We won! So... Kidnapping your husband guidelines!

We won Whoohooo! Yes, i am talking about the Ice Cream Flavor Face off contest!!! So my present and THANK YOU gift, from me to you; Kidnapping Guidelines!!!

These are easy to follow and no, it doesn’t have to be your husband, it can also be your wife, best friend, girlfriend, boyfriend, (and yes it would be lovely if you can ask him or her to marry you on this trip…) or soon to be fiancee! It's always good to hit two flies with one swat, or so my grandma used to say...

Just make sure it is an (almost) adult and you HAVE TO FORGET about work, troubles, sickness, pain, worries, money, kids OR cows!

So you pick a date, call his or her boss to make sure they can leave for a while, but you also have to make sure the boss is in on it and don’t spoil the surprise. Grab some favorite jeans, pants, shirts, hiking boots and toiletries and stuff them in the back of your car the night before. Think of good excuses to give to him or her so they don’t find out that you have hidden them! Good excuses include, “It is in the laundry basket, yes it is been in there for over a week”,” The dog used it as a new playmate”, “Oh sorry honey I ruined it with the bleach, but I will get you a new one soon” and/or “The cat pied on it and now I need to wash it again”…

On the day of, put your designated “victim” in the car, take his or her keys, phone, blackberry, I-Pad, laptop and other play toys from them and put them in a zip lock bag and store them in your glove compartment of your car! Tell them to enjoy the ride/drive/flight! And no they can’t have their toys back until you get back in the car to drive home… I know this will be a little bit of a challenge for some of us, but trust me, it is worth it!

Arrive at the The Quail Ridge Inn in Sevierville and enjoy 2 or 3 days of relaxation with your loved one AND George and Anita! They are absolutely fabulous and they will make you feel at home in their beautiful log cabin and cook the most INCREDIBLE breakfasts AND (yes, I know it is almost too good to be true) desserts! There are NO tv’s in your room, you are in the middle of the mountains, right in front of the Smoky Mountains, and you have very BAD reception. So it is the perfect time to enjoy your loved one and the KING SIZE bed (o my gosh it is HUGE!!), the Jacuzzi, good food, trees, raccoons, butterflies, birds, deer, flowers and bears (who steal Anita and George’s peaches) and mountain views, rivers waterfalls and green meadows!

So you see it is not that hard…

I am so glad that we are blessed with a super mom, dad and little brother so we COULD go away like this last weekend and we enjoyed it too the fullest! Yesterday we came back and it was back to business and cows as usual but everything was a little better to bear because we were refreshed. Maybe sometimes you just need to be refreshed to do the best job possible…?

Besides the fact that we had a great time with each other and Anita & George …. IT IS OFFICIAL…. Because of all of your votes WE WON!!! I got this fantastic news on my blackberry, yes I snuck out, dug into the glove compartment of the BMW, opened the zip lock bag and checked all my messages and all of your comments on the “kidnap Bastiaan post”. “Don’t tell Bastiaan, though!”

So this great news was a little cherry on top of Anita’s great dessert!

I would like to thank each and every one who voted in all the rounds and yes if you want to read how we got to the top…
Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and Little Brothers!
Ice Cream and multi Colored Peppercorns
Kidnapping Bastiaan... and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream...

Or if you want to go give George and Anita the pleasure of your and your kidnapped person's company…
The Quail Ridge Inn Bed & Breakfast

Or if you want to learn some more about everything dairy and / or cows…
The Progressive Dairyman Yes, Whoohoo we won!!! Super article if i may say so myself! ;-)
The Proud to Dairy Website

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH and I told you before but I will tell you again… YOU’RE THE BEST!!!

Thursday (blogging life) will be back to normal! So we’ll probably do a new “Crazy American’s” then but now I am going to catch up on some work. We are going to have a big group of people coming to tour the dairy today, so that is going to be exiting enough! And yes tonight I will be off to go and read some of your fantastic posts that I haven’t been able to see in (what looks like) ages! Hehe…

 
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Kidnapping Bastiaan…. And Vanilla Bean Ice Cream…

Yep, I admit it!
I kidnapped my husband!
And I LIKED IT!

We don’t go out much. Our life pretty much evolves in and around the dairy. We don’t feel the need to go too far and away places, because when we were “young” (yes, this means in our teens and twenties) Bastiaan and I traveled the world. So now we are just happy to sit on our own couch in our own house enjoying each other’s company.

But sometimes you (well, I anyway) get this feeling and you just need to chance paces a bit to keep yourself and your relationship happy…

Soooo, I kidnapped my hubby!

Last year my sweetie turned 30 (such a young pup...)! And we needed to celebrate, but I am not very good at giving gifts and I am also ALWAYS forgetting his birthday day (yes I know, it is usually on the same date every year…) but somehow it always sneaks up on me! So to make up for all the years that I almost (or fully) forgot I planned a little get away trip.

He did not know ANYTHING! I just told him he needed to make sure to shower and shave and be ready at 11 am Thursday morning.

The night before I packed his favorite shirts and yeans, tossed some cologne and gel in a bag and put that with my girly girl stuff in the trunk of my car. At 11 am he was ready and was anxious to know where going…. Bastiaan is not very good with surprises or gifts; he just has this need to know what it is or what the surprise is…. But I was NOT going to tell him!

I had to be pretty crafty because after his shower and getting dressed, with me telling him “Sorry honey, that shirt of yours is still in the laundry basket…”, “Yeah I know it is been in there for over a week….”, “I’ll do it when we get back tonight…”. And sneaking back into the house, while he waited in the car, with a lousy excuse of having forgotten something, to get his toothbrush and shaving stuff, in two Walmart bags, so he couldn’t see what was in it... We finally got going.

No I didn’t need no handcuffs, and also I didn’t need a blindfold, but I had him in my car and I wasn’t gonna let him go!

After we drove for 4 hours he REALLY wanted to know where we were going. I told him, “surprise!” and kept driving. But of course I got a little hungry and he got a little grumpy after all this driving, so we pulled over at an exit close to Cincinnati. Bastiaan was all ready to hop out of the car and do some driving with race cars (that was what he thought we were going to do) but when we pulled into the parking lot of a Steak and Shake, he figured it out pretty quick! No racing cars, not today!

After we had a fabulous burger and a shake, YES some VANILLA BEAN (hehe), we hit the road again. And finally after driving a little over seven and a half hours we were there! By that time Bastiaan knew we weren’t going home that night, but he still did not know I booked us a Bed & Breakfast close to the Smokey Mountains and we were going to stay there for two nights. We ended up staying there for THREE nights, just us, our lovely hosts and some wonderful house guests. No phones, no TV, no computers and NO COWS! We did have long walks, amazing breakfasts and even more amazing desserts, some incredible views of the mountains and our own porch and Jacuzzi! It was fantastic!

And..., because of all of you, we made it into the final round of the Progressive Dairyman Ice Cream Face Off!!! AND because Bastiaan is going to be 31 this weekend and yes I am kidnapping him again today! But this time with his knowledge, I am gonna ask you ONE MORE TIME to please vote for Vanilla Bean! And I promise you, I will do my best to find the best ice cream place in DollyWood and eat some Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and let you know about it…. Well…. And if we won the contest of course!

A big THANK YOU SOOO MUCH to everybody who voted AND a big THANK YOU AND A BIG HUG for everybody who where brave enough to try my Ice Cream and multi colored Peppercorns recipe, and actually did LIKE it!

You guys are the best!!!



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