Monday, May 25, 2015
Memorial Day
For Memorial Day, Toby and I went to Scooter and Laura's for a cookout! They made a delicious meal and it was so much fun hanging out with the family. I didn't take any pictures during the meal (I was too busy stuffing my face) but after dinner, Laura and I took Landon to the park. This was the perfect opportunity for a mini photo shoot with my new camera. Landon was so cute and Laura and I pulled out all of the stops to get him to smile! Bear with me while I figure out the best size pictures for this blog. I am going to re-size them so they are big and beautiful, but that means for all past blogs the pictures will be tiny and out of place. However, all future blogs will have big, beautiful, centered pictures (if I do this correctly)! That's the whole point of a blog anyways, right? I probably won't get it right on this blog, but maybe in the next! In the mean time, enjoy pictures of my super adorable nephew.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Graduation Weekend
Forgive my sporadic blog posts...hopefully I will be more frequent now that school is over! This past weekend I graduated college! After four long years I am finally done. My whole family came up for the weekend to celebrate. It was such a great weekend and I felt so special! A little recap followed by lots of pictures:
Thursday morning kicked off my long weekend! I had a job interview for an entry level position with Integrity Applications Incorporated. I was super nervous but Toby stayed up the night before with me and helped me practice interview questions. Thankfully, they asked me every question he helped me practice! The interview went really well and I got the job offer the next day!
After I left the Interview, I picked my dad up from the airport. Toby and I gave him a tour of Trinity, then we met my sister Courtney and my dad's wife Vicky at Bull Run Winery. We went out to dinner and then it was time for graduation! My mom and my other two siblings met us at the Patriot Center. The ceremony was long and boring, but it felt good to walk across the stage and know I was done with college! That night, my family all gave me graduation presents which was so sweet. I was so thankful for their thoughtful gifts! Then, Toby surprised me with a present as well. He got me a CAMERA! It is so great. He got me a Canon EOS 6D and everything to go with it, including a lens. Over the last two years I have been learning about photography at work and in school and now I have my very own camera to practice with! They all spoiled me so much. It was a great night!
The following day, I woke up and had coffee outside with my mom. Whenever we go down to visit her, we always have coffee in the morning before everyone wakes up so I was glad we could do that here. Toby and I gave her a tour of the school as well and then everyone (minus Toby who had to work) headed up to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. It was a beautiful day to take pictures so my siblings and I all had a lot of fun taking pictures of everything. The aquarium was so fun! I was really glad we all got to go. When we got back, we went to Dogfish Head for dinner with Toby and Salzie. It was so fun to have everyone all together.
After dinner, my siblings, Toby and I met my dad at a place called Top Golf. Toby and my dad had been there earlier in the day and wanted to go back. It was a pretty cool place. It was a lot like a bowling alley but for golf. We hung out there for a couple of hours while the guys hit golf balls. Toby was getting really good by the end of it! Us ladies tried to hit a few, but we were terrible so we stuck to taking pictures.
On Saturday morning, my siblings and I met my dad and his wife at a pancake place for breakfast while Toby, my mom, and her boyfriend Gregg set up for my graduation party! RJ and I went over to help after we got back. Toby was so sweet. He literally planned and executed the entire party for me. The only thing I contributed was the email addresses. It was so much fun and lots of people came! I loved getting to introduce my family to all of my friends. It really was a great weekend and I'm sad that everyone had to leave yesterday.
It was seriously one of the best weekends! My family is so great and I loved having them all up here. Thanks to Courtney and Morgan for going around and taking pictures at the graduation party so that I could talk to people (and helping set up for everything), thank you Salzie for helping cook pizzas for everyone, thank you to RJ for coming early to help set up with me, and thank you Mom and Gregg for running errands for Toby and lastly, thank you so much to my incredible husband who went out of his way (and his comfort zone) to make my weekend awesome and make me feel so special. I love you all!
