Trip back home

Disclaimer: This may be a little long, but it was a 2 week trip. I tried to make it as brief as possible. :-)

I just returned home on Saturday night from my trip to Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, NOLA, and Hattiesburg. I had an AWESOME time! It was so much fun, I wasn't sure I still wanted to live in Virginia! The heat finally convinced me that I like it better up here- haha.
So... I drove all the way to The in-laws the Friday before Evan's Baptism (also stopped there on the way back to Virginia). We had a great time together! We ate at the coolest restaurant called Cowboy Jim's. It seemed like it was at least an hour away, but it was worth it! The food was delicious and we sat along the water and Mama B and I fed the fish a lot of our hush puppies!


Aren't they cute?

After that I headed to my sister's for Evan's Baptism. It was such a special day, and he did so well! After we went back to my sister's house for Doberge cake and lasagna, which was delicious!


Best of ALL, Monica loved his quilt that I made. She and my mom even tried to steal the one that I made for myself. Guess they'll be on the quilt list soon!

I stayed at Monica's till the next Thursday- we hung out, grilled, and played with the kids mainly.


The next big event was Lynn's shower, but she probably doesn't want to post pictures. Maybe just one or two?


Then it was off to NOLA! I spent time with Granny, she made me all kinds of my favorites and I was able to see my best friend since high school- she even made me lunch! Very relaxing there. Then headed over to Mom's and hung out with Jenny a few days, and Mom and I did a lot of shopping, ate, had daiquiri's, snoballs, you name it- we did it! She made sure that I had my fill of everything before I came home, and I appreciate it because it was so hot and she just took me everywhere that I wanted to go- she is the best mom....
Crawfish we had at Jenny's (J. bought us daiquiri's too)- do I have an awesome friend or what??

Chargrilled oysters at Acme Oyster House with mom-YUM. I even found a pearl in one of my oysters, and it's pretty round.


I had 3 snoballs while I was there, 2 were King Cake flavored from Sal's. Jenny took me there one day, and my mom took me there for another king cake snoball because I fell in love with it. She said that Sal's was where she always took us when we were little, and we'd sit on the stumps outside the shop and eat our snoballs. Once she said it, it came back to me. I wish there were snoballs in Virginia!

My King Cake flavored snoball (or what was left of it when I decided to take a picture)



Jenny had a Corks N Canvas painting party too, but I'm not posting pics because my painting sucked big time. I don't even know where I put it when I got home, that's how bad it was! But it was fun!

The night before I left, Karl and Mom took me to Cafe Du Monde to have beignets, a great way to end my visit.
I hope next time I go home Robert can come with me, he sure missed out on a GREAT TRIP!!!!

The Newest Addition....

Here he is! Evan James was born on Thursday, April 9th at 7:50am. 8 pounds 3 ounces, 21 inches long. Mimi says he's a snuggle bug- my favorite! I won't get to see him until I drive down to Louisiana for his Baptism, and we don't have the date for it just yet, but hopefully it will be soon! I can't wait to see my little godson in person!



Alee loves her little brother! Monica said the first time she ever held him, she immediately started singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to him, and does so each and every time she has held him since! Such a sweet big sister!

Quilts and stuff

Here is the second quilt that I finished piecing. It was "supposed" to sort of be a Mardi Gras quilt because of the colors (minus the blue), but I don't know.....I just got it back from the quilter yesterday, so as you can see it doesn't have binding on it just yet. I'll probably do it after I finish my godson's quilt. This isn't the greatest picture, but no one was around to hold it for me and my house is really dark inside, so I threw it over this bench in my front yard:



Here is the back where you can see the quilter's design:


Here are the beginnings of my godson's (Evan's) quilt: my friend Jennifer has a quilt designer program, so we brainstormed and finally came up with a design that we and my sister all liked. She is decorating Evan's room with a theme called Baby Zoolicious, so I ordered the valance and chopped it up to use the animals in the quilt. This is what I've done so far, and everything is minky except for the animals, so it'll be so soft for him.

In between the blocks there will be rainbow stripes out of cotton material, then it's going to have a minky top and bottom border with triangle points. I can't wait to finish it! And I need to hurry, because he's due in about 3 and 1/2 weeks!

I made these coffee koozie things yesterday too. Just messing around. And obviously I had to go and have a White Chocoloate Mocha to test them out. ;-) They worked out great!

