Update

My birthday was last week (10 days ago...) and my dad came to Raleigh to take David and I out to dinner! We had a blast and I got to wear a new dress. Yay! As presents go, I got a few more things off of our registry, Avett Brothers tickets from Jackson, and new Toms!

Today we went to Hyco lake to hang out with Dad and the Apples. I picked up my Toms from Dad and Ransom had his first swimming experience! He did very well. We dropped him because he never decided to swim out on his own, but he hung out on floats with us for a while before deciding to swim back for the bank.

 Ransom and David in the water.

My new Toms on the ride home!

I'll make an effort to blog more in the coming weeks. We're currently finishing plans for Europe and will start packing soon (10 days left!) and I plan to keep the blog updated while we are traveling. I think we have free wi-fi everywhere we're staying, so I should be able to handle that.

Memorial Day Weekend

Well, we started our memorial day weekend with a quick trip to South Carolina for Big Daddy's birthday (that's David's grandfather). We're on our way home now, and all I can think about is how I haven't seen my puppy in almost 10 hours! How sad! I feel like a new mom who left her child for the first time. We left him in his kennel at home and had a friend stop by this evening to feed him, let him out, and play with him for a while. I miss him though! I can't wait to get home to my warm bed and go to sleep with my puppy (and hubby, of course).
Tomorrow we leave him again to head to Greensboro. We're off to Caldwell's graduation to celebrate with Tyler Perkins (Congrats, Tyler!!) and then to Reidsville to hang out with my parents for the day. The plan is to not break down and take the puppy with us, but to leave him kenneled again. He'll have someone take him out two or three times tomorrow. At the rate I'm going though, I won't be able to spend another day away from him.
The main(well, only) reason we don't take him with is everywhere we go is because the poor little guy gets carsick. We've been told he'll grow out of it, and for big trips we normally give him Benadryl, but it's just not worth driving him all over creation this weekend and cleaning up all that vomit. Hopefully he'll grow out of it sooner rather than later so we can start taking him on day trips!
We don't have any big beach or lake or cookout plans, but I'm sure the rest of you do, so have a blast! Happy memorial day!

Mother's Day

Sorry for the absence. We've been busy, but I'm graduating Saturday! I got an iPhone 4 (we're pretending it was our graduation present to me) and have been wasting all my spare time taking cute pictures of our puppy!

Ransom and his new raccoon toy!

Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of updating, but for now, here's a picture of us with our new moms (and dads)!

Happy Mother's Day! We love our moms!

United Kingdom

David and I have been given the opportunity to spend two weeks in the UK this summer! We are very excited about our trip and plan on spending a little over half the time driving through England/Scotland and the rest of the time exploring Ireland (with a night in Paris somewhere in there).


The reason I'm blogging about this is because neither of us have ever been to the UK before and we're looking for advice on where we should spend our time. We want to pick 5 or 6 cities in the England/Scotland area in which to spend the night, as well as places to see (at our leisure) in between those cities. We will also have a significant amount of time to spend in Ireland seeing things.


So! If you've been to England, Scotland, or Ireland please tell us your favorite things you saw! And if you haven't been but know of something super awesome that's there that we should see, let us know!


Here's a picture of the Champs-Élysées from the last time I was in Paris! (2004, almost 7 years ago to the day!)

Birthday!

It's a few days late, but happy birthday to David! Last night we had a pretty fun (nerdy) party. We hung out with a bunch of friends, played old game cube games, board games, and had some pretty awesome cupcakes! 

Kiersten and I worked super hard on these cupcakes. I borrowed a recipe from Smitten Kitchen and made "Car Bomb Cupcakes." For those of you who don't know what a car bomb is, I will explain.


To drink a car bomb, you fill a pint glass with Guinness and a shot glass with mostly Irish whiskey and top it off with some Bailey;'s. You then drop the shot glass into the Guinness and chug it. If you don't chug, your Bailey's will curdle in the Guinness. It sounds weird, but it's delicious and sweet. The only reason I don't normally do car bombs is because I struggle with drinking that quickly. David, however, loves them.


The cupcakes are made with Guinness batter, Jameson ganche filling, and Bailey's icing. They were delicious and a great way to celebrate David's birthday!

Suzanne Collins

David's Aunt introduced us to Suzanne Collins years ago when she gave us The Underland Chronicles to read. She has decided David will be the next great children's fiction author, so she makes it a point to read all the children's fiction she can get her hands on. She gave us these because she thought they were good and wanted him to read them. 


The Underland Chronicles follow Gregor, a young New York City boy, as he discovers and explores the Underland. Apparently, (I just learned this reading the amazon page I linked!) she got this idea when she was thinking about Alice and Wonderland and how foreign that world must feel to kids who grew up in the city (Brilliant!).


Needless to say, we love these books, and they are definitely on the long list of books I'm excited to read my children. So when a friend of mine told me Suzanne Collins had written another series, I was very excited.


The Hunger Games Series is about a teenage girl named Katniss and her adventures in the post-apocalyptic United States. I don't want to tell you much more about them, because I've only read the first book so far (I'm currently sitting on my couch anxiously awaiting the arrival of the last two by UPS... They went out for delivery at 7:06 this morning.) and I don't want to read summaries of the other two and spoil them for myself!


The point? I recommend all 8 of these books for all of you to read! Although one series is for kids and the other for teens (I find that we read a lot of kids/teen books...) they are both appropriate and entertaining for all ages! Pick them up at your local library (Or buy them, they're worth it!) and read them as soon as you can!

New Apartment

Sorry for the lack of posting lately; we've been extremely busy. I've had a lot of school work to do, David has been busy with his 40 hour/week mulching job, and we moved!

Moving was a great decision! Our new apartment is much closer to Lake Johnson and to a lot of our friends. There's a back yard area where the puppy can play, and an extra bedroom for our friend Brant who is going to stay with us this summer!! Our kitchen even has a cute little window over the sink that I can open to smell the fresh air. 


My parents came up to help us last weekend and brought their puppy to play with Ransom. The moving was very hard on the pups...

Anyway, hopefully there will be more regular updating in the near future. Also, happy birthday to Nikki!!