Virginia is for Lovers

The whirlwind of a weekend visiting Jason down in Newport News, VA started with a flight on the tiniest plane I've ever been on. It was roughly a 50-passenger commuter plane and it was kind of freaky.

I'm not afraid of flying, I know accidents happen but I trust the industry and despite the fact the "Put together in 5 minutes" video I saw at the Boeing Plant really freaked me out I have utter faith that I'll land at my destination safely. But honestly...tiny planes scare me! That being said, I made it to Virginia and got the grand tour of tunnel traffic.

It was awful.

It makes traffic on the Belt look like the Indy500. We got all of 2 miles in about an hour. I wanted to cry. It was only after we were sitting in traffic for an hour and a half that Jason mentions there is apparently an airport 10 minutes from his apartment I could have flown into instead of Norfolk. Way to miss the boat on that one sweetie.

After an eternity we got to Jason's new apartment and it was a lot nicer than I thought it would be. His mom helped him decorate a little and found some amazing deals on furniture ($6 for a dining room table set?) so at least the only bare room was the guest bedroom.

The living room is pretty big and there is a nice balcony where Jason pulls his rocker out and yells at the kids below to "Get off his lawn!"

The community the apartment complex in is also nice and Jason's only 15 minutes from work now, which is a vast improvement over the 45 minute to one hour commute he made when living with his friend Brian in Norfolk.

We spent the weekend enjoying ourselves. Hung out with Brian and watched movies and then I let the boys play some video games. Did a little shopping for some additional things Jason didn't have in his apartment. Drove over to Virginia Beach and played pirate mini-golf and walked the boardwalk.

It was nice.

We sat down in some shade beneath an apartment building off the beach and listened to a really great band playing at a nearby outdoor bar. I had to do a double take at the band because they sounded almost exactly like a The Switch and were even doing half of the same songs. But alas, it was not the people I know but the band was good and created a nice soundtrack for Jason and I to people watch to.

My time in Virginia was short-lived, I dislike that Jason is so far away but thems the breaks for now. Long weekends will have to do until something more permanent is arranged.

Long Week!

This week just won't end! It's dragging on like none other!

In less than 3 hours I'll be on a plane down to Norfolk, VA to see my Silly! We haven't seen each other since July when he and his parents stopped in, so this week couldn't go fast enough for me...but all it did was drag on! Ugh!

I mean not to say we didn't have some excitement. Jaclyn & Andy mailed out their invitations once I finished writing out all the envelopes in my now perfected calligraphy style. Wednesday night we helped them stuff the last of the invitations and I printed, chopped, and punched each and every one of their handmade rehearsal dinner invitations (more on that when I get back).

Tuesday we met our newest little addition to our family of friends. Little Xavier has definitely stolen our hearts, and I just want to devour him, he's so cute!

Thursday the Beaner started Law School Orientation. And despite the fact that I was at work when she left, I imagined her going through a movie montage while getting ready...much like the one Elle Woods goes through in Legally Blonde.

And I've continued to seed my mother's head with ridiculous ideas about how I'll have a circus wedding since she seems to think that's what I mean when I say I don't want a traditional wedding every time J&A's pending nuptials come up and everyone sounds so overwhelmed.

*sigh* Am I in Virginia yet?

You Make me want to Procreate

One of my sister's best friends from high school decided to join the Army right after graduation. I am not necessarily for war, but I am definitely for the troops.
I respect every man and woman who don a uniform and have the utmost respect for their families as well. It's difficult, and it takes a special kind of person to serve without being asked to.

What does this have to do with procreation? Well my friends, Matt found a lovely lady in the Army named Rachael and they got married and three months ago she popped out the cuties baby I have ever seen.

This is Matt with newborn Xavier, however this picture was taken a few months ago when they just brought the baby home from the hospital. Matt is actually in training in Arizona getting reading to ship out for another tour in Afghanistan in November, so we didn't see him this week. However, Rachael was up from Georgia with Xavier to visit Matt's mom and Rachael's dad.

We couldn't resist some cuddle time with a new baby, especially since Xavier is the first baby out of all of our friends, so off we went to Matt's mother's house and got a chance to meet this strong young man.

Here's Xavier with his beautiful mommy Rachael. She's got this whole mom thing down pat. I am in awe, at 21 I definitely wouldn't have been able to take care of a baby and she's doing an amazing job of bringing up Xavier. Looks like Matt will be away for a full year starting in November, we sure wish Rachael didn't live in Georgia because we'd be more than happy to baby sit and help her out with this little snugglebug.

