Playing Catch Up

We have been so busy!  Every single weekend since we moved, we have either had visitors or we have been out of town.  It's been pretty crazy but I wouldn't trade it for anything. (although it might be nice to have one weekend alone with Barrett :-) ).  Two weekends ago we went to Maryland and DC.  We drove down to Maryland on Friday to stay with our good friends Emily and Eric, and their two precious kids, Lucy and baby Owen.  We had a lot of fun, but we always have a blast with them.  Then on Saturday morning we met Barrett's sister Maddie and his parents Tom and Brenda because....Maddie got a new job and is moving from Ohio to Maryland!!!!!  (We are thrilled to have her so close to us).  We looked at an awesome apartment and Maddie moves in this weekend!  Saturday evening we went to DC for the 2011 Walk to Cure Lupus, it was a great time. We ended up raising over $2,000 for Lupus Research.  This is a cause that is very special to my family as my mother has been living with Lupus for the past 30+ years. My sister Kaitlin and her bf Brett live right outside of DC in the cutest area in the cutest apartment.   They had everyone over for taco night on Saturday and then we all headed to the walk on Sunday.  We had a blast and there was this insane rainbow right above us the whole walk.

Rainbow at Lupus Walk

Dad, Brett, Me with Peyton, Barrett, Mom, Kelly, Matt, Kaitlin and baby Paxton



Dad and Peyton

  One weekend ago we had our very good friends Lauren and Ryan (Ryan was Barrett's best man) in town.  Of course the morning of their arrival a water pipe breaks and we are left with no water for the entire weekend.  Boy was that interesting!  (sorry guys!).  We went to a little town called Manayunk and went shopping and stopped for a few drinks and something to eat, it was great to catch up.  We headed back to the house and cooked dinner that night, although looking back we probably should have gone out given the fact we had no water and the dishes were piled high in the kitchen.  Sunday morning we headed to Chestnut Hill for a street fair/fall festival, we had a blast.  Can't wait to see Ryan and Lauren again soon!

Barrett, Ryan, Lauren, Kristin

 Last weekend we had a huge Fall Festival.  It was a great success!  You can check out the link for a wonderful article on my husband and Meadowbrook Farm if you want to know more: 
http://articles.philly.com/2011-10-07/news/30253768_1_garden-center-community-gardens-specialty-gardens
I set up a table selling homemade brownie pops, caramel chocolate apples and apple pie pops.  It was a big success and I ended up selling out, plus I had a lot of fun.

First Wedding Anniversary

The hubby and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary on September 12th.  Now that we are on one income we have to be much more careful about our spending but that being said, we only get one First Wedding Anniversary, so we splurged a bit.  We spent the weekend at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, wine tasting, getting pampered at the spa and eating amazing meals...it was perfect.  The resort is HUGE, no really it's 2,000 acres.  They have tons of restaurants to choose from, a bowling alley, spa, two 18 hole golf courses, arcade, zip lining, off road jeep driving, paintball etc...pretty much something for everyone.  Barrett (the husband) and I both agreed that if we won the lottery (one of our favorite games to play) we would bring our entire families here because there is so much to choose from everyone would enjoy it.  Although I enjoyed the 8 hour spa day more than you can imagine, the best part of the weekend was having my husband all to myself without any interruptions.  His new job is pretty hectic and keeps him busy around the clock so I eat up every second I can get with him alone, meaning no phone/email/texts. Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

We went to a winery for a tour and wine tasting.  This was the only part of the trip that fell a little short, for the price I really wouldn't recommend the tour we took but we enjoyed the beautiful mountain air and the quality time together.

This was taken right before dinner, the view was gorgeous and we took full advantage of the nice weather with drinks on the patio.

We enjoyed this on our actual anniversary.

This wedding cake held up amazingly considering it traveled from Ohio to NYC to Philly.  It tasted pretty good too!  Tips for freezing the top tier of your wedding cake.  First flash freeze the top in the freezer until the icing is hard, then wrap in plastic wrap (I used like 5 layers) and store in the freezer until your one year anniversary!  I can't tell you how happy Barrett was to have this thing out of the freezer, it took up a lot of space.

New Blog

I finally did it!  I joined the blogging world.  The main reason I decided to start a blog is because I want to be able to look back on different times and remember what I did, what I thought, what I liked, how I was feeling etc.  I wish I would have started this when I first moved to New York, then again some things should not be documented, like your single mid twenties in Manhattan, eek!