Sunday, February 18, 2007

Allerton




So last night Calista and I went out to celebrate the anniversary of when we started dating. We went to Montgomery's on the square in Monticello, a town about 3o minutes west of us. The food there was absolutely delicious. After we ate it was getting late and the roads weren't great so we decided we should stay the night. I had wanted to stay in this park near Monticello called Allerton, but we didn't think that we could stay there because you normally have to have reservations. However, we asked the server about it and he went to find out and the owner of the restaurant came over and said that she just happened to have a key to one of the houses on the Allerton property. She had picked it up just in case someone didn't want to drive home. So she got us a room and then decided to throw in brunch for the next morning, since the restaurant was serving it there the next day. So we spent the night and had a great time. The place was just beautiful. Apperently it was a huge estate that some wealthy man donated to the university when he died and they have turned it into a park and used the mansion as a hotel and conference center. On the property there is also a place called "the house in the woods" and that is where we stayed. The next morning we didn't have clean clothes so we traveled back home and got cleaned up and then came back for the brunch which once again was fabulous. Calista thinks she is ruined for ordinary food now. I have posted some pictures of us in the park the next morning.

Snow and Fun










Everyone probabely had a great deal of snow recently, but I thought I would post pictures of all the snow we got. University of Illinois cancelled for two days (first snow days in 30 years) so it was pretty great. Cali and I got to stay home and watch movies. Our only real adventure was going out to the grocery store and that is when I took most of the pictures. As you can see from one of the pictures, a lot of the cars were completely buried because of the plows. It was awesome this year to have a garage!