8.8.08 Beijing

Say what you will about lead paint, but China can do a seriously impressive Olympic opening ceremony. Ben loves the Olympics and has been humming the Olympic theme for the last few weeks. I have to admit it's a little exciting (the games, not his humming).

Here he is enjoying the opening ceremony, sporting the Olympic hat that has been sitting in our closet since we bargained for it in Tiananmen Square four years ago, just waiting for 8.8.08.

The photo shoot.

I thought it would be fun to do a photo shoot with Emma and Amelia before Emma moved. My friend Jill took some fabulous photos of the girls. (To see more of her beautiful photography, click here.) I had a hard time narrowing the selection down, but here are a few of my favorites. Well, maybe more than a few.

Emma and Amelia











Amelia and Elsa

Weekly shout-out.

This week's shout-out goes to Sprecher Root Beer. Straight from the brewing capital itself, this root beer is the best (and I'm not just saying that because I'm from Wisconsin). If you live around here, you can find Sprecher at the Dairy Godmother.

This post courtesy of "The Post"

Every week the Washington Post publishes a "Road Trip" suggestion that covers different themes all over the area. I usually read these and then cut them out in hopes of attempting them on some free weekend in the future. As it turns out, free weekends are hard to come by. A few weeks ago though, a road trip really caught my eye (See the Forest for the Treehouses in Pennsylvania) and on Friday, we drove a few hours to the Delaware Valley in Pennsylvania to try it out. For anyone who lives around here, I highly recommend this one. One of the great things about this road trip was the lack of crowds in rural PA.

Our first stop was the Tyler Arboretum. There was this fabulous exhibit of 17 unique tree houses that had been designed and built by local architects and artists. The Arboretum itself was beautiful to walk around, and it was an added bonus to climb a few tree houses along the way.

Even Amelia was brave enough to climb into this tree house that was suspended by cables.






Amelia keeping the eggs warm in this giant nest.


This was the "Scared Silly" tree house. Amelia is sitting on a little mouse that scared this elephant right up into a tree.


This tree house was called "Hanging Out" and was a grove of trees strung with hammocks. It was one of our favorites.



The birdhouse tree house.


There was also a beautiful butterfly house full of flowers and, well, butterflies.

Before...

and after.


Our next stop was Linvilla Orchards. They had a great market with lots of delicious fresh fruits and veggies, as well as a bakery with home-made pies that looked so good. You could pick your own fruit and peaches were available when we were there. Amelia was pretty exhausted and it was really hot outside so we decided to just buy some peaches in the market. (We would later learn that Amelia was actually sick and had a fever.)


We made a quick stop at the most fashionable greenhouse I've ever seen. Terrain at Styers is a new garden center/greenhouse cafe/landscaping service owned by Urban Outfitters. It was really beautiful.


Our final stop was Longwood Gardens. We will definitely be making a return trip. These gardens were amazing and much larger than we imagined. We ran out of time and daylight. There are several different gardens and fountains and the largest conservatory I have ever seen containing some amazing flowers and plants. We were just in awe as we wandered through the gardens and the conservatory. There were also some amazing tree houses on display here.




Amelia and camel at the Italian water garden.


On the trail through the meadow.



The topiary garden. Fabulous.


This tree house was made to resemble a Norwegian church. It smelled really good too.




This was an adirondack-style tree house. These massive trees were growing right up through the roof.



The Birdhouse.


This was part of the Children's Garden inside the conservatory which was so great. There were all kinds of water features for kids to play in. (Most of the fountains throughout the main gardens have strategically-placed flower beds surrounding them to keep people out.) We need to take Amelia back when she is feeling better because she loves playing in fountains. She often requests to go to the garden center at Lowes just to play in the display fountains.


Amelia trying so hard to enjoy the fountains despite her sickness.


Inside the conservatory...who knew you could grow flat nectarine trees.


The illuminated fountain show, set to Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony.

Deep fried demolition!

On a whim, we decided to head out to a county fair last night to check out a demolition derby and enjoy some food and various livestock (and food made from livestock). The fair was in Loudon County out in the country and it was so beautiful there.


As soon as we entered the fairgrounds, there was an immediate smell of things being fried. We tried the fried cheesecake and it was exactly as you would imagine. We didn't attempt the fried bologna sandwiches or the fried pickles.


There was a corn on the cob eating contest and a petting zoo and a lot of big trucks.



Amelia was just barely tall enough to ride the little roller coaster and we had a good laugh watching her get whiplash. She was loving it, we swear.


Please note the scary looking ride operator in the background. Most of the ride operators looked like this guy. We were pretty sure they picked them up off the street somewhere.


And who doesn't love a good demolition derby? Good fun for the whole family. They even had a special "heat" with just minivans.