Here's Hannah with our favorite new man. Xavier is totally going to be a lady killer...I mean as long as he keeps those beautiful blue eyes he got from his mama!

Xavier is so strong too! For only 3 months old he's already mighty enough to keep his head up all by himself and he tries to shuffle across the floor in a pseudo crawl. And if you hold him up, he even tries to stand!Xavier is so well behaved too. The entire time we were there he cooed and made adorable little noises, but never cried. He got fussy once and Rachael just said to him, "You have no reason to cry," and he stopped. Worlds Best Baby! Apparently he's always that quiet and even sleeps through the night!

If only we all have babies like this!

Geese and Houses...

On Sunday after our exciting excursion to Hunter Mountain, Chrissy gave us instructions to Kyle's house...he lives in the middle of nowhere and Chrissy isn't known for her sense of direction.

As I overheard Chrissy giving Laura directions over the phone I couldn't help but imagine that we were going to wind up in the middle of the woods out of gas, wondering who we would eat first.

My worst fears were confirmed when I heard Chrissy say, "Take a right on Biting Road...I think that's what it's called..." In fact, it was not, but in the long run that wasn't our biggest problem. Our biggest problem was finding Chrissy's obscure landmarks like the Geese Crossing sign you see at right.

I've never seen a Geese Crossing sign before in my life! It's always a duck crossing sign with a pictogram of a bird, never a specific sign with words written out warning you about the geese!

Anyway, we finally made it to Kyle's and it was well worth it. His house is beautiful. I should have taken more photos, but I wasn't sure if Kyle would understand my need to document everything especially since it was his home and we had just met.

Just to set the scene, the house was an old farm house. Barely two stories, with a gorgeous loft master bedroom at the front of the house where you could wake up and look out the window and see the LAKE! I love lakes...there's something so serene about them and they just make me happy. An extension was put on the house adding another bathroom, a kitchen/hallway, and two bedrooms upstairs. All of which are amazing.

Then Kyle's parents, who apparently owned one of the local breweries, added another extension and a wrap around porch (complete with hot tub) with the money they made when they sold the family brewery.

Now I know this is a horrible photo, but you can see some of the charm of the house. It's painted an old red barn-esque color, right behind Chris on the large porch outside those sliding doors is the hot tub and a few picnic tables and places to sit.

I even love the blue stain glass art. Gorgeous! There's just something so special about a house that creaks no matter where you step, that has no matching furniture, and that has old school meat grinders attached to every flat surface in the kitchen.

My dream house is now a mix between Kyle's hodgepodge of a farm house and the beautiful Victorian house in the movie Practical Magic.

And most fantastic of all was Chadwick, the family's English Sheepdog who couldn't find nacho dip on the table even when it was pointed out to him.

What a good boy!

A birthday Surprise!

Last weekend while I was up in PA with my family, I shot Laura a little txt about how we were going to the outlets and I missed our ridiculous shopping runs that we did occasionally while in school. To which she replied, "I'm on a boat!"

Her friend Chrissy, whom I have come to love and adore has a boat and they were out enjoying the delightful weather. I was surprised to get a message a few minutes later from Chrissy saying that the following weekend they were going to a German festival at Hunter Mountain for Laura's birthday and I should come and surprise her.

Before that moment my plans were to finish out the weekend in PA, drive back home to work Monday-Wednesday, drive back up either Wednesday night or Thursday early morning, help my parents/grandma pack up and leave Friday morning for Monticello where my other grandma has a cabin. Then I'd spend the weekend there cooped up with my family in the tiny cabin.

But then Julibean and I realized, why the hell couldn't we go up to Hunter Mountain and surprise Laura? I always miss her birthday because it is always the weekend of our reunion with my Mom's family but this year it was totally do-able with the switch to a Friday-Friday week.

A few hours later, Chrissy, Julibean and Laura's sister Ursula and I were all conspiring about how Julianne, Chris and I would drive up Saturday to meet them and surprise the crap out of Laura and then drive back up to Albany for the night and hang on Sunday with them.

Well let's just say Laura had NO idea what was going on. I was very proud of Chrissy and Urs for keeping the secret, they usually are horrible and tend to blurt things out without thinking about it. Laura thought she was being mugged when I jumped out in front of her to surprise her...the day was fantastic. The weather was beautiful, not too sunny, not too humid, not too cold, but perfect beer-drinking, bratwurst-eating, chicken-dancing weather.

Urs bought her much pined after dirndl, which might I add looked smok'n on her!

Laura & Urs are half German, half Cuban. My sister and I are a quarter German, and Chrissy is Dutch which for us was close enough! We had a great time meeting other people, buying fantastic hats, and really getting down with our German pride!

