It’s beginning to look a lot like….

…I haven’t updated the blog in a good long time.

 

Oh… and Christmas.

Lights and Whatnot…

The above is part of a display at Pufferbellies toy store here in Staunton… pretty cool stuff….

Even if they didn’t use real gingerbread..

But, they are extremely detailed…..

So… Things have been a bit quiet here on the normal blog for a while.. there have been occasional posts over on the cooking blog… but things have been way too quiet on here…. basically, life has happened. I got a new job, Virginia has settled into her job… Maybe we can convince Virginia to hop on the blog and give some more details some time… I know I probably have tons of uploaded pictures that I haven’t said anything about yet… so… we’ll see… for now, it’s time for me to do some laundry, and get ready for work this week…

And then….

The weekend before last, Courtney, Ashley, and Josh came to visit all of the way from NC. … Unfortunately… I don’t have a ton of pictures… so. we’ll have to shoot from the hip.

Friday, Josh got here first. He needed a quick transmission flush, so a trip to Foreign Affairs and several hundred dollars later.. he was ready to roll again with a “Danger-Ranger” that was shifting nice and smooth again. I had a big pot of Chili going at home… so we ran back to the house, met up with Virginia… ate some Chili.. and headed out again. (For the interested folks.. the Chili is over on the cooking blog… ) We headed out to a wine tasting down at the wharf here in Staunton … For the record, there is no water near the wharf. … But the wine shop was really neat. It was in the bottom of a rather old building… HUGE timber frame members… and the fire suppression system was plumbed entirely in copper, complete with solder joints. I’d be interested to know what happens to solder joints in the event of a fire in a building full of alcohol.

Anyhoo. We walked around town with Josh.. then returned to the house to relax a bit before Courtney and Ashley got here. Since they were coming from Asheville, they got here to Staunton around 10:30… and we just sat and talked for a while before going to bed. Saturday morning, we all meandered out of bed… got ready to go… and hit Kathy’s for breakfast. Kathy’s is a local restaurant… really down-home Southern cooking. This translates to: they make an awesome breakfast. Virginia got “bacon waffles” … you might think that this would be a waffle, with a side of bacon. And you’d be wrong. This would be a waffle with chunks of bacon magically cooked into it. Uh-mazing.

We then hit downtown Staunton, and caught the tour “Trolley” around town. This was … interesting. The trolley had a “guide” that was narrating the trip, but it didn’t seem overly well rehearsed. The narration was either very fast, or lacking, depending on the speed of the bus. Special attention was paid to churches (apparently there are over 80 churches in Staunton). Special attention was NOT paid to hygiene  by the man who was sitting in front of us. I think he may have actually rubbed himself with dead mammals AND fish before boarding the bus. He then sat in the front seat, and opened his window. Of course he opened his window. If the latent smell wasn’t bad enough, we had to add movement and airflow to it. Since he was sitting in the front seat, we all got to share in this awesomeness. As an added bonus, at one point, he leaned out of the window to BARK at a woman on the street, who was walking her dog… in retrospect, he was probably barking at the dog… the woman was just collateral damage. So… Maybe I was too quick to judge the narrator of the trip… obviously, I wasn’t really paying attention.

After the trolley ride, we went into the Visitor’s Center, where Courtney could grab 3 copies of every pamphlet in the place. Normally, I would tae the rest of this paragraph to find some reason to make fun of her for reading all of the pamphlets in a town that she’s just visiting… but… she actually found something that we didn’t know about.. so… +10 points to Courtney. What was it that we found?? Finally picture time…

Those are brewing barrels. Apparently, here in Staunton we have an awesome little place called Queen City Brewing. Now, for those folks that live in “real” cities, it’s no big deal to have a brewery…But… this isn’t just a brewery… sure, they do make their own beers (quite a lot of them in fact)… and they do tastings…..

… with 12 beers on tap, and more in the back…. but, the kicker is: this place is like a Build-A-Bear workshop. Except replace Build with Brew, and Bear with Beer…. Yep. You go in there, you can make your own beer… spend about an hour and a half doing that, then come back in a few weeks (depending on brew time) to pick it up. Yeah. Beat that.

Our first trip there, we didn’t brew our own… but we did a tasting, and then bought a “pig” of beer. What’s a “pig” of beer?

This is a “pig” of beer. It’s 2.25 gallons, and it sells for right around $30… then, you have a tank of fresh frosty beer in the fridge…. there’s even a magical little bag inside that fills with air as you drink the beer out in order to keep the beer from going flat.

But, there was one HUGE flaw with the pig…. it just didn’t look right.. so… the girls got to work…

Some Crayons.. some construction paper… some tape….

We have the technology….

Petunia was born….

Curly tail and all… now.. it was truly a pig…

But it was a pig wit magical powers… a pig that could dispense cool refreshing beer.

So.. we had our pig.. we had good food… what else did we need?

