Weekend update with your host I.P. Freely

Went to the Biltmore estate this weekend for the opening of their Christmas season. It was perfectly crisp cold weather in the mountains of North Carolina, too bad we missed the peak leaf week by 2 weeks though. The mansion was amazing, it was Lauren and my first time there and with the Christmas decorations up you ooh ahhed all day long. That place is beautiful but stands a far second from The Hearst Castle in California, which I promised Lauren I would take there some day. After walking through the mansion we headed for the free wine tasting session at their winery. Lauren and I previously and frequently enjoyed the Biltmore Estate White Zinfandel and were looking forward to expanding our selections. We ended up tasting all their whites and I had a few reds as well. After the tasting they direct you to their wine shop where you can buy everything you tasted. For a few bucks more you can taste their reserves so as it was Laurens birthday we tried their champagnes (sparkling wines for you snobs!) and decided that we would have a certain one as our toasting wine at our wedding. We then headed back to Columbia where we proceeded to begin our registry at Belks (Belk.com) and continued on to Bed bath and Beyond to see what we would put on that one if we decided to have one there. Being thoroughly exhausted we decided to grab a pizza and head back to the apt. to watch the Clemson Tigers take on the Miami Hurricanes. As you can see from my previous post we won, and to boot I read today infact that we did not allow Miami to score the entire second half! That basically capped the weekend for me but it continued on. Lauren and I spent Sunday house hunting and went into an open house and met a realtor who is now OUR realtor. He has already sent back a bunch of homes, which Lauren wants me to look at a few, so I will probably be loaded for a while. Too bad my mind turned off after the Clemson game though. I would have loved to see the campus when we won, of course the campus that I knew of old, not the upped standards crowd that is there now. Also if you haven’t been paying attention that is a 4 game winning streak and God knows it looks too similar to last years ending performance. I can’t wait for the shamecocks to enter Death Valley and face the inevitable deafening roar of 90+ thousand fans ready for demolition. And remember folks, Death Valley has been rowdy all year, when we weren’t that good, imagine how we will be when the defense comes out pumping arms to a full house and a 5 game winning streak!!! OH YEAH HOW BOUT THEM TIGERS!!!