I have no idea who that guy in the back is, just jumped in on our picture I guess.

We even took a ride up and down the skilift to enjoy the view. It was beautiful and definitely something Laura won't forget since she was scared the entire time. On the way down though Urs (who was in the chair in front of us) got everyone to say/sing/toast Laura's birthday as they passed us...that was wildly entertaining, and Chrissy, Kyle and I even serenaded her to a broken version of Happy Birthday in German.

It wasn't too far into the day when we decided that we should totally make the German Alps Festival at Hunter Mountain an annual birthday extravaganza for Laura. We all had the best time and it was relaxing and fantastically enjoyable to boot!

Speaking of das boot. I didn't buy a boot, because none of the designs appealed to me, but I did almost buy this glorious stein...

We match...no?

The Traditional Tradition

Ever since my mother was a little girl her family has taken a week out of the summer to go to the Poconos for a reunion of sorts. That tradition is still very much alive and the first week of August every year, we find ourselves packing up and moving into a cabin for a vacation of merriment, good company, and lots of games.

Since it's conception we've moved through three different places. The first was called Twin Willows, the second Tall Trees, and the third and current place is called Countryside. Although I loved Tall Trees with a passion growing up due to it's wonderful location just down the road from Carousel Park, I have grown to love Countryside with an equal passion and admire the Strand Family for keeping it so welcoming year after year.

When we were younger, we'd play Manhunt and Wolfie out in the fields. As we grew older we'd sit around the gazebo, sneaking beer from our parents, and play card games betting dimes and losing our money to a different cousin each night.

Now that my generation of cousins is grown and all of us (save two or three) are in, or have graduated college, things are a little different. We only get to come up for the weekends and try to cram a full week of shopping at the Crossings, visiting the China Buffet, or Gabel's, and hanging by the pool playing cards into two days. We bring along significant others and sip beer and share stories while the next generation of cousins run around our ankles.

It's a great feeling, knowing I have so much family and even when we haven't seen one of the cousins for almost a decade (which actually happened this year), it's easy to just catch up and fall right back into the old lazy routines of mocking, trying to toss one another in the pool, and chasing each other up the grassy hill.

But sometimes it's also sad. I love having this set time when I get to see the extended family, but we all live along Long Island and in the Bronx...some in New Jersey, but it takes a 2-3 hour ride to Stroudsburg to get us together. I mean, really! My generation is spread out across the East Coast now that some of us have settled in places near our alma maters. But we're all still relatively close and we don't see each other until August each year.

It's odd getting old. There's still a part of me that waits for the rain to pour down on the valley of cabins so I can get on my bathing suit and roll down the wet grass of the hill, trapes down into the stream, run through the poison ivy, and swing on the metal playground with all my cousins. (Yes, we seriously did all this during a thunderstorm and it was lovingly nicknamed the "Idiot Run" after we realized how many stupid things we'd done.)

Tradition is a funny thing. I can't wait to make traditions with my own family later on in life. Maybe I'll get to point at my kids and say, "Idiot" when they return from their own version of an Idiot Run like my father did to us.

Showers Showers Everywhere

Been a little elusive lately, but here I am, back again.

The shower was wonderful. Everyone adored the food Julibean made and they practically scraped the Key Lime Pie plate clean and every other guest was asking for the broccoli salad recipe.

Jade and Jessy did a wonderful job of finishing decorating outside while Julibean and I finished preparing some food and sangria in the house. And Stacey made pretty much the sweetest hat of bows I have EVER seen!

Our family and friends literally showered Jaclyn with love and affection and a mondo amount of gifts. They basically cleared out her B3 registry and there are only a few things left on her Macys registry.

Jaclyn was most excited that there were so few things left on those registries not because she wanted to add more things, but because her and Andy have also registered for their honeymoon to...where else? Disney! They're hoping that everyone who has yet to bestow gifts on them will put money towards their honeymoon.

I personally had never heard about registering for a honeymoon before but apparently it's all the rage. I'm pretty sure my Mom decided to pay for a couples massage or something utterly romantic like that for their honeymoon but she was originally tentative because it's just not something her generation was familiar with. I think it's really cool!

Jaclyn's co-workers, they were flipp'n fantastic ladies.

So family, friends, lots of good food, lots of generous gifts, and cute little princess tiaras to boot! Jaclyn's shower was fantastic and she was so happy with how the day went and that's all that is important.

Three generations.

Jaclyn & her maids: Jessy, Jade, Jaclyn, Stacey, me & Julianne