1) Today is my Friday - We're driving to NC to visit our families this evening. We weren't planning on visiting again until the end of August, but we have a free weekend and writing Father's Day cards last week made me want to go...so we are!
2) Weather - With the exception of the past 2 days (which have been ridiculously hot and humid), the weather has been amazing lately. This past weekend was around 80 and not very humid at all. Perfect!
3) Guest Bathroom Update - We painted the guest bathroom last month, and I still need to post pictures of that. I want to finish decorating first, which may take forever. Anyway, we bought new light covers for the fixture. I don't love the fixture we have in the guest bathroom, but I don't hate it either. I only see it to clean the bathroom anyway. The ones we had were so old looking. It really made the bathroom look dated.
This is an old one and a new one side by side.
All new! About 5 minutes of work and less than $20. Such an improvement!
4) Our Garden - We're finally getting stuff out of it! We've been getting lettuce for a while, but it's growing even faster now. Our cherry tomatoes are doing very well and so are our peas. The carrots land potatoes look really good, but I'm not sure when they'll be ready.
5) Brewing - We brewed our first beer in forever Friday night. The kit we used was very different from kits we've used in the past. It was much more simple with fewer steps and it didn't take nearly as long. We rarely get kits anymore, but I got this one on sale really cheap. We'll see how it turns out. I think it's going to be a little too dark. We added some rosemary and thyme to it, so it should be interesting. I can't wait to see how it turns out.
6) Fishing - For Father's Day, we slept in then went fishing. Josh is really getting into fishing and we had lots of fun the last time we took Bailey. This time, we went to a different spot. She was so hyper, I decided to take her for a walk. We hadn't gotten far at all around the lake when we met another puppy. He and Bailey hit it off really well. We ended up taking them off leash so they could play for a while. Other than trying to run and play with a dog that was on a leash and stealing a soccer ball, Bailey did really well.
7) Star Spangled Sailabration - This past week, there was a huge celebration for the bicentennial of the War of 1812. The inner harbor was loaded with lots of ships from all over the world. We didn't go to the main part because we just weren't up for the traffic. We went to Fell's Point since it wasn't as crowded and we had a groupon for a restaurant there. There were sailors from all over the world all around Baltimore! We even saw a few that were stationed at Camp Ljeune! After we ate dinner, we went to look at some of the ships.
Hutch, is that you...on a Canadian battle ship? This ship fired off cannons as we were walking back to our car. It was SO loud, and since I wasn't expecting it, it was pretty scary too.
Japanese Coast Guard (I couldn't get a good pic of this one, it was way across the harbor)
Josh and I went to Miami to visit Anna and John for our vacation. We were there from the 23rd through the 29th of May. Yes, we were there during the "zombie attack". Crazy!
Anna picked us up from the airport on Wednesday. We went to pick John up for work then headed to Wet Willie's for dinner and drinks. YUM! We went to South Beach next. I enjoyed it much better than the last time we went (Spring Break last year). It was beautiful, the weather was perfect and it wasn't very crowded. We relaxed, caught up and did some people watching. After that we went back to their place. They had just moved last year when we visited, so it was nice to see how they've decorated their apartment! We chatted a lot, made plans for the rest of the week, took Carter out to play (he made a new Pit friend :-), of course this made me miss Bailey) and ordered pizza for dinner.
South Beach!
Thursday we slept in and Anna took us on a tour of Miami's campus while John was at work. This is one of the only days we were able to check in on Bailey while she was playing at Camp Bow Wow. We went out for dinner at Scotty's Landing. It was really good and reasonably priced. We got to sit right by the water, which was really nice. A nice lady from Alabama took this picture for us. I love running into Southern people when we're not in Southern places! It just feels familiar, which is really nice when you're in an unfamiliar place.
Dinner at Scotty's Landing.
Friday, John got off work early. We went back to South Beach. Since Memorial Day weekend was coming up, we knew it would be ridiculously crowded for the rest of our trip, so this was our last chance to go. Again, it was beautiful. We found an area that wasn't crowded at all. We read a little and relaxed in the water for a while. Last year, the water was still a little too cold for my taste. This time, it was perfect! We went back home, showered, grilled out and played cornhole. Just like old times. It was a low key but very fun night.
