Headed West for the Weekend

Thursday Josh and I took a half day and started our 8.5 hour drive to Spruce Pine, NC for Brittany and Lee's wedding. Since we didn't have Bailey with us, we decided to stop to actually sit down for a dinner. Josh wanted to find a brewery on the way if we could. He ended up finding a place in Blacksburg. It ended up being a really good time to stop. It was close to the halfway point and we were both ready for a break.

 We drove through Virginia Tech's campus since it was only a couple of minutes out of the way. I didn't really get any good pictures, but it's a pretty campus.

 My chauffeur :-)

Bull & Bones is the name of the place Josh found. We both really liked it!

They have 6 brews plus a seasonal. The seasonal brew was lemongrass ginger and it was delicious! 

 They had burgers and BBQ with hand cut chips. Neither of us was very hungry and we couldn't choose what to eat, so we ordered a burger topped with BBQ and onion rings on it. It was AMAZING! 

We ended up getting into town pretty late, but luckily the owner of the lodge we were staying was really awesome and agreed to stay late so we could check in. He was even nice enough to show us to our rooms (which is a really good thing, because we would have never found it ourselves). The main office was a couple minutes and down the mountain from where our room was, and if you don't know your way around, it's probably impossible to find in the dark...and in the rain. A lot of the wedding party was staying at the lodge. There were several rooms and a common area. We decided to hang out for a while once we got in. Lee was staying here, but we didn't know anybody else that was still up when we were there. Everyone was really nice though! We ended up hanging out for a while. 

These are the cabins that were in front of our room. Somehow, I completely forgot to take a picture of our room!

Brittany was able to get most things taken care of before we got to town, so Josh and I decided to sight see a little Friday morning/afternoon. We had to run a couple errands, then we drove around the parkway. The view was absolutely amazing. 

 A Christmas tree farm! They were all over the place.

Love of my life <3 

Friday evening we had rehearsal then dinner. The dinner was at the lodge we were staying at. I didn't take any pictures, but the place was beautiful and the food was amazing. The lodge also has a winery and brewery, so the wine and beer that was served was all made on site. It was so good!

At the rehearsal dinner.

I'll write about the wedding in another post, or else this would be a novel.

Car Shopping

We didn't expect to be car shopping for another 3 years or so. Needless to say, we hadn't even thought about what kind of car we would like when I got in the accident in June. So, while we were waiting to hear back from the insurance adjustor, we sat down and talked about budget and what we were looking for in a car. We want to get an SUV when we have kids, so we even considered getting one now. We decided early on in the search that we would wait to get the SUV until we actually need the extra space. For now, we were much more concerned about gas mileage. 

Once we decided we were getting a car, we had to decide which features were important to us. We knew we wanted a sedan, something with good gas mileage, no black interior (Bailey's white hair shows up very well on black and I know it would drive me crazy), and a decent sized trunk. We were considering new vs used too. These are a LOT of things to consider when you're on a short time frame. We did lots of research online and our top choices were the Honda Civic and Mazda 3. We also considered the Ford Focus and Toyota Corolla. We ended up ruling out the Focus pretty early on. The Corolla was the first car we test drove. We liked it, but it didn't stand out. We found it used at a Honda dealership. I decided before the test drive was even over that I really didn't want to buy a car from this particular dealership. The guy who helped us was extremely pushy and knew absolutely nothing about the car (I actually doubt he knew much about cars at all, he didn't know manuals could come with cruise control). I'm no expert about cars, but if it's your job to sell cars, you should be able to answer basic questions a potential buyer has about the car. We had a max budget for used and new cars, and he didn't even acknowledge that. He was showing us used cars that were at the top of our new car budget. 

The next day, we continued our search. Our first stop was a Honda dealership a co-worker referred me to. He's been buying cars from this dealership for many years and he only had good things to say about them. He put in a call for us, and we went to go see them the next day. We had already ruled out the Accord because of price and gas mileage. We wanted to go with a smaller car, so we drove the Civic. We drove a silver one and we loved it. We liked this dealership much much better than the previous Honda dealership. We told them what we wanted, the salesman got it for us and let us go on a test drive on our own. This was much better and more relaxed than when the salesman is in the car with you. We were free to talk about the car or whatever while we rode. We both drove it and it was very comfy and drove very well. We had leather seats in the Taurus, and they get uncomfortably hot in the summer time, plus we had concerns about Bailey puncturing the seats with her nails (we use a hammock, but it's still a concern). Because of this, we decided we wanted cloth seats this time around. We decided that keyless entry and cruise control were essential, but we were flexible on any other features. I had done some online shopping for used Civics, and I was finding them for less than $1,000 cheaper than a new one. With them having 60-80K miles on them already, it didn't seem worth it to go with a used Civic. We decided on the LX. It had the features we wanted along with a few more. My favorites are the auxiliary input jack, the multi-information display  (We can have a picture display!) and USB audio capabilities. It makes playing the Ipod much easier, which is great for trips. Some of the more expensive models had a sunroof (we had one in the Taurus and rarely used it, so this wasn't a big deal) and bluetooth. The bluetooth would have been cook for the Ipod, but it wasn't worth the extra money for us. We really liked the Civic, but we wanted to drive the Mazda 3 too.

