July Stories: Jimmy, Jefferson and Peaches

As I've said many times before, this summer has been awesome.

After my husband's parents left, (check out details of their visit here and here), my parents came into town!

I wrote about their grand train entrance and the first few days of their visit in my post "it's been a while".

SO! Jumping right in where I left off, this is the story of our very full house.

July 12th, my aunt and cousin came into town. They were coming so that Madi could see Liberty, and also to spend some time with us and in Washington D.C.!

It was so fun to have them at our table.
(And we were really glad that we got this bigger table!)

We have a super good-looking family.

On Friday, they had a tour of the campus. So I went off to work, and everyone else kept themselves busy at the house, or around campus.
That night, mom made her famous (and one of my absolute favorite meals) chicken enchiladas.
We thoroughly enjoyed those, and then decided it was time to introduce them to Caribbean Snow.

(If you don't know what Caribbean Snow is, then you obviously don't read my blog. So hop to it.)

Side Story: When Paul and Rhonda were here, we took them to Carib Snow. Rhonda ordered a Kiwi and White Coconut by my suggestion, and I ordered the same thing, with ice cream in the middle. The man erroneously put ice cream in Rhonda's as well....she was not happy about that. Until she tasted it. Now I'm pretty sure she craves it daily.
:) 

Okay, now I need some Snow, stat. This is the worst part about blogging around lunch time.
It's almost always about food.

To save my stomach further grumblings until Dusty gets here for lunch, I'll talk about the butterflies!
Earlier this summer, our apartment complex traded out our plain bushes for some flowers and other plants. Everyone's front yard area looks so summery and bright.
For some reason, our two yellow-flowered bushes were particularly attractive to the butterflies.
They were packed full of them!
Of beautiful butterflies!

"I'm a beautiful butterfly!"

Anyway. We had a lot of fun looking at them all, flying around and landing on the flowers.
It was really pretty.
We had fun catching them, as well!

They stayed around for weeks, only around our bushes. Not really sure why, but it was definitely a fun sight every day, leaving and coming home to our lovely winged friends.

On Saturday, we had a whole day planned.
The six of us headed up to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's plantation in Charlottesville.
We had been there before with Dusty's parents (during my birthday month when they came to visit), so we were looking forward to visiting again.

He was a handsome fellow, although a bit bronzed.

If you ever have the chance to go to Monticello, you should.

It's absolutely beautiful.

It's obvious why he would have preferred to spend all day, every day at that plantation than anywhere else in the world.

There's no photography allowed in the house itself, but we took the tour and were able to walk through his halls, rooms, library, and even his bedroom, where he died.
The house is beautiful, expertly designed by Jefferson.

You can see how clever he was, and how entranced he was by time and weather.

The back side of the house:

We spent a good amount of time around Monticello, touring the grounds, taking pictures, visiting his grave and wandering around the gift shop and museum by the visitor's center.
It was pretty warm out, but we had a really great time.

On our way to Monticello, we had seen a sign saying "Fresh Peaches".
My mom's favorite fruit!
So, as we drove down the windy road down the mountain, we took a left at that sign and headed up to who-knows-where in search of fresh peaches.

Looky there!

Sometimes, that long and winding road leads you right to a peach market.

 I think mom was in heaven.

Needless to say, we lived on peaches for the next few weeks.

They had everything! Peach cider, peach dressing, peach butter, peach salsa, peach barbecue sauce...
The list goes on and on.
We had a lot of fun wandering through their store, ooh-ing and aah-ing at everything we wanted.
We settled on a little bit of everything, grabbing some peach donuts as well.

What a worthy little stop. We were glad we had made the trek up the hill. Even just for the view!

Afterwards, we piled back into the car...
(Oh and PS, Dusty rode in the trunk the whole way there and back. Not an actual trunk, but the little back door slot of the medium-sized car....don't tell any police officers you may know. The car only sat 5, so we had to improvise. He was alright. Really.)

We were excited (dad was really excited) to be going back to Jimmy's on the James that night for dinner.
It was his last night with us, so it was important that we go somewhere great.
And while we did take my parents a few other places, (including The Crown, which has the most amazing wine parfaits) their love could not be swayed to anyone but Jimmy.
(Despite the fact that dad kept calling it "Jimmy on the John", which doesn't have quite the same meaning.)