Saturday, we lounged for the majority of the day. Anna and I read while the guys played X-Box. We decided we should do something besides be lazy, so we ended up going bowling. I'm horrible at bowling (except the Wii kind. Haha.), but it was still fun. After bowling, we went to a Cuban restaurant. It was SO good. Anna found a Groupon for the place, so we all ended up eating our fill (and some) for super cheap. I even tried some Cuban coffee. I HATE coffee, but it came in such cute little cups. I tried Josh's and decided I would like one too. They were also super cheap! We even had enough for everyone to have another meal to take home! NC State was playing those other people in baseball when we got back home. I don't care about baseball, but I actually got into that game and I was really disappointed when we lost. I stayed up to play games for a little bit, then ended up crashing early (but still really late for me).
Sunday we slept in a bit then drove to the Everglades. This was my favorite part of the trip. We had planned on kayaking (which I would still like to do some day!), but the timing didn't work out for us, so we just hiked. We still had an amazing time! The "hike" was only like .8 miles round trip, so I wouldn't really consider it a hike. We pretty much walked down a ramp. We still saw a lot on such a short walk though! First we just saw some birds, a weird bug, then some turtles.
That was cool and all, but I was looking for gators and panthers! I knew the chances of seeing a panther were pretty much 0, but I was hoping to get lucky.
Anna and I spotted the first alligator in the water. He was kind of far away and we could only see his eyes, but we still got excited and took pictures.
We kept walking and we saw one coming up out of the water! SO COOL!
Then, there was this cool lizzard, his neck flares in and out, this picture has it flared out.
Close up!
Sunday, we went out to a place Anna and John really like, Titanic. The food was really good and so are their micro brews. Apparently, we went on kareoke night. John joked that he would do it if they had "Forgot about Dre". Of course Josh said he would too. I don't think either of them expected that they would actually have it. Guess what...
We had a blast watching them and the crowd really enjoyed it. They were much better than the people that had gone before and after them. I would never have the courage to get up in front of a crowd of people and sing, much less rap, so I was super impressed with both of them!
Monday we went were lazy for the first part of the day then we went to the beach. John put ribs in the oven to cook so they would be super tender when we were ready to eat that night. It was Memorial Day, so it was ridiculously crowded. It was also not nearly as pretty as South Beach. We still had a good time though. We didn't get in the water, it wasn't very nice looking. I did put my feet in just before we left. Haha. We mostly relaxed, or attempted to. It was quite windy and sand was getting EVERYWHERE! My entire body was covered. I was just laying on the blanket and it looked like I had rolled all in the sand. We played bocce for a while after relaxing, then we went back home. The ribs smelled amazing! We had some delicious mac n cheese and asparagus with them. YUM! We played cornhole for a little while and planned our trip to Atlanta in August! I'm SO excited for the season opener! John had to be at work early the next morning, so we said our goodbyes to him then went to bed.
Tuesday was the day we were leaving. Anna had to go to work, so Josh and I packed and had breakfast. Anna took us to the airport and we got through security in no time. We were all set to go. We were scheduled to land at BWI at 4:30. We had to pick up Bailey by 6:30, so we had a nice little cushion. Our plane was delayed by about 20 minutes, so Josh decided to go to the bathroom. A minute after he got back, a girl we went to high school with came up to us. We haven't seen her since 2004! She lives in NC and we live in MD, but we run into each other in the Miami airport. Small world! I was a little antsy about our delay, but I still felt OK. We were going to have to take a shuttle to our car, but I figured we should still make it to pick Bailey up by 5:30ish since we didn't check any luggage. We finally boarded the plane and I felt much better. We sat there...and sat there...and sat there a little longer. The pilot said there was going to be another slight delay, but we were going to go ahead and watch the safety video and go into the holding area. Apparently there was a lot of air traffic in the BWI area. We waited for what seemed like forever. It was SO hot on the plane. Finally, they said there was going to be another delay, we went back to the terminal and let us off the plane without us knowing what time we would be leaving. I knew it was impossible for us to make it back in time to pick Bailey up since it was already after 4:00. I may or may not have cried at this point. The funny thing is, our flight was still listed as on time on all the boards. Haha. We realized we were just going to have to eat at the airport. We were both pretty hungry. We ended up grabbing salads from Chili's to go. We didn't want to go too far, because we didn't know how long it would be before we boarded again. We both called in to work as a just in case for the next day. We really had no clue what time we were leaving. We decided if we got home after midnight, we weren't going to work the next day. Josh started making fishing plans in his head for the afternoon. Haha. I called Camp Bow Wow and arranged for Bailey to stay another night :-/. We decided we were going to enjoy the rest of our vacation, so we each had a beer at the airport bar. We were able to board about 30 minutes later. After it was all said and done, we ended up being about 4 hours behind schedule. I've only ever had 2 major delays while flying, and they were both leaving Miami! Haha.