I was really excited to drive the Mazda 3. I definitely liked it better visually. I was pretty close to buying one my sophomore year of college, but Josh talked me out of it. I've liked them since then. We both loved the Mazda 3. We drove an automatic with the +/-. It was pretty cool. You can choose to shift up manually, but the car automatically shifted down for you, and you didn't have to use a clutch to shift up. We both thought that was pretty cool, but we decided after having the car for a few month, we would probably never use it. It drove very well and the sound system was a little better than the Civic. One of the major drawbacks for the Mazda 3 was the interior options. It was either black, or an ugly tan/black combination. It may sound silly, but this was pretty much a deal breaker. Granted, one of the reasons we liked the the way it looked so much better was because it had black interior, I knew it would only take 1 trip with Bailey for that to change our minds. We really wanted gray.

Next, we drove another Civic. We just wanted to go to another dealership to see how the price compared to the quote we got at the first dealership. We also drove a manual at this one. We were interested in one from the beginning, but the first dealership didn't have any on the lot in the LX. We drove the Polished Metal Metallic (darker silver looking color) and we liked it much better than the silver metallic we drove at the first dealership. We liked the interior color better too. We both LOVED driving the manual and we were leaning toward buying it for quite a while. This dealership gave us a higher price (even though the manuals are a little cheaper) than the first dealership, and there was more pressure. We really liked the low pressure at the other dealership a lot. 

We went home and talked about all the cars. We decided we prefer the Civic. Now we just needed to find a used car to compare it to so we could be sure we wanted to get a new one. I had already done this online for a bit, so I kind of knew what to expect, but Josh wanted to go see one just to be sure. We went to look at 1 and ended up not even test driving it. It was 4 years old and had somewhere between 60 and 80K miles on it (I can't remember for sure). It was only $600 cheaper than the quote we got for the brand new car. Obviously, it wasn't worth it for us. If we went new, we would have the warranty, which I think is worth $600 itself. So, we decided we would go with the new Civic. Once we decided on the Civic, we briefly thought about getting the nicer model with the leather seats some other features. I was all for it. I knew leather was a concern with Bailey, but it did look nicer. This car was $4K more. Ultimately, we decided not to go this route since we're still trying to pay off some student loans. We're already taking on a car payment, and we didn't want it to be higher than it needed to be. 

I woke up around 12:30 am Sunday because I was cold. I was SO excited, because this meant our power was back on. We were planning on buying the car the next day as long as we heard for sure that the Taurus was totaled. I was excited and I wanted to be sure about our choice, so I got up to do a little internet searching. I was looking at the awards each car got. The Mazda got things like, fun to drive. The Civic got awards for much more practical things, like holding value. If I were 19 searching for a car, I would have definitely gone with the Mazda 3. I'm much more practical now (and Josh is much more practical than me), so we decided for sure to go with the Civic. They also have a reputation for lasting a really really long time. The Mazda 3 has only been out since '04, so it doesn't have a track record like the Civic.

So far, we're completely happy we bought the Civic. We have decided that we definitely prefer leather seats. Bailey's hair clings to the fabric in our car, but at least it does vacuum up easy. We don't necessarily wish we would have gotten the leather seats since our car payment is much lower, but we do want to get leather seats for our next car. That's really the only thing we don't love about our car so far. 

Friday Favorites!

1) Adjustor - A week after my accident, we finally found out for sure that the Taurus was totaled. We got a fair amount for the car considering its age and we were able to get the check quickly.

2) LaHonda - Last Monday, exactly a week after my accident, we bought our new car. We decided on a '12 Civic. I'll post more about the car shopping experience along with pictures sometime this weekend. It was fun but stressful at the same time since we were on such a short time frame. We love the car so far and we're getting great gas mileage! On our trip to Raleigh this past weekend, we got 40 mpg on the way down and 42 mpg on the way back home. That's a HUGE improvement from the 25 mpg we were getting with the Taurus. 

