The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Around the house

What a week we had!  Robert, Maxwell and I were in Naples last week visiting my parents and had a great, albeit rainy, visit.  We ended up heading back to Birmingham a few days early because we were afraid Maxwell was getting an ear infection again but, after a visit to the doctor, he got a clean bill of health.  That was great because Robert and I had plans to go to Nashville for the weekend for my Vanderbilt 10 year reunion.  GJ came to B’ham to stay with Maxwell and we had the BEST time on our trip.  I loved seeing all my friends and visiting our old haunts.  The best part of the trip though?  Pulling back in at home and seeing Maxwell smiling and waiting!  Plus all new pansies planted in our yard by the one and only fantastic GJ!!  Awesome!  Lots of details about both trips to come this week but I need a night to recuperate.  In the meantime, I’ve got some more pictures from two weekends ago in the yard…

There’s always work to be done around the house.  Luckily Robert is pretty handy with tools…

and this provides great entertainment for Maxwell.

There’s also always photo opportunities around the house.  Luckily I’m pretty handy with the camera…

and this also provides great entertainment for Maxwell (or maybe that’s just the leaves).

There’s also always bugs around the house.  Luckily they aren’t all scary, hairy spiders like this one…

eeeewwww.

I’m outta here.

But not before wishing my cousin Amy a VERY happy birthday!!  Hope it’s a GREAT one!

A little more Aspen

On Wednesday I showed you this shot of my mom and I on the Rio Grande Trail…

It should look familiar to you because I had shown you this shot about a year ago…

I think they’re in almost the exact same spot! I’m thinking I need to go back to Aspen every September from now on to take another picture…watcha think Robert?!  🙂

I almost came home with these boots for Maxwell…

Baby cowboy boots

but then I remembered that we live in Birmingham, not Aspen, and I decided against it.  They sure were cute though!

I also thought this was such a cute leather jacket…

kiddie leather jacket

until I realized it is for kids.  Yep, this is a children’s boutique and I don’t even want to know how much the jacket cost.  Over the top!  They also had this cute little cocktail dress…

and this fabulous frock…

Perfect for those kindergarten charity balls, don’t you think?

Gotta love it!

Hope you all have a great weekend.  We’re ready for it as it’s been a rough 24 hours around here.  Maxwell picked up some sort of bug at school – he’s been fever-y and was even pukey on Wednesday night.  Lovely.  Hopefully he’ll be feeling much better and we’ll get to do some fun things, like mowing the hard wood floors…

and cheering the Tide on to a victory over the Gators!

See you Monday!

Aspen! Part 2

First, Happy Birthday to my fantastic sister-in-law, Jenny, today!!  Hope it’s a GREAT one!

Continuing on with the Aspen adventures…

We got up on Saturday and, feeling adventurous, decided to go on a little hike before our spa appointments at the St. Regis. Our helpful concierge told us about an easy hike right up the mountain that was only about 3/4 of a mile.  Perfect!  We headed out and, although it was a little uphill, had fun. We were quite proud when we reached what we thought was the summit of the trail…

The views were fantastic!

At this point we were apparently supposed to walk down the dirt road to the bottom of the mountain…something our helpful concierge didn’t tell us make clear. So, we just kept walking on the trail across the mountain…

until it became clear that we had missed a turn.

After a few good laughs, we finally found a path that snaked us down to the bottom of the mountain.  When we exited the path, imagine our surprise when we saw there was a whole finish line set up just for us!

ha!  It was a half marathon and the path literally dumped us out right at the finish line. I think the winning runner was just a few miles back…glad we didn’t get in his way!

After our (longer than expected) hike we had a great morning at the spa. We then rode the gondola up to the top of Aspen Mountain.

That afternoon, we went over to Aspen Highlands and took the bus up to Maroon Bells.  It was honestly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen…with the water, the mountains, the trees.  Just stunning.

There was even a wedding up there that day and the bridal party was quite entertaining.  They were leaving at the same time as us and couldn’t find their car, so they tried to get on the bus and it was comical. I think they had all had a few pre-ceremony cocktails!

