another family weekend.

this past weekend we had more family visitors, this time dad and robin came to see us and our new house! they arrived on friday afternoon and after spending some time giving the house tour and just catching up, we headed downtown for some dinner at fork & pie bar.

ohmygosh we ate so much food. if you happen to visit fork & pie {which i highly suggest you do} i would recommend the appetizer trio, because choosing just one would be too hard. for our meals, dad and robin both got the shepherd's pie, austin got the pulled pork bbq, and i got the spinach orzo pie. each of these get an a+.

but the real highlight of the meal was the dessert {but isn't it always?}. robin went with the banana pie, dad with the pecan, and myself, well i got chocolate chess pie, of course. i should have stopped one bite earlier on the spinach orzo so that i wouldn't have had to waste this last bit of chocolate chess pie. i cried a little having to leave it behind.

after dinner we decided to wander around nightfall for a bit to burn off those dinner calories show dad and robing the city a bit.

on saturday morning austin and i picked up some amazingly delicious donuts from julie darling donuts {red velvet donut: oh. em. gee.}. they were delicious. i might have an addiction.

and then dad helped us install a new wax ring on our toilet. man, we are good hosts. we butter you up with some gourmet donuts then we make you do manual labor. anyone else wanna come visit? we've got walls that need painting cookies for you!

saturday evening we had austin's parents and brother down for a cookout. and since dad and robin bought us a lovely new fire pit we were able to keep warm outside on our patio.

ok so maybe we were sweating our... faces off, but the point is that we have a fire pit now and we were too excited about it to care that it was 90 degrees outside.

and now, an overload of pictures.

oh and we can't forget that miss graci was there.

i'm so glad that dad and robin got to come visit! now i just need all my siblings to make a trip out here, too! can't we get a trump siblings trip together somehow??

surprises are fun.

want a quick recap of my weekend in ten words or less?

surprises, friends, ponchos, guns, mexicans, pirates, beta beta, and sisters.

oh, and saltine crackers. so i guess that makes like eleven words or something.

anyways. now for a real recap of my weekend. friday night, austin and i met up with some of my friends from pta school at nightfall to catch up and listen to some music. oh and sweat, because it was really, really, really hot outside. we also may or may not have complained about school stuff already...

but saturday was when the real fun happened. because i was held at watergun-point surprised by two of my bestest friends in costume at my front door on saturday afternoon. katie and lindsy promptly forced me into a costume {complete with crooked mustache} and made me dinner. who could complain about that? not me. cause there was cheese dip. and it was delicious.

then we reverted back in time to when we were in college and we had girls nights and we would listen to music as we all crowded in one bathroom to fix our hair, put on makeup and try on 47 outfits in order to go out for the night. holy moly i miss those days.

and i miss this ridiculousness in my life.

on sunday, we proved that we could be normal if we try hard enough and got all prettied up to attend the ribbon cutting and grand opening of our sorority chapter's new house. it's been like ten years that we've been waiting for that house. i only wish i could actually go back in time so i could live there.

katie, lindsy, me and brianne in front of the house with our letters.

we had a great time touring the house {and peeking in to every room and closet we could find} and seeing lots of our sisters. and feeling old realizing that we know absolutely no one in the chapter anymore... but it was a great time.

i'm so happy that katie and lindsy surprised me this weekend with a visit. and we gotta get on that yearly girls trip planning asap!

a new friend.

yesterday evening as i was doing some work out in the garden, i found a new friend.

a very angry new friend.

this little guy was not very happy that i accidentally disturbed him while planting some things. but once he calms down and stops striking at every thing that moves maybe he'll actually appreciate the new plants that he can now hide under.

while i'm on the topic of gardening, can anyone identify this plant?

we were given a bunch of these the other day, but we have no idea what they are. anyone?

presents!

as i mentioned in yesterday's post, austin and i brought some goodies back to tennessee with us. and as promised, i'm back today to share those goodies with you. cause i wouldn't want to break any promises.

first, we brought home a ton of plants to plant in our gardens. we also got a bunch of pink daffodil bulbs and some blackberry lily seeds.

i don't know what's in the water back home, but i need to get some of it because apparently it makes hostas grow to be the size of houses. thanks to tucker for modeling as a size reference here. and also for letting you see how ridiculously hot it was outside.

so as baby hostas have popped up here and there, mom and tim dug them up for transport back to our house in tennessee. they're just little guys right now, but hopefully they'll like their new home around our back patio and grow up to be huge.

not so sure if this guy is going to make it or not, since tucker didn't do his job and keep the deer out of the yard... but we'll give him a shot.

we also brought home quite a few purple coneflower plants.

and although it doesn't look like much right now, they'll eventually have purple flowers and hopefully they'll attract more butterflies than bees...

and for the final item from the plant category, we brought home some sedum.

i believe that these little guys will grow up to look like this:

{image from here}

i can't wait to get all my plants in the ground, but we're actually going to get some more hostas and some cannas from some other friends/family first. anyone else have plants they want to donate to our house? i want my gardens to look like pretty jungles!

the other presents we brought home are for prettying up the inside of the house. in case you didn't know, my momma is a genius scientist smarty-pants and a really crafty artistic person. she makes stained glass art of all kinds and she donated some pieces to our house!

