Happy Tuesday (and St. Patrick's Day)! I meant to post something yesterday but I felt like I needed a weekend to recover from my weekend!

On Saturday morning Rob and I woke up and took Ender to Atherton Market for coffee. It's been so fun finding dog-friendly places in our neighborhood and bringing him with us almost everywhere. We took our coffee to go and headed back home to relax on the couch a bit because it was rainy and grey and we had originally planned to go on a long walk.

After about a half hour, there was a knock at the door, so I got up to answer it and standing there in the hallway was my mom! She and Rob had talked the night before and she decided to come down for the weekend and surprise me. The rain had stopped and the sun came out so we walked to lunch, visited a couple of breweries, and went out to dinner.

Then on Sunday we had the most gorgeous afternoon barbecuing on our courtyard with mimosas and plenty of sunshine. I drank half a bottle of champagne and absolutely had to have an ice cream sundae. (Then we made gluten-free pizzas and watched a movie before calling it a night!)

What a great weekend. Spring is here and I'm totally okay with it.

We stayed put for a much-needed weekend at home, this time with a puppy! Rob and I managed to get out for breakfast and then to a brewery on Sunday afternoon, but otherwise it was lots of playing and naps and figuring out what our life like looks like with a dog. Ender already seems bigger every day.

It got up to 70 degrees this weekend and it has me totally ready for spring. The warm air, damp grass, and that spring smell always brings me back to March and April of my college days, which are full of so many beautiful memories. We're visiting Longwood at the end of March and I'm looking forward to it already. But for now, I'm hoping for more warm mornings and afternoons with iced coffee in my hand and a sleepy puppy in my lap.

How was your weekend?

Rob and I headed to Asheville, North Carolina for the first time on Saturday. It was so fun to go somewhere new together--we parked the car and just explored downtown all afternoon. We visited a couple different breweries, ate some delicious food, found a cool little coffee shop, had a cocktail at a really charming 20s-inspired bar, and finally went to the Jimmy Eat World concert that had brought us there in the first place.

Parts of Asheville reminded me a lot of Roanoke, and other parts of it reminded me a lot of Minneapolis. Needless to say, we'll probably be back again soon for that very reason. I've been giving North Carolina a bit of a hard time lately, but there's a lot to get into around here.

Here's where we went:

• Lexington Avenue Brewery for drinks, brussels sprouts + pork belly, beet gnocchi with bacon + goat cheese, and truffled pommes frites.
• High Five Coffee Bar for one regular cup of coffee and one almond milk cappuccino.
• Lex 18 for a sidecar and a French 75.
• Wicked Weed Brewing for a hard cider, some beers, the charcuterie, house-made potato chips, and a burger without the bun.