Recent events

I feel like we have had some big events that really deserve separate posts of their own, but truthfully I am not feeling the creativity flowing. I will just post pics and you can quickly scroll through them and our moms can read all the captions (because when there is a picture overload we all know that moms are the only ones who read the captions).

Baby Showers

There have been quite a few of these, and all have been very much appreciated!! Thanks to all the ladies who planned and prepared and, where possible, attended these celebrations, they were all so great! The first baby shower was thrown by several of my good friends and it was Fancy Nancy party. For those who don't know, Fancy Nancy is a precocious little girl who likes fancy words, fancy clothes, and anything French. She is hilarious and cracks me up. Everyone at my party was asked to wear purple or pink, two of Nancy's favorite colors.

This party was so fancy, even the spoons were bejeweled! Thanks, Girls!
Joy helped plan and offered to host in her lovely home. As guests entered, they received beads. If they said the word "cute," they had to give up their beads - to me. As you can see, Charlotte got a lot of cute stuff.

I was thrown a shower at my work as well, and even though the party was on a Friday after hours, everyone was gracious and stayed, it was great! We played a funny game where I had to guess what type of candy bar had been melted and smooshed into a diaper; these photos of everyone looking are priceless. I love the look of concentration on people's faces.

Boy's Week

After graduation, two of Rich's classmates stayed an extra week to take care of a few things before heading to the West. It was me, Rich, and Two other dentists, with one little boy in tow (a son of one of the other guys). Here's some of the junk food that usually can't be found in our house. Rich and I took full advantage of it.

Yup, here's the two TV's. Of course you need two, one for video games, one for movies.

Graduation Day!!!

Finally, the day arrived, and Rich graduation from dental school! It was a long road, but I'm proud of him for finishing. Here he is after his hooding. I think they knocked his hat crooked, but I still think he's handsome!

The dental friends and their wives; great friends and great memories, we will miss these awesome people!

Here's Rich and his friend David, they have been friends since they were in diapers. It's so great that they were able to go to dental school and graduate together.
I just liked this picture. He thinks he's so cool, haha!

Father's Day

We went up to Harrisonburg for Father's Day and celebrated with Richard's Dad. It was a beautiful weekend, and we enjoyed spending the weekend up there. Richard also received a gift which he was highly anticipating, but not expecting for Father's Day, a Baby Bjorn. He's very excited, I think the picture below says it all.

Camping

I had wanted to go camping one last time before Charlotte came, and, unfortunately we were rained out on the weekend we thought we were going to get to go to the Shenandoah National Park (Father's Day Weekend), so we decided to try again, but closer to home the next weekend. We packed up the car and headed to Pocahontas State Park in the mid summer's heat.

As part of our campout, Rich had to tryout some sweet new gear he got from Therm-a-rest. Thanks to Facebook and my Husband's sweet word smithing, he won the chance to be a gear tester and got $400 worth of gear from them. First test, can a pregnant women sleep a humid VA summer night comfortably? Answer, yes!

Camp is set, now it's dinner time!

How do you feel about blackened hot diggity-dogs? Yeah, I don't like them either, thus the chicken on the flame, and it was good.

On our way down, we sent out a mass text to all of our awesome friends, and the Morris' answered the call and brought up the kids for some 'Smores. As you can see, Eva loved the giant marshmallows!

After the Morris' left, Rich remembered he brought his scrubs for a ceremonial burning. He said it was very cathartic.

Richard's 29th Birthday

On July 1st, Richard turned 29. His parent's came up for the day for the festivities. They finished icing the cake that Richard made for himself. It was a delicious German Chocolate Cake that his grandfather on his mom's side used to make.
It wouldn't be a birthday at our house without a few butts on a birthday card.
After going to the Cinebistro to see Transformers #3, Rich received this transformer as a birthday present. Look at the joy on this manchild's face.

July 3rd

We went to see the RVA fireworks down at Brown's Island in the middle of the City. Thousands of people braved the unbelievably muggy evening to see the fireworks and hear the symphony (which oddly, only played before the fireworks, and the following music during the show was questionable at best).

The Bennetts joined us for the evening, and we had a great time talking and looking up the origin of the word Yankee on the Iphone. Oh, Iphone, how did we ever get along without you!

These fireworks were dubbed the firefly fireworks by Brityn and me. They were my favorite.

Today was the Fourth of July, we had a nice get together with some friends; we had great food and great company. Since it was raining here, we decided to watch the National Fireworks show on PBS and now that it's 10:30pm, it looks like Rich's prediction on Charlotte's arrival was wrong, sorry, babe. Happy Fourth, everyone!