Such a fun place!
Everyone's food was amazing. We all split some desserts, and, despite the smutty waitress, had a lovely evening.

Smutty: adj: smut-ti-er, smut-ti-est: cruddy: characterized by obscenity. Soiled with smut. Grimy; indecent or obscene. 
Ex: That smutty girl is wearing leggings as pants. 
Ex: That waitress that bends over to show her gleaming backside is the smuttiest of them all.

I don't have anything against waitresses, skirts, leaning, cleaning, or smiling.
But when the waitress is oblivious, the skirt is short, the leaning and cleaning is extensive, and the booty is out, then that smiling waitress starts to bug me.

Madi and I were staring, unable to rip our eyes away. Like a car crash.
I wanted to tell her. I really, really wanted to tell her.
Casually walk by and say, "Excuse me, lassy, your skirt is too short. So much so, that your tush is making an appearance like the bad encore of a terrible concert".
At every slight movement, her skirt would whisk up. To be fair(ish) it was way shorter in the back than the front, but even so, the skirt was too short to begin with. How could she not know? 

I felt like I was at a show in Vegas.
That I did not want to pay for.


It's moments like those that make me wish society was more concerned with the truth than with being "nice", or not hurting anyone's feelings...like those poor people on American Idol that have been told they have amazing singing voices all of their lives.

Anyway...

After waddling home in happiness, we plopped down and decided to watch an episode or two of So You Think You Can Dance. We were pretty far behind, so we were trying to catch up.
My dad and Dusty ran to the store, to get the cable that would allow us to hook our computer up to our TV.

While they were out, dad went and grabbed me Starbucks and THIS:

The best parting gifts ever. We had been talking about this movie earlier in the week, and I still can't believe I own it now. I can watch it whenever I want. Except not really, because Dusty still refuses to watch it.
I suppose you had to grow up with it.
Otherwise it may seem a little weird.

Dusty and I had nursery duty at church the next day, so we went while the rest of the gang hung out at home and prepared lunch.
It was our first time in the nursery rotation, so we were slightly nervous!
I wish I could have taken pictures of all of the cuties. To respect the privacy of them and their parents, I decided not to, since I didn't have express permission. But we had a blast. We were with the really little ones, and one little girl didn't want to be anywhere but my lap.
She latched onto me for dear life! I spent the entire time in the rocking chair, talking to her and just hanging out. She did not want to talk to Dusty. Haha! Every time he came close and tried to say anything she burrowed her face into my shoulder.
He was a little offended but I think she's just a one-person-at-a-time kind of gal.

That afternoon, we took dad to the airport and had to say adios!
Which is never fun to say.

Love my parents!
Luckily, my mom was staying for another two weeks, so it helped ease the pain of a slowly-but-surely emptying household.

The Harrises were set to leave the next day, so we enjoyed our last night by going to an especially adorable part of downtown Lynchburg.
The Craddock Terry Hotel!

It's a hotel dedicated entirely to the theme of shoes.
Thus, the giant red high heel on the side of the building.

It used to be an old shoe factory, and now is a super cute hotel. Every room has a different shoe on the door, and the lobby is filled with old-fashioned shoe polish stations, a shoe-filled gift shop, and books and art about shoes. It's pretty great!

Madi and Terri were able to get a few souvenirs...
Especially since my aunt is a teacher and is contemplating a shoe theme for her classroom! She found a bright red high-heel door-stopper!

Afterwards, we went down the road a little to Waterstone Pizza, our favorite pizza joint in the area.
We finished off our meal with their home-brewed root beer floats!

The rest of the evening consisted of us four girls downstairs laughing hysterically and talking inappropriately, while Dusty was upstairs trying to study. I doubt he was able to do so very effectively, but we sure were having a blast!
It was really sad saying bye to Madi and Terri the next day...the house seemed oddly empty and quiet when I came home from work that day. But, we were really excited to have mom for two more weeks.
Two weeks of peaches, laughter, reading, and happiness.

:)

In love,
Cait