Summer Vacation

My (Jenny's) parents and brothers visited last week and we had a wonderful time together. The only bad thing was how fast the time flew by! Here are some pictures from their trip as well as a video of Ben surf fishing (Daniel and Matthew also surf-fished, as did my dad, but Ben was probably the one who went the farthest out with his pole in order to get to where the fish were!).

Photos from Fort Monroe, Williamsburg/Ben's birthday, and Washington, DC:

Family Visit July 09 - Ben's bday, DC, etc

Photos from fishing at Sandbridge Beach:

Family Visit Aug. 1, 2009

Video of surf fishing:

Pictures of July 4, Beach, Family Time

For those of you not on Facebook, here's a link to a few select pictures from our July 4th weekend - which included a visit from Ben's parents, a day at the beach, and a colonial 4th celebration. Oh, and also a trip down to Ft. Monroe to see where Ben works.

View album here

We are now gearing up for the second family visit, which will be the last week of July. Can't wait!! Otherwise, we're both enduring our jobs and catching as much sun on the weekend as we can.

That's all for now!

Summertime in Williamsburg

Here are some pictures we took recently. Except for the first two, all the rest are in Colonial Williamsburg. It's so pretty here in the summertime, though very hot right now as well! We are looking forward to the coming week, when Ben's parents are coming to visit us for a week. We'll go to the Colonial W'burg 4th of July stuff, and we are also planning to take a day to drive down to the Outer Banks. Fun, fun!

Turkey and baby turkeys (turklets?) that we saw beside the road less than 1/4 mile from our house:

Pretty carnations Ben got me on a particularly stressful workday (which has been pretty much every day lately!):

Ben, a cat-lover, found a cute kitty in Colonial W'burg who was just waiting to be petted:

Bruton Parish:

Pretty silhouetted home and trees:

Pretty flower in the Colonial W'burg garden:

A moth (photo by Ben):

Colonial home:

Another colonial home (this one looks different than many of the others in CW - it's brick and has a huge, distinctive, gnarly tree in front of it):

Famous colonial home (I forget the name of it):

Tweet Tweet - Baby Birds are Here

We have this ceramic pot that is mounted on the inside of our patio's overhang. It was there last year - Ben put it there to see if some birds would nest in it. We are now on our 3rd set of baby birds between last spring and this one! We missed the first batch of birds earlier this spring somehow, but the latest ones have been very cooperative in terms of allowing for a photo shoot. They are so adorable with their little furry mohawks and when they chirp for their food with mouths wide open! Enjoy...

Baby Birds

June Update

June seems to have slipped up on us, and I just noticed we haven't posted since May 20. Well, part of that is because I joined Facebook world in late May, so now I tend to use that for keeping up with friends rather than the blog. However, I know some people, especially family members, aren't on FB, so guess we better keep the blog posts going at least periodically!

Let's see, May 22 was our 5th anniversary, and we spent it at work mostly (boo!) but then took a happy little drive on Colonial Parkway followed by a picnic (in the new car, sunroof down!) on the York River - complete with sandwiches from Colonial Williamsburg's one and only The Cheese Shop. I don't think we did much else that weekend that I can remember (man, my memory is going - that was 2 weeks ago yet it feels like ages ago!). Ben gave me a papasan chair for our anniversary, and I am thoroughly enjoying that (he is too); it's a great thing to come home to after a long day at work :)

The past couple weekends we have spent doing massive cleaning, rearranging, sorting out of old papers and stuff, and then throwing whatever we can away. It took longer than we thought and we aren't even done yet, so this weekend will be partly spent doing that. It is so refreshing to get rid of things that you really don't need and have only been keeping "just in case." My theory is that if I run across something that I didn't remember I had, and if I haven't needed it in the past two years since moving here, chances are I probably won't need it in the future--or if I will, it won't be the end of the world to get rid of it. Oh, yes, and another part of this project has been to go through our computer files as well--consolidating, organizing, and getting rid of duplicate documents. We did that in anticipation of getting new memory for our laptop (thanks to Ben's parents!)--which we successfully installed without losing any data, but which we were trying to play it safe with in case something did happen (one never knows with computers...).