Annnnnnnnddddd.......DONE!!!

What is wrong with your legs

Today I wore a skirt to work and somebody said, what is wrong with your legs. Well it is sort of a long story and it all begins with a beach house.

This is the awesome crew that came to the beach house to celebrate graduation from dental and medical school. I had been looking forward to this vacation for weeks. Every time I had a rough day at work I would remind myself that in ___ Days I would be sunning my self on the beach and hanging out with great friends. I had even fantasized about how I could dig a hole in the sand and get to lie down on my stomach. Well two days before the trip I was informed that the forecast was for rain every single day. I tried to shake it off and remind myself that I still could relax in the beach house. I was telling one of my coworkers about it and when I told her there would be 16 adults and 16 kids (under the age of 6), she didn't seem so sure of the relaxation of the event.

I will admit that I started to fret, just a touch, but as soon as we got there and started to hang out with friends, chatting and playing games I knew it was going to be great no matter what the weather was like, but there was still part of me longing for a tan.

We played games and Rich and I even got to try out the kinect on Xbox. It is amazing the kinds of things you will do if a video game tells you to. Normally if you asked me to stand up and do a solo dance in front of 15 friends I would definitely refuse, but not this time.

On Saturday I looked outside and saw all the girls hanging out in swimming suits and I debated putting mine on...for a few reasons, but mostly because weather.com said it was supposed to rain in one hour. I figured one hour would be worth is so I busted out the swim suit and plopped myself in the beach chair (trying to get out of one of these things without abdominal muscles is quite a feat)

Well 3 1/2 hours later I decided it might be a good idea to go in (okay in all honesty, it was just because the wind picked up and I got cold...I am not that responsible.)
I was so happy I had enjoyed the sunshine and warmth. Until that evening when a portion of my arms and legs were on fire. That night I even had a dream that I had shingles on my legs that were responsible for the pain.

I thought that it was only going to be sunny for one hour. I knew my upper legs would burn even in one hour, but I wasn't too worried about my lower legs. I know this is terrible (I should know better), but I didn't put any sun screen on my lower legs, I just kept thinking that it might be my only chance for a tan this summer (again, I do realize that tan=skin damage, but I am also vain) What I didn't realize is that having sand packed onto your legs can act as a natural sunscreen and create a very strange pattern. Serves me right. Now instead of having a bronze beautiful tan on my legs I have this bizarre disease like pattern and people ask me, "what is wrong with your legs?" Stupidity is the only fitting answer.

Just call us Katniss Everdeen

My MIL, Nancy, decided to take up to archery. She is really good and this Mother's day we went out and learned some SKILLS. It was a really fun thing to do for Mother's day.

Rich started and the string kept hitting his arm and was causing some bruising. So in true mother's day spirit his mom gave him her sweater to protect his fragile arm. I think he looks rather dashing in his mom's sweater.

Rich managed the impossible by shooting one arrow into the back of another. Quite amazing, but sadly it ruined the arrow.

Dickie took some good shots.

I decided to try my hand at it and...well, all I can say is that some of them hit some part of the target.
Then it was Mammie's turn. We were all a little nervous because she has a tremor and we weren't sure exactly where the arrow would end up. Luckily, none of us were harmed.

Okay, let's face it none of us are as good as Katniss Everdeen, but we had a blast.

Game Plan

I have many things I would like to post about and I even have started loading pictures for a different adventure, BUT first this....our game plan since graduation.

I was thinking about this line from...you guessed it...You've Got Mail:

Birdie Conrad: You are daring to imagine that you could have a different life. Oh, I know it doesn't feel like that. You feel like a big fat failure now. But you're not. You are marching into the unknown armed with...
[pause]
Birdie Conrad: Nothing. Have a sandwich.

This is where we stand "marching into the unknown armed with....Nothing." Not really nothing, there is a cool framed DDS degree sitting in our living room. The nothing at this point comes in the form of solid job opportunities.

Rich has had two offers that seemed great on paper, but weren't right. We are still trying to find that RIGHT job and we are willing to wait for that to come. So until then, we are still here.

In fact being a "5th year senior" (by staying in the same apartments with the other students from our church) has some definite advantages, like living so close to so many friends-although we are seriously sad about all our close friends who are moving on, saving money, not having to do yardwork, calling maintenance when we need something fixed (who cares if they just paint over the water leak in our ceiling), going to the pool, and not having to pack just yet.