Zombie Love

In response to Ian's Monster Truck Valentine's Day extravaganza, I decided to knit him something lovely in return. Since Ian loves zombies (especially Left 4 Dead, lately), and I love Ian, I made him this knitted zombie. Ain't love grand?

Monster Truck Valentine's Day

Oh my boyfriend is so romantic. Valentine's Day fell on Ian's weekend this year, and he chose....Monster Truck Jam. Only southwest Virginia's finest made it to this event. We had no idea what to expect. Well, its a lot of big trucks running over little cars and pretending to race each other very short distances. We decided once in a lifetime is probably plenty. Unfortunately, the lighting in the arena was not the best for pictures, so here are the non-blurry ones we got.

All the monster trucks

Crushing Cars!!! In the air!!!

Reaching for the Star

The weather was ideal this weekend and we had to get outside. I searched through a million websites trying to find an intermediate level hike that was less than 5 miles long. I was sold when I learned that we could hike to the top of Mill Mountain and see the Roanoke Star (here's the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_Mountain_Star). The Roanoke Star is this giant structure that sits atop a hill that looks over the city of Roanoke. It kind of reminds me of that Jesus statue that looks over Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, but a little less awesome. So we climbed to the top, took lots of pictures, and can't wait to share them with you.

My hand drawn map. Good to have just in case.

Our destination from kind of far away. Not a great pic, but hey, we were in the car. Give us a break

Ian excited to go hiking again. Can't you tell?

Half way there.

The Star!

The description!

The view!

An alternate view!

Ian city-gazing

A much deserved water break before we head back down

So hopefully the weather stays nice enough to keep up the outdoorsy stuff for a while. I will warn you that next weekend (valentine's day, remind you) is Ian's weekend, and he is talking up some Monster Truck Rally event. It may be a Valentine's Day to remember (or forget). See you then!

Bacon's Hydroponics

Remember that indoor growth system I got for Ian for Christmas? Well...it works awesome. We are growing basil, savory herb, and some stock flowers for starters. Tonight we harvested a little basil and made some pasta sauce with it. Delicious. I'm taking a crop physiology class this semester, and I always come home and try to identify different parts of the plants growing and what kinds of roots they have and blah blah...pretty lame I know. You can even grow tomatoes and jalapenos in this thing if you buy the right kit, I'm recommending it. Very cool at home activity. I'll leave you with a picture, of course.

Basil on the left, flowers in the back, savory on the right.

Busted plans

We knew that on Sunday of this weekend it was going to be nice, I'm talking like 60 degrees. So we planned on sitting around for most of the day on Saturday and catching a fancy orchestra trio show on Saturday night. We got all dolled up, cooked a fancy dinner and wine, headed to the show and....they were sold out. We were bummed but we went home and had a movie night and it turned out to be not so bad.

We had to get outside on Sunday because the weather was, as promised, about 60. We went to the good ol' Huckleberry Trail, as we often do, because we knew it would otherwise be muddy and gross anywhere else. Neit managed to stick his head in burrs immediately, but they were easy to remove, so no haircut this time. Neit was so excited and the trail was so crowded that it was difficult to contain him. He lunged at every dog we passed, and we passed a lot of dogs. I'm glad we got our outdoor adventure in before the weather got cold again. As of right now, its snowing here. Such is life.

Da Trail

Neits new burrs

Restraining Neit from pouncing on dogs

Gorge along the trail

Return to the great outdoors...kind of...

The weather was so nice on Friday. Upper 50's. It got us all fired up to get back outside and do some hiking. So Saturday we woke up and it was, well, cold. And I had big plans for hiking. So we waited. We waited for it to warm back up. It didn't happen. I was so sad that we didn't do anything that I had to get us doing something. So we had a game night. How about some Jenga. So today I wasn't waiting around for it to warm up again. Unfortunately, I didn't get any warmer that 40, so we decided to stay close to home and walk the Huckleberry trail up until it hit the VT campus, then loop through campus and back to our car. So not the most exciting weekend we've had, but we did get outside and get a few miles in. Plus, Neit got to go to Petsmart when we were done, and he got a bath today too. We are all pretty tired and happy with our weekend, even if we didn't get to go to a cool new hiking spot.

Waiting, waiting, waiting for it to warm up outside. But it just didn't happen :(

Game Night! Pouring some wine...

Whoa did you see that action shot of the wine pouring? Let's get a close up...

Intense Jenga moment

Here is a shot from our walk today. Not a great one, but here is the campus from a distance

Science Museum

We try to alternate weekends when it comes to who gets to decide what we want to do. Ian stole my idea for next week and took us to the science museum in Roanoke. This was again an activity that is aimed toward little kids, but we learned all kinds of stuff anyway. The museum also has a planetarium that they use to play IMAX type movies, and we caught a pretty cool flick about Africa, the Serengeti, narrated by James Earl Jones. Pretty epic. We took lots and lots of pictures, and here are the ones I think sums up our museum visit best.

The first exhibit they had consisted of a lot of cool rocks. Jarad would have been jealous.

Ian with a big rock

How about this giant mouth? Better be careful before you get....

swallowed! (see me back there?)

They had quite a few mammoth fossils.

And an exhibit with a bunch of sea creatures. Here's a hermit crab.

Ian was playing with some magnetic forces before I made him pose for a picture, and then he stopped doing anything and you can't really tell what is going on here.

I got to forecast some weather. "Theres some big ol' lightening going on over here"

And here I'm waiting for our Africa movie to start.

Fun and educational. Sounds like an Ian and Karleigh type of day. I get to pick next week's fun adventures, so make sure you check back in and see what we're doing!