The 'Ei's Have It: Barns, Ballgames, and Bugs

I've said before how fortunate we feel to be a short 10-15 minutes from the country and a (sometimes not so-short) 10-15 minutes from the city. Loudoun County is a great location to enjoy the best of both worlds and these past two weeks, we did just that!

My parents came in for a visit and we kicked off their stay with dinner at an outdoor German Kielbasa restaurant in Leesburg (no pictures from that, we were all too busy with our pretzels, kielbasa, and German beverages). On Saturday, we headed out to Waterford for a strategically planned leg of the 2013 Loudoun County Farm Tour. The Farm Tour is a weekend when over 30 farms and maybe 20 wineries and breweries open up for visitors. The cousins hit the tour together (along with their parents and a very contented Grandmom and Grandpa Wintrode). First we visited a small local family farm with plenty of little animals to feed and pet and plenty of farm-hospitality as they grilled up hamburgers (made from their own beef) for all of their visitors.

Allie and Tim trying to wake-up 'Pig Pig,' the farm's 1,000lb pet pig.

The A-team (Allie and Alice) was glad to be together again.

Not exactly 'white as snow,' but you'll do quite nicely.

Little lambs at play.

If you look closely, you'll see a little bit of Suz and Jonathan in these struts.

Par for the course, Allie's jabbering about...something...and Alice is listening patiently before heading off to do something else.

Heeeerrreee, Pig Pig.

Don't worry, Daddy, I'm sure he'll fit in the Civic.

We probably could have stayed there all morning and been content, but about 5 minutes away in another part of town, the Alpacas were waiting...

We checked out all kinds of Alpacas.

Wooley ones...

Baby ones...

And even alien ones.

Good thing this fence and my Grandpa's leg are here to protect me!

Alpaca some smiles in too while we're at it...:o).

Speaking of smiles, you can't see them, but I'm pretty sure these two grandparents were in Grandparent Heaven.

Last on the Farm Tour was a trip to a local Winery/Brewery. We started at the winery and lasted long enough to lose count of the number of breakable glasses and headed quickly over to the brewery to complete our tour with local brews, BBQ, cupcakes, and room for the cousins to run.

This is the only side of hops Grandmom's interested in, the side with her grandkids strolling alongside her.

Grandmom and her brood.

Unfortunately, only a few days later, a stomach bug decided to take its own tour of one, Allison Kathleen Eicholtz. As I post, our little patient is fast asleep in her bed, which she asked to climb into and where she fell immediately asleep...a sure sign that something is definitely 'off' with our little night-owl. I stayed home with her on Thursday and Chris was off on Friday for some Allie-Daddy bonding.

If you look closely, you'll see the princess dress she insisted on wearing during a spurt of energy before she crashed on the couch.

I'm pretty sure we saw this pose in the ultrasound. Some things never change.

We thought we were in the clear the night before we had tickets with Grammy and Grandpop Shaiko to go to a Nats game on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, but the 72-hour virus (pegged by our doctor) seemed to be of the over-achieving sort and she was wiped out (or whiney) for most of the game. She did rally briefly throughout for a few snapshots and cheers, but mostly she was my little barnacle and slept through a nice outside dinner after the game. There are worse things :o). Hopefully this bug takes a hike so we can get back to normal and our girl can get some relief. All in all, though, it's been a great two weeks.