Simply Sasha: Exploring North Carolina- Part 1

School's out for summer! And thank goodness for that! For part of my break my Mom flew out so that we could have some mother-daughter bonding and travel around North Carolina and see all the sights. Boy has it been tiring, but it really has been so much fun! We've had road trips galore and I mean GALORE! We've been to Charlotte, Asheville, Carolina Beach... to Virginia a couple times... all over. My mom and I LOOVE driving in the car. Listening to some good music, chatting about life and admiring the scenery and exploring... what could be better?

On our trips I've found that North Carolina is such a beautiful state and my mom said on more than one occasion, "The people are all so nice!". Which I must say is very true.

To begin our adventure we traveled up North to Virginia/D.C. to visit Josh and some family friends for my birthday. We had an absolutely amazing dinner at Il Canale in Georgetown. If you are ever in the area, you absolutely MUST try this place. Their pizza is to die for, spectacular, unforgettable... AND it is certified by the Italian government to make authentic Italian pizza. I didn't even know such a certification existed. So this is pretty much as close to real Italian pizza as you can get without purchasing a ticket to Italy. It was such a delicious dinner with such wonderful company, I couldn't have asked for anything more on my birthday.

The whole gang at dinner for my birthday

So before I continue I must explain the picture above. Mom and I stayed at our friends Vivan and Dean's home in Virginia. While we were there getting ready for church we all heard a boom and someone screamed. Well... the tree in their backyard just fell randomly on a beautiful Sunday morning. Part of it landed in the neighbors backyard while they were outside, but luckily nobody was hurt. Such a random occurrence, but it made for a pretty cool picture.

Our first stop in exploring North Carolina was visiting friends in Charlotte. A family from our church in San Francisco recently moved to Charlotte last year and we haven't seen them since so we decided to go visit. Charlotte is about a 3 hour drive from Chapel Hill; we left early and just made it a day trip. It was so fun seeing Sasha (my mom's Goddaughter) and her new baby sister Sabina. They are so so so adorable! I think I could have probably could have stayed all day and played with Sasha. At some points I swear I was having more fun than the kids :). Gotta love it!

Having Tea with Sasha
(Btw, that gray wall is chalkboard paint! So you can write on the walls... pretty much the coolest thing ever! Makes me want to paint my walls with it so I can doodle whenever I want)