Anniversary #4

April 30th, 2009

While John's mom was here helping with Jonah, we celebrated our 4th anniversary. Suzanne was nice enough to take Jack for a couple days while John, (Jonah) and I went on a little get away.

For our 4th Anniversary we went to visit the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. This is the largest privately owned house in the United States covering 175,000 sq. feet and 250 rooms. It was built by George Washington Vanderbilt II (1862-1914), the youngest of the Vanderbilt family. After many summers of visiting his widowed mother in this area, he fell in love with the surroundings. His father left him with $5 million and decided to build this as his summer estate or otherwise known to him as, "little mountain escape"... ya, not so "little"

It has an indoor pool, 2 story library, beautiful art work and furniture, indoor bowling ally, excercise room , elevator, clocks, air-forces heating, fire alarms, intercom systems...(keep in mind, this house was built 1888-1895). Amazing for the turn of the 19th century.

G. Vanderbelt's idea in building this house was to replicate the "working estates of Europe" and sure enough, this is the closest we've felt to Europe since we were there in summer of 2007. It was gorgeous.
Jonah loved the baby bjorn.

75 acres of this 8000 acre property is made up of these beautiful gardens, winery, and farm. Look at that little bumblebee hard at work!
This garden was one of our favorites.
Interesting Fact: 2 years before he died of a heart attack immediately following an emergency appendectomy, George and his wife had tickets to passage on the Titanic. They didn't board due to a "premonition had by George's mother" but their luggage and their valet, Fred Wheeler, were already on board after the "premonition". Luggage and Fred were lost when the Titanic sunk in 1912.

There were green house type rooms full of all kinds of cool plants. This was the cactus room.

Jonah turned one month while we were there!

The beautiful pond on the property

Where they would come to "ponder the meaning of life"

John catching a candid!... Nothing like kissing the sweet smell of a newborn baby. I can't get enough! Oh I love him so much (4 weeks old).

A top view from one of the main gardens. There was a news reporter there advertising the Biltmore spring/flower festival. It was really fun to see in action. They did about 10 takes of the same simple phrase. Something along the lines of "I'm (NAME) here reporting at the Biltmore flower festival. Stay tuned during your 6pm news for more details of this spectacular get away...!" It was funny to see people trying to get on TV.

The flowers were incredibly beautiful!
We were 2 of the estimated 1 million tourist they get each year. The Vanderbilts still own the property and tradition still stands that to this day, all remaining descendants gather there for a very formal Christmas Eve dinner.


TOURING ASHEVILLE
We enjoyed the cute little town of Asheville. Loved the beauty, the homeless, and the hippies! There were rallys on the street corner wanting to bring "peace" back to America. Lots of pedestrians, bikers, tattoos, smelly armpits, natural/organic/yoga stores... etc. But then, you turn the corner and see this:

This was the high school in Asheville. Are you kidding me? I know my high school sure didn't look like that.

Even the McDonalds was hosh posh...
We ate dinner at this fantastic Thai place downtown, walked around for a little while, then got this icecream sunday to shared! It looks a lot better than it tasted.

PS We later found out that Jonah does not like Red Curry... It was a rough night...

This was the beautiful city hall in downtown Asheville.

This weekend get away quickly turned into an expensive one. On the way to Asheville lets just say that we learned a lesson the hard way... 24 miles over the speed limit in a construction zone is not very pretty on your credit card statement, or your insurance policy, or anything for that metter! Please learn from our mistake and DON'T SPEED IN CONSTRUCTION ZONES. The tickets are very expensive and so NOT worth getting your licence revoked... But, over all a wonderful trip and a very happy #4 anniversary! I love you sweety :-)