Bistros, brews and bros

Ok, guys. I am behind in my blogging. A lot has happened in the last week or so - a little weekend trip, the boys's 2nd birthday and a small birthday celebration. Let's start with the weekend trip and stay with me and I will try to get caught up and post the other updates soon! :)

Two Saturdays ago, Thomas and I took a little trip with the Atwoods. We refer to our foursome group as #bostonpartners, because we went to Boston together several years ago. We all get along great and travel really well together. It just works! 

Our most recent trip over last weekend was our "#bostonpartners: Asheville edition" trip. We'd kind of been talking about doing some sort of trip over this past spring/summer and never really got around to it. About a month ago, we suggested going up to Asheville and checking out Sierra Nevada Brewery and everyone was on-board! Hippieville, oops I mean Asheville :) is only a little over an hour driving distance, so it's convenient and it's such a cool town. I've spent very little time up there but always hear great things and was very interested to check it out.

We went straight to Sierra Nevada to see the new brewery. The brewery is awesome! There are a few bars, a restaurant, and a gorgeous outdoor area! They have lots of chairs set up - adirondack, rocking, cushioned outdoor chairs - and a fire pit (not needed on this day because it was pretty hot!), an outdoor amphitheater, corn hole, a garden, etc. It's truly beautiful. 

We weren't able to get into the tour at the brewery . Apparently it books up 2 months in advance, as soon as they release the dates - keep that in mind if you're planning a trip anytime soon! But they do have an option to do a self-guided tour. We did that. It was OK. You should plan to do the real tour if you go up there!

Thomas, me and Brent with our first beer of the trip

The Atwoods hanging out on the rocking chairs

Lunch in the Taproom restaurant

Guys at the bar

Catherine and me in the garden

Did you notice that Catherine isn't drinking a beer in any of these pictures? If you are wondering and making an assumption that she may be expecting.....wellllllll, you'd be correct. Catherine is pregnant with #3 (b/c she wants to be just like me hahaha) and is due in late February. The brewery trip was probably not on the top of her list of things she wanted to do while preggers, but she was a great sport, none the less. And it was a bonus for the guys and me to have a designated driver so we didn't have to take Uber. :) All 5 of the Peerys are so excited for her, Brent and her boys to have another baby coming!

Thomas and me in front of Sierra Nevada

Brent and Catherine

Cheesin'

After we left the brewery, we went to check into our hotel, get ready for dinner, and then head into downtown Asheville. We weren't able to get a hotel downtown. Apparently there was some sort of food and wine festival going on, which we found out later, so we booked hotel rooms near the brewery instead and chose to drive into the downtown area.

Fun in the car

We had reservations at 8:15, but got downtown around 7 so we had some time to kill. We walked around a little and found this restaurant with a cool outdoor seating area. It was at a fairly busy intersection and the people watching was great so we decided to sit down for a drink and apps before dinner.

Then we went to our dinner spot, The Market Place. We had a great dinner there. The atmosphere was very cool and the food was delicious!

After dinner, we were all very full, but we couldn't resist walking around just a little to this dessert place - French Broad Chocolate Lounge. Can you believe there was a line out the door waiting to get in to this place? It was probably around 10 or 10:30 at night! That's a sign that you know it's going to be good. You couldn't have rolled me out of the chocolate lounge after apps, a great dinner and then a rich dessert. So good!!!

My dessert - the truffle torte

Catherine was so kind to drive us safely back to the hotel, despite some annoying passengers (ahem, guys) that just wanted to listen to music instead of the GPS. It was pretty comical. :)

Sunday morning we got up and went back downtown to have brunch. We got a recommendation from our hotel to have brunch at Chestnut.  Our server here was great and although the previous night's dinner was awesome, I think brunch may have been my favorite meal of the trip!

Doughnut as a brunch "app" - so bad, yet so good!

I love this girl!

Per usual, we had a fabulous time with our friends, the Atwoods. I love it when you have couple BFFs where the guys and the girls both get along really, really well. Asheville did not disappoint - great food, friendly people, pretty scenery; it was all around a really awesome trip. I'd love to go back to Asheville again sometime. There seems to be a lot of fun stuff to do and there are lots more great restaurants to try!

We, fortunately, had some great help at our house taking care of the triplets. Fifi and Jerry were here for part of the week because Thomas had to travel for work and they agreed to stay through the weekend to allow us to have our #bostonpartners adult time. MaSha came over and helped out too, so we had a group effort and knew the boys would be well taken care of. We are seriously so grateful to have such kind and generous family members to help us out. We know that not everyone has resources to be able to go on weekend trips without kids and we've gotten to go to New York and now Asheville this summer. If you're reading this, thank you, to all of our family and friends that allow us time away every now and then. It means so much!

Jerry, William, Ryan, Fifi and Stokes

#bostonpartners has already started thinking about our next trip. We've tossed around several ideas and places and I think we've settled on Nashville. And yes, we're going to wait until Catherine has the baby and can successfully travel for the weekend!!! Maybe next fall.....TBD. :)