The weather was starting to get bad when we landed. I'm glad we left when we did. Otherwise, I don't know if we would have made it home that night. We obviously didn't feel like cooking, so we picked up Chinese. Before we got home it was raining so hard we could barely see. The storms ended up getting pretty bad, and we just beat them home. It was SO nice to walk into our house, but it was too quite without Bailey there. It also smelled like new paint. Haha. It felt so good to sleep in our own bed. We both had a hard time falling asleep. We both napped on the plane while we were waiting to take off, so I'm sure that didn't help things. It was really hard to get up the next morning. We were both exhausted. It did make it easier that we didn't have to feed and walk Bailey, but I was still sad I didn't get my normal goodbye hugs and kisses. Wednesday was a tough day at work, but I left a little early so we could pick up Bailey. Josh called me at work to ask me to pick him up first. He wanted to be there when we got her. It's out of the way, but I was more than happy to do that. I'm glad we were able to pick her up together. She looked so small when we picked her up! We had been around Carter all week and he's a bit bigger than Bailey. She also lost a few pounds while she was there from running around all day for a week straight. She was very excited to see us, but not like I thought she would be. She was pretty much how she usually is when we pick her up from camp, but more tired and more cuddly when we got home :-). This was the longest we had ever been away from her, so it was really tough. Josh even let her sleep in bed with us that night, which has never been allowed before.
We had a really good time on our vacation. It was nice to get a break from every day life. It was so great to catch up with old friends. It's even better, because we'll see them again so soon!
My niece turned 5 on May 24th. We had her birthday party on the 19th, the weekend before Josh and I went on vacation. I just can't believe how fast she is growing up! Josh and I drove down Friday after work, so we got in pretty late. We stayed with my sister so I could help her prep for the birthday party the next morning. Josh took Bailey to my dad's and went fishing with my cousin.
The them of Natalia's birthday party was Hello Kitty. She wants Hello Kitty everything! Her big birthday gift was redecorating her bedroom in just about everything Hello Kitty we could find. Her parents bought her new bedding, a rug, wall decals and curtains. Josh and I got her a wall lamp, a picture I painted and a lamp (I painted a Hello Kitty on the lamp shade). We also got her a Beta that she named Hello Kitty. She has since re-named the fish Bella. She was SO excited about her new bedroom and her fish. Anyway, my sister and I got up early to start decorating and re-arranging her bedroom. It was lots of work but well worth it.
Natalia's super cute cake!
She doesn't like people singing Happy Birthday to her. I was like this too.
Opening some gifts
Natalia with her fish, Bella.
We decorated with tons of balloons of course. Part of her room decor was a big Hello Kitty poster. I made bows out of tissue paper so the kids could play pin the bow on the kitty, kind of like pin the tail on the donkey. It was really cute! They also played musical chairs and chased each other around like kids do. It was a lot of fun, but I will admit, a 5 year old's birthday party is a GREAT form of birth control!
AJ and Kristen came to visit during Mother's Day weekend. They were coming up to visit family and for AJ's sister's graduation. We were the first stop on their vacation :-).
