Early Christmas in the Kinlaw House

As I mentioned in my last Friday Favorites post, we had Christmas at our house before we left for NC. We decided to do it on Wednesday. We were originally going to do it Thursday, mostly to avoid packing unnecessary gifts and driving them to NC then back up here. We realized how much we would have to do on Thursday, and decided to do it Wednesday instead. I'm REALLY glad we did, because Thursday was really busy. 

Our tree needs more lights, and we probably should have taken pictures before we opened half the gifts.

I'm always excited about Christmas, but I was even more excited this year. It's Bailey's first Christmas! I've been looking forward to giving her gifts :-) We got her a new bed, a couple stuffed toys, some balls, a rope with a ball, a freeze dried shish kabob treat and a big bone. She chewed through 2 balls and chewed the ball off the rope within about 30 minutes. We'll have to stick to tennis balls (we got a few of those too) since the doggy balls won't hold up for us. We wrapped the shish kabob and let her rip it open. It was so much fun! 

Look at those holes!

YUM!

This hamburger was too cute! It had a hole in it in 5 minutes.

Since we've been married, we've gotten a joint gift, then separate gifts. I assume we'll continue to do this. This year, our joint gift was this carpet cleaner (and yes, I'm actually excited about using it...we just have to find a free weekend). The price came down a lot from when we were originally looking at it, so I was really excited about that! Josh's mom has the older model and she loves it. We were going to get a TV for the state room, but once it was time for Christmas, football season was almost over. We hadn't found any amazing deals, so we decided to hold off. We're planning on looking again around Super Bowl time to see what kind of deals we can find then. If we don't find what we're looking for then, we'll probably get one just before football season starts again. So...that may or may not be a late joint Christmas present.

I got Josh a glass carboy for brewing. A plastic one came with the kit I got him for his birthday and he's been wanting a glass one for a while now. I got him the new Call of Duty a couple months back, and he insisted that it should be a Christmas present. That would have been our budget if I would have listened. Since it was so long ago, and since I wanted him to have at least a few surprises, I decided to only count it as a fraction of a gift. Haha. I got him a couple other little things that he's mentioned over the past few months.

This is the only picture I got of either of us with our gifts.

When Josh asked me what I wanted for Christmas, all I could think of was a Kindle and a couple house related things. He decided against house related things because he wanted me to have something I would enjoy. I didn't get to open the Kindle during our early Christmas because Josh had it shipped to his mom's house. It would have been obvious if a little Amazon box showed up at our front door. Haha. I knew I was getting it because I had an Amazon gift card in my stocking. I've used it for Kindle accessories and a couple books :-) That alone would have been a little more than what we planned to spend on each other since he paid extra for the Kindle without the ads (I had no idea they even had ads!). I did get to open a couple small gifts though. Josh had picked up some of the things I wanted to buy myself on Black Friday. He talked me out of spending my money. So thoughtful. :-)

We had a great Christmas and I really enjoyed the time we got to spend with just the 3 of up :-)

Friday Favorites!

I'm posting this early...or else it will be late again.


1) Christmas - I LOVE Christmas. It's tied with Thanksgiving for my favorite holiday :-). Good food, family, friends...what's not to love? Not to mention gifts of course. Everybody loves those. This Christmas was a little more laid back than some we've had, and we still managed to spend a decent amount of time with everyone!

2) Kenya - While we were home for Christmas, Bailey got to play with her little sister AND Natalia. It's important to us that she interacts well with all types of dogs and kids. She did great with both!

Bailey is so interested in the people toys. I'm not sure what's up with Kenya's face.

3) Brewing - We brewed our fourth beer when we got home Monday afternoon. We bought all our supplies last week so we would be ready. Fortunately, we didn't have any trouble with traffic and there was plenty of time to brew! We decided on an English Bitter. We wanted something sort of generic that you can drink any time (the pumpkin was great, but it was one of those beers you have to be in the mood for).

4) Belk Bowl - Unfortunately, we were not able to make it to our bowl game this year. The timing just didn't work out for us :-/. We did enjoy watching it at home and looking on the bright side, we saved a lot of money by not going. It was a good game and I was definitely excited for another Wolfpack W!

5) Short work week - I don't think this one needs an explanation. Haha.

6) De-cluttering - We got rid of a lot of the stuff we've been keeping in our garage, and we made a trip to Goodwill. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while, so it's a bit of a weight off my shoulders. We're one step closer to being able to park in our garage! Haha.

Friday Favorites!

This is a little late...again...


1) Early Christmas - We always celebrate Christmas with Josh's grandparents early. This past weekend, we drove down to VA to visit with them for a while. It was really nice to see everyone and catch up. We also got to stop at COOKOUT while we were there. Josh's uncle told us there was one in VA, but I had forgotten all about it. Josh remembered and asked if I wanted to go. Ummm...YES!

2) Dogsitting - While we were gone, we left Bailey with my co-worker. This was the first time she's ever spent the night away from us. I'm not going to lie, it was nice to have a break from the regular night and morning routine. It was so much faster getting ready! I did miss her a lot though. I was so glad she had another dog to play with all weekend. She was exhausted when we picked her up Sunday afternoon :-)

3) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - I can't remember if I've mentioned this before or not. I tried to read this book a while back and I just couldn't get into it. After several suggestions from friends, I decided to tough it out and give it another shot. I'm so glad I did! I finished it earlier in the week, now I'm making my way through The Girl who Played with Fire.

4) Early Christmas #2 - We decided to open our gifts before going home for Christmas. It just didn't make sense for us to load everything up in the car, drive it to NC, open them and drive them all right back down...especially since our car is always packed to the max anyway! Plus, I really like being able to enjoy OUR family time. It's great to open gifts with ALL of the family, but we'll still have things to open at each house, so it's fine that our gifts from each other aren't there. I'll probably have a separate post about this later :-)

5) Ride home - We left work a little early on Friday so we could get on the road and hopefully avoid traffic. We took a route to bypass DC. I really enjoy having time to just talk on our trips. We had a smooth trip with hardly any traffic. We got to Josh's mom's a little before 11 and just talked for a while. She had a gift wrapped for Bailey and we let her open it when we got there.

Separation Anxiety?

Bailey has been doing well for the most part. She's doing great at day camp when we take her. She did well when we were dog sitting and she did well when a friend was sitting her for us. She's doing well on walks and she's not having accidents in the house. 

