Mom's Garden - Minnesota

Dad, this one's for you (and the rest of you that won't get out to Minnesota to see Mom's garden). She works incredibly hard all summer on her garden, caring for it and improving it. The house is such a peaceful place to be, both inside and out. It's out in the country, so the wind rustles in the trees and the birds are constantly eating from the feeders. The important thing of the day is to enjoy it. Here's just a glimpse, pardon my picture-taking skills. Brian can attest that I'm getting better, but I still cause a little blur now and then.

Minnesota Weekend

Sometimes you have to be reminded how important family truly is, and when you let yourself give into just enjoying life, you really can have a ball. Last weekend, I traveled to Minnesota to visit my grandparents. It was a great trip - we ate, talked, played cards, talked, ate, played cards, slept, ate and played cards again. If you know Sharon and I, we were good at playing cards, eating and talking all at the same time. A perfect weekend if you ask me! And here are some highlights in pictures...there are none of the card games, so you'll have to take my word for it. But to our family, 500 is the religion, so four people in a room means it's time to start dealing.

I was lucky to be there the same time as Uncle Gary and Cousin Bret - and here's the family in the kitchen. Would you expect anything else?

Places everyone, places...Jeopardy is coming on.

Grandpa working in his shop...that's the look that is immediately followed by that smile (which of course, I didn't get a picture of)

and look at his rotten kids...

But you can see where they learned it.

Mom and I took the boat out for a ride, and we got a great laugh after a quick stop that threw Bailey in the water.

She perches up on the bow of the boat, and try as she did, once I hit the mud, she couldn't regain her balance and ended up going for a swim.

Dry Dog. Wet Dog.

It was a great visit!

Bonsai advise - PLEASE!

One of Brian's school cohorts is off interning, and I have been volunteered to watch the plant. (Not that I mind.) I haven't done any research on this little fella...but it seems to be a bonsai tree of some sort.

When it arrived at my place a few weeks ago, it had a nice curved shape.

But look what I've done to it!
It's growing!

Do I need to trim it? When? Where?

Anyone? Thoughts?

Summer Plans

I thought you all might enjoy a quick update of our summer plans...

Brian has sucessfully completed his first year of his William & Mary MBA, and he has re-entered the working world. After chasing numerous leads, he landed an amazing internship at THQ for the summer. THQ is a large game-publisher and he is going to be exposed to the finance and product development side of the business. He is more than excited! And for two months he is going to trade the Virginia humidity for the California sunshine. Really, it's two adventures in one! (Yes, he's very upset for leaving the wife in VA! Or he better be...)

Home sweet home...for Brian...

Brian's new car...for the summer!

Sarah:

You guessed it! I am working in Virginia. I absolutely love my job at Lumber Liquidators. It's a great team, and I am right in the middle of the efforts to take the Company public.

It's great experience, challenging and fun.

Exactly what work should be!

Philadelphia code name Philly

Photo by: Maciej Baranowski

Going to Philly was something that has been on our list of things to do for a while, but we just hadn't gotten around to it. Thankfully, Anne gave us a great reason (her party) to come up and visit!

We had three missions to accomplish in Philly...

1. Go to Anne's party
2. See the Liberty Bell
3. Have a Philly cheese steak

We arrived in Philadelphia at approximately 11:45pm, but didn't get to our destination until about 12:20. We managed to turn our road trip into a five state adventure instead of just being a four state one...20% more fun, right?! Well the state that we added was purely on accident and not fun at all. While in Philadelphia we accidentally crossed the Ben Franklin bridge and kept going for a little while and ended up in New Jersey. Oops! Long story short we drove around in the dark for a bit and ended up finding our way back thanks to the atlas and Sarah's excellent navigation skills.

Even though it was late, we took the opportunity to catch up with Anne over a nice glass (okay, bottle, but who's counting...) of wine. The next day we completed two of the three missions with promise that the third, a cheese steak, would be great on Sunday. Mission two was completed on our way to help prep for the party, yup we saw the liberty bell out of the car window as we dashed off to the Italian part of town.

When we got to the Italian district the four of us (Anne, Brian, Sarah & Nancy) made breakfast the first priority. YUM! Then we strolled through the market and got some vegetables, seafood, cheeses, meats and more...The best part was going into the cheese and meat shop! As Anne was shopping the guy behind the counter was giving us samples of cheeses, meats, balsamic vinegar and more...and even though we just had brunch we found a way to fit the wonderful cheeses in! The most amazing thing had to be either the ricotta cheese cake, the fresh mozzarella, or the aged balsamic vinegar.

As we continued through the market area with I think Sarah described it best by calling it a moment straight out of "Pretty Woman." Three of us with bags and Anne leading the charge down the street...

That night we went to the party (Mission 1). There was an oyster shucker, paella, all the food from the market, champagne, sangria and plenty of beer and wonderful people! Unfortunately (or fortunately), the camera was MIA for most of the night so the only pictures we have are from the early part of the evening.


A bunch of us stayed the night and by noon the next day everyone was famished. So off to get a Philly cheese steak (mission 3). Thankfully the night before we met a Philly native who filled us in on the original cheese steak and how to order. The original is "American with," which means one gets white American cheese with grilled onions, YUM! Now some of the crowd wanted another local favorite of "Wiz with," which as you can imagine is cheese wiz with grilled onions. No one left hungry and everyone was quite happy with their authentic Philly cheese steak.


On the way back from Jim's Steaks we saw the Liberty Bell one more time, only this time we actually hopped out of the car and saw it up close and personal. We wandered around a bit more in the area as we tried to settle the enormous cheese steak in our stomachs.

Philly really is a beautiful city and hopefully, our travels will bring us back sooner rather than later, but all in all a wonderful weekend!

More of Lovely Williamsburg

We are still new enough to town that we're working through the list of "Williamsburg To-Do's." We grabbed Molly & Tony (you guessed it, MBA friend and wife) and were off. Now, realize, that these lists are not always created by adding the best things in town to do, but more so, the things that keep visitors busy. So, we started at the winery (always a good place to start).

The Williamsburg Winery is small. I know we're tainted by Washington State, but we enjoyed the tour. It was Molly's first winery tour, so it was fun to hear her comments. The tasting...was fine, we'd go back if we had guests in town that were interested, otherwise, considered it checked off the list.

And JAMESTOWN. That was our second mission of the weekend... it is a living history museum. Being the residents that we are, admission is free. It is a very well done exhibit, and the boats are cool to see. (The weather was anything but cool - yet another reason why Sno to Go was so tasty.) This one we'd go back to, guests or not. Long story short, we came, we saw, and we conquered.

Ok, so we didn't really take the canoe out on the water, but you could imagine what it would be like.

Sno to GO!

If you thought that Zip Lines + Hot Springs was crazy delicious we have found something that takes the cake.

Imagine it is 90+ degrees outside and the humidity is at approximately 80-90% and you have in front of you a cup layered with snow cone, ice cream, snow cone and lastly ice cream...it is a recipe for a wonderful afternoon!

Such a place exists, and thankfully, nearby. It's called Sno to Go. This wonderful shack has a chilled treat like no other that I have ever seen. It is a snow cone puree stuffed with vanilla or chocolate ice cream served up in a variety of wonderful flavors. We tried "Frog in a Blender" and "Sea breeze." YUM!

BTW: They can and will change the color of your tongue.

Side note related to Sno to Go is brain freeze! Our friend Molly said that if you are prone to brain freeze or have it, you should take their tongue and lick the roof of your mouth to help reduce the likelihood/pain of the terrible condition, brain freeze, that goes along with frozen treats.