D-run Goes to Michigan

Before Darin left for his conference in Michigan I told him to send me pictures. This is one of his top schools for graduate school, so I obviously needed to get a feel of it through text pictures.

He followed through very nicely.  Here's what my chain of text messages from Darin looked like last week (in his own words of course--I told him he should just write this post but he didn't like that idea, little did he know that he already wrote it):

"House on the right is where I'm staying."

"Band practicing on its own field."

"Part of stadium." 

(He's probably going to hate me for posting this selfie but he knew I couldn't go 52 hours without seeing his precious face).

 Wolverine

 "Ann Arbor with part of campus."

"Color."

 "School pride."

 "Beginning of main campus."

 "Cool building."

"Cool building."

(He sent this one twice. He must have really liked it).

 "Bell Tower."

 "All the buses here look like this. Excuse the random person."

 This is the shirt he wanted to get me. 

Instead he found this one on sale for me, and I love it! I was excited to see that he got me a large so I could actually wear it for a little while, then I put it on and it's already pretty snug. I checked the tag and saw that he got me a "slim fit" shirt. Thanks for the compliment sweetheart, but maybe not the most ideal time for a "slim-fit" shirt :). 

Then of course after he reminds me to hang dry it, I totally forget and stick it in the dryer. Nice one Brillante. Looks like this will be going in the box of clothes that I won't wear for a year.

 19 weeks and counting.

Fall Frolic

Watching the Oriole's in their first playoff game while eating leftover Apple Crisp. Must be October.  Speaking of October, I'm kind of in love with this shirt:

Web-site

Who doesn't love October? Does such a person exist? This is hands down THE best season change.  Fall to winter and spring to summer just blur together. Winter to spring is nice...when you're not in Southern Virginia and spring really just means early summer. Granted, fall here comes a little later than I would like, but it's coming. I've started to see a few leaves changing color and we've had the A.C. off for two weeks now (although there have been a few 80s days that were pushing it for me), but when it gets into the 60s (!!) at night, you've just gotta have the windows open.

The other night I hosted a little Fall Frolic. It was a semi-celebration of fall with a little babyshower twist to it as my buddy Sarah approaches the big day of meeting her baby girl (but really it was more of a lets-stuff-our-faces-with-fall-junk-food-and-craft-and-open-baby-presents kind of a night).

As much as I love a good party, I've decided that I'd much rather GO to a party than host one. First of all, I'm pretty cheap and uncreative when it comes to decorations. Secondly, I get a little stressed out thinking about whether or not people are enjoying themselves, which in the end makes it impossible for me to enjoy myself. (I actually held it together pretty well for this party and had a really good time with some great ladies). Thirdly, everyone leaves their sweet treats and then I am forced to eat all the leftovers for days after the party.

Of course I only took pictures right before anyone showed up and at the end when only three ladies were left... I wish I had a picture after everyone arrived with all their yummy dishes! We had so much pumpkin, apple goodness going on.

 Alejandra, Sarah and Meredith showing off their cute fall wreaths.  

 And here's my finished product. It was pretty simple to make, wrapped the wreath in burlap and made felt flowers to put on it.  Really simple, but I like the simplicity of it. 

A Week in Review

It's been another busy week so let's just do one big week-in-review-photo-drop shall we? 

Last Saturdy, while Darin was working, Shae and I stopped by the Williamsburg airport open house.

 Shae loved exploring the helicopter from head to toe and touching every single button in his reach.

We had a fun park day with Shae's buddies.

This hunk of my husband turned 28 years old and we celebrated by having friends over and eating Nutty Butty Ice Cream Cake.

Shae found all the socks that his daddy kindly leaves all over the house and turned himself into the sock monster (all the while thinking it was the COOLEST thing in the world). 

 And yes, that would be ANOTHER boo boo on his head. His forehead and the cement seem to be good friends these days.

We had lot's of fun with our friend Flavia who I started babysitting at the beginning of the month while her mama works.  Shae LOVES Flavia. He gets really excited when she comes over and has a good time playing with her, but it's definitely been hard for him as well. He started to learn the fine art of not-sharing, pushing, "No! Mine!" and other all around jealousy-toddler skills. Sometimes I feel like my days consist of being Flavia's body guard, and yet they always tend to have some cute moments like these.

Flavia's "CHEESE!" face vs. Shae's "CHEESE!" face.

Flavia wins.

 What's this? Shae letting Flavia read one of HIS books? Could it be? Moments like this are very rare.

While doing laundry the kiddos decide to come help me. They went on like this for a good 20 minutes. Doing the laundry is the new hop-scotch.

 Shae is quickly outgrowing his sandals (thank goodness summer is almost over). I looked through his drawers one day last week to see what I could find and tried one of each of these shoes on him and he REFUSED to let me take them off the rest of the morning.

 We put the shoes on after he brought me a cup full of tampons and kneeled down to say his morning prayers. It cracks me up that he kneels down and folds his arms at the steppers where we put our fan. His daddy is a good example at morning prayer so Shae always sees him kneeling at the bed, I guess the bed was just a bit too high so he found something more his size.

 Two straight rainy days definitely calls for teaching Shae what a fox says.

 And then sitting on the table for half an hour playing with two root beer bottles from daddy's birthday while mommy does some work. He loved pretending to put the lids on and off and then taking them in and out of the shoe box. It always amazes me what entertains a baby/toddler.

As soon as the rain stopped on the second day we booked it outside because we were all going crazy. One of our neighbors was playing with his dogs out in the field by our house. We need to schedule appointments with these dogs, the kids could have watched them play frisbee for hours.

 Insert squeal of joy here. (And this sunken table is the PERFECT play toy for these two).

 We went to the park again. We really really like the park.

 Shae walked around with my sunglasses on like he was the bees knees of toddlers. 

 And then plastered his face against one of the toys.

This morning we babysat these two crazies while Darin went with their daddy to buy themselves a car. We walked around Colonial Williamsburg a bit and of course had to stop at the Farmer's Market and get some muffins. (Sorry Ezra for turning you into a ghost).

And that was our week.