It's not all good though...I've been thinking she may have a bit of separation anxiety for a while now, but I thought I was just making excuses for her behavior. I kept pushing it out of the back of my mind and telling myself she was tearing things up because she's a puppy and she'll grow out of it, she's bored, blah blah blah. It's not just tearing stuff up though. She barks, whines, etc. a lot when we leave and she won't stay in a room alone. I used to think she just followed us everywhere because she was curious, but I think it's because she's scared to be alone. I kept making other excuses for all the behaviors that were concerning me. She didn't always have these issues. When we were in our apartment she never tore anything up and she didn't whine when we left her. She would sometimes let us be in a different room without getting upset. It didn't happen immediately when we moved in the house. I wish I could pinpoint when it started to happen, but I can't. I can figure out when she started to be destructive with things other than her toys (thanks to this blog and her weekly updates), but I can't remember if she started freaking out when we left around that same time. 

This kind of freaking out is bad. Really bad. Our carpet is brand new. I'm not ready to replace it. So...back to the crate it is for my poor baby.

Bailey had to go to the vet to get a Lyme booster last week. While we were there we talked to the vet about our concerns. Of course he can't be sure, but he agrees that it sounds like separation anxiety. We talked about what we can do to address the problem. We talked about the different steps we could take and little things to hopefully make things easier on her. We've started her on a natural supplement called Composure. We want to use this combined with some behavioral things (crating her and leaving her for short periods of time, leaving a TV or radio on for her, etc.). Of course there are medications, but we definitely don't want to go that route. If things don't improve at all, we may have to take her to see an animal behaviorist. I don't think it will get that extreme. We just have to work with her consistently so it doesn't get worse. 

I keep trying to figure out if there's something we did to provoke this. I don't know what caused it, but I do think we have been making it worse without realizing it until recently. Bailey used to be REALLY bad for sprinkling on the floor a little when we came home from work. To try to prevent this, we would just ignore her for a few minutes when we got home. Once we got her outside and she calmed down some, we would talk to her and pet her. Now that she doesn't do that anymore, we have started talking to her, hugging her and playing with her as soon as we get in. We have recognized this and we're trying to make leaving and coming home from work as insignificant as we possibly can. I know it will take some time and lots of trial and error before we start to see any major improvement. I feel so guilty leaving her now, because I know she absolutely hates it :-/

Friday Favorites!

This week DRAGGED, so I'm definitely happy to see Friday!

1) Christmas shopping...is over! Don't get me wrong, I love shopping for the people I love most, but it's so nice to be finished. I am making a couple things, and I still have quite a bit of work to do for those, but no more shopping for me until the after Christmas sales!

2) Dog sitting - As I mentioned in last week's post, Josh and I dog-sat for a co-worker last weekend. It went very well overall and I think it was great for Bailey and Pete. Bailey has WAY more energy, but it gave us a good opportunity to try to teach her when enough is enough.

3) Camp Bow Wow - This isn't the first time they have been on my Friday favorites list, and I'm sure it won't be the last. This Wednesday, they had a discounted day camp price, Santa, a dog chef and wine and finger foods for the humans! Josh and I tasted some of the food and wine while we watched Bailey play with the other dogs on the monitors. We checked her out then got in line to meet Santa. I thought she would bark a lot because she's so funny with new things sometimes. She didn't bark one bit! She was very well behaved, even with the new dogs that were in the lobby. She usually gets SUPER excited around new dogs. I'm sure this was partially because she was exhausted. One lady did come up to her and talk in a very high pitched voice. That ALWAYS gets Bailey really excited. She jumped up on her (we're still working on that) and made her spill her wine. That was the only thing she did wrong. We went to talk to The Dog Chef for a few minutes and Bailey got to sample his food. She enjoyed the food, but it would cost us more than we spend on our own groceries to order from him. I think we'll stick to her current food for now :-)

4) Haircut - When I got my last haircut in October, I decided to leave some length on and just get a trim. I've been regretting it since the next day. I got my hair cut today and it's short and much more manageable again! I love it! I'll post pictures at some point. My camera is due back on Monday.


5) Date - Josh and I both love historical Ellicott City. The salon I went to for my haircut was just a few minutes away, so we decided to take a look around for somewhere to grab a bite to eat. We ended up finding Ellicott Mills Brewing Company. I love brewery/restaurants. The beer is always good and chances are, the food is too. I tried an Aussie style beer and alligator. Josh got a burger and another type of beer. It was all delicious! The atmosphere was great too. I love spontaneous dates!

Friday Favorites!

1) Christmas decorating - I LOVE decorating for Christmas! We put up our tree last Saturday afternoon. I've been adding a little each day. I made a wreath to put up, but it fell and when that happened, half the ornaments fell off. I need to fix it up and re-hang it. 

2) Homebrew #3 - Our holiday beer was ready for us to try on Saturday. We shared one while we decorated the tree. It was better than I expected it to be :-) Now we're trying to figure out what #4 will be!

3) Spontaneous date night - We had a groupon and decided to use it this week for a date night. We never really go on dates during the week (and we probably wouldn't have this time if it wasn't expiring!) so it was a nice change of pace.

4) Doggy buddy - I think we finally have a doggy buddy! One of my co-workers watched Bailey while we went on our date. It was only for a short time, but it was nice to know she wasn't at home annoying our neighbor with bionic ears. It was kind of a trial run to make sure they can get along well. We're dog sitting him this weekend.

5) Holiday party! - Josh's company's Holiday party was last night at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront. We had a great time and I got to meet a lot of his co-workers. There was a cocktail hour and a half (the coordinator said an hour just isn't enough haha) followed by an AMAZING dinner, raffles and dancing. They had some great gifts, buy we didn't win anything. I don't have pictures because I still don't have my camera back, but we should have a picture that they took of us at some point :-) It was so nice to be able to get dressed up to go somewhere. I think we might get a room and take Bailey somewhere so we don't have to worry about what time we're getting home or who's driving. 

Thanksgiving!

Our Thanksgiving holiday was eventful to say the least. It's one of my favorite holidays, so I've been looking forward to it!

I got off work a little early the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We packed the car that morning before work, so all I had to do is pick up Bailey and break down her crate. We hopped in the car and picked Josh up from work. We got on the road around 3:30. We didn't expect to get home before 1am, but traffic wasn't nearly as bad as we expected. I could have told you when we got to NC just by the radio. We heard Scotty McCreery as much in that last few hours as we would in a week up here! Haha. Anna and John were driving to Raleigh from Miami that same night. It was kind of fun keeping up with where they were in relation to us, it gave us something different to do. We ended up passing them on 95! We got home around 11:30. I was completely exhausted, but we still ended up staying up until about 2:30 catching up with the family. We stay at Josh's mom's when we go home. His grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousin all come down from Virginia. We only get to see them a few times a year, so there's always so much to catch up on. 

Where's Daddy going?

Thanksgiving is always a busy day for us, but I wouldn't have it any other way. We typically have 3 Thanksgiving dinners. We've been in this same routine for years, so it's something we didn't have to work out when we got married. Haha. We get up early and spend time with everyone, then we eat at Josh's mom's around 12ish. We go to my mom's house after that for round 2. (This is usually when Josh takes a nap.) We eat again there, hang out for a while, then go to Josh's aunt's to visit his dad's side of the family. We eat a little bit again, hang out some more, then go back to Josh's mom's. We've been doing this for years, so I have a strategy now. I just pick my favorite foods at each house and keep the portions small. Josh loads his plate down during round 1, then he picks off my plates at the other stops. He'll figure it out one day :-) This year, we weren't able to make the 3rd stop, so we just visited Josh's dad at his house on the way back to Lumberton. 

Bailey LOVED playing in the leaves at my mom's!

My favorite!

Black Friday shopping is also another tradition for us. Josh's family always goes together. I've been going with them for the past 8ish years. We get up ridiculously early and go to the Lumberton mall for Mickey Mouse snow globes and such. We go to Hardee's for breakfast and to chat a bit. After this, we go to the mall in Fayetteville. This year, we had to stop at my mom's to drop Bailey off. She was nice enough to baby sit while we were shopping. The mall in Fayetteville is usually pretty crowded (but not like the crazy Black Friday crowds you see on TV). This year, the crowd was pretty thin. There was a shooting early that morning. No one was hurt, but it still kept the crowd away. We didn't know about it until we were on our way there. We got SO much of our Christmas shopping done, so it was definitely worth one busy day. We picked up a few odds and ends for ourselves too. After we finished shopping, we met back up with the family for milkshakes at COOKOUT :-D. We stopped by my mom's house to visit with my family for a little while longer, then we left for Raleigh. 

We went to our friend Spenser's house and Bailey got to meet his dog, Abby. They got along really well. We went out Friday night and caught up with several friends. We stayed out quite a bit later than we had planned, so we didn't get much sleep before we had to get up to get ready for the tailgate! After we got ready, we dropped Bailey off at another friend's house. We made arrangements for Bailey to stay at his house and play with his dog while we were at the football game. Bailey had MUCH more energy, but they still got along very well. Then...we were off to tailgate! It was SO good to be back at our old stomping grounds! We had a great time tailgating with our friends. Our game was looking horrible during the first half. We put up a fight and ended up making a huge comeback! It was awesome! After the game, I was SO exhausted. After getting less than 5 hours of sleep 3 nights in a row, I wanted nothing more than to just sleep. Since we were going to be leaving early the next morning, we toughed it out and went to dinner since it's going to be a while before we see everyone again. Once we got back I showered and crashed. I haven't been that tired since my wedding! 

We were planning on leaving at 7am to head home. We were hoping to beat the traffic. I wasn't paying attention when I set my alarm clock. It was set for Monday-Friday only. It was after 7 when we woke up. We ended up getting on the road around 9:30. We had to make a few stops to get breakfast and gas, then we finally got on the road. I drove home this time. It's always a bit hard on me leaving, but this time was by far the hardest. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's time for the holidays? I have no clue. It was just so hard driving away. Josh asked me what was bothering me and I just started crying like a big baby. I don't know why that happens. I can talk to other people and keep a straight face. So weird. Anyway, literally right after I started crying about missing home we blew a tire. We pulled over, unloaded all our stuff and Bailey's, and changed the tire. I walked Bailey while Josh got started. Then, the car started rolling. Yup, like an idiot, I forgot to turn on the E-break. We ended up getting the spare on, but we warped our jack in the process. We were only about an hour into the trip at that point. We were searching for somewhere to get the tire changed, but we were having trouble finding a place off 85 that was open the Sunday after Thanksgiving. We kept on driving and we finally just stopped at a Wal-Mart in VA. Traffic wasn't bad at that point, but we couldn't go the speed limit since we were riding on the spare. When we finally got a new tire and got back on the road, the traffic was horrible! We ended up getting home around 5:30. That's not so bad, but we were originally planning on getting home around 1 or so. 

Once we got home, I was fine. The homesick thing works kind of different for me. While I'm here, I'm fine here. I have no desire to move back to NC in the immediate future (but I do want to end up back there eventually). It's when I'm actually there that I miss it, and just as we're leaving, I don't want to go just yet. I don't really know why that is. Josh thinks it's because I get to visit people I love and miss when we're in town. I don't have to get up and go to work, I get to hang out with friends, go to football games, and just get out of the normal routine. Maybe he's right. He always talks some since back into me and reminds me that Raleigh wouldn't be the way it is when we visit if we lived there. I know that, and I think that's why I'm in no hurry to get back. I think I just don't want the visits to end because I enjoy the break from work and home maintenance. Haha

Bailey!

Wow, it's been a while since I've given a Bailey update!

Socialization

We've been much better about getting her to the dog park on a weekly basis. She is getting much better at interacting with all types of dogs. She's learning that she needs to be a little more gentle with the smaller dogs and she doesn't need to be scared of the gentle giants :-) A few weeks ago, she met her first Great Dane. She was terrified of him at first, but after she finally decided that it was OK for them to sniff each other, they played really well together. I think she really had fun running under him. Haha. We talked to his mom while they played with the other dogs. His name was Connor. I assumed he was an adult because of his size. Nope, he weighs in at 130 at 10 months old! I didn't get a picture, but he looked something like this one.

On a side note, I love Great Danes! If they didn't have such a short life span, we would definitely consider getting one. 

This last time at the dog park, Bailey was chasing other dogs. I was just standing around chatting and I had all my weight on one leg. A dog ran into the back of my knee, (You know that weak spot that people can kick you in and you just fall down? Yea, that spot.) and I just fell flat on my butt. I turned around to see which dog it was, thinking it was a larger dog...nope, it was a little Jack Russell! It was hilarious! I think I laughed for about 10 minutes straight.


Camp Bow Wow
Camp Bow Wow is a boarding facility and day camp. There are locations all over the US (which is why I wanted Bailey to go there) so it's really convenient for when we travel to Raleigh (there's a location in Cary). They require an interview day before they will allow a dog to enroll in day care or board. Bailey had her interview day this past Tuesday. Their are pretty strict on playing, so I was actually really worried about taking her. She's a sweetheart, but she can be a rough player. After an hour or so of no calls to come pick up the ridiculously hyper puppy, I felt much more comfortable. We were able to tour the place and have a brief orientation when we picked Bailey up. They confirmed that she was a rough player. They have time outs for when the more enthusiastic ones get carried away. I like that :-) We do timeouts at home and at the dog park if she goes crazy, so it works well for us. We were originally doing this just so she would be covered for when we need to board her or take her to daycare, but we've decided to take her one day every other week. She had so much fun and she was completely exhausted when she got home. She was also very affectionate :-) I sat down beside her and she just plopped down and put her head in my lap. Normally, sitting down beside Bailey means fighting off kisses and her trying to walk on you. Haha.

Training
We're still working on "say your prayers". We haven't been nearly as consistent with this as I would like. She's getting it, we just have to stick with it. She is doing the actions on her own, without so many cues now. She just lays her heat between her feet most of the time though. Now we're working on getting her to bow her head on her own and hold it.

We intermittently work on give it and take it. We're not doing any organized training with it, but we try to use those words while we're playing with her. She still won't hold anything you get her to take (except a treat of course). I have gotten her to take a dollar and hold it for a few seconds, but she just drops it after that.

Once we got back home from Thanksgiving, we didn't use her pinch collar for a few days. That was a bad idea. We had hoped to have her weaned off it by now, but she's still way too immature. She wasn't responding as much to our verbal commands because she knew she wasn't wearing her pinch. We took her to the vet without it and that was a nightmare. She wanted to pull like crazy to sniff EVERYTHING. We've started using it again, and she's doing much better. We still have a long way to go with walking. I think this is going to take the longest since she's SO curious. We're taking her to the human park today so we'll have lots of opportunities to work with her.

We've let Bailey roam the bottom floor and stairs a few times when we had to leave for just a little bit. She's been locked in the foyer before, but she's never been able to roam the State Room without us there. She did really well for a while, and we had worked our way up to a couple of hours. One day, when we were out for about 4 hours, she decided it would be fun to rip tear out part of our carpet padding and scratch up a little bit of the carpet. This is our fault, we still haven't put the transition from the carpet to the tile back up. Still, she shouldn't have done that and we won't be leaving her out to roam again for a while.

As far as potty training, she's doing very well! She has actually let us know she needs to go out when she couldn't get to her bells. I didn't know what she wanted at first, because she never does that. I was really proud of her. We'll still use the bells but we'll probably try to slowly remove them over the next few months. That way, we won't have to remember to take them with us when we visit other people.

I mentioned a while back (I think) that we were planning on getting Bailey shoes for the winter. We got them! We've been putting them on her while she plays in the house so she can get used to them gradually. She wiggles a little bit when I try to put them on, but she's not really bad. She will try to take them off, but she's pretty easy to distract. We've only walked her outside with them once and she did great! She's a bit more clumsy when she wears them and all of her tricks are exaggerated. It's so funny. Here are a few videos.

I felt a little bad about laughing at this one, but it's just hilarious!

She's supposed to be waving in this one. This is what I meant about her tricks being exaggerated!

We've started running a little bit with Bailey. Hopefully we'll be able to stick with this through the winter. It's definitely helped with her running up and down the stairs.

She's maturing just a little bit. She's becoming a little more cuddly. I'm excited about this because I'm a big cuddler. We don't allow her on the furniture, so she usually comes and lays her head in one of our laps until we go lay on the floor with her. Well, one night this past weekend, Josh and I both fell asleep on the couch. I'm a super light sleeper, so I woke up to Bailey putting her feet up on me. She was crawling up on the couch with us. I kept acting like I was asleep to see what she was doing. She ended up laying on my chest. It was so precious (even though she's a bit heavy for that now), I just didn't have the heart to make her get down. I fell back asleep eventually and she woke me up snoring in my ear. Josh woke up not long after that and made her get down.

Nap time on her "couch"

Farfalle di Pollo al Sugo Bianco

I got this recipe from this great cookbook I picked up from the library. It has a healthier version of lots of recipes from different recipes. This one is from Macaroni Grill. I'll definitely be making it again!

Ingredients

Cheese Sauce

2 cups skim milk

1/4 t Chicken bouillon powder

1 C shredded low-fat Parmesan cheese

3 oz fat free cream cheese, softened

1 T cornstarch

Pasta

4 T diet margarine

1/2 c diced red onion

1/2 c chopped pancetta (I just used bacon)

1 T chopped garlic

3/4 c chopped green onions

12 oz grilled chicken, sliced (I actually made this without the chicken, but I'll try it with next time)

12 oz farfalle, cooked

1/2 c skim milk

1 T chopped fresh parsley, for garnish

Directions

1) For cheese sauce, heat 1 1/2 c of skim milk in a medium saucepan. Whisk in chicken bouillon powder and cheeses just as the milk starts to boil. Stir in the cornstarch and the remaining 1/2 c milk and whisk. Let mixture thicken and remove from heat.

2) In a large skillet, melt the margarine and saute the onion, pancetta and garlic. Let simmer until the veggies are just softened. Add green onions, grilled chicken and the cooked pasta. Stir in the 1/2 c milk and add the cheese sauce. Stir to blend all the ingredients.

3) Serve the pasta sprinkled with the parsley. 

Serves 4. Each serving is 635 grams. The original Macaroni Grill version has 1,310 calories per serving. I didn't use all the suggested low calorie options, so mine was probably somewhere in between. 

I haven't been so great about keeping up with this blog lately. We've got most of our Christmas decorating finished, and I still haven't posted pictures of our fall decorations! By the time we got around to decorating our living room, fall was already here! It worked out pretty well because the color I chose looks pretty fallish on its own. We didn't have to get much. Now that I think of it, we only really decorated the living room other than some pumpkins that we put outside (that I never got any pictures of).

 We have been looking for a picture to hang on this wall since we moved in. I've looked everywhere without much luck. I guess it didn't help that I had no idea what I wanted to put here. I was just waiting for something to jump out at me. I finally found this one at Target of all places. I also love the pillows!

In this area, I wanted a leaning shelf and Josh wanted something to hang on the wall. This is our compromise and I love it! I can't say I loved hanging it, but it was worth it. 

This is a picture from the dining room. Not much going on in the bay window here. The Christmas tree is there now. After Christmas, we have a bench that we'll be putting here. We just have to get it painted first :-)

 I thought I took a closeup of these, but apparently this is all I have for now. The area over the TV was looking a bit naked to me. I was originally going to put the floating shelves over the TV and these were going to go on the wall the shelves are on. Josh suggested that I switch it around. I'm SO glad I did. I love these, and it was less that $20 for me to make them! I just got the frames from Michael's, and some fabric from Joann. You can't tell here, but they're dragonflies and bees. The colors are perfect with our pillows, and the dragonflies and bees kind of add to the nature-y feel we have going on.

