Good Monday Morning Everyone!!!

Well, it's actually mid-Monday morning and almost Monday afternoon. I actually slept in a little bit this morning. The weekend kinda took it out of me, plus my tooth is still hurting so I used those as excuses to sleep in until 9 a.m. (I have a dentist appointment Wednesday morning, so until then I'm doing my best not to be miserable and looking at the bright side of things--that I might lose 5 to 7 pounds, since I can't really eat anything!). Anyway...I digress...

Gary and I had a little anniversary get-away and, let me just say, that getting away by yourself can do wonders!!! (If you are married with children, it is a must! One of my "Rules for a Good Marriage"! lol)

We stayed at a really nice hotel and, once we saw how nice it was, considered not even leaving the room for dinner. We were thrilled with the huge couch...

where you had a great view of the HUGE, flat-screen plasma tv...

And there was just as good a view of the television from the bed...

We also thought the little door hangers were cute (yes, I take pictures of door hangers!!)...

So, we seriously thought about not leaving the luxury of the room or the hotel, but our churning stomachs got the best of us. We went to a yummy Italian restaurant where there was some GREAT food that I really was unable to eat because of my mouth (although I did salivate at the amazing foccacia garlic rolls that I ate two bites of. Gary then proceeded to eat the rest of the two large rolls on our table, moaning all the while about how good they were. When I am in perfect dental health, I am going back to that place!!

I DID, however, manage to eat this entire piece of tiramisu. It was SO creamy and delicious (and, well, I did give Gary a few bites of it!). Yumm-o....

After sleeping in for a bit the next morning, we ventured out to this really cool winery (the one "must see" on our list for the weekend). We went to our first winery last year and had such a good time, and Gary and I both like wine so much, that we've decided to make it a goal to go to every winery in our state (and, of course, to visit some out-of-state as well!). We were very impressed with this place. It was so pretty, the people were so nice, and the wine was delicious!


Inside the winery, we got a tour of their operation and then did a taste-testing. I think there were about 10 wines we tried (they had two or three dries, but the rest were either semi-sweet or sweet. They even had some blueberry wines. As the lady running our taste test said, "In the South, people love their sweet wines. It's because we're in the land of sweet tea and Coca Cola." I loved that!


I was also so excited to find out that the winery has blueberry picking times in the summer. "Pick Blueberries" is one of the things on my list of things to do this Summer, so I found a place to do it! yay!!

And a few more pretty pics of the winery...


We had a great time getting-away and some other highlights of the weekend included...
~ wandering aimlessly trying to find a covered bridge that we saw signs for. We thought it would be a great place to take pictures, but we never found the place!
~ not fighting kids for a place in bed!
~ watching what we wanted on tv!
~ having adult conversation!
~ realizing we need to do this even more often!

We ended the weekend by picking up the girls (minus McKenna, who was at her youth leadership conference. She had a great time, by the way!) from my parents' house. It was timed perfectly, because it was time to celebrate my brother's birthday...


And while I'm at Mom's house, I have to take pictures of her garden. (It changes every time I see it!) Look at the butterfly I caught in this one...

And this hydrangea...

And then Sydney had to put on a Dancing Show for us! It was priceless, to say the least...


We discovered that Dancing Contests were just one of the ways my parents entertained the kids (Sydney and Delaney, but also my two nephews) while they spent the night. They had limbo contests and scavenger hunts; swam at the pool and ate lots of ice cream...and, although Mom said Sydney said she "missed Mommy" on Friday night, she had too much fun otherwise!!

So, there you have it! Our weekend in a nutshell!

I hope your weekend was FANTASTIC and that you have a wonderful week ahead!