Chris' Birthday Dinner...

For Chris' Birthday I planned a surprise weekend get-away to explore the area in VA near us. I settled on Mineral, VA as they had several Christmas Tree farms where you could choose and cut your own Christmas Tree and it was only about 2.5 hours away. In addition I found this lovely historic Inn called the Littlepage Inn that was a plantation in the 1800 and is still owned by the same family today. On top of that loveliness I reserved us a 2 hour horseback riding trip in St. Anna's National park. If you would like to view pictures of all these activities see Chris' blog.

For Chris Birthday dinner, however, I made reservations at Pomme french restaurant in Gordonsville, VA about 1/2 hour away from Mineral on the recommendation of the Inn owner. What a fantastic reservation. The town of Gordonsville was lovely with Main St. all lit up for Christmas. There were many antique and quaint looking shops that we would have liked to explore had we more time, however, we were satisfied with our experience at Pomme.

They had an extensive wine cellar and the specials for the night were lovely and complimented our meal perfectly.

Chris and I were seated at a lovely table near this mural of an apple orchard, which was fitting since Pomme translates to apple in English. The decor was lovely and welcoming, the service was attentive, but not over powering, the food was nice and overall we would go back.

Two satisfied customers!

Happy Birthday Chris!

Facial Fun...

After another night of games...I believe it was Catan or Skip-Bo this time...but really who can keep track, Carl, Chris and I started talking about weird things we could do with our faces. Inevitably the stories started rolling out about the crazy faces we used to play around with in our youth. These were two my brothers, friends and I used to do in elementary school.

WARNING: This next set of pictures is not PC, so if you are faint of heart turn back now!

When I was in elementary school the fun thing to do was "Chubby." The whole series isn't captured here, but basically the story goes like this:

"Hi my name is Chubby! I'm Chubby, my dad is chubby, my mom is chubby and my brother's chubby too. One day my brother says to me, "hey Chubby you want to go for a ride on my motorcycle?" So I say sure. We started riding on his bike and I said, "Faster, faster!" My brother asked, "Are you sure?" So I said sure (pull hands back on face to stretch the skin tight) and it went so fast!

Then came my O'Connor family's "scary face". When my brothers and I were little we used to do all sorts of crazy face contortions. This is one I remember my parents showing us. My hands were so little at the time that it was difficult for me. As you can see, it's not difficult anymore...just a little disturbing!

Kate comes to visit...again!

Kate came to visit for an evening to celebrate the end of two long and rewarding years of earning her Master's in Occupational Therapy at VCU in Richmond.

We celebrated by putting on some very large pants...

So large, in fact, that two grown women could fit into them with plenty of room to spare!