September Days

Not much has been going on here in the Kestner household. I turned 30 on Wednesday and had a lovely day at Grove Park with a mani/pedi and also got to enjoy the facilities there. My treatments came with a glass of champagne that relaxed me right up and I got a rose in celebration of my birthday. I enjoyed a nice ($20, gah) salad for lunch poolside and spent the day napping and reading a book. It was lovely. After that, Dillon grilled up a mean ribeye steak for each of us and surprised me with a new crock pot! I've used that crock pot probably 5 times already, I love it!

Dillon and Luke have been working on Luke's Halloween costume. Luke decided that he wanted to be a fireman and so I've bought the hat and the coat and Dillon's building an awesome firetruck out of a diaper box. Luke has been an awesome helper and they've tried to work on it some in the evenings after work.

This weekend, Dillon's been sick with a bad sore throat and stopped up nose. Since he hasn't felt well, we've stayed around the house mainly and cleaned a little here and there. We haven't even gone out to eat this weekend which is REALLY unusual for us. HA. We did get to shop at the new Ingles right down the road from us. Super exciting, I know.

 Luke's really into Curious George right now and he likes to ask to watch "Monkey George". We read books every night about Curious George, Dinosaurs, and Pickles the Fire Cat.  He's really a lot of fun right now and his conversation skills are great. He likes to talk on the phone and he always asks "How you doin', mama?" Most nights I hear his little feet running into our room, but sometimes he sleeps through the night in his room. If we could just figure out how to get him to sleep in past 6:30 on the weekends, that would be great.

Me and Fireman Luke!

What Luke's doing right now...

Working on the Fire Truck!

Hanging out after my spa day... 30's not that bad, right?

My manicure! (Which is already chipped, haha)

Luke and his boots. He likes to talk about those boots ALL. THE. TIME. :)

And a picture of Luke before school one day. I loved his little outfit so much I had to get a picture.

September Fun

We got back to work this week and, as usual, the four day week felt almost longer than a regular work week.

We were looking forward to a fun weekend ahead and the Mountain Song Festival on Saturday. I had seen that one of the bands I really enjoy was playing at this event and it promised to be family friendly. I thought it would be fun to go and listen to music. It also touted "lots of food" and "arts and crafts" booths. I bought lawn tickets and thought we could basically picnic while listening to music.

We arrived and it wasn't quite what I thought it would be. The "lawn" seats were outside of a covered amphitheater so it wasn't easy to actually see the band and the acoustics were terrible. We decided to try out one of the four food tents (there wasn't an abundance as I thought it would be) and we paid almost $30 for the measliest barbecue dinner I've ever had. The tipping point was $4 thimble sized ice creams and when they had people standing at the trash containers having to explain why you can't throw away materials that can be recycled. I'm all for sustainability but when you have to employ staff to stand at the recycle bins to explain where you need to put your refuse, it's a little much. Maybe Dillon and I were too grumpy yesterday, but we just weren't feeling it. We stayed for an hour and caught the trolley back to Oskar Blues Brewery where we had parked.

An interesting thing did happen on our way back though... Our nice trolley driver was trying to make it on very tight roads, roads that were made even tighter by people parking illegally so they didn't have to walk further up to the festival. Our driver took a tight corner and *crunch* the trolley hit a car. We thought he had hit a pot hole, but he even got out to look and didn't see any damage. Only until we got to downtown Brevard and the police officer pulled us over and said "You know you hit a car back there!" I felt bad for the trolley driver as he was the nicest man, but the police officer was very nice to him and even let Luke look around his police car.

We tried to salvage the evening by listening to live music at Oskar Blues and just relaxing. It was probably the best part of Saturday.

Today was much better and relaxing. We spent the morning getting groceries and supplies to make a fire truck for Luke's Halloween. Luke had caught me earlier this week researching how to make a firetruck out of a cardboard box and I had promised we would work on it this weekend. Every morning this week, he woke up asking "Build a firetruck today?!" So now we have a red cardboard box with suspenders. Dillon's working on the wheels and hopefully we'll finish it soon!

Dillon took me shopping for my birthday at the outlets this evening and we got some good food at Marcos this evening. We felt much more relaxed and at least we know that next year the Song of the Mountain Festival just isn't for us.

My 30th birthday is coming up Wednesday. I'm looking forward to welcoming my 30's with Luke and Dillon and taking a day off work. Here's to my last weekend of my twenties!

How I felt about the whole ordeal...

Our view...

We did see this!

And a beautiful sunset when we got home.

Labor Day 2015

We are back from a jaunt down to Georgia to visit my parents. We left on Thursday night after work and drove the 6ish hours arriving around 11:00. This weekend we enjoyed some really good food, good times catching up, a few hours at the beach and many hours at the pool.

Luke still doesn't favor the beach and while he'll play in the sand, that's about all he wants to do. We did that on Friday morning and the rest of our days we spent at the pool right down the sidewalk from my parents' condo. It was much more relaxing and pleasant. Every afternoon, around 1:00, we all took a siesta and napped/relaxed for a couple of hours. It was really great.

Now we're back! Work starts up tomorrow and there's laundry to be done. This weekend we have the Mountain Song Festival in Brevard and *gulp* my 30th birthday is next week. I'm taking the day off for some relaxation and alone time so I'm really looking forward to that. Happy long weekend everyone!

For some reason, blogspot has put my pictures out of order, but this was at dinner at Mullet Bay on Saturday night. 

Maw and Pepaw!

Switching glasses with dad...

Feeding turtles, fish and ducks. The highlight of Luke's trip!

Some of the turtles we saw.

Color study of the bark on the tree... how many colors can you count?

We took the camera to the beach the morning we went and then the battery died. We got only a few pictures. :P

He loved this little chair!

Luke is an expert at "Forrest Gumping" his pictures.