On the way to Raleigh!

3) Raleigh - We went to Raleigh for Brittany's bachelorette party last weekend. Well, I did. Josh hung out with other friends. We had great time at the party! We started out with Sushi and gifts, then ended the night by going to Glenwood South...SO much has changed since I've been in the area! Saturday, we had a pool party at Chris' house, so we got to catch up with even more friends! Bailey got to play with Carter all day too. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of them together this time.

 The whole group at 606

 Anna and I at the pool party (she has a better picture of us)

Bailey on the ride home. She was not as amused with this as I was.

4) Short Day - Since I needed to be in Raleigh Friday evening, we took a half day on Friday. Half day Fridays are SO awesome! My day usually goes by pretty quickly in the mornings, then it seems to just stop after lunch. I didn't have that issue last Friday since I left at lunch!

5) Loans - We paid off our 3 (out of 6) highest loans this past week! After considering all our options for purchasing a car, we decided to use the money we got for the Taurus to pay some of the loans off. We were able to finance the car for .9% and the loans we paid off were between 5 and 6%. We still have quite a way to go, but at least we're paying much less in interest now. Of course, we've added a car payment to our budget, which was NOT the plan at all, but we're both happy and we'll still be out of debt by the beginning of next year (minus the car and house of course) if things go according to plan. 

6) Brewing - We left Raleigh early Sunday so we could get home in time to brew. There's a homebrew competition we're entering in August, and we wanted to make sure we could enter a couple beers. We're entering our Punkin Ale and Honey Pale Ale. In past years, more unique flavors have won the competition, so I'm not sure what our chances are, but it will be fun anyway! The winner's beer will be served on tap in a couple bars in Baltimore and during an event that takes place in October. Since the event takes place in October, I'm sure there will be many pumpkin beers entered, so hopefully ours will stand out. As far as the Pale Ale, we tried something new with the hops this time, and the beer isn't even hoppy enough for me (if you know me, I'm not a big hops fan), that's not really good for a Pale Ale. If we still enter this one, it will have to be entered as something else. We brewed 2 beers at a time. As far as timing goes, it was much more efficient. It usually takes us about 4 hours or so to brew a batch from start to finish. We brewed these 2 batches in probably 5 1/2 hours. Not bad at all! It was extremely tiring though! It's a lot more involved and we definitely have some kinks to work out in the process if we continue to go this route, like buying a little extra equipment so we don't have to keep cleaning and sanitizing certain items. This was the first time we used our new brew kettle and we love it! 

 I LOVE that we can just drain directly from the kettle. It's an extra piece of tubing to was, but it's totally worth it! This makes our old kettle look tiny, but it's really big too!

7) Free Os Tickets - We had some office supplies sales guys come in to talk to us at work this week. At first, I was a little annoyed (I deal with WAY too many annoying sales people), but they ended up being really nice. I handle most of the ordering at work, but the previous receptionist and I both met with them. They ended up giving us some goodies, best of all being skybox tickets to the Orioles v. Yankees game on September 9! I'm not really big into baseball, but I'm still super excited. Going to an Os game is on my bucket list for up here. We had the opportunity to buy tickets through work for a fundraiser for the Saturday game, but it was going to be $100 a couple. YAY for free tickets! 

8) Mad Men - Josh and I used to watch How I Met Your Mother on Netflix all the time. We finished all of what was on there (now we just have to watch the most recent season). Some of the guys at work recommended Mad Men. We started watching it a week or so ago. I wasn't crazy about it at first, but we're both getting into it now. It's weird, because I don't really like any of the characters, but I still like the show. I do kind of like 1, but it's only out of pity. Haha. Either way, it's a good show. Yay for finding something new to waste time on, like I needed that. ;-)

The Opposite of Friday Favorites...for Last Week

So, last week, I didn't have a Friday Favorites post. Honestly, after our weekend home, last week was pretty darn crappy. Monday, I was rear ended by a tow truck on the way home. I was coming to a stop (the car in front of me was stopping), he rear ended me, and pushed me into the car in front of me. Not a great way to start the week. I was completely fine, just a bit shaken up. I had some random bruises and some muscle soreness the next day, but nothing major. Josh wanted me to go to the Dr. just to make sure everything was fine, so I did. They just said I had some tightness in my muscles, gave me a super awkward neck brace to wear and gave me some exercises to do. I'm completely fine now. 

 Tuffy made it out in one piece. I kind of wish I would have saved this so I could frame it and put it in the State Room. Unfortunately, I didn't think of it until we had already cleaned everything out of the Taurus. 