We then headed back to Aspen, got another cookie from Paradise Bakery and sat on a bench doing the best people-watching…and getting updates on the AL/AR game from Robert!  Roll Tide!  We were supposed to go to another fancy dinner that night but we decided to ditch those plans and eat at Ajax Tavern with a great view of Aspen Mountain.  This was my dinner…

and it was definitely the right decision!  We were tired and called it a night after dinner knowing we had to get up bright and early to catch our flight home.  While we were sad to leave (especially when we both stepped off the plane at home to hot, humid weather!), we were SO HAPPY to have had such a great time!!

Meanwhile, back at home, Robert took care of things all weekend.  He even handled Maxwell getting stung by a yellowjacket!  Oh no!  I got a call on the top of Aspen Mountain from Robert and I could hear Maxwell SCREAMING in the background.  He had actually stepped on a yellowjacket and got stung on the bottom of his foot.  Ouch!  Robert calmed him down and, after a little love from Elmo and Mr. Moo, Maxwell was doing much better…

I couldn’t wait to get home Sunday to see this little guy waiting for me!

Overall it was such a fun trip and I’m so glad we got to go.  Happy Birthday GJ!  Where are we going for 61??!!  🙂

Aspen! Part 1

My mom, Maxwell’s GJ, is one special person.  I knew I wanted to do something fun for her 60th birthday and I thought a trip to Aspen was just the thing!  I have been to Aspen in fall in the past and I knew it would be a great place to take her.  Considering she doesn’t get much fall in Florida, I suspected that she would LOVE seeing the fall leaves and breathing in the crisp, cool mountain air!  My suspicions were confirmed the moment she stepped off the plane in Aspen…

Grinning from ear to ear!  It was a FANTASTIC trip from start to finish!

The trip started out on Thursday with a bang – in the Denver airport we saw the former Bachelorette Trista with her husband Ryan and their two kids. Apparently their little boy’s name is Maxwell because it said it on his monkey backpack. I knew they were cool. Then we realized that Steve Forbes was on our flight from Denver to Aspen…our commercial flight. Not sure what that says about the economy! We later figured out that he was actually staying in our hotel. I think that says that we picked a nice hotel! 🙂  After arriving in Aspen, we were just walking around town, checking things out and who did we see? Ron Howard!  Opie himself was sitting on a bench talking on his cell. Celeb sightings were a great way to kick things off!

Like I just said, our hotel, The Little Nell, was ridiculous. It was possibly the neatest hotel room I’ve ever been in. My mom and I each had our own room and I think we had enough room for 20 people between the two of us. Heaven! And this was our view of Aspen Mountain out the window…

Not too shabby!

Thursday night we had dinner at the hotel at Montagna and it was delicious. The hotel knew that it was my mom’s birthday and we ended up with free wine and dessert…nice!

The next day we grabbed a muffin from Paradise Bakery and took in this view…

The perfect way to start the day!

We then rented bikes and biked the Rio Grande Trail.  It’s a 9 mile ride out to a great lunch spot called Woody Creek Tavern.  The ride out is pretty easy and mostly downhill…which means the ride back is not quite as easy and uphill!  We persevered though and made it with only a few stops!  🙂

Everything along the trail was just gorgeous…

and we even saw some guys fly fishing.

I used the self timer on my camera to take a picture of the two of us…

I think it’s a framer, don’t you?

After 9 miles, we finally made it to Woody Creek…

and I had this plate of yum for lunch…

Maybe, just maybe, that was part of the reason the ride back was a little more difficult than the ride there!  We ended up taking a few breaks to take in the scenery and enjoy it all…we were in no hurry!

We then tried again with the self-timer on my camera and got a much better result!

Now that really is a framer!

We were so proud of ourselves for biking 18 miles!  We celebrated later that afternoon with a cookie from Paradise Bakery and then had a great dinner (with terrible service) at Matsuhisa. Considering how badly I wanted good sushi (something that does not exist in B’ham), I didn’t even care about the super delayed sea bass that we ended up canceling. I think we were also too tired to care!  We were back in our rooms by 8:30 and happily called it a night!

While I was gone, Robert was at home holding down the fort (with a little help from Susan on Thursday and Friday). Now, I know you come to this blog to see pictures of Maxwell and not pictures of me and GJ (but we are cute, aren’t we?!) so I’m going to show you all the fun pictures that Robert sent to me while I was away. Let me tell ya, when you’re missing your baby, there’s nothing better than seeing his smiling face come through in an email!

The boys had a big time while I was gone!

Tomorrow – hiking, the gondola and Maroon Bells!  See you then!