we got this pretty blue flower piece for our living room window. {turns out i'm not so great with the camera and i couldn't quite get a good picture of the whole window without it either being way to dark, way too light, or this kind of blah shade of blah.}

but up close to the glass, you can see how pretty the color is and the details. i literally smile every time i walk into the room and see it hanging over our couch.

and as if that wasn't enough, momma gave us two more pieces! we've got this victorian style flower piece hanging in our kitchen:

and this little green flower hanging in our bathroom.

unfortunately, our stupid windows have stupid little bars dividing them into little sections which are really screwing up the glass. for the one in the kitchen i was at least able to hide them a bit with the edges of the piece, but the one in our bathroom didn't work out that way. eventually, though, and hopefully sooner rather than later, we'll be getting all new windows installed without those dumb little bars.

anyway, so those are the goodies we brought home from virginia. a big thank you to momma and timmy for being willing to share these things with us. i feel like it makes it a little easier to be six hours away from home when i can bring little pieces of home back with me and i get a little reminder of home by just looking around.

mini vacay.

so austin and i just got back from a mini vacation trip back home to virginia to see my momma, my timmy and the rest of my family. austin took off from work so we could have a long weekend and so i could spend even more time enjoying my family.

on thursday morning we loaded up the car and were on our way. unfortunately this is what we were driving in:

beautiful weather for a six hour drive, yes? i mean, at least we didn't waste a pretty day driving... i guess?

austin and i have made the drive from tennessee to virginia so. many. times. but each time we make the trip together, we stop at the state line for a little picnic. this time it was an indoor picnic thanks to the downpour. but the good news was that we got to have a little bit of a history lesson regarding the crooked road, virginia's heritage music trail, by tuning in on our radio. bluegrass, anyone?

eventually, we made it home. and i was so. happy. to be out of the car. and momma even had some fresh lilies waiting for me in a vase. and also a little big bang theory inspired soft kitty pillow. so cute.

the rest of the evening was spent catching up with mom and tim, snacking on appetizers and pizza on the patio and catching the first episode of the season of big brother. oh and trying to keep the peace between these two.

friday morning, we took a trip to visit the salem museum.

i hadn't been since i was in middle or high school and we got to look at some interesting stuff about the history of salem, lots that i didn't even know. and they even had an entire exhibit on the old lakeside amusement park that was in salem. i made mom get a picture with the model of the shooting star, the roller coaster she rode as a little girl that traumatized her for life.

saturday morning, i watched as mom, tim, and granddad worked on this pretty vw truck and momma even took me for a ride in it, despite having not told me the brakes weren't exactly functioning properly...

afterwards we all drove downtown {in a car with functioning brakes} to check out the taubman museum of art where they had exhibits including depression era photos by dorothea lange, a collection of faberge, and something called the big lick boom.

these pictures were taken in the big lick boom exhibit, which is an installation by artist wayne white who, turns out, is from chattanooga. and for those of you who are wondering about the name, big lick was the original name of roanoke {something about salt licks and deer...}

this guy was like a giant puppet on strings that you could pull to animate him and make him talk.

after the museum, we wandered around downtown for a bit checking out the farmer's market and making a stop in the market building for some baked deliciousness of baklava. yum.

then the seven-year-old in me forced momma and timmy to take me to the fair since it was in town. and i can't remember the last time i was in town when the fair was.

i made momma ride the tilt-a-whirl with me. we spun around and around and around. 

and i don't care what you say, the old rides at the fair are the best. maybe not the safest, but the best. probably because of the memories i have of them as a kid.

it was so incredibly hot out we only got enough tickets for the tilt-a-whirl and one other ride. and because i'm a nice person i let austin pick the ride.

and while we look pretty excited about it, you should have seen our faces when we were done. total disappointment. it was like sitting in a dark room for 14 seconds with a strobe light occasionally {which was supposed to be scary}. thanks a lot, austin.

after the fair, i was hot. and tired. so i napped. but then we had family down again for some fresh from the garden {and farmer's market} veggies for dinner. and a lot of catching up and general family time. good stuff.

sunday morning i got to spend some time loving on my pretty horse, wendy. ok, so she's not really my horse, but i like to pretend.

alien horse!

i also spent some time wandering around taking in the pretty views that i love so much.

i sat and watched the hummingbirds for a long time. they fly so close to your head and there are so many of them up there!

unfortunately, like all good things, our visit home was forced to come to an end. not cool. but at least we had sunny weather for our trip back to tennessee. and as has become a tradition for our trips, we stopped at sheetz for some lunch. most people around here don't know anything about sheetz, but austin considers it to be the greatest gas station ever. and you probably think that's weird, but once you try some fresh made to order food from their infinite menu you'll agree with him.

after a very tiring drive we finally made it home. after a quick stop at little caesar's for some pizza for dinner. i wasn't cooking after that drive.

juliet says "are we there yet?"

all in all, i had a wonderful visit back home. it's always so good to see my family but i always wish it could last longer. hopefully it won't be too long before i see them again.

i have some more pictures to share of some goodies we brought home with us, but since this post is ridiculously long as it is {i'd actually be surprised if anyone is still reading...}, but i'll be back to share those later.