Valid excuse :)
First of all, I want to wish my sweet, smart, handsome husband a very Happy 26th Birthday!!! I love you so much!
He requested a strawberry angel food cake for his bday treat, so I'm in the process of baking it now! I'm also making him some very yummy steak for dinner and we're skipping our Dave Ramsey class :) (Sorry Ron & Kim - I promise we're getting a lot out of it!!)
I feel like I did A LOT while I was on the East Coast, so I'll try my best to summarize my time away:
I ended up flying in early to Maryland Monday night after work to help out Jim & Shannon who were in a tough spot with babysitting. I got to hang out with TJ & Gabby Tues & Wed while Jim was in Houston and Shannon was at a work conference. TJ is 4 (he was our ringbearer in our wedding) and Gabby is 2. They are sooooo cute and entertaining and I loved spending time with them! They were so good and made me laugh. I wish I took some pictures of them!!!
I left Jim & Shannon's Wednesday afternoon and headed to Columbia to meet my niece, Rena!! Emily looks great and so does Rena! Rena greeted me in one of the outfits I sent her for her baby shower.
Rena is almost a month old now, but she's still so tiny! I never, ever got tired of holding her and feeding her and cuddling! She makes the cutest squeeky sounds and is a beautiful baby! I think she got her sleeping ability from the Dalton side, because the girl will sleep through everything!!! This is a good thing considering Monkey, their cockerpoo dog, has a bark the size of a pitbull (just not as deep).
I left Friday morning to head to Richmond to try to do as much as I could in 2 days. I got to hang out with Laura & Paige Friday, then go to dinner with my parents Friday night & hang out with Nikki, Elly, Patrick & Lauren Friday night. Elliot (Nikki's daughter) turned 2 on Saturday and she had a cookout at Jason's parents house to celebrate. We decorated Elly's cake Friday night and we were having so much fun, Elly stayed up with us until 2am! Oops!
Saturday morning I had breakfast with my college roommates (PAACK) at Cracker Barrel. I got to see Kendall & Cindy's little boys, and after breakfast we went to Kendall's house for a bit to play with Taiten. I forgot to take pictures!! Agh!
Saturday afternoon was Elly's bday party. She's obsessed with Barney, so everything was purple & green themed. She opened presents in her time out chair, so it resulted in a not so happy face:
How cute is she? Elly will be a big sister in just a week!! So excited for Nikki & Jason and the new addition to the fam! Can't wait to meet you Riley!
After Elly's bday party, I headed over to Paige's to watch the VCU/Butler game. Ashley stayed in Richmond to watch the game so it was nice to hang out & catch up like when we used to live together! I had no idea Richmond would be so VCU crazed! People were selling Final Four t-shirts at the corner of gas stations as if it was New York. I'm glad VCU was able to make it so far and represent Richmond, and I'm also glad to hear Shaka signed on for another 8 years to hopefully bring VCU back to the March Madness in 2012!
After the VCU game, I decided to drive back to MD. I was very tired, and the more I thought about it, the less appealing driving back in Sunday morning traffic seemed. Plus, I was anxious to hold my beautiful niece one more time!!
Sunday was another Rena day, and Emily's parents Randi & Rich came by to say hi and took us out to lunch. We went on an afternoon walk and laid low until it was time for me to head to the airport.
I wouldn't blog without posting a picture of Rena Brynn!!
I thought my flight home was going to be a breeze, even though there was a lot on the news about Southwest having a hole in one of their planes.
I was wrong.
If you guys haven't experienced a Kansas City thunderstorm, then you haven't experienced a real thunderstorm. They are DARK, they are LOUD, and they are deadly. Kansas City just so happened to decide to have a HAILSTORM last night as my flight was landing.
Scariest. landing. ever. I literally prayed to go to Heaven because I knew I was going to die. I closed my eyes as the plane felt like it was either going to do a 180 or just crash straight down.
We survived, obviously, but it wasn't fun. The pilot was clever and after we landed he went over the intercom and said "...Welp.......we made it." I'm counting my lucky stars today.
After we landed, I had to wait for my luggage. Ryan called as he was driving to the airport and said the hail was so bad he was going to have to pull over. Luckily he made it to the airport, but then we had to wait another 30 minutes until the lightening stopped and they were able to use the ramp to get our luggage to us.
On the way home, we drove right back into the hail storm. We had to pull over for 10 minutes because the hail was so loud hitting our car, I was scared it was going to smash the car windshield in.
This morning before Ryan left for work, he checked out my car to see if there was any damage, and unfortunately there was. A lot of it.
The hail was so bad it dented the entire passenger side of my car. We've only had it for 3 weeks!!!! :( I have to take it into the shop on Wednesday before work to have the Geico rep do an estimate and see the damage. I'm so sad for Miss Nelly! I wish more than ever that we chose an apartment with a garage!!
I tried to take a picture, but it's very hard to get pictures of hundreds of dents on a silver car in daylight. Here's one that shows the depth of the dents:
All in all, I had an awesome time in Md & Va. It was so incredibly refreshing to see friends & family I've missed so much. I keep hinting to Ryan to try to transfer to Charlottesville, and I'm hoping one day it'll happen.
I missed Ryan & Zoe a lot while I was gone, so I was ready to come back home. If I could transport everyone to me, I would be the happiest girl ever! I can't say I'm ready to go back to work tomorrow, but I have to do it at some point!
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