We had to drive a rental. Since we were just going to have this one for a week, we wanted something fuel efficient. We ended up with the Mazda2. I don't love the car, it's definitely not my style, but the color is absolutely hideous!!! The gas mileage was really good though. 

So, I spent most of last week dealing with insurance companies and all that fun stuff. We were 90% sure our car was totaled, so we started researching like crazy. By Friday, we still hadn't heard back from the adjustor, but we started shopping and test driving anyway. We didn't have a great experience at the first dealership. We looked at only used cars at this one, and they were near the top of our price range for a new car. We decided to test drive a manual Corolla anyway. We liked it, but we didn't love it. The salesman was very pushy and knew absolutely nothing about the car. I actually doubt he knows much about any car. He didn't know manuals came with cruise control (ummm...even I knew they did...and I don't know much about cars). Josh told him up front that this was our first test drive and we still had to hear back from the adjustor, but he just kept on and on. He finally mentioned us getting married early, so why not buy a car early. Josh said..."Yea, we dated 9 years before we got married." That finally did shut him up. Haha. 

Charleen and her boyfriend came over for a game night Friday night. Around 11:00, our power went out. There was a storm going on, but it didn't seem too bad, so I thought the power would be back on in no time.  We've never lost power in our house, so this was a first for us. Luckily, we have a ton of candles and a big flashlight. We kept playing games for a while. Josh and I went to bed around 1:00 and the power still wasn't on. We decided to sleep on the bottom floor since we didn't have A/C. I expected to have power when I woke up Saturday morning...NOPE! Apparently the storm was a lot worse than we thought. We went to test drive cars in Silver Spring (close to DC) Saturday, and it was worse there. The stoplights were out, so traffic was a mess. Gas stations were closed. Some of them had no power at all and some of them had run out of gas. Our gas light was on, and we were in the rental so we didn't know how long we could make it. There were a few gas stations open and they had ridiculously long lines. We had no choice but to wait since we didn't know how far it would be before we found another gas station open. We ended up waiting about 25-30 minutes for gas. Not fun, but it's better than pushing a car! 

We ended up not getting power until about midnight Monday. We were out of power for about 48 hours. It sucked, but there are a lot of people who STILL don't have power. It's hard to believe because it really doesn't look that bad. We had lots of branches and some small trees down, but that's about it. I know there were worse areas. Growing up in southeastern NC, we saw lots of hurricanes, and they were a lot worse than this storm. Fran was a horrible storm, and I think we were only out of power for 2 days. I know there are a lot more people up here (about 500,000 people were without power at some point due to the storm), but I still don't get it.

We passed time by car shopping, eating out and playing games. We tried to go to the movies, but they were out of power too. Luckily our downstairs area didn't get that hot. When the power came back on, our thermostat said our second floor was 87 degrees! Yikes!

Playing Monopoly in the foyer.

Weekend Home!!!

The weekend after Father's Day, we decided to go home to visit our families. We originally weren't planning on going again until Labor Day weekend. I was writing out Father's Day cards and I really wanted to go home. After watching our wedding video, we both kind of wanted to go home, so it wasn't hard talking Josh into making the trip. Josh had that Friday off, so I took it off and we drove down Thursday after work. We waited until after rush hour to leave this time. We usually leave right after work and just tough it out. I'm glad we waited this time. We left about 2 hours later than we usually do and we got to my sister's house about an hour later than we usually would, so it was worth it. We also didn't have the pressure of getting on the road NOW. 

Friday I went shopping with Nikki for a little bit, then we went to my mom's to have a cookout with my side of the family. We made kabobs on the grill and they were delicious! It was really nice to spend time with everyone, but I kind of wish we would have gone somewhere or something with them. There were just too many people to actually get to catch up with my parents, which is what I wanted to do. 

 We introduced Bailey to some of Natalia's toys. She's usually scared of kid toys, but this one grew on her.

She didn't really like wearing it though. Haha.

Saturday, we went to Cherry Grove with Josh's mom and step dad for the day. It was the perfect beach day. We got there a little later than we had planned, but we still really enjoyed ourselves. Josh and Aaron fished while Josh's mom and I lounged and searched for seashells. We saw SO many crabs! I only have pictures of some of the hermit crabs we saw, but we spent a lot of our time out on a sandbar and we saw regular crabs out there. I didn't take my camera with me because I didn't realize how much we would see! Bailey was with my dad playing with her sister while we were at the beach. After we left the beach, we went to Broadway at the Beach and ate at Joe's Crab Shack. For whatever reason, I got a crab cake salad. It was good, but it was the whimpiest crab cake I've ever seen. The food was good, but I wasn't impressed and I probably won't go back. We ended up not getting home until around 11:30 that night and it was storming really bad, so she stayed with my dad. 

