Our Thanksgiving weekend

(I wrote this on our way home from New York. Nothing like writing a blog post at 1 am in the dark,hee hee)

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday and weekend!

Our's was quite nice. We drove up to New York to spend Thanksgiving with Rob's family.

We left Wednesday night, right at Sam's bedtime. Rob had worked from home that day and slept for a while before we headed off. Sam and I slept in the back seat while Rob drove through the night. 10 hours never went by so fast! It was awesome. Sam did great! He slept practically the entire time. He woke up just as the sun came up and just chilled for another couple hours before we got there. He even held out to get his bottle! Although I will admit, I missed mine and Rob's road trip conversations and pointing out the places with the funny names and singing The Office theme song while driving through Scranton, PA.

We spent Thanksgiving at Rob's cousin's house. Sam got to meet his cousins Abby and Danny. Danny is just a couple months younger than Sam. It's crazy to think that Sam was that small just not too long ago. It's also crazy because Sam is usually the youngest when we go places, hee hee. It was a lovely dinner and get together. I always enjoy spending time there.

Friday we went over to Connecticut to the huge grocery store Stew Leonard's. This place is ginormous! The great thing is that throughout the store, there are animatronics of butter, bananas, chickens, cows and even Twinkie the Kid. It's so silly and fun. We thought Sam would like it.

Rob's mom's good friend came by to meet Sam later that day and then Rob's aunt came a bit after that. It's sweet to see Sam meeting relatives. He's always to happy to see new people and doesn't mind being held. It makes me happy too because I know Sam won't get a chance to see a lot of his relatives often and I'd like these moments to be happy ones. It'd be different and a bummer if Sam didn't like being around new people. He knows he is loved!

Saturday we left Sam with the grandparents and me, Rob and his brother went to Greenwich, Connecticut. We went there to go see the 3D printers at the Makerbot store. (Oh yes, we are that geeky) It was actually really cool to see a 3D printer (a machine that uses plastic spools to make 3D objects that were designed on the computer.) Rob is currently learning how to design things. I'm going to learn too once I finish up some projects of mine. I actually have some 3D rendering knowledge from high school. FunFact: I enrolled to learn computer animation in college, but I  changed my mind before I started. Anyways!  We are not getting a 3D printer any time soon, but it's something we thought would be fun to do on the side one day. After visiting that store we walked around a bit and went into this real awesome toy store. It was like Fab.com's kids section. They had such great toys, the kind of toys I'd like to get Sam. A lot of wooden toys, toys that encourage imagination, thought, and independence. We didn't buy anything because Sam was still a bit young for it, but I have a lot of great ideas of toys I'd like to get.

Another thing we did, we looked at old baby pictures again, now that we have Sam to compare. We all came to the conclusion that Sam has Rob's eyes and nose. Sam also seems to have Rob's happy personality, always smiling and looking so genuinely happy. I can't wait to visit my family one day and look through our old photos and see Sam in them.

It was a nice little trip. I am so proud of Sam for how well he did. The car ride, the craziness of meeting relatives and sleeping in a different house. The key, I think, is just to keep it and familiar and normal as possible. We drove during night, during bedtime. We stuck with his night time routine, even reading Good Night Moon in the car. I brought the white noise machine, stuffed animals and blankets that all smelled like home.

Getaway to Asheville

As I mentioned in my last post, Rob and I went to Asheville this past weekend for a last minute, but much needed getaway.

Friday Rob dropped the dogs off at the doggy day care, picked me up from work and then we were off to the mountains!

This weekend was all about indulging, relaxing, destressing, taking it slow and enjoying each other's company. We've, more so Rob, been under a lot of stress these past few months and with Rob's birthday on Monday and our anniversary coming up, well...how could we not go somewhere.

We stayed at the Hotel Indigo, this swanky, but laid back new hotel in Asheville. What a great place!! Everything was decorated so modern, but not in a stuff lux way. And everyone was so friendly and helpful. We treated ourselves to the suite, which was lovely and we had a great view of the mountains. The shower was amazing and there was even Aveda products for the toiletries.

Friday we stayed in and had dinner at the restaurant at the hotel. It was very yummy. I had pizza and Rob steak with these amazing scalloped potatoes. I was happy that they had sparkling lemonade to drink since I'm limited to what I can drink. We got a wild blueberry cobbler to bring to our room. Yum.

Saturday Rob got up super early to run in the gym since he's training for the NYC Marathon. I got to wake up on my own and take it nice and slow since there were no dogs bugging me for breakfast. It was such a nice moment for me. After Rob got back we had breakfast at the hotel. I had a fresh made croissant with egg and fresh made sausage and Rob had steel cut oatmeal. We decided we didn't want to do what we always do in Asheville, walk around downtown looking at all the same places we always look at. So we decided to finally check out the famous Biltmore house/mansion/castle.

We were surprised to find that it was barely a 10 minute drive to get to the Biltmore. Even more surprising when you see how much open land it's on. I think I read it's like on around 125,000 acres. The house itself was just grand. We spent the afternoon walking through the rooms and such, all still set up from the early 1900's. We even got to see an old fashion basement pool, it was so big! I wish it was filled to really see it.  And the view from the terrace....breath taking! Just hills and woods, not a modern building in site. Walking the house took us about 2 hours and we were beat afterwards. We then drove to the Antler Village on the grounds to check out that area and have some lunch. Sadly we didn't go to the winery, not really exciting when you're pregnant. Oh and how jealous I was of everyone on their bikes going around the property, how awesome would that be? I'd go again just to be able to bring my bike and ride around the property. I'm really glad we went to the Biltmore. It just relaxed me even more, even with all the crowds. It was just so nice seeing some american history.

Since we were exhausted, we decided to stay in that night. Not before we made a stop at a beer store for Rob, who got some pretty sweet beers. Jealous. We just spent the rest of the night watching crappy cable and me eating leftovers and Rob a wrap from the hotel.

Sunday we got up bright and early, had breakfast. I got the steel cut oatmeal this time with dried apricots, walnuts and honey....pregnancy super meal! I even treated myself to a decaf soy latte.
Then it was time to head home.

It was just so nice to get away. I told Rob we'll have to do this a couple more times before the baby comes. Maybe not splurge like we did, but just to get away and clear our heads. Like I mentioned before, I felt amazing during this trip, no pregnancy symptoms at all. Lovely.