a while this morning. Fortunately, our sweet friend Erin is coming to live with him while we're gone, so I know he'll be fine.

Ok. That's all until Asheville!

Booger

Meet Booger, the newest member of our family. He enjoys being petted, sleeping upside down, nibbling at our fingers to wake us up, sleeping in odd places, snuggling with his people, sleeping all day long, watching the birds out the front window and sleeping some more. And no, we didn't pick out his name. He came with that.

This week

This week has been another bitter sweet taste of life on the road. Amazing to be out playing, but missing being home with the hubby. I've had an amazing week with Ronnie Freeman and the crew leading worship at The Cove (The Billy Graham Training Center) in Asheville, NC for the yearly meeting of the international employees of Samaratin's Purse...a Christian international relief organization. It was so beautiful to see these people from all over the world come together to strategize of how they can better serve the nations by providing disaster relief in the name of Christ. We had a sweet communion service last night in a chapel designed by the late Ruth Graham, wife of the great evangelist Billy Graham...and this morning as we gathered for a prayer service, a man from Ecuador began to cry out a prayer in Spanish and I was moved to tears at the songlike quality of this man interceeding for his fellow employees in his native tongue. We're on the road now from Asheville to Boone, NC where Samaratin's Purse is headquartered to lead one more night and morning of their yearly meetings at headquarters where we will be joined by an additional 400 employees. Then we get to head back to Nashville.   We got to spend a great afternoon exploring the Biltmore Mansion in Asheville.  Here are some pictures from that excursion....

Keith meanwhile has been at home holding down the fort. He's been hard at work and has gotten some good time with some of his close guy friends. He's also been playing Daddy to the newest inhabitant of the Yellow Barn. Yes folks, as of last Saturday, we are the proud parents of a long-haired, orangy/yellow tabby looking cat named "Booger". (He was already named that when we got him from the Humane Society. We're currently trying to think up a replacement name.) He is such a wonderful cat with a sweet personality, no bad habits as of yet, and has generally brought joy to our house with his motor-like purring and absurd looking sleeping positions. He's already got us both wrapped around his little paws and I'm afraid to report that we might have already become "those pet people" who are obsessed with our cat. :)

Guess that's all for now. I'm riding in the van and am starting to get a bit queasy looking down at my iPhone so I'll sign off. :)

a brief overview

Hello sweet family and friends!  As some of you know, I'm a semi-dedicated blogger.  I get on kicks, and then I get lazy, and then I regret my slothfulness and vow to blog some more.  So I decided that since Keith and I have just begun this fabulously crazy new season of life together, that it was the perfect opportunity for me to wipe the blogging slate clean and start over again.  So that's what I'm doing!  Keith and I got married on January 23, 2010, so we've been married for just over 3 months now.  I created this blog (and invited Keith to be a contributor!) so we can both write posts and keep everyone up to date on our lives.

The past three months have been a whirlwind of traveling, work, graduate school and transforming the yellow barn from a bachelor pad to a cute-newlywed-couple's pad.  I'm not eve sure it really is any sort of a pad now.  It's a cute family house.  We adore it.  Soon, I'll post some pictures of the rooms that we've already redecorated.  We've still got quite a ways to go until it's perfect, but we're pretty well there.  and I love it! 

Stay tuned...and welcome to life in the yellow barn!

Blessings,
Bethany and Keith