Chocolate Festival

That's right, you read it correctly. There is an annual Chocolate Festival here at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. So how could I resist taking Tabatha to sample a local venue while also sampling deliciousness? I couldn't. We had a great time. In fact, I will carry one specific memory with me for the rest of my life. Bear with me while I try to paint a picture of smells with words. (It's tougher than it sounds.)

As anyone who has been pregnant knows, your sense of smell can become quite elevated, which is usually unpleasant. But as we found ourselves in the middle of a big area with vendors, I had quite the opposite experience. The food vendors all had food that either was made with chocolate (like the mole I ate for lunch - that's mole, Mexican style, not mole the rodent) or went well with chocolate. In addition, they had vendors with beauty products made from chocolate, a booth with spices and teas that went with chocolate, or just straight up chocolate.

So there I was with Stellan and Tabatha sharing a warm lava cake on the lawn with literally dozens, maybe hundreds, of spicy, sweet, bitter, wonderful aromas wafting my way. And I suddenly realized that, as a pregnant woman, I was enjoying a heightened sense of the awesomeness! That's the first time I've ever been grateful for this particular "super power." I can still remember the intoxicating scent now.