Otherwise, we have been enjoying going on evening walks (when it's not raining, as it seems to have been doing most of the past week) and just soaking in some sun on our porch. There is a lot of wildlife around here that seems to come out even more in the summer: raccoons, deer, frogs (LOTS of 'em), bunnies, and baby geese and ducklings. I'm including a few pics of the goslings here - they aren't the best photos but they really were sooo cute with their young, furry feathers.

This summer promises to be relatively uneventful and low-key, as we aren't planning any major vacations due to Ben's new job and not having the time off to take. It's sort of sad, but sacrifices must be made early on for the benefits later, so we are trying not to complain and to at least be glad for the weekends!

Well, that's all for now. Hope everyone has a good weekend!

The New Car

Here are pictures of our new car! I (Jenny) will primarily drive it (to and from work), while Ben continues to drive our old (2002) Honda Civic to and from work. The new car's best perk (in my opinion) is the sunroof--something I've wanted since I was 16! It also has a 6-CD changer and is generally quite nice on the inside (more luxurious than I ever expected with an Accord). We were fortunate to get such a good deal on it, thanks to our good friend Susan's dad/family friend Bruce (pictured in the first photo below with me)!

Side view:

Matthew, Ben, me and Daniel in front of the new car:

My Brother, the Graduate

We just returned from Atlanta yesterday and have posted photos of Daniel's graduation and surrounding events on Picasa. Here are the links, below. A few more highlights of the weekend are below!

Pictures of Senior Honors Night (Thursday, 5/14), Baccalaureate (Friday, 5/15), and Graduation (Saturday, 5/16):

SrHonors_Bacc_Graduation

Photos of the Post-Graduation Open House Party at the Robinsons' on Saturday, 5/16:

Open House

*Here is an article detailing the complications of graduation - a bomb scare that delayed the ceremony for 1.5 hours (ended up that the mysterious package they found was a student's "carefully wrapped" ceramic art project!). This delay was accompanied by rain, which resulted in the ceremony being moved indoors to the gym. It was very cramped and the pictures of the processional, etc., are just not good enough to even post, since you can't even make out Daniel to our being so far away!

*The above factors resulted in the open house party we had scheduled becoming a bit delayed and longer lasting - we had to dash home and get all the food together, etc., in time for the guests to arrive. Fortunately, almost all of Atlanta was aware of the delay in the graduation since it made the local (and even national, I think) news that morning, so most guests came toward the middle/later part of the party!

*That night, we were going to go to the Braves game but instead we got there and (1) realized the ticket people had given us the wrong tickets in advance; our tickets were for 5/23 instead of 5/16!!; and (2) Number 1 ended up being quite fortuitous, as shortly after arriving to the ballpark, Daniel's ankle injury from his bike accident last week swelled up horribly and got all blue. The doctor had (wrongly) told him if it does that, he should get the ER immediately. This put him into a frenzy, and we ended up calling 911 and having the paramedics come to get him. They took him to Piedmont Hospital, where they spent until nearly 12:30 or 1 a.m. waiting to see the doctor and learn that his pediatrician had told him wrong, and that this blueness/swelling was just part of the healing process (albeit very painful and scary looking). So, all's well that ends well, but I dare say, Daniel will NEVER forget the day he graduated from high school!! And, sadly, he'll spend his first week or so as a high school graduate hobbling around on crutches until his ankle heals.

*Meanwhile, we enjoyed the rest of our time with my family, but due to the "excitement" and staying up so late Sat. night, we ended up both forsaking our plane tickets and just riding back in the new car to Williamsburg. (Will post pics of the car later.) We got back last night fairly late, and today I woke up with a bad fever. By noon it had spiked to nearly 103 degrees F! Yikes. We went to the doctor, and I apparently have some bad infection, probably a type of strep. I am on antibiotics and a steroid shot, and I am slowly starting to feel a tad better. (If you recall, we got sick last time we went to Atlanta, so everyone is now forbidding us to ever go back to Atlanta again!! However, I think it was probably coincidence, and since we lived in Atlanta before, I find it hard to believe that I am truly allergic to Atlanta, although one never knows...)