Snow Day! Snow Day! Snow Day!

We're going back outside to play!

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Weekend in Philadelphia/New Jersey

My friend is a Girl Scout troop leader and usually invites me to do the cool things with her troop. Last weekend, she invited me to go with them to Philadelphia and New Jersey for the weekend. She said the girls didn't want any of their mothers to come so they told her to bring me (because I'm cool like that- haha)
Anyway, it was a long long drive. We went to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell, Constitution Hall, and the Mutter Museum. On the way to see the bell, everyone decided they wanted to take a horse and carriage ride and have a mini tour of the area. I didn't realize how historic that area was. Really neat stories! And we decided to skip Consitution Hall, but I forgot why.



Then we stood in line to see the bell. They practically strip search you before they let you in. I had a Sprite with me and the guard made me drink some to make sure it wasn't acid. Anyway, it wasn't too much of a big deal, I was just surprised for some reason. So we saw the bell, then off to the Mutter Museum.


The Mutter Museum is a medical museum. (I stole this part from wikipedia:) It contains a collection of medical oddities, anatomical and pathological specimens, wax models, and antique medical equipment. The museum is located at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The original purpose of the collection, donated by doctor Thomas Dent Mütter in 1858, was medical research and education.

The museum is best known for its large collection of skulls and anatomical specimens including a wax model of a woman with a human horn growing out of her forehead, the tallest skeleton on display in North America, a nine-foot-long human colon that contained over 40 pounds of fecal matter, and the petrified body of the mysterious Soap Lady, whose corpse was turned into a soapy substance called adipocere. Many wax models from the early 19th century are on display as are numerous preserved organs and body parts. The museum also hosts a collection of teratological specimens (preserved human fetal specimens), a malignant tumor removed from President Grover Cleveland's hard palate, the conjoined liver from the famous Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, and a growth removed from President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Yeah... like the sign says, "Disturbingly Informative". I was the one who suggested we go there because I had heard about it on TV. No pictures were allowed in the museum.



Then we headed to the USS New Jersey.(Ok, I stole this part too)
The Battleship New Jersey, our nation's most decorated battleship, is an 887-foot long, 45,000-ton living window on the most important half-century in U.S. history.

Students of all ages will walk up the gangway and experience the Big J's size-nearly three football fields long. And they can:
Take a look inside the ship's legendary 16-inch gun turrets.
Visit the Bridge, Communications, Captain's and Admiral's Cabins, and Officer's Wardroom.
Learn about the role the "Black Dragon" played in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf.
Climb up and down the companionways.
Examine the lockers that had to hold all of a sailor's personal belongings.
Check out the enlisted men's bunks.

We slept there that night in the men's bunk area with what seemed like a million other girl scouts. I guess what I'm really trying to say is we didn't get much sleep at all because of this one troop. The mothers were the ones who wouldn't shut it, and Connie went over there and politely told them to shut their traps, but it didn't work. Ugh. I think we finally fell asleep around 1230 or 1am and they called revelry at 7am. Anyway, we went on a tour of the different areas of the ship, which was very interesting. They have a post office, barber shop, dentist, even a jail on the ship. The next morning we were able to listen to Bonnie Selb, who was a code breaker in WWII and helped us win the war. That was really interesting. She was a cute old lady.






Bonnie Selb:


I was very tired when we got home, but I am very grateful for being invited to go on the trip!

The Princess

I have another post to do on my weekend trip to Philly but I'm waiting on pictures from my friend. Anyway, I thought this was cute. Tuesday morning it was freezing in our house, and Robert was out of town, so it was just Emma and me. Lately we have been sleeping with the heat pump turned way down to save electricity, and just turn the electric blanket on and we also put a quilt on top to keep us extra warm. It's nice and cozy until you have to get out of bed. That morning I got up, went downstairs to turn the heater on, and usually Emma will follow me. This time she didn't. When I got back to the bedroom, this is how I found her...



As if to say, "yeah right, I'm not getting out of this warm bed, are you crazy?"
She just might be the luckiest dog I know!!

Wintergreen Ski Trip Videos

Since Alisa posted a lot of pictures and told the story of the trip on her blog, I figured I'd just post some of the videos. Some are funny, some show how silly we are- but we had a great great time! Enjoy!

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