They got to our house Saturday in time for lunch. This was the first time we had seen them since New Years, so there was a lot to catch up on. We cooked brats on the grill and just spent some time chatting and catching up. That evening, we went downtown to go bowling at Mustang Alley's. This was our first time bowling since high school! Josh kicked our butts and I scored ridiculously low, but we still had a great time. It was still pretty early when we went, so it wasn't crowded at all, which was actually nice. After bowling for an hour, we went downstairs to Heavy Seas Alehouse. Heavy Seas is a local brewery and they have several beers that Josh really likes. Up until this point, I wasn't really crazy about what I had tried. The few I had tasted were just too hoppy. They had all their beers on tap and even a few on cask, so Josh was really excited about that. He got Loose Cannon on cask and I got Sea Nymph, which is a summer ale. It is delicious! I used to like Sam Adam's Summer Ale, but since having Sea Nymph, I really don't care for it anymore. Haha. The food is a bit pricey and we were still full from lunch, so we didn't get anything to eat. They have a nice outdoor beer garden area and we decided to hang out there for a while. It's pretty small, but they do have a couple beers on tap out there and a grill, so they can make your food right there for you. We decided to just play a game of darts. It was a beautiful day, so we really enjoyed ourselves out there. After Heavy Seas, we went to PowerPlant Live. Apparently, it was 80s night, because LOTS of people were dressed in ridiculous 80s clothes. I didn't take any pictures, because I felt like it was rude at the time, but I really wish I would have now. Haha. We ended up just hanging out at Leinenkugel's Beer Garden by the fire place. It was nice to just relax and people watch. After this, we went to Canton for Lisa's (AJ's sister) graduation party. We ended up staying there for a few hours. Lisa had no idea that AJ was coming, and much less that he was bringing us, so she was very excited for us to be there.
Our group
The Kinlaws
The Klingenmaiers
Sunday we got up and I made cinnamon roll pancakes for breakfast. They were a little labor intensive, but delicious! We decided to go tour wineries. We went to 3 different ones since they were so close together. We went to Loew Vineyards, Elk Run and Black Ankle. We enjoyed ourselves at all of them, but Black Ankle was by far the nicest and my favorite. It was also by far the most expensive. After we visited the wineries, we wanted to take AJ and Kristen to G&M for crabcakes. We've been to G&M several times, but it's been for dinner during the week or an early dinner on Saturday. This was 6:00 on Mother's Day. NOT a good time to go to G&M if you're hungry. The wait was at least an hour and a half. No thanks! Luckily, they have a takeout area. We ordered from there and had our food in less than 20 minutes. We just took it home and ate it there, which was actually really nice. We finished dinner and played bocce for a while. We took Bailey out with us to play. She is so funny, because she's used to being able to chase the balls we throw when we go out in the field behind our house. She would try to run after them, then when we went to collect the balls, she would try to kick them around and pick them up. Of course, they're really hard and heavy, so she couldn't, but she tried every single time. We had a lot of fun. We just relaxed and watched stuff on Netflix for the rest of the night. Or Josh, AJ and Kristen did. I fell asleep. Haha. Josh and I had work the next morning, and AJ and Kristen were driving to Atlantic City, so we all went to bed early.
At Black Ankle. Isn't this a super cute building?!?
The back side of the tasting room.
We had a really good time with AJ and Kristen and we can't wait for them to visit again!
This is my first Friday Favorites post in lots of Fridays! It's hard for me to not try to include all the good things that have happened to us since my last post, but I'm going to try to write individual posts about the big things :-).
1) Sleeping in - I rarely stay up really late or sleep past 8, even on the weekends. Last weekend, I slept in with Josh both days. I could probably count on my 2 hands how many times that has happened since we've been married. Granted, it was because I was sick and I had to take Nyquil so I could breathe through the night. It was still nice though :-).
2) Bailey - Since Josh and I got back from vacation, we've been spending more TOGETHER time with Bailey. We had gotten into the habit of just one of us taking her on walks. We would both take her out to play, but we rarely went on walks with all 3 of us. She was so tired for the first couple of days after we got home, she was SO well behaved. We decided we wanted to keep her tired forever (seriously, it's not possible, Haha.). We both missed her so much, so we both wanted to be with her on her walks. So we've been walking her together in the mornings before work and most evenings after work (when it's not raining). We had been mostly throwing toys out back for her to get exercise, but we've stepped up on the walking since she gets exposure to more things that way. We still don't see as many people and other dogs as I would like (we usually see MAYBE 1 dog on the morning walks and just a handful of people), but it's better than none. She is behaving better, apart from chewing up her bed (this is the second bed she's ruined). I should have taken a picture of her crate, but I didn't. She's fascinated wit zippers and likes to unzip things. When she found all that fluffiness inside, it was like the biggest stuffed toy ever, so she was in heaven I'm sure.