Thursday morning kicked off my long weekend! I had a job interview for an entry level position with Integrity Applications Incorporated. I was super nervous but Toby stayed up the night before with me and helped me practice interview questions. Thankfully, they asked me every question he helped me practice! The interview went really well and I got the job offer the next day!
After I left the Interview, I picked my dad up from the airport. Toby and I gave him a tour of Trinity, then we met my sister Courtney and my dad's wife Vicky at Bull Run Winery. We went out to dinner and then it was time for graduation! My mom and my other two siblings met us at the Patriot Center. The ceremony was long and boring, but it felt good to walk across the stage and know I was done with college! That night, my family all gave me graduation presents which was so sweet. I was so thankful for their thoughtful gifts! Then, Toby surprised me with a present as well. He got me a CAMERA! It is so great. He got me a Canon EOS 6D and everything to go with it, including a lens. Over the last two years I have been learning about photography at work and in school and now I have my very own camera to practice with! They all spoiled me so much. It was a great night!
The following day, I woke up and had coffee outside with my mom. Whenever we go down to visit her, we always have coffee in the morning before everyone wakes up so I was glad we could do that here. Toby and I gave her a tour of the school as well and then everyone (minus Toby who had to work) headed up to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. It was a beautiful day to take pictures so my siblings and I all had a lot of fun taking pictures of everything. The aquarium was so fun! I was really glad we all got to go. When we got back, we went to Dogfish Head for dinner with Toby and Salzie. It was so fun to have everyone all together.
After dinner, my siblings, Toby and I met my dad at a place called Top Golf. Toby and my dad had been there earlier in the day and wanted to go back. It was a pretty cool place. It was a lot like a bowling alley but for golf. We hung out there for a couple of hours while the guys hit golf balls. Toby was getting really good by the end of it! Us ladies tried to hit a few, but we were terrible so we stuck to taking pictures.
On Saturday morning, my siblings and I met my dad and his wife at a pancake place for breakfast while Toby, my mom, and her boyfriend Gregg set up for my graduation party! RJ and I went over to help after we got back. Toby was so sweet. He literally planned and executed the entire party for me. The only thing I contributed was the email addresses. It was so much fun and lots of people came! I loved getting to introduce my family to all of my friends. It really was a great weekend and I'm sad that everyone had to leave yesterday.
It was seriously one of the best weekends! My family is so great and I loved having them all up here. Thanks to Courtney and Morgan for going around and taking pictures at the graduation party so that I could talk to people (and helping set up for everything), thank you Salzie for helping cook pizzas for everyone, thank you to RJ for coming early to help set up with me, and thank you Mom and Gregg for running errands for Toby and lastly, thank you so much to my incredible husband who went out of his way (and his comfort zone) to make my weekend awesome and make me feel so special. I love you all!
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Our Trip to Florida
Last week for my spring break, Toby and I traveled to Florida! It was so nice to get away from the cold weather. The winter blues is a real thing y'all. I'm originally from Florida so every time we go back I get super nostalgic! I am definitely built for the beach/warm weather life. I tried very hard to convince Toby that moving to Florida for a year would be a great idea. I don't think it worked! But he definitely wants to go back again so that's a start :)
We flew down which was great because I think we were both dreading the thought of driving for 16 hours straight. We spent our first three days in Orlando which was so fun! Toby got us an awesome deal on a hotel that was walking distance from Seaworld. My dad got us Busch Gardens passes for Christmas which get us into eight different theme parks on the east coast! This worked out great for us because two of them are in Orlando (Seaworld and Aquatica) so we spent a lot of time at those parks. With our passes, we got discounts on food and we got "ride again privileges" on the roller coasters which was so much fun! The parks weren't crowded at all and the weather wasn't too hot which was a real blessing. We were able to just enjoy ourselves rather than sweating like crazy and spending the day in lines. When we left VA it was 8° and there was a lot of snow on the ground so we were both so happy to be in Florida that we had fun just walking around outside. Our hotel had a pool and a hot tub and if you can believe it, it was warm enough at night to go in those. I love Florida weather. Toby has most of the pictures from Seaworld on his phone, so I only have a couple to post. And Aquatica is a water park, so we did't get any pictures there because we locked our phones away. We loved exploring Orlando and spending all of our time outside!