 I got this leaf plate from Marshalls. The pumpkins came in a bag of potpourri. I loved them because they feel fallish, but not at all like halloween!

I love this thing! For Christmas, I'll replace the candles and fill it with something different. I'm not sure what yet. I got it from Michael's.

I wish I could have gotten a better picture of this before I took it down. I love the branches and the mason jar candle!

I plan on finishing with Christmas decorations this week. Hopefully my camera will be back in soon and I'll be able to take pictures before I get Spring pictures up!

Friday Favorites!

1) NCSU vs MD! What a great game...or at least half :-) The game really looked horrible during the first half, but we kicked some major butt during the second half to come back and become bowl eligible! (Hopefully, we'll get a bid to a bowl we can make it to!) 

2) Friends - We got to hang out with SO many friends that we haven't seen in too long. I love our friends, not only because they are great friends, but also because we can be so far away for so long, then when we see each other again, it's like we were never apart. :-)

3) Cyber Monday - I ALMOST finished Christmas shopping. I now only have 2 people to shop for :-) I hope to finish those today or tomorrow. AND, we found a great deal on our carpet cleaner, which is here! I just have to find time to use it now.

4) Camp Bow Wow - I'll write more about this in a Bailey post, but Bailey went to day camp for the first time. Camp Bow Wow requires an interview day, and Bailey had hers on Tuesday this week. She got plenty of exercise and was exhausted when we picked her up!

5) Date night! - All I have to say is I LOVE my amazing husband! He took me to see Breaking Dawn since I didn't get a chance to see it while we were in NC. He doesn't like the movies but he was a good sport :-) We also went out to an Indian restaurant before the movie (yay for another check off my 101 in 1001 list!). It was delicious!

6) Verizon Fios - This actually happened yesterday, but I'll go ahead and put it in this post :-) We've had issues with our Comcast internet since before Thanksgiving. We set up an appointment for someone to come out, but apparently the people we spoke to forgot to put in a work order, so I took off work for not reason. This was not acceptable at all to me and I've missed Fios, so we decided to switch. Not only do we  have better cable and MUCH better internet now, but we have a house phone (I told Josh we're just like an old married couple) AND we'll get a $300 Visa gift card within 3 months! There are also lots of new features that have been added since we last had it. I'm SO excited. Now I just have to learn all the channels again. 

Friday Favorites!

This is a bit late, but with the holiday traveling and our internet being messed up...it's the best I could do :-)

1) Date night - The Friday before last, Josh and I went to Baltimore Comedy Factory for out date night. We had so much fun! I've never seen standup live so it was a great change to our typical date night. :-)

2) Football - We beat Clemson! I definitely didn't expect the win. I do feel like we missed out on a little bit of excitement. I know that sounds weird, but I just knew they were going to come back and beat us. Finally near the end of the 4th quarter I realized that wasn't going to happen. By that time we were so far ahead with so little time left. Don't get me wrong, I'm SUPER excited that we won, but there wasn't that really exciting, "OMG, we just beat #7!" moment. 

3) 3 day week - I love short work weeks!

4) Thanksgiving - I LOVE Thanksgiving! It's probably tied with Christmas for my favorite holiday. We got to eat some delicious food and spend some time with our family. Thanksgiving marks the beginning of Christmas season for us, so there's plenty of excitement!

5) Black Friday - Yes, we're some of the crazy people that go out shopping on Black Friday. No, I don't camp out in line for one of the 3 TVs Best Buy might have. We go mostly to spend time with Josh's side of the family. We get up every year and go together. Sometimes we get some shopping done, sometimes we don't. This year, we got a lot done. On Black Friday alone, we knocked out over half of our Christmas list. SCORE!

Friday Favorites!

I'm so glad I've started doing this. If I would have had this exact same week a few weeks ago, I probably would have told you that I've had a crappy week. When I look at these few things, I remember it actually wasn't so bad. It was actually pretty darn good.

1) New work hours - We're working shorter hours now that Josh has started his new job! The tradeoff is that he doesn't get every other Friday off anymore, but I like this better! I think Bailey does too :-)

2) Girls night - As much as I love just hanging out with the hubby at home, it's nice to get out of the house and hang out with some of the girls! I went to a friend's house for a girl's night last Saturday. It was a much needed change of pace.

3) New phone - This is a favorite and a not favorite all at the same time. I like my new phone, but I bought it because I had to. I lost my old one at the dog park. While it's much better, there are definitely other things I would have preferred to use my spending money on :-)

4) Natalia's call - I love when my niece calls me :-) She called a few nights ago to tell me they  had a tornado watch at home. Haha. She also wanted to check in on everyone and tell me what she had for dinner. It just amazes me at how she can hold a conversation :-) Little kids are so dang cute!

5) I got my ring back - I had to have a prong re-tipped on my engagement ring. I didn't want to hand it over, but when I got it back it was as shiny, white and scratch free as it was the day I got it :-)

6) Bailey howls - We've been trying to get Bailey to howl for the longest time without much luck. She will do it sporadically, but we want her to do it on command. We didn't think she really had it in her to be honest. Well, we were curious about how long she barks and whines when we leave for work. We decided to record her when we left for work. She doesn't do a lot of barking and whining...she howls! Not the little wimpy howls we get when she gets excited about something, but a real howl! Of course, it's not ideal for her to be howling that early in the morning, but I'm glad to know she has it in her!

Friday Favorites!

I borrowed this idea from my bestie. It's so easy to forget those little things that make you smile throughout the week, so I would like to list a few things about each week that made it great :-) 

1) NC State Football! Yes! We beat UNC for the 5th year in a row. It was an even sweeter win after all the crap talk from Withers leading up to the game. AND...shutout? Heck yea! AND, LSU beat Bama! Great football week!

2) Brewing! We brewed our Holiday beer Sunday night. I'm really excited about it and I can't wait to try it. This has been put off for a couple weeks now (lack of time when we had visitors and lack of hot water when the heater was broken), so it's not going to be ready in time for Thanksgiving like we hoped :-/ That's alright though, I'm sure it will be worth the wait.

3) Gone with the Wind - I finally finished the book a couple weekends ago and I was so excited to watch the movie. Josh and I stayed up really late Friday night to watch it. Of course, the book was better, but it was still a really good movie.

4) Cleaners - I bought a Livingsocial voucher for housecleaning. We had an appointment for Saturday morning. So, in just an hour or so, our house was cleaned AND we made a huge amount of progress in cleaning out and organizing our garage. We need to get rid of some stuff we've been hanging onto, but we're well on our way to being able to park our car in the garage before Winter sneaks up on us! Too bad I can't find my camera charger, this is definitely a project I would like to have a before/after shot of!

