West Virginia

We had our first family getaway last weekend to take in the waters in West Virginia. We started out by meeting my mom and aunt in Farmville, VA to visit the Greenfront wharehouse for rugs. Our floors are getting battered by the baby and construction and our tenants probably don’t appreciate Charlie’s evening exercises (he does the indoor 40 in which he races up and down the hallway at night, usually screaming “ahhhhhhh” as loud as he can). Of course we PLANNED to take off Thursday night at 8pm, but Carlos showed up at 10pm and - need I say - hadn’t packed yet. So we go on the road at 11pm and found our way to Farmville around 2am. I had booked a bed and breakfast which is about the worst idea when traveling with an 19 month old. The house creaked like crazy and the walls were old and thin so any baby noise traveled widely. All of this meant that we ended up not-so-cozy all together in an old queen bed. On Friday we somehow managed to spend 6 HOURS(!) looking through rugs. Poor Charlie was exhausted - here he is on a pile of rugs.



From there we went to the Greenbriar which was hysterical. It is an over the top resort in West Virginia which was converted to an army hospital during WWII and then reverted back to a hotel under the design auspices of Dorothy Draper. Think big floral patterns, bright colors and stripes. But in the end we had a great time - Charlie loved being able to run around the hotel and it's seemingly endless network of hallways and staircases. Everyone was so nice about having a young child (except the casino staff...). His absolute favorite was listening to the live music. While he like the pianist at tea time, he really like the band on Saturday night. He clapped his hands and danced and at the end of each song he would scream "Bravo!" A group of older ladies were dancing to the music and their boring husbands wouldn't join them so they turned to invite Charlie to join. He stared at them and then ran over to put his head in my lap embarassed. His second favorite thing was drinking from the water fountain and then came the carpeted staircase. His least favorite thing was the gun club where Carlos and I shot skeet. It was my first time shooting and wow - I thought I had strong arms but that gun is really heavy. I didn't even get through my 25 shots. Of the 10 or so I took I only hit that target 2 times.

Here are some photos of Charlie enjoying the Greenbriar, our trip to the range and the official family portrait from our stay(!).