Some crab, some wine...and a broken computer.

4 Day Weekend

Will, Colin and I had an eventful 4 day weekend! Makes it hard to go back to work tomorrow...

On Saturday, we had Uncle Eric & family over to celebrate Aunt Wendy's birthday! We had a lot of fun eating dinner, visiting and playing Guitar Hero. One thing that was not overly great about the evening, was that our air conditioner was not working. The thermostat had the temperature as 90 degrees, which was as high as the thermostat would read. It was pretty miserable. To add to that, not knowing that the air would not be doing its part in keeping us cool, I chose to make a crab bisque to go along with a chicken and veggie dish that was prepared in the crock pot. So, a hot meal in a very hot home! At least the food turned out really well...I was excited to try the crab bisque recipe I had. Even with the heat, we managed to have a good time and enjoyed spending time with our adorable nephews and Colin's Aunt and Uncle.

On Sunday, Will took Colin to Dale City to spend some time with his mom and dad. I got to spend time with a girlfriend from work and her friend. We went to some wineries close by. It was a great day...nice weather, great wine and a delicious lunch! I was good and only bought one wine, a really good dessert wine from the first winery. For lunch we went to this place called Magnolia's. It is an old mill turned into a restaurant. I had a portobello sandwich. Delicious!

While trying to find the last winery we ended up driving too far. We discovered this by the "Welcome to West Virginia" sign! This was my first time in the state, but it was getting late so we did not get to spend too much time there. Oh well, I will make Will take me back, I have heard the area is beautiful! I want to head that way for an outdoorsy vacations. At our last wine tasting stop, we were given our money's worth (tasting fee). I think I counted 13 or 14 wines that we tasted. I had been to this winery before and it is one of my favorites. They have a Zeus wine (red) that is really good (if you like dry wine) and they end with their raspberry dessert wine that you drink with piece of chocolate...VERY delicious!

Monday was not our favorite day of the weekend. Our home computer got a virus, which messed with the operating system. We tried to fix it ourselves, but gave up and had to have the Geek Squad at Best Buy do the job for us. Since my class is online, this made doing homework a bit difficult. Bright side! I think I have convinced Will to get wireless...now I can use my laptop to do homework. Yay!

Tuesday was wondeful! Colin let us sleep until 8 AM! That has not happened in a very long time. We had breakfast and got Colin to daycare around 10 AM. Will and I went to the mall, got some fancy coffee and walked around until it was time for our movie to start. We saw Star Trek. Very good movie! I do not remember much about the series but the parts I did were referenced in the movie. Afterwards, we had a nice lunch at an Italian restaurant. It was so nice to spend time with Will, just the two of us. But it is hard to go stay away from Colin, so we picked him up early and went home for some familly time.

Oh...Colin is saying banana...or at least he is trying to say it. It comes out more like..."nanana". So cute! The poor guy has been teething, so he had trouble falling to sleep last night. He ended up sitting on the couch with us until about 9 or 9:30...late night for the little guy.

What a wonderful weekend!

More Photo Fun

Here are a few more...

I love these two pics! The first is at the Renn Fest last year & the second is at Gettysburg.

Colin & daddy at the coast in NC (New Years) & just me goofing around.

Me again w/my new highlights (the technique made them not so noticeable) & Colin at Grandpa B's place.


This picture my friend John took. I really like this technique, but only for certain pictures.

I may not be able to post the rest of the week, work is going to be busy (I have to have my test scripts written by Friday), but Will and I have a four day weekend...so I will write more than.

Photo Fun

I finally had some time to edit some of the pictures I have been taking with my camera I bought a while back. Here are a few of the finished photos!


Colin on Thanksgiving & with daddy a few weeks ago.

Colin at the park & at his Grandma Liz's house.

Colin on his first birthday & last football season.

I will post some more shortly! Hope everyone is having a good week!

Rub a Dub Dub...Bath Time!!!!

Bath Time for Colin!!!

Colin LOVES bath time!! This last week we thought we would try a bubble bath! He was ecstatic!!! He was transfixed by the bubbles. I took some pictures, so I thought I would share.

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Mother's Day Weekend

For the most part, my weekend was wonderful! William and Colin spoiled me with Mother day gifts and took me to breakfast at IHOP! William did a lot of the cleaning and kept telling me to relax and not to worry about doing anything...How spoiled am I??

The not-so-good part of my weekend, I kind of did to myself. I got the idea in my head that I wanted to treat myself to highlights in my hair. I imagined a pretty caramel color. Not too drastic, but noticeable. I actually told the lady, "professional but noticeable". The caramel color turned out to be a gold color, very blonde. No offense to any of my blonde friends, but I have no desire to be a blonde, my skin color and the rest of my hair color does not go well with that shade. It was hideous! It was OK though, because I knew it was somehow fixable. I do not know if it was the smell of the chemicals or going without caffeine, but I also ended up with a terrible migraine. So, I decided not to go to dinner with Will, my mother-in-law, brother-in-law and his family. I would have been a bore. So, I was upset about my hair and about missing a dinner that I was looking forward to all week. Sorry Liz and Ann, hope you both had a wonderful mother's day!

So, I stayed home and laid on the couch watching movies. Once Will got home from dinner, I went to the store to buy some more dye to hopefully minimize the ugly hair color. Will did it for me and it actually turned out really well. A few blonde streaks somehow escaped the darker coloring, but for the most part I have a brownish/red color with some random blonde! I actually really like it now...Thank you Will for saving my hair and a wonderful Mother's day weekend!!

I hope all the Mother's and Mother's-to-be had a wonderful weekend!!

Also, mom I am glad you had a great weekend! I still have your gift to send...I will do it soon, I promise! I love you so much!

Liz- My Mother-in-law. Thank you for being so sweet and wonderful to Billy, Colin and I! We love you so much! Thank you for making it a little easier to be going through all my recent life changes without my mom here.

Missed Weekend Updates

I have failed to write about the past few weekends, so I will do a summarized version in this blog.

A couple weekends ago, we had a busy weekend! Saturday we had a couple (John & Susannah) that I work with over for dinner. I made a fish dinner, that I thought turned out pretty well. We had a great time!!! We got to entertain them with a wonderful invention, the Wii!!! It was hilarious to watch everyone play after a few drinks, especially Susannah boxing!! I sadly did not take any pictures of this. I will have to remember to do that next time.

On Sunday, we went with Wendy and family on a hike in Maryland. It was Colin's first hike! He had a wonderful time playing with his cousins, Aidan and Alexei. He tries to mimick what they do. At one point they were stuffing twigs into a tree stump and so there was Colin, with no idea why, throwing twigs at the tree. Not doing so well to actually get them into the hole. His cousins were patient with him and helped him with this important task. Very cute to watch. The hike was more of a little stroll and then a big lunch! Which we will not complain about! We love food! It was fun having a picnic.

This weekend: On Saturday, we made the trip to Fair Oaks Mall ( I call it a trip because traveling even 20 minutes seems like a long time because Colin does not like the car...at all). We went to pick up my ring that was sent away to get all pretty again! Anyway, we got there early, because Will wanted "the B family out the door at 9 AM sharp", so we were out of the door at 9:10 (pretty good, I think) and there was no traffic so we were at the mall by 9:30, which did not open until 10. So, Colin got to lead us around the quiet mall. He even got to stand on the escalator, which threw him off a bit and he would not walk once we were off of it. He hesitates any time the floor changes, like if the tiles are different colors or texture. It is like he has to make sure it is stable ground before moving forward. He does the same with grass and sidewalks.

After Colin's nap, Will went to the music store with John (a friend that I work with) and he bought a bass guitar! He is very excited! This is a new instrument for Will, so John is going to teach him a few things. While Will did that John's wife, Susannah, asked me to go on a walk. I had just lifted weights (a leg day) but I thought it would be a good cool down! So, we got Colin in his stroller and went for a walk, which ended up being around 3 miles...my poor legs!! I am so sore today, but it is good, a good pain!

To end the day we went to dinner at the Aunt Wendy & Uncle Eric's house. Will's dad was also coming up from Dale City. Dinner was wonderful! We had a cookout. Colin had a little scare from one of the dogs, so he was clinging most of the time, but he still managed to play outside in the grass and have a good time. He also made sure that everyone knew that he could talk now...and it was hard not to hear him, especially when he was talking (or yelling) at one of the dogs!

Today...Sunday...being lazy. That is all my body wants to do! Well, I do have some homework that must get done. Unfortunately. I should be moving on to that.

Happy May everyone!