Nothing. .. So. we sat around… talked… Courtney and Ashley played with the iPad… we watched some movies… then played some games… and just enjoyed the rainy weather inside…

The next morning, we started with some pound cake… then Josh took off to get back home… Courtney and Ashley stuck around for a little longer… so we went to Gypsy Hill Park…

The ladies fed the ducks….

We all rode the mini train….

 

For some reason… there were a bunch of children on the train… and they screamed every time we went through a tunnel… so… that was… loud… but… the train is really neat…

After the train ride, and the feeding of the ducks… Virginia posed the following question: “Do you guys want to walk around the park? or… We could go get some Gelato…” …. so.. of course, we went and got Gelato! … But then… it was time for Courtney and Ashley to head back to Asheville….

It was an awesome weekend… but it was over far too soon….

Picture update!

So.. we recently went to Northern VA … We were lucky to attend the wedding of Virginia’s prior room-mate in Richmond, Elise’s wedding!  I didn’t take any pics during the wedding or the reception really… but.. the day after, there was a brunch… with a petting zoo!!! so… we’ll use this are just to put out some pictures from the weekend’s wedding.

Oh yeah… the reception was on a river boat… on the Potomac.

I did much better with this boat than with the boat from our honeymoon… I didn’t feel sick at all… so.. that’s good.

This was actually a really cute scene… the dog and the cow were getting close, and sniffing at each other… but then, the cow would lunge forward towards the dog… the above shot shows the dog recoiling in fear.. with his crazy ears.

This is a male horse.. some itty bitty thing… unfortunately, they painted his hooves, and put glitter in his hair…. poor guy…

This is a “Skinny Pig”… which apparently is a Guinea Pig without fur.

 

Virginia with an Angora Rabbit… she’s thinking about making it into a sweater….

The bride and groom…. Elise and Jamie

 

Big Update. … AKA… I thought I already updated this blog several times.. and I didn’t.

I didn’t realize that this part of the blog hasn’t been updated in so long… so… let’s see… we’ll start off with some scenery of downtown…

So… you can see… Staunton is a very photogenic town… there are plenty of good looking old buildings… and lots of good spots to walk around..

My personal favorite, when Virginia drags me kicking and screaming out for a walk, is to go downtown to walk around. This is because the downtown is littered with cool little places to go grab a beer. So, walk for a few blocks…. stop in to the local Irish Pub for a beer… walk a bit more.. drop by a beer garden… walk a bit more…. what’s that you say? A free wine tasting? Well then.. we’ll be right in.

Also, we decided to try to take in some local fun in the area…. so, the above picture is from our short foray to the Churchville carnival. It was…. … … … interesting. Of course we didn’t grab the best parking.. and it started to rain as we were walking around… so we had to hide under the BINGO tent for a little while. That’s one drawback of hauling around the big camera all of the time.. it doesn’t like the weather, and it doesn’t stow easily when the bad weather does come…. I need to get my little camera back from my mom.. Anyhow… the carnival…. The carnival was a big change for us, because we haven’t been to a carnival back in this area for a long time. As far as carnivals in Southwest Virginia go, this one was nothing amazingly odd. However when you’re used to “Fairs” and whatnot in Boone that are full of the upper middle class folks that can actually afford to live in Boone, and their children in their outfits that make them look like they fell out of the J-Crew catalog….  the missing teeth, Gravedigger Monster Truck T-Shirts (With sleeves ripped off), and Confederate Flag hats of Southwest Virginia are a bit of a change….

Now… another scenic part of Staunton….

 

Purty ain’t it? Ok… one more from this location…

Yeah… it’s a cemetery. Specifically, it’s the Thornrose Cemetery here in Staunton. The place is HUGE.  We’ve gone here to walk around for a little bit…. it’s good for about an hour’s worth of walking if you take all of the various little paths around… and there’s some interesting stuff to see… some very old gravestones… a lot of civil war monuments…. I need to find out more about this place at some point… also, the clouds around here have been crazy lately… I don’t know what the deal is… but it’s like I haven’t seen clouds for years… the clouds around here tend to amaze me on a near daily basis.

This isn’t so much a cloud shot… or related to what I was talking about… but… it’s a shot of one of the downtown theaters…. there are two of them downtown… both are pretty old and historic….

Farmer’s Market and lake trip!

So… we just got back from a busy weekend.. but it was a good one… We started off with a trip to the Staunton farmer’s market….

We weren’t sure what to expect… and honestly, we’ve been a bit spoiled with the Boone farmer’s market… but… it was pretty awesome…

 

There were flowers, plants, eggs, meats, cheeses… it’s pretty damn amazing…. We picked up some veggies.. Virginia got some fresh tomatoes, some basil… and we got some home-made fresh mozzarella … and some home-made fresh ricotta… we took out freshly acquired fresh goodies… hopped back in the car, and headed to the lake to met up with the Oliver folks….

Good times were had at the lake…

A short break-down…. Virginia made bruschetta… I made ravioli… with a little help from Erin…

 

I went swimming with my phone in my pocket… we went out and played on a boat… all in all… a good time….