Astoundingly Beautiful
Today we drove to Lowe's on some errands and then to Leesburg for lunch. We discovered The Green Tree restaurant which was just amazing. It's interior is very much an 1800's tavern complete with fireplace (complete with fire) and some really amazing food. From there, we just decided to wander. We drove up Route 15 to the Potomac River and across to Point of Rocks, Maryland. From there we alternated between Route 28 and this amazing scenic drive as we headed back south east towards Washington.

The trees are just past peak but there are still quite a few gorgeous trees. The colors are incredibly rich in places and the roads we drove along were more like tunnels under these amazing canopies. The sky itself was a dark, rich blue as we drove towards what looked to be pretty heavy rains (we never saw more than a brief misting). We drove through forests and past farms. In many places the farms were so picturesque that we could have sworn we were in a postcard. I even saw my first belted galloway cow. Over and over we kept saying how beautiful it was outside. It was just the perfect day.

Too bad we didn't bring a camera. We're thinking of going back and doing it again tomorrow with camera but we'll see... we drove nearly 100 miles today! Doing that again is a bit daunting, no matter how beautiful it is.  10:08:47 PM    

The Garage, The Quilt, The Chocolate, The Shower
Today I cleaned up the garage enough to get Ann's Civic into it. Not that there's much point in that since we're going to donate it to charity soon. It needs almost $700 worth of work to pass its emissions test and is currently unregistered. So, it's pretty useless to us and selling it would probably be quite tough. So, off it goes to charity and we get back a bit in our taxes.

This evening Chris Kagy came over and helped me hang a quilt in the hallway. And by helped I mean that he did most of the work while I handed him things, held the ladder, and did the complicated math ("What's half of 35?"). In the end, the quilt was hung and looks fantastic. The only real problem we had was figuring out how to fold and unfold the folding ladder to get it into the positions/places we needed it to be. Who knew you needed an engineering degree to use a ladder? (And how happy am I that I was able to get to the house of the person we borrowed it from and just lightly toss it into the car. Well, carefully edging it in and securing it with bungies so as to not scratch anything at all, but you get the idea.

While this was all happening, we heard a lot of noise in the kitchen. Rumor had it that something funny was happening. We were a bit too wrapped up in what we were doing to pay much attention. It wasn't until I went to the video camera to get the image of Chris and I above that I found out the true extent of what happened.

I'm on a diet. Weight Watchers part 3. I've done it twice before with great results (just managed to blow the good habits and gain it back again afterwards). So, I'm watching what I eat. Ann asked Jack what he wanted for dessert and he said chocolate milk. We don't have any chocolate syrup so I suggested he eat my Ben & Jerry's since it (a) is so fattening I can't even look at the container without gaining weight and need it out of the house ASAP and (b) It has chocolate in it.

Of course, it wasn't enough to just eat the chocolate ice cream. No, Jack had to melt it and then slap the table. I expect that we'll be finding chocolate spots on the walls, floor, chairs, and the Mac in the background of the picture for weeks to come.

All things considered it was a fun evening. Even the part where Jack had a small accident in the bath tub and had to get re-cleaned while Ann cleaned the bath tub. I took him into our bathroom and took a shower with him. At first he was a bit freaked out by the falling water until I told him it was raining. Then he loved it. After we got out, got dry and went into his room to get him into his PJs he said "Taking shower with daddy!" I just know he's going to go say that at preschool. Out of context, it sounds very bad. I just know we're going to be getting a phone call next week...
  12:59:09 AM