 Josh going out to the sandbar.

 A hermit crab!

 He's a shy one

 This one had such a pretty shell!

Near the end of our beach day.

Sunday, went to my dad's house and spent a little more time with him. We decided to have lunch with Josh's dad, so my dad agreed to take Bailey to my mom's and we picked her up in Fayetteville after lunch. We didn't get on the road until around 3:00, then we hit some pretty bad traffic on the way in, so we didn't get home until about 10:30. That was WAY past our bed time. 

Anniversaries!

We've had a couple anniversaries in the past few months. May 20 was our first anniversary in our house! I really can't believe we've already been here for a full year! Time has really been flying by. We would have liked to have had a cookout or something for this occasion, but it was such a busy time, we weren't even home that weekend. This is when we went home for Natalia's birthday party. Even though we didn't do anything to celebrate, I still feel like I should at least mention it. 

Josh and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary on June 5. I can't believe it's already been 2 years! Since our anniversary fell on a weekday this year, we cooked a nice dinner together. We decided on crab cakes. You can't go wrong there! We had asparagus and something else delicious with it. It was so long ago, I really don't remember what else we ate. Haha. We just ate in, watched our wedding video, and shared some wine. It was a very nice, low key at home date. Sometimes, I love those just as much as going out, or even more!

I LOVE watching our wedding video on our anniversary. It's so fun to look back and see how we've changed (we both looked so much younger!) and to just remember that day. It was such an awesome day, but it FLEW by faster than any other day..ever! It's nice to kind of get to re-live it every year :-).

One of my favorites

Smooches!

Cinda makes the best cake ever! This was the only thing missing from our anniversary. I had planned on ordering our anniversary cake for when we're in Raleigh this weekend. With all that has been going on, (more on that later) I completely forgot! I'm so mad at myself now!

Father-Daughter dance...My Little Girl...always :-)

Brown Eyed Girl...our last dance.

The following Friday, we went out to eat to celebrate again. I don't know what I was thinking, but I made reservations for 5:00 in Annapolis. This time of the year, people are really excited about Summer coming up. When people get excited about Summer, they get excited about the beach. To get to the beach, they have to go over the Bay Bridge. To get to the Bay Bridge, they have to get to Annapolis. Needless to say, this would have likely been a cluster anyway, but I actually made dinner reservations during rush hour! Who does that? Anyway, after driving about an hour to go 25 minutes away, we had a really nice dinner.

Bailey's First Fishing Trip

I'm still playing catchup here. I'm trying to remember and write about things that happened over a month ago! That's pretty tough with a memory like mine.

The Sunday after we got back from Miami, Josh decided he wanted to go fishing. We wanted to do something outdoors with Bailey anyway, so I was even a little excited about it. We got up and went to the early service at church (8:00!) then came home, changed, and headed to the lake with Bailey.

We found our first spot on the rocks. There's a trail around the lake at Centennial Park and it's always pretty busy, especially when it's nice out. Since we were down on the rocks, we took Bailey off leash. She did really well staying around us. I noticed a crawfish, so we decided to grab him up in case we didn't catch anything else. We never caught anything over here. We noticed that the spot we wanted was opening up, so we left and walked to that area. It's more shaded, so Josh really likes it.

 On the rocks.

She really liked playing with the seaweed.

We kept Bailey off the leash most of the time in this area too. She really enjoyed chasing sticks as I threw them in the water. Silly pup, she doesn't like to go in to the point where she can't touch the bottom. She just likes to splash around in the shallow parts. She did try to run and play with a Beagle that was walking by, but other than that, she stayed right in our area with us. She didn't have any trouble finding ways to entertain herself.

 Playing with goose feathers...

 Ripping roots out of the ground...

Chasing sticks...

She's still a bit territorial. I've noticed that she really doesn't like when people approach us. When we're outside our house, she gets really protective of us, so that's something we need to work on. A few people walked up through the woods (through the area Bailey had claimed as her bathroom) and started to approach our area. She did NOT like that at all. We have to figure out how to approach this issue. It's really hard to expose her to these types of situations when we can't control how other people act around us.

All in all, our first fishing trip was great. Josh never did catch anything except lots of seaweed (is it still seaweed if it's in a lake?). We still had a great time and Bailey was exhausted by the time we got home, which is always a plus! It was a nice, relaxing way to spend our first Sunday back at home.