Fun Weekend in RVA

Happy first day of fall! My FAVORITE season! :) It makes me think of apple cider, apple picking, pumpkins, Halloween, changing colors of trees, and not ridiculously HOT weather! :)

This past weekend I was a busy bee! Friday night Laura and I went on a shopping trip for a new coffee table and end tables for my living room. Once the LR is complete I will post an update about it, but we didn't end up buying anything, but did find something TO buy when we looked on my computer later. :) 

Then later that evening my friend from college, Sarah, and her adorable daughter, Adeline, arrived for a short visit. Poor Adeline was so confused when she got there that it took a long time for her to go to bed. I read her a book (or two), we showed her the cat, eventually she went down. 

Llama Llama Nighty Night

Adeline woke up the next morning wanting to know where the cat was :) I can pretty much tell you that the cat was under the bed for most of the weekend. 

She thought my computer was a tablet, so she kept trying to click on
images to make them bigger but it wasn't working!

Then we got dressed and went to the South of the James Farmer's market where we both enjoyed our first of the crazy awesome donuts that are there!

I think she liked it!

Went home for a nap. :)

Baby bed head! :)

After nap time we headed off to Maymont to see the animals!

Adeline and Sarah looking at the owl!

Selfie! :)

The bears were out! One was swimming and one was just hanging out

We stopped by Proper Pie to get Chris some pies. Then we went to Burger Bach for dinner. Adeline was introduced to ketchup which she pretty much loved. 

Google Awesome

After dinner Sarah and Adeline went back to NC :(. I went and hung out with Anna and Laura at Plaza and had a margarita. Then we went to Sweet Frog for dessert :)

Sunday we headed off to Oktoberfest in Richmond. :) Pretzels, bratwurst, and Bold Rock cider! Yummy! Great way to ring in fall! :)

Giant Pretzel!

Brat 

Did you do anything fun this weekend?!?!

Happppppy Birthday Anna! :)

Alright so I'm a day late on this one, but that doesn't change my excitement about Anna's birthday in any way! :) Yesterday, my friend Anna had a birthday! Last year we celebrated her birthday with a fancy trip to Subway. This year we took a step up and had dinner, a few days earlier, at the new Travinia Italian Kitchen & Wine Bar near Willow Lawn. We met the chef because we totally ordered something NOT on the menu, but he happily obliged and it was pretty good! Then we went back to my house for some cupcakes... Frozen style!

Frozen Cupcakes!!! Complimentary Rings included :)

She's excited! :)

Woot woot!

I am not one of those people who has any sense of style, I pretty much wear solid colors, black, gray and brown and call it a day. This girl, though, I absolutely love to see what cute, fun, and stylish clothes she wears. :) I could only aspire to be that awesome with my clothes or my house or anything really! :) She just always looks so put together!

Cute little piñata! And a little photo bomb from my neighbor's bike...

Anna loves to have fun, and is always up for a dance party, and she laughs at me because I don't like to dance, but I can be really good at following dance instructions (like the first time we went to her dance class). I just don't like to ad lib my dancing moves. :) I mean this has nothing to do with any of the photos you're about to see, I just thought I'd mention it!

Just a few pictures of some adventures we went on in the past year :) We totally should have taken a photo of when we went Black Friday shopping last year because that was actually awesome. We went in the middle of the day when the mad rush of people was over. Then we ran some errands and it was fun! Such is life, I hope you enjoy these photos! :)

Halloween 2013 :) Charlotte, me, Laura, Anna and Lila

Laura, Anna, Emily (Baby Caleb), and me having some froyo

When Laura was sick with pneumonia :(, we showed up at
her house wearing these :) Oh and I'm pretty sure we're both
smiling in this photo, can you tell?

Anna, Emily, me, and Scott Scott 

Looks like we were both doing some sort of exercise this day!

Let me take a selfie! 

Laura, Anna, and me on our way to North Carolina for the weekend

Anna, me, Emily (Baby Caleb), and Laura

We really tried to spell out love, I think, with sparklers, we had fun anyway :)

Anna, you're such a fun and caring friend, and I'm so glad that I got the chance to celebrate YOU! :) You are great and I hope you had a wonderful birthday, friend! :) 

Happy Happy Birthday, Anna! :)

Family Vacation - Overview

I was going to start this blog off talking about the reason for me not blogging lately was because I was on vacation, and then I thought about how often I have blogged in the past few months and realized that I seem to be on par with my "normal" amount of blogging.

Anyway, I just got back into the USA last Saturday, the 30th of August, from my family vacation.
 This post will be more of a summary of the vacation and once I get pictures from my brother and my mother I'll try to do more detailed posts with awesome photos!


I have to be honest, my family does some pretty crazy vacations that have been pretty instrumental in me conquering all but two of the fifty United States. We have been to Montana (via Canada), Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Hawaii, Alaska, and several places in between. This year the family headed off to Iceland and Switzerland for vacation.


Yeah, this seems a bit odd, right? Iceland seems a little bit out of the way, especially when our originally intended destination was Switzerland. Somehow, though, Icelandair has a good business going by offering cheaper rates flying to Europe when you stop over in Iceland for longer than 24 hours. For me, it was about $500 cheaper than flying from Richmond directly to Zurich, even though I had to drive to DC to catch my flight. Plus, we wanted to see Iceland, so that was an added bonus!


All the places that we went in Iceland

Remember back in 2010 when the volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, erupted in Iceland and the European airspace was closed for a week or two because of ash in the air? Yeah, well, we had to keep close watch because earthquakes began at a DIFFERENT Iceland volcano, Bardarbunga, on August 16th, 4 days before our arrival in Iceland. On the day we flew from Iceland to Switzerland the threat level had changed from Orange to Red. However we did successfully and safely make it to Switzerland. Over the week the threat level changed back to Orange and the volcano ended up erupting at some point, but we were still able to fly back through Iceland and get home safely to our respective destinations. Since then, ANOTHER volcano has erupted in Iceland, so I'm glad our trip wasn't scheduled for later in the summer!

When we got to Switzerland we took a train to Lauterbrunnen, where we spent most of our time in the Jungfrau region (see map below)

All the places circled are places that we went in the Jungfrau region

Switzerland had no volcanic concerns and our weather was crazy because down in the valley it was nice in the 60's and 70's but as we went up to the top of the Schilthorn or the Jungfraujoch, it was COLD! Talk about preparing for all kinds of weather! What a crazy trip! 




Things in Iceland and Switzerland are so vastly different from landscape to modes of transportation. Iceland is volcanos and has a lot of volcanic rock and lava everywhere. They have geothermal heated pools and rivers, and use that geothermal energy for heating houses. Switzerland has the beautiful Alps and is so very green. Every picture I took, I felt like I was in one of those Christmas villages. Check out our modes of transportation in each. The day we flew from Iceland to Switzerland I felt like I was in that movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles".

Flying the friendly skies :)

Our transportation mode in Iceland: 

Toyota RAV4

Our transportation modes in Switzerland:

High Speed Train

Gondola

Cable Car

Cog Train

Finicula

So, including travel time, it was an eleven day, two books read, several movies watched (on the plane), lots of hiking, lots of different modes of transportation, beautiful sites, volcanic eruptions, 10,000+ miles of travel vacation. Stay tuned for more pictures and stories, but for now I'm signing off!