Weekend Adventures

How was your Memorial Day Weekend?

Ours was full of crazy adventures. We took a drive on the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway on Friday night to the Town of Floyd. Floyd is an awesome little town with a cool, local music scene and some really funky art and shops. It's known as a music hot spot on Friday nights and you'll always find a crowd at the Floyd Country Store for the Friday night jamboree.

On Saturday afternoon, I spent the day fishing with my granddad, brother and his girlfriend. We caught about 15 fish and fried them up for dinner and I learned that I have no patience for dealing with the bones in fresh fish. Unfortunately, we didn't cook the massive bass my granddad reeled in.

We were back on the road again Sunday with a trip north to Lewisburg and White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia. Lewisburg is a quaint little town that doesn't have much activity on Sundays and White Sulphur Springs was mostly abandoned. However, it is home to The Greenbrier, where we toured around and had some afternoon tea.

And we capped off the weekend by spending Memorial Day picking strawberries at a nearby farm. We now have enough berries to eat strawberry shortcake for the next three months but it's great to be able to pick your own fruit and eat it right after you picked it.

The Freakin' Weekend

During the winter months, there is a shortage of things to do in our area. Actually, that may not be entirely true. But because the weather is often cold and snowy during the winter, we don't venture out of the house unless we have to. Instead, we keep a fire going in the wood stove, build pillow forts, watch movies and drink hot tea. We manage to act like 7 year olds and 70 year olds at the same time. It's quite a feat.

Now that the weather is warming up and spring has arrived, there are lots of great weekend events to check out, and this past weekend was particularly busy.

On Saturday, we started the day in Downtown Roanoke and hung out for a while at the finish line of the Blue Ridge Marathon. This race is known as "America's Toughest Road Marathon" and makes its way along a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway and attracts visitors from around the country. It did nothing to motivate me to ever run a marathon but it was really cool to stand at the finish line and see people as they celebrated finishing. I love watching people accomplish a goal they've worked so hard to reach.

Spring Saturdays in Roanoke also offer great opportunities to visit some of the local farmer's markets in the area. The Historic City Market in Downtown Roanoke is one of the oldest farmer's markets in Virginia and features a great selection of produce, baked goods, and other homemade items. We act like such trendy hipsters and always peruse the market even though we know what's there every Saturday.

In other ridiculous news, I had ice cream for breakfast on Sunday. It wasn't just ice cream though. I toasted a waffle and then put a giant scoop of ice cream on top of it. But I didn't want to stop the party. So I also heated up some homemade ganache and put that on top of the ice cream. Don't judge me. I'm already ashamed.

-David

The Taste of Roanoke

Nicole and I have a thing for free stuff, especially if it involves free food. We once asked a friend who had a Costco membership to take us with her so we could try the samples. When we lived in West Palm Beach, we ate dinner twice a week at the two different Whole Foods locations because they'd have block parties and offer dishes from the various departments in the store. We even went to the Ikea in Orlando once only because they were serving free breakfast. We're such great supporters of the economy! If it's free, we'll take three.

And we always check the calendar for events that could include complimentary snacks. Hello, The Taste of Roanoke.

The Taste of Roanoke was part of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce Business and Technology Expo at the Roanoke Civic Center this past week and it featured a number of local restaurants.

We spent the evening enjoying burger sliders from Beamer's 25, chocolate chip cookies from The Hotel Roanoke, ribs from Smokey Bones, grilled chicken and steak from Longhorn, vegetable kabobs from the Salem Civic Center, and much more. 

They were even serving the new Cool Ranch Doritos Taco by Taco Bell! SPOILER ALERT: It's just as bad as the other Doritos taco.

It was a lot of fun trying food from different restaurants in the area and we ran into a lot of friends. 

Do you have any tips on fun free things to do? Particularly those that involve free meals.

-David

Spring Update

It's been a few months so it feels like we're due for another "It's been too long since we last posted and we promise to do a better job with this in the future" post. I don't know if this will happen or not but we'll keep trying to post when we can and provide updates about what's going on in our life.

Nicole has been doing some serious baking lately and trying new recipes that have been amazing. It has made me quite popular at work as I usually take the leftovers to the office. Two of her latest creations have been blueberry muffins and chocolate cake, which were inspired by these two recipes:

Cooking Classy

Cannella-Vita

This is also the start of one of my favorite weekends of the year as a sports fan. The Masters just finished it's second round of play and the weekend should be full of great golf from Augusta National. I'm so excited about spending Sunday afternoon watching The Masters on CBS and seeing who wins golf's first major of the year. Here is a picture from when we went a few years ago:

That's all for now!

-David

Welcome to Church

I saw this post from Stuff Christians Like and thought it was awesome. It's from Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Community and it's the welcome message they put it in their church bulletin a few weeks ago. If you decide to visit a church today, I hope you go somewhere that makes you feel like this. Here's the message:

We extend a special welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, gay, filthy rich, dirt poor, yo no habla Ingles. We extend a special welcome to those who are crying new-borns, skinny as a rail or could afford to lose a few pounds.

We welcome you if you can sing like Andrea Bocelli or like our pastor who can’t carry a note in a bucket. You’re welcome here if you’re “just browsing,” just woke up or just got out of jail. We don’t care if you’re more Catholic than the Pope, or haven’t been in church since little Joey’s Baptism.

We extend a special welcome to those who are over 60 but not grown up yet, and to teenagers who are growing up too fast. We welcome soccer moms, NASCAR dads, starving artists, tree-huggers, latte-sippers, vegetarians, junk-food eaters. We welcome those who are in recovery or still addicted. We welcome you if you’re having problems or you’re down in the dumps or if you don’t like “organized religion,” we’ve been there too.

If you blew all your offering money at the dog track, you’re welcome here. We offer a special welcome to those who think the earth is flat, work too hard, don’t work, can’t spell, or because grandma is in town and wanted to go to church.

We welcome those who are inked, pierced or both. We offer a special welcome to those who could use a prayer right now, had religion shoved down your throat as a kid or got lost in traffic and wound up here by mistake. We welcome tourists, seekers and doubters, bleeding hearts … and you!

NaBloPoMo - November 27

Question: If you could instantly know any language in the world, which one would it be?

I'm torn between Afrikaans and French. I would love to learn Afrikaans because I love the way it sounds and it would make me one step closer to sounding like a South African when I talk, which is one of my goals in life.

On the other hand, learning French would open so many doors to different parts of the world. From Africa to Europe to South America to North America, there are people speaking different variations of the French language. Through the traveling we've done around the world, I've been constantly reminded of how much easier it would have been to communicate if I'd had any sort of knowledge of French.

While Afrikaans would be fun, French makes the most sense. Au revoir!

David

NaBloPoMo: November 26

Monday, November 26, 2012: Do you speak more than one language?  How did you learn the additional languages?

I am horrible at speaking other languages - though admittedly quite good at English :) I took Spanish classes throughout middle school, high school and college but am far from mastering it. Actually, I like Spanish and frequently try to get other people to speak Spanish with me but I still stink. While we were in Switzerland, David did a great job of picking up French (and Haitian Creole in Haiti) but I find French horrifying. The letters don't look like the word and nothing sounds phonetic at all. As much as I long to move to another country, the thought of learning a different language doesn't excite me at all. 

Laissez Le Bon Temps Roulet!

-Nicole