3) Alex - Wednesday of this week, our UPS lady came in and told me we had a little fawn outside our back door. I went out to look at him and he was SO tiny. I have no idea how long the poor little thing had been there, but he was sick (I won't go into details, but it wasn't very pretty). Another co-worker and I decided not to call animal control, we didn't know what they would do with him. We found a wildlife rescue to take him to. We decided on Frisky's. We put him in a box, stuck him in the back seat of my car and drove him over. We were calling him a girl, but we still named him Bambi. When we got there we found out she was actually a he and he's about 2 weeks old. Our UPS lady was worried about him, so she stopped by again just to check on him (so sweet)! She said she had named him Alex, after the street we work on (Alexander Bell Dr). Hopefully all is well and he'll be fine.
4) Brewing Supplies - For our anniversary, I got Josh a wort chiller (it cools the wort down faster, so there's a smaller chance of contamination). We also decided to get a second brew kettle. Josh wanted to get a larger one. I consulted friend who is also a homebrewer (10+ years, so I always go to him with our questions) and he pointed me in the right direction. It's more than we were planning on spending, but we won't be replacing it any time soon. He's still using his original one and he said it looks like new. I love that we can drain from the bottom of this rather than pouring it from the top. We'll be brewing the full 5 gallons in this kettle and it will be nice to not have to lift and pour 5 gallons! We can also add a thermometer later, which we will definitely do. We'll be brewing tomorrow and our new kettle won't be here yet. We may use it some time next week though! We have our next 3 batches planned out, so there will be plenty of opportunities to use it. We can brew 2 batches at the same time now too. I'm pretty excited about that since brewing a batch takes several hours.
5) Anniversary Dinner - Last Friday, we went out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary. We decided to make dinner together at home on our real anniversary (more about that later). Our appetizer was just OK, it had prosciutto, duck (I've had duck before and I like it, I didn't like this, it was kind of like duck bacon...no, not even bacon, because bacon is delicous...I don't know how to described it, but it was smoked and it had mroe fat than meat. I wasn't a fan.) and wild boar. I was excited about the wild boar, but when it came out it was sausage. And it just tasted like sausage. I think Josh was excited about all the meats. Haha. I wanted the crab and artichoke dip, but Josh said he wasn't feeling it. The pita bread that came with the meat was delicious though. Haha. I got a burger (with some DELICIOUS mac n cheese instead of fries) and it was SO good. Josh got a crabcake burger and it was also very good. We both got some local beers that we enjoyed. They had apple pie eggrolls on the menu for dessert and that sounded amazing to me. I was full, but I ordered it anyway. I wasn't thrilled about it. The eggrolls were small and I could barely even taste the apples, and the ice cream they came with was SO salty. Our entrees made up for the not so amazing appetizer and dessert, so we still really enjoyed our meal. It was so nice to just relax and unwind from the week together.
6) Lazy/Productive Weekend - Last weekend we got caught up on things around the house we had put off during our first week after vacation. Neither of us was feeling well, so we weren't really up for cutting grass and washing laundry. We got a lot done, both on the house and our personal goals. We had plans to go out to eat dinner Saturday, but we had just gone out for dinner on Friday and we just didn't feel like it. We decided to just throw a pizza in the oven and watch movies until way past our bed time. It was pretty awesome :-).
So, it's been over a month since I've posted! Things have been so busy lately and when I've had the spare time to blog, I just haven't wanted to, especially the last couple weeks. Blogging used to be a big deal to me, but lately it really hasn't been. I kind of thought about stopping all together, it's just felt more like a burden than anything else. Then I started thinking about all we've done in the past month. Blogging has been my way of documenting our lives since we moved away from home. It's a really good way to keep friends and family in the loop and for me to look back at how we're evolving as a family. So, I've decided not to give it up after all. It will take some time, but I'll get caught up with everything...or at least I'll try. I don't even remember what all we've done since I last posted, but I'll give it a shot :-) Expect several posts in the next week or so.
