Alora & Brittan Home For Spring Break

Next week is Maxwell & Zara's Spring Break, but last week was Alora & Brittan's. Cara was at the AAAAI conference in San Diego, so I drove up to Virginia to pick them up with Maxwell and Zara. The girls' dorm closed at 10AM Saturday, so it was an over-the-night drive after work Friday. After picking them up we headed over to Afton, VA, where a 5K was fortuitously scheduled at Cardinal Point Winery. This was my first winery run since running between Napa and Sonoma (well, half of the half) in 2006. I ran a respectable 27:49 and then enjoyed tasting some wine afterward, at Cardinal Point, of course, and then nearby Vertias. Both have matured since I was last there in 2008, although I was saddened by the lack of unblended Viognier, which I had felt was one of the Monticello AVA's standouts back then. Then we headed back to Tennessee with an obligatory stop for dip dogs along the way. We stopped in Knoxville, saw the Löwens, and finally got our house there rented to a nice Norwegian post-doc and his family. Ironic for Vaagslandhuset, no? Cara was gone at the conference until Wednesday and the weather brought time off school for Maxwell and Zara as well. This lead to a nearly nonstop two-day LAN party on Maxwell's Minecraft server. Brittan took time off from this to see her boyfriend, and when Cara got back she took Alora to finally go get braces. I thought it was weird of them to pull one of her front teeth to start out this process (why waste a perfectly good tooth), but apparently this is a fairly normal thing. What do I know about orthodontics? Alora was VERY excited though, because her teeth have been paining her for some time now. Friday for the farewell dinner Brittan made homemade ravioli - one of my favorites! Then Cara drove them back up to MBC, stopping in Knoxville on the way to remove the oven from our house (the renters wanted to use their own). This week it's back to normalcy, but we've still got pictures to remember the whirlwind week by: