Road Trippin'

We recently pulled off a fantastic road trip to visit family and friends in Ohio. As is usually the case, the trip was packed full of good times with our people, laughter, and numerous amazing dance moves during the time in the car (Although Jon will only let me dance while the car is moving. No dancing at a red light so as to not attract attention to one's ridiculousness). We hoofed a par 3 golf course with Mom and Dad and stopped play serveral times to wonder whether or not a stampede of ducks was going to take us out. We spent a whole afternoon and evening with close friends at a wine fest trying to charm vendors into giving us the largest samples possible and trading owl jokes that date back to our wedding. We relaxed at a lake side cottage with our inner circle and took numerous boat rides to soak in the sun and see who had to stay close to shore so Ava could swim ALL day.

On the way home we pit stopped in Gettysburg for a day to tour the battlefield. It is amazing to take in the sheer size of that 3 day battle and it is also hard to imagine such devastation occuring in such a beautiful place. There are endless insights and side stories to the battle. It makes me wonder, with so many soldiers having died there how many stories are there that we will never know?

This is Jon on the Union side of Pickett's Charge. I think it's the worst mile I could imagine having to slowly march across in the history of our country.

It's Official

After 2 years of work and thousands of dollars in tuition, it's official according to the state of Virginia..............I'm a teacher!!! What especially catches my eye on license it that it says (just in case you can't see it) Postgraduate Professional License. Sounds pretty hoity-toity even though it's not so glamorous where the rubber meets the road.


Funny how I just got this spectacular piece of paper in the mail and I'm already working on keeping up my licensure renewal points before it expires in 5 years.

Jon vs. The Garbage Disposal

One of the things I admire about Jon is that he likes to figure things out. If you give him a box of patio furniture that is in a million pieces he will lose himself in putting them all together. If your car battery dies he will take out all the ridiculous little parts under the hood, change out the battery, and put everything back together.

His latest challenge was our garbage disposal. After discovering a pile up of black sludge (so gross!) under our kitchen sink we figured out the disposal was the culprit. After 2 trips to see our friends (literally) at Home Depot we finally had all of the parts to fix it.

It took Jon 2 hours, some fancy tools he uses on his car, and an angle grinder that made sparks fly everywhere and our garbage disposal was like new. He never ceases to amaze me.

The score: Jon 1, garbage disposal 0.

Summer Favorites..so far

Jon and I have declared this The Summer of Fun. Graduate school is over for me and a huge engineering job Jon worked on for a year and a half is complete. We're ready to enjoy our extra time. So far some of our favorites are:

1.Veggies from our garden. I've thrown them in soup, salads, casseroles. They are delicious and I'm obsessed with watching them grow.

2. This diet sparking Oceanspray drink. Since I'm not a soda drinker but love a tasty carbonated beverage I'm always on the look out for a delicious treat. This hits the spot and is only 2 bucks for a pack of 4!

3. Grilled pizza! Jon and I make this almost every week. We tweak it and put together wild combinations of ingredients (some from the garden). We've even started making our own dough. We love it.

The Summer of Fun is off to a superb start!

Whirlwind Weekend

Jon and I headed to Ohio last weekend for a whirlwind weekend of family, home town friends, college friends and little sleep. We flew in Thursday night and stayed up late with my brother, his wife, and my brother's best friend laughing hysterically about a lot of nothing.

One of my college roomies got married last Friday (although, my BFF from college and I secretly said the reception was in honor of our birthdays that are 1 month apart--thanks for the party, Julie!). The wedding gave all 6 roomies and most husbands a chance to catch up and whoop it up. It was great to have some of my girls stay with us at Mom and Dad's...just like old times!

Saturday morning brought a parade of fun visitors to the house. Jon and other friends worked to fix the window we had to break to get into Mom and Dad's since we accidentally locked ourselves out (sorry Dave and Becky).

We also babysat Ava while Colin and Melissa went to his high school reunion Saturday night. A new parade of good friends came over to their house that night which ended with 5 squealing kids trying to save a baby bird from the jaws of the friendly neighborhood cat.

We had a blast even though it took us two whole days to catch up on sleep!

Save The Bay

After a long hiatus from blogging, Cookies n' Cream is back. It's amazing what the completion of a huge engineering project and a Master's degree graduation will do to free up some time. Now we're a little more free to do fun stuff like blog and......

Clean the Bay Day! Jon and I volunteered with some others from his company to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay and its' watersheds over the weekend. We were assigned to the "downtown" of Virginia Beach which we really didn't think would be that dirty but once we got a closer look it was gross!

Our team picked up close to 1,000 cigarette butts in a just 2 hours. We found a shopping cart in a water retention pond that Jon tried valiantly to pull out of the muck (it was waaay too stuck!). Oh, and plastic shopping bags can get really disgusting! Overall, Clean the Bay picked up 19,000 pounds of trash. It's sad that there's that much trash laying around.

Furniture

While perusing Pier One over the weekend we found this piece of furniture that was on super sale. We decided to buy it right then and there with the understanding that it was a final sale and not returnable. In our excitement over finding such a great item for our home we never thought about how we would actually get it home since there was now way it would fit in either one of our cars. Luckily a friend let us borrow his old truck that we couldn't turn off once we got it started (which ended up being hilarious) so we could pick it up. We brought our furniture home and have it perfectly situated in our guest suite. Doesn't it look great? We think so!