Outdoors, and Weekend Get-Away for Jim's Birthday

This weekend, Jim left work early on Friday and it was a great day to do it!  It was perfecly sunny and in the 70s.

We went to Lake Johnston in Raleigh, about 8 miles from our house.  There is a 3 mile paved trail around part of the lake (and a 6 mile trail around the entire lake).

We took Kylie with us too

She loved all the ducks/geese at the edge of the lake!  Despite Colleen being 7.5 months pregnant, and trail having some moderate steep hills along the edge of the lake, she made it with little trouble!

Saturday morning we headed down to Charlotte for a quick weekend get-away for Jim's birthday (His birthday was Thursday the 18th).  Before we headed out we had a bagel at Panera by our house, outside of the store here is how Colleen looks at 31 weeks pregnant:

Colleen googled things to do in Charlotte and found a a park called the Airport Overlook Park

She knew Jim was a geek who likes planes so she made a picnic and took him there for lunch!

We took our fold-out chairs and set them up and watched the planes landing/taking off.

The skyline in the distance was visible too

Most people like to take a picture of themselves with their feet proped up and the ocean/beach in the background.  Well, Jim liked to take the picture of a plane landing, the control tower, and the skyline in the distance!  That's his version of paradise!

That night we went to The Palm for dinner.  They send you a gift certificate for a free 3 pound lobster for your birthday (a $65 dollar value!), so we used that and ordered steak and sides.  Jim joked how nice it was to have his dinner served on a silver platter:

He also liked that they put a bib on you to eat the lobster

We stayed a nice Marriott Ressnissance (Thanks Dan!) and enjoyed swimming in the pool, and hanging out near a fire pit.

Sunday we drove back and were reminded of reality, we had to mow our lawn for the first time this year as part of it were growing high!

St Patrick's Day Parade, Landscaping, Spring blooms

We started off this weekend by walking the neighborhood and checking out some of the spring colors blooming on the trees.  Our favorites are the dogwoood trees that are in full bloom all over town.

We also saw some red bud trees:

Then we headed downtown to the St Patrick's Day Parade:

They had everything from Irish Dancers:

To sword fighting Irishmen:

The NC State U band that is going to Dublin this week for their parade:

Our favorite though was the Golden Retreiver Rescure Organization:

We then had lunch on an outdoor patio at a restaurant in the City Market area (Jim had a Guinness that he loved!), and headed to Moore Square and listened to some bands play, and Jim was jealous of the little trains that the kids got to ride on:

The rest of the weekend we spent some time landscaping.  We bought some mulch and landscape edging and spruced up the tree area near our driveway.  The edging was made of recyled plastic bottles, and the mulch was a red that we thought would play well off the brick house.  It also helped give us a nice defined edge to mow around this summer:

Jim built a raised garden bed 4' x 8' for Colleen to grow her vegetables in.  We also used some top soil to fill in some of the low spots in our yard that fill up with rain water puddles

Colleen is going to plant some vegetables this week.  We both can't wait to eat home grown vegetables like we did last summer!