5) New job! - Not for me, for Josh! I haven't posted about it before, but today was his last day at his current job. He starts his new job on Monday. We're both really excited. This is a great opportunity for us! We celebrated with a happy hour after work today. Waffle fries topped with crab dip and cheese...DELICIOUS! 

The Woes of Being a Homeowner

Being a homeowner is very different from what I expected. It's not nearly as glamorous for sure, and it's a lot of work. We're way behind where I thought we would be at this point. For that reason, sometimes I regret not buying a newer home. Sometimes I think we are going to end up spending just as much as if we had bought one of the new construction townhomes we looked at once we do everything we want to do. I know that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems that way sometimes. I have to remind myself that we bought the house as more of an investment than anything. The amount of money we were going to spend in rent for the 5-7 years we plan on being here was absolutely ridiculous (and that's just with a small 1 bedroom apartment...anything larger would have been even more ridiculous!), and we did get a good deal. Not only that, but I was just plan sick of apartment living. It was definitely a lot less responsibility, but I love having a place to call ours! And, even if we don't actually make money on the house once we sell, we've learned a LOT! There are things I know to look for now that I would have never considered before owning a home. There are things that I have realized are or are not actually that important when it comes down to it. I know this is going to be a great experience when it's all said and done, and I definitely wouldn't want to go back to apartment living, but sometimes it's just frustrating.

There are tons of changes we want to make to our house, from simple updates or renovations to adding a deck. By this time, I thought we would have our kitchen completely renovated. We're not even close. One obvious reason is money. Every project, big or small, seems to end up costing more than we think. There are those "little" things we need to get for projects that add up really quickly. Also, I didn't think about those things we would HAVE to spend money on, like fixing a leaky window or replacing a water heater (more on that later). Of course I knew there would be repairs, I just didn't think they would come soon. The other reason is TIME. There's never enough of it. Since we're beginners at this homeowner thing and neither of us are particularly handy, our projects always take longer than we plan. For this reason, we're making some changes to the way we plan for projects. We're going to plan for the project to take twice as long as we think it will and 1.5 times as much as we think it will cost. This will account for the numerous trips to Lowe's to pick up tools we didn't think we would need. Haha.

Now, back to the water heater, the main reason for this post. It went out on us. That's bad enough. What's worse? It went out when we had 4 guests in the house! I felt SO bad. Some of them got lucky and only had to endure 1 cold shower, others (sorry Hutch!) were pretty much screwed for 4 days. Josh researched some stuff and tried a few things on the water heater. In the end, the heating coil was corroded or something and the whole thing needed to be replaced. We did a bit of research and picked out a water heater. We decided to have it installed. Josh has learned very quickly that he hates anything plumbing related. He had already been trying to repair the thing for several days. He was just burnt out. Lowe's had same day installation if you ordered before noon. That worked perfectly. Josh ordered it on Thursday. Well, same day installation was $100 extra, so we decided one more day wouldn't kill us. They only had one in stock that they could deliver soon (and it wasn't the one we picked out, but at least it was cheaper). So, we were getting our new water heater on Friday. Yay for hot water! Nope, no hot water of Friday. The lady taking the order didn't think to tell Josh that someone needed to come in to sign a contract before they would send anyone out, and she didn't update the phone number on file with the number Josh gave her (they had Josh's phone number on file...Josh lost his phone). Mid-day Friday we still hadn't heard a thing. That's when I called to figure out what was going on. This is when I found out we had to go to Lowe's first. We went in after work to sign the contract. Someone finally made it out on Monday to install the water heater. So...several hundred dollars and a week later, we could take hot showers again!

Luckily, I have an amazing husband who warmed water on the stove for me to take baths rather than cold showers, so the bathing part wasn't so bad. Washing dishes was horrible, it's so much harder to get dishes clean with cold water! For this reason, we decided to put off brewing our Christmas beer for a week :-/ Hot water is definitely one of those things we took for granted. 

Household Binder

I mentioned in my 101 in 1001 list that I wanted to complete a household binder. I really want to get more organized and I think this is a good start. I'm just about ready to tackle this project! Josh and I have decided to put house projects on hold for a few months because we're just burnt out. Once we finish our current one (the half bath), that's it until...I don't really know when, but at least after New Years. This will give me some more time to work on things I want to accomplish. I've decided to make this my December project so I'll be all ready for the new year! For now, I'll stick to planning, finding inspiration and collecting the supplies I'll need.

One of my favorite blogs for inspiration I've found so far is IHeart Organizing. Not only are there great ideas for making a household binder, but she's got great tips on organizing ANY part of your house you can think of. I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time there!

Here are my potential categories and the things that will be under each section:

- Meal Planning: fridge, freezer and pantry inventory; dishes we want to try?

- Finances: Payment schedule/checklist, account info, maybe I'll print a copy of our budget for here? Maybe not?

- Home Maintenance: Cleaning checklists/schedules, maintenance schedule (like changing filters, checking smoke detector batteries, etc.), contact info for contractors that we've used. I want to get a baseball card sleeve to add business cards to this section

- Contacts: phone numbers, addresses and e-mails of friends/family

- Pets: Bailey's vaccination schedule, heatworm/flea prevention schedule, vet info, emergency vet info, boarding/daycare facilities...or maybe this one should go in the travel section?

- Emergency Info: Drs (when we finally get a regular Dr), closest hospital info (is it bad that I still don't know where our closest hospital is?), Dentist, OBGYN...eventually pediatrician, etc. I haven't decided if I'll call this tab emergency info for sure...maybe just Healthcare (since it's not all emergency info?)
- Travel: packing list (I make one EVERY time we go somewhere and it pretty much stays the same...this way I can save some time :-)), care instructions for Bailey in case we have a sitter (as well as kids...eventually)
- Auto: maintenance schedule/checklist

Some other things I'm thinking about putting in there:
- Project to-do list (like, major projects for the house)
- Paint swatches we've used for the house, (with the room they were used in written on them)
- Past home improvements

The more I think about it, the more I think I could make a whole separate binder with the last few things.

So...what do you think? What would you put in your binder? Are there any categories I'm missing? Just something within a category I'm missing? Would you put something under a different category? I would love any suggestions!

The Big 25!

I'm 25! It's not a birthday that I've particularly looked forward to, but I still don't feel old, so that's good enough for me! This entire month has been very busy for us, so I really just wanted to relax. That's exactly what we've done! Friday after work, we were planning on going to a comedy club. As soon as we got home, I decided I didn't want to leave. We just stayed in and watched TV. We looked at the schedule for the comedy club and watched some videos from the comedians that are going to be there in the next few weeks. We have a Groupon that expires toward the end of November and decided to either next weekend or the weekend after that. 

Saturday was our designated lazy day for the month. I did cheat a bit and seal the grout before Josh woke up. It's supposed to be a lazy day for US, so I really wasn't that bad. Other than that, it was a great lazy day. The weather was perfect lazy day weather. It was cold and rainy, so I had no desire to remove myself from the comfort of my couch and blanket. We did get a little bit of snow. I've never seen snow before my birthday! It wasn't anything to get excited about. There was no accumulation, just a few flakes for about 30  minutes. We did take Bailey outside in it, but I don't even know if she noticed the difference. She did walk a little differently, but I think that's probably because we put her hoodie on her :-). We watched football and movies for most of the day. I even took a nap! Doing nothing and taking a nap may not sound very exciting, but both are very hard for me to do. Since we got the house, there's ALWAYS something to do. The to-do list never ends. This is why I've made it a goal to take just 1 day out of the month to be lazy and relax. If I don't, I'll work on little projects all weekend and it's Monday before  I notice it. I do almost feel guilty that we didn't finish up some projects, but I think this is important for our sanity. Haha. We ordered Chinese so we wouldn't have to worry about cooking or washing dishes. I did make some crab dip to eat while we watched football, but that took like 5 minutes of my time :-)

Sunday was my actual birthday. I slept in, which isn't an easy thing for me to do. Josh surprised me with breakfast, flowers and a cake :-) We took Bailey to the dog park in the early afternoon. We relaxed a little bit once we got her home, then we left to do some Birthday shopping. I got some new clothes and black boots!

Years ago, I always wanted impractical gifts for my birthday. This is one thing that has definitely changed...and I'm not quite sure exactly when it changed. I literally racked my brain to think of what I wanted for my birthday. Everything I could think of was either a clothing item or something for the house. Those are the most exciting things for me right now. I want a carpet cleaner for Christmas...maybe I am getting old?!? Haha

Bailey's Progress Report

This is probably a bit overdue. Haha. I've decided it's not necessary to do these weekly anymore since Bailey isn't growing as quickly as she was and they're probably starting to get a little repetitive. 

Behavior wise, we have our good days and we have our bad days. Bailey is getting much better at understanding what we want from her. She is also going through a very rebellious stage, so it doesn't always matter if she understands or not. I know we still have several months of this left and it's definitely a challenge. She is testing her limits for sure. She used to be great about doing her tricks. Now, she grunts and huffs before she does them sometimes, and sometimes she'll just refuse to do them. I would say playing dead is probably her least favorite trick. Sometimes she'll run through all the other tricks she knows to see if she can get a treat for doing them without having to play dead. It's cute sometimes, but we never treat her until she does what we ask her to do. 

She's doing really well with potty training. She's consistently ringing her bells still. She didn't have any accidents when we went home a few weeks ago and she didn't have any over the past few weeks when we had visitors. These used to be the hardest times in terms of accidents. Until the other day, I'm not sure when she last had an accident. I'll take the blame for the accident the other day. I was cooking breakfast and she rang her bell twice. I ignored her because it hadn't been too long since Josh took her out. I figured she just wanted to go out and play. Well, I was wrong. She had to pee. Oops.

She's so-so on her walks. We were hoping we wouldn't need her pinch collar any more by now. It's definitely not something we want to always have to use. She usually pulls when I try to walk her without it. When she gets really excited, she doesn't respond to the pinch collar as well as she used to. 

We've slacked on her tricks. We're still working on say your prayers. I personally got really bad for just having her wave a time or two then letting her eat while we had visitors. I don't know why. It takes all of 5 minutes to work on new tricks before her meals. Because of this, we're about where we were a few weeks ago with the trick. She likely would have mastered it by now if we would have been working on it consistently. It's OK though, it's just a trick and she'll get it eventually. :-)

She's done really well with all our visitors. She did get overly excited a bit, but I suppose that can be expected since she's just a puppy and we don't have visitors much. She likes everybody so that's never an issue. We just have to worry about jumping and things of that sort. I don't know what we'll ever do if we have a visitor who hates dogs. She just wouldn't know what to do if someone didn't want to pet her or play with her. She was a bit more hard headed than usual while people were here. I'm not sure if it was just her being more rebellious, if she thought we weren't paying attention, or what it was, but there was definitely a noticeable difference. We had to repeat ourselves more than usual, which is something we try not to do. I think when she notices that we repeat our commands, she just learns that she doesn't have to listen the first time. It's really hard for us to stick to this. It's my first instinct to tell her to sit again if she doesn't listen the first time. We're working on that :-)

This is one night while Anna and John were here. It was past her bedtime and she was so tired. She had to stick around to see what was going on though. 

We decided when we got Bailey that she wouldn't be allowed on furniture. I've put her in bed a few times with me when Josh stayed up late to play games or on his basketball nights. He was OK with that. I actually think she prefers to sleep beside our bed, she always acts a little nervous when she gets on our bed, but she eventually gets settled and goes to sleep. I'm not sure if it's because it's so tall or what. Anyway, we have an ottoman that we haven't used since we got it. We started using it for Bailey's training when we started working on "paws up". We talked about it when we first got her and more the other day. We decided she could have the ottoman. She likes to be close to us and we don't always feel like laying on the floor with her, so I think this works out.

I think we're all happy with this arrangement :-) She's not allowed to sit up here while we're eating though (we eat here more than we do at the table).

We were originally not planning on getting a dog until January 2012. It wasn't hard for me to change my mind when we met Bailey, but Josh took some convincing. I wanted a dog for a companion, he wanted a dog for protection. He justified getting her (from a financial standpoint) by getting a dog rather than a security system. We live in a safe area, but Josh has been paranoid since he left home I think. Bailey didn't bark at anything at all when we first got her. Josh used to come home at night from basketball and she wouldn't pay the least bit of attention to him opening the door or even walking up the stairs. For about a month or so, she's been alerting us a lot better. She barks when she hears neighbors too, but hopefully she'll learn to tell the difference.  I'm not sure if she'll ever be able to distinguish the sound of cars coming to our driveway and our neighbors' since they are so close together. She's just a baby so she'll learn what normal sounds are with time. 

She's loving all the leaves. When it's windy and we're on walks, she'll try to chase the leaves. It's so cute. She tries to chase the leaves down the stream near our house too. She's much more comfortable playing in it than she used to be. She used to only drink out of it. Now she will chase sticks and leaves. I thought she would like water a bit more since she has a little bit of lab in here. She definitely hasn't gotten that from the lab. So far I think she just has the coat and the toes of a lab. She definitely has a Pit temperament and energy :-).