When we left Orlando, we went and stayed with my Aunt and Uncle in West Palm Beach for the remainder of our trip. We cannot thank them enough for taking us in! They really blessed us on our trip. They housed and fed us every day. We spent the time hanging out at their pool, going to the beach, and exploring West Palm! It was so great to see my family, especially since I don't get to see them very often. My little cousins are 9 and 11 and they adore Toby. He was so good with them. I loved the fact that they got the chance to get to know Toby and that they spent so much time with us! Also, my cousin Keenan used to live in Fairfax and moved back to Florida last October, so it was good to spend some time with him as well. All in all, it was an awesome week!
We flew down which was great because I think we were both dreading the thought of driving for 16 hours straight. We spent our first three days in Orlando which was so fun! Toby got us an awesome deal on a hotel that was walking distance from Seaworld. My dad got us Busch Gardens passes for Christmas which get us into eight different theme parks on the east coast! This worked out great for us because two of them are in Orlando (Seaworld and Aquatica) so we spent a lot of time at those parks. With our passes, we got discounts on food and we got "ride again privileges" on the roller coasters which was so much fun! The parks weren't crowded at all and the weather wasn't too hot which was a real blessing. We were able to just enjoy ourselves rather than sweating like crazy and spending the day in lines. When we left VA it was 8° and there was a lot of snow on the ground so we were both so happy to be in Florida that we had fun just walking around outside. Our hotel had a pool and a hot tub and if you can believe it, it was warm enough at night to go in those. I love Florida weather. Toby has most of the pictures from Seaworld on his phone, so I only have a couple to post. And Aquatica is a water park, so we did't get any pictures there because we locked our phones away. We loved exploring Orlando and spending all of our time outside!
When we left Orlando, we went and stayed with my Aunt and Uncle in West Palm Beach for the remainder of our trip. We cannot thank them enough for taking us in! They really blessed us on our trip. They housed and fed us every day. We spent the time hanging out at their pool, going to the beach, and exploring West Palm! It was so great to see my family, especially since I don't get to see them very often. My little cousins are 9 and 11 and they adore Toby. He was so good with them. I loved the fact that they got the chance to get to know Toby and that they spent so much time with us! Also, my cousin Keenan used to live in Fairfax and moved back to Florida last October, so it was good to spend some time with him as well. All in all, it was an awesome week!
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| Toby insisted on keeping his mustache for the first day of our trip. I kept catching him taking pictures of it. |
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| The Walruses were HUGE! |
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| The Beluga Whale looks to me like an overweight dolphin. |
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| I love dolphins so much. They have always been my all time favorite animal! |
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| The Shamu show never disappoints! We also saw the killer whale that the whole "Blackfish" documentary was about. He was in the show. Pretty crazy. |
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| They had this cool window where you could see the killer whales while they swam by. This was the baby. Can you imagine how big the adult ones would be in this window? |
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| This was the coolest British Pub we got to eat at! They have different beers from all over the world and a "Pour your own beer" wall that works like a froyo place (pay by the ounce). |
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| The beach was so pretty. This picture doesn't even do the blue water justice! |
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| We went over to the top of the Everglades and we got to see some alligators swimming around. My cousin said this one is between 6 and 7 feet long. He said if you measure in inches the distance between the eyes and the edge of the nose (snout?) that's how long it is in feet. Pretty cool! Better than measuring from up close... |
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| We got to sit outside at World of Beer on our last night. |
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| My favorite person to travel with! |
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| This was the weather on the day we were leaving. I think it was a sign we should have stayed... |
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