My life recently (outside of work) has been pretty busy, which is what I will use to excuse my absence from blogging. A few weeks ago, Tyler and I went to New Braunfels to visit his family for the weekend. That was fun. They were really sweet and threw a little birthday party for me on Friday night, so I got lots of great things.
As soon as we got home from that trip, Tyler had to leave for some work-related travel. He's training in the small town of Indiana, PA for a month. I miss him so much! He's been gone this long before, but usually only to places within driving distance to home. Not being able to see him on the weekends is NO FUN. The nice thing is that he's within driving distance, albeit 6 hours, of my family's house in Virginia, so he's able to go there each weekend and spend time with them. He's played golf and gone fishing and explored the forest. I'm jealous!
So, my nights have been pretty quiet all by my lonesome, but at least I've come up with fun things to do on the weekends. The weekend of my birthday, I got to fly home to Virginia and spend some much-needed time with my family. Tyler was also able to come down and meet us for most of it. It was great! My family is awesome. My birthday was the day after the series finale of LOST, which we happen to all love. I'm
On Saturday, we all woke up early-ish and packed a lunch and went hiking. We went on a hike called Falls Ridge. Within the first 5 minutes of the hike, you arrive at a beautiful waterfall. It's really different because the water is rich in minerals and over time there's been a huge build up of calcium carbonate, leading to one of the largest-known exposed travertine deposits. There are really cool caves on the trail that you can explore. We even got my mom to go inside one, which was a huge feat!
Then we drove up the road to another hike called Wind Rock. That road takes your right through the resort which was used in the filming of Dirty Dancing. It's pretty cool to see all of that-- the barn where everybody dances, the resort itself, the cabins, the lake and gazebo. Pretty neato! It was raining pretty strongly by the time we made it up to the top of the mountain, so we had a picnic in our car. Kyle, Tyler and Kate went mudding in Kyle's jeep, which caused something in the engine to flood and the jeep to later be reeaaally sassy about starting. Once the rain stopped, the hike itself was a short walk, but the destination is totally worth it. There are huge rock faces jutting out over a huge valley overlooking the Jefferson National Forest.
We sat out there for a while and climbed around on some rocks before heading back into town. On the way home, we stopped at a place called Pandapas Pond and walked around the trail there. It was really neat because there are beavers that live there and you can clearly see where they have just chomped clear through a tree and are about to haul it off into the water. There were also squillions (real number) of baby geese that we chased and loved. Nature is neat!
That evening, I got to open my birthday presents! WOO! My family again brought the awesome and made my birthday amazing. If you're a fan of LOST, you will recognize and appreciate everything herein just as much as I did! We were all down in the basement and my little brother brought me something wrapped in newspaper-- specifically the section of the newspaper that had a huge photo and story on LOST. Inside the newspaper, there was a walkie-talkie. I tried to turn that on, but the battery appeared to be dead. So I opened the battery hatch and instead of a battery, I found a typed message on a little piece of paper. It was in French. I don't speak French, but I used my resources and asked my little sister (who's in French classes) to help me decode. The messages said something like "Find the hatch. On the door to the hatch you'll find 4 8 15 16 23 42. Your presents are inside the hatch." So now I'm on a crazy search for something in my parents huge house (which I've never lived in, so I'm unfamiliar with the in's and out's of) for something that could be considered a hatch. Somehow, I relatively quickly located it. On the door to the air filter in the sunroom, I saw the numbers. I opened the door to the hatch, and there they were!
I was very lucky and must have been very good this year, because I came away with a new Nikon DSLR (YAY!), a huge memory stick, a spare rechargeable battery, all the manuals and DVDs I need to learn my new camera, an awesome carrying case, a fancy tripod, the 3rd season of LOST on DVD to add to my collection, $20 and a cool thing to keep my hair out of my face and off my neck while I do things around the house.
That night, we went out to dinner at the River Company Restaurant and Brewery, where we had some great food beer and wine. Then we went home and ate some delicious birthday ice cream cake. What a great end to the best day!
On Sunday, my parents and Tyler and I left and went to Chateau Morissette, a winery on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's nestled in the woods up on top of a mountain and the views were amazing. We went on a tour of the winery and then had a tasting of 10 different wines. It was really fun and relaxing. After that we stopped and ate at a yummy Mexican food restaurant on the way home.
That evening, Tyler left to go back to Pennsylvania and we started preparing for the Lost series finale event. Dad and Kyle and I assembled some awesome torches out of materials that the Losties would have had. Dad went out into the wilderness and cut up some limbs. Then we wrapped one end with shredded towels and some wire. Then we soaked those in 1 part tiki torch liquid and 2 parts motor oil. They worked amazingly well. Like, they would not go out until completely submerged in a bucket of water and they put off a ton of light and heat. SUPER COOL. The plan was to dress up like various characters from Lost and go on a torch walk through the woods behind my parents house. There are trails and creeks and it looks a heck of a lot like the island back there.
While we were making torches, Mom was setting up the viewing area in the basement. We had a giant tiki man poster, some netting, some inflatable palm trees and a string of paper pineapples. For dinner, we had a giant spread of delicious food. There was tropical chicken kabobs with onion and bell pepper, boiled shrimp, barbequed ribs, mango, kiwi, strawberries and some chocolate/peanut butter treats. The girls also had flowers to wear in our hair. It was great.
We watched the series finale event, but by the time it ended we were kind of all at the end of our emotional ropes, so we postponed the torch walk to the next night. We stayed up trying to digest what we'd just seen, Mom and I watched Jimmy Kimmel's Aloha to Lost special and then we hit the sack.
On Monday, my actual birthday, we took it pretty easy. We went shopping a little bit and talked a lot about Lost. That night we went out to dinner at an Italian place called Sal's. Deliciouso!
I had to leave on Tuesday, so it was another day of taking it easy. My mom and Kyle and I went to Kyle's girlfriend's house for breakfast and coffee. Her family just put in a beautiful new pool and guest house, so we got to see all of that. It looks so nice! I would spend all of my summer out there if I could. From there, we just kind of sat around the house and talked about our upcoming trip to Montreal. Then I had to get on the plane and fly back home. Sad.
And that was my birthday weekend! This post is really long already, and I'm about to leave work, so I do believe I will just have to tell you about this past weekend another time! Maybe I'll even blog some more when I get home! Makin' up for lost time! :)