Zoo Visit!

This post is super late. My family came to visit a few weekends ago. They've been up several times since we've moved into the house, but they've always helped us work on projects. This time, we wanted to do something fun with them. We decided to take them to the National Zoo. 

The last time we went it was ridiculously hot and humid. It wasn't a great day to walk around and a lot of the animals were inside. This time, the weather was perfect for a day at the zoo! 

 Natalia, Josh and I. She wanted to take a picture on every animal statue at the zoo.

 Panda! We were so close to him! The last time we went they were inside and we didn't get a good look at them.

 Natalia and Daddy on the anteater

So, if you know me, you know I'm terrified of snakes. Natalia talked about seeing the snakes from the time we stepped into the zoo. I told her Uncle Josh could take her in the reptile building. I started thinking about it and I decided if my 4 year old niece was brave enough to go in, I was going to go in too. I actually wasn't that bad. Natalia hated it. She is terrified of crocs and that's what we saw as soon as we got in. Daddy carried her around the whole time. I was just going to walk through and look at the turtles and frogs. I didn't have any interest in the snakes. Josh told me I should look and see what all the poisonous ones looked like. I told him it didn't matter if they were poisonous or not, I would treat them all the same. Haha. I humored him anyway. It actually wasn't that bad.

Anaconda! I have no idea how big this thing was, but it was huge. Not like in the movie obviously, but still huge. There was a lady just outside his exhibit holding the skin of a dead anaconda. I touched it! 

 Diamondback. This one was a little more scary because they actually live where Josh and I are from. We obviously won't have to worry about running into an anaconda anywhere, but I grew up playing in woods of Southeastern NC...plus he was doing the creepy snake tongue thing. Ick!

 This is a ginormous iguana. We saw a few wile iguanas while we were on our honeymoon, but they were probably the size of this guy's nose. He's shedding his skin in this picture, it actually looked pretty gross.

 I forgot what kind of turtle this is, but he's huge!

 Beautiful tiger!

He kept roaring! It was really cool. You can only hear it once in this video, but it's still pretty cool!

Daddy, Josh and I. Natalia took this picture. Not bad for a 4 year old :-)

Staycation!

This past week, we had lots of friends/family come visit! Anna and John, who are our best friends (plus John is Josh's cousin) came from Miami on Wednesday and stayed until Monday. Chris came from Raleigh on Saturday and stayed until Thursday, and Kallie came from SC on Saturday and stayed until Tuesday. Josh and I took some much needed vacation while they were in town. 

Josh, Anna and John picked me up from work on Wednesday, then went out for dinner and drinks. We got a delicious crab pizza from Joe Squared then we went out for drinks at Howl at the Moon. It was fun just catching up. Thursday we went to get burgers and we drove up to Hydes, MD to go on a tour at Boordy Vineyards. The place was absolutely gorgeous and the tour was really good. The wines tasted great too!

 The guys at happy hour

 
The whole group!

The hubby and I <3

Friday we wanted to relax a bit. Anna and I got a long overdue massage. I haven't had a massage since the couples massage we got on our honeymoon and I've wanted another one since then. It was great, but after only 3 days back at work, I already feel like I need another one! I think I'll try  to get one once a year :-) They're too expensive to get much more often than that. Josh and John went to play disc golf. They had fun, but Josh lost his phone :-/.

Saturday we drove down to Charlottesville to see the NC State/UVA game. We got there early to meet up with more friends and tailgate before the game. The weather was great, the tailgating was great, AND we won! The campus is absolutely beautiful and I couldn't believe how amazing the views from the stadium were.


Bailey was so tired on the way to Kyle's in the morning.


But she was too curious to go to sleep!

 The girls

 The guys

 The hubs and I...with part of the amazing view!

 The Martins!

Oops...how did we get down there?

Sunday, we all went to a pumpkin farm. We went on a hay ride, walked through what was supposed to be a corn maze (it was really just a path through corn) and picked out pumpkins we were planning to carve later that night. I was super excited because Josh and I have actually never carved a pumpkin together. I can't believe it's taken us over 10 years to carve a pumpkin! We got home and could not find our pumpkin carving kit! We finally just gave up and decided to hang out since it was Anna and John's last night.

 The hubs and I with our first pumpkin!

Silly guys :-) Love them!

Anna and John were flying out of Reagan, so we drove down to the National Harbor for lunch. We went to Cadillac Ranch. The food was really good and it seems like it would be a really fun place in the evenings. The service wasn't impressive though. After that, we walked around the Gaylord Hotel. It's absolutely gorgeous inside. It's like a little indoor town. I wish we would have had more time to look around, but we had to get on the road! It's a good thing we did, because traffic was horrible. We'll definitely be going back in the future. On the way home from the airport, we stopped to pick up pumpkin carving kits. Chris and Kallie both had bought pumpkins and we wanted them to be able to carve them before they left. I wish we would have taken pictures when we were carving or at least with our pumpkins when we were finished. I was so tired, I didn't even think of taking pictures until yesterday! We cleaned the seeds so we could roast them. I made some cinnamon/sugar ones (surprisingly, I wasn't impressed with these) and some Old Bay seeds (these were delicious).

Tuesday morning, Josh got up to take Kallie to Dulles. I stayed home to pick up around the house a little bit and start planning for the day. Chris wanted to go to a winery while he was here, so we needed to pick one out. Boordy is on the Piedmont Wine Trail, so I wanted to pick another winery on the same trail. It wasn't that hard to choose since most of them do tours from Wednesday-Sunday. We chose Fiore Winery. Now we've seen 2 of the 8 wineries on this wine trail! This one was WAY smaller than Boordy. The buildings were not as pretty as our first tour, but the views were gorgeous! I really enjoyed both tours. On the way home, we stopped at G&M. They have delicious crab cakes! The prices are about the same as a lot of the other crab cakes you'll find around here, but the size actually makes these worth it! As always, it was delicious...and I had leftovers for lunch. I had to work the next day, so I went to bed early while they guys played Halo.

Josh and Hutch!

The hubby and I in front of some grape vines. Look at that view!

Wednesday was a tough day back at work for me. I was really bummed that 1) some of our friends had gone home and 2) that Josh and Chris were still home. Josh and Chris came and picked me up from work. We went to McCormick & Schmick's for happy hour. They have an amazing happy hour menu! This was another early night for me since I had to be at work again. Chris left Thursday afternoon before I got home :-/

All in all, this was a great vacation...even if we didn't really travel. It was great to have some familiar faces around for a while and to get to show them around a little. It's tough getting back into the routine. Luckily, we'll meet up again in a month over Thanksgiving weekend!