The Accidental Boilermaker

Today Nate and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary!  We started it off with an 8 mile round-trip hike up to McAfee's Knob.  It's the most photographed spot on the Appalachian Trail.  The neat thing is the trail head is not even 5 minutes away from our house.  It was a pretty decent hike, but the view was definitely worth the work. Afterward we saw Moonrise Kingdom which we both really enjoyed.  It's this whimsical story that makes you remember when you were young and searching for that one person who understood you and would accept you for you.  Go see it if you haven't already. Finally, for dinner we went to The Homeplace, which is just a mile from our house.  The Homeplace is a popular restaurant for AT hikers, but it must be popular for everyone because it was packed when we got there. Everything is family style and the only choice you have is what type of meat you want.  Everything was really good and the best part was our mea...

Nate rescued two goats yesterday (all his learning is paying off).  One little goat escaped and Nate knew how to grab it by its horns in order to lead back into the pasture.  I helped by opening the gate.  Then after dinner we hear a goat crying absolute bloody murder.  It got it's head stuck in the fence.  So Nate helped set it free.  You can watch my dad performing a similar act of good will here . Also we got our first true visitor yesterday!  My good friend's mom stopped by on her way back home to Richmond after visiting family in West Virginia.  We also went to the Catawba farmer's market where Nate got some local (like just up the road from us) bacon.

Nate's been pretty busy since we moved to Virginia. In addition to working on that dissertation, he has been bug proofing the house and learning all he can about goat farming. Today he mowed the lawn and found a huge snake. He also found some time to relax and play his guitar. I swept like the whole house and then was going to clean some windows but we didn't have any windex. Oh well, they're not going anywhere. An update on the garden or should I say mystery garden. We don't know what variety of tomato plants (they were volunteer plants from my cousin's garden) or pepper plants (we got them free from a store in Salem and forgot to ask) we planted. Just adds to the fun : )

The adventure has begun! We've been in Virginia just over a week now. It's been kind of fun just me and Nate, neither of us working, having the time to unpack and explore. That will change of course. Nate starts at the VA hospital July 30th and hopefully I will find a job soon but in the meantime we are trying to enjoy this time. We got our garden up and running. It is so nice having a garden in our backyard (it's nice having a backyard!) And we are making friends with our neighbors, the goats. It's really fun to help feed them in the morning.