Framed

I have been spray painting some frames to go in our bedroom recently. I've had them stacked in a pile on the stairs for a couple of days...ok, ok...weeks. The other night, I finally decided to take them upstairs, but on the way, I dropped one. Tyce, being ever helpful and sweet, picked it up for me. When he picked his head up, the frame flipped over his face. I started cracking up and then grabbed the camera. The whole time, he kept trying to give it to me like "here, take it!"

I think he's suggesting who should go in that frame.

What a sweet boy!

Road Trip Part 2

Our second road trip was a whole lot shorter and we stayed in Virginia.

Ryan and I have been wanting to visit each other's colleges ever since we met. They were such a huge part of our lives! And I know that to truly picture Averett...you have to see it. Yes, the whole campus is pretty much one huge building! Ryan was shocked when he actually saw that it was true!

So, on Friday of Labor Day weekend, we made the trek to Danville! While we were there, I got to visit with some of my old professors. We even drove down to North Carolina to visit one of my religion professors, Dr. Nickens. I took about 85% of the courses for my major with him. We also ate some Danville fine dining - Short Sugar's for lunch and Ham's for dinner! Danville has been built up a lot since my college days (which wasn't that long ago!) It's a much busier place now!

My Alma Mater, Averett University

Averett built a new student center and I had never seen my leadership plaques before...so of course, I had to go find them!

Notice my name AND my sister's name on this plaque...

This is one of my favorite spots on campus and I'm not really sure why. You could usually find me running down this path on the way to class. Why? Because I was late. Did you really have to ask?

We drove into Lexington that night and got up early to go see the parade at VMI.

Ryan's Alma Mater, Virginia Military Institute

This is where we could have found Ryan, in the Alpha Company. (aka - the tall kids)
Chapel on campus

This is where Ryan lived. They are doing some major renovations, which we were surprised to see.

VMI was having a home football game, so we stopped by to watch a little bit of it.

Much to our surprise, they won!

I was totally fascinated by VMI. It was so different than my college experience...or anything that I have ever experienced for that matter! I must have asked Ryan a gagillion questions that day. I loved being able to experience that part of his life. I have so much respect for him for having completed four years there.

After this trip, we haven't taken a road trip since. With Disney World and this trip so close together, we were done with the car for a while! But hopefully soon, we'll be back on the road!

Road Trips

Ryan and I have taken a couple of road trips lately.

When we went to Disney World, we drove to Orlando. All 12 hours. It wasn't bad at all. I think the anticipation of Disney had me really excited and I wasn't even thinking about how long it took to get there. Plus, I took a nap and watched some Friends on DVD. The trip back on the other hand was excruciating. We drove to southwest Florida to visit Ryan's grandfather. It was a great visit! But...the trip home was 18 hours...and we did it in one day. After 8 hours of driving in Florida alone, I started to go a little crazy. Then I got really stir crazy in South Carolina at about 9:00 p.m. We were still so far away from home and I had to work the next day! All in all, I am really glad we drove to Florida and had our car with us. We had such a great time. I loved experiencing one of my favorite places in the world with my favorite person in the world!

It was a great getaway and escape from our crazy life. Disney can make you feel like you're in a whole other world! It definitely wasn't a relaxing vacation though...we spent ALL day in the parks and in the heat. But was it worth it? Definitely!

The first day, we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios. (That's right, it's not MGM anymore!)

Rockin' Roller Coaster was our favorite! With the fast pass...we rode it a lot!

Audrey! Silly boy.

While we were there, we celebrated our one year anniversary!

It's been tradition in our family to always go to the Magic Kingdom on the first day, but I wanted to spend our anniversary there, so we went on the second day. (It was tough to break tradition, but I managed.)

We wore our anniversary pins in the park that day. People would stop us to wish us a "Happy Anniversary!" all throughout the day! This is what one year of marriage will do to you.We ate at one of their nicer restaurants for dinner that night. Our waiter alerted our entire half of the restaurant that it was our anniversary. He made us feed each other cake while everyone watched and he took a picture. Disney definitely made our anniversary special!

After the parade and fireworks that night, we went back to our timeshare. It was so nice! It had a full kitchen, which was great for saving money. We ate breakfast there every morning, we packed our lunches for picnics in the park and we even fixed a couple dinners there too.

We traveled with our wedding cake and we broke it out that night! Even a year later, Jaime's cake tasted amazing!

On Monday, we went to Epcot. When I was a kid, I thought this park was kinda lame for kids, but this time around, we had a ton of fun!

We spent our honeymoon in Mexico last year, so we made it a point to go to Mexico at Epcot!

We decided to eat dinner in Mexico and to make a long story short, we had to wait a little bit for our food, so they gave it to us for FREE! (Have I mentioned that I love Disney?!)

We had a great time at Animal Kingdom on Tuesday. We got to go on a safari and hit all the major attractions before the rain kicked in.

We spent the rest of our week re-visiting the parks and going to Downtown Disney.

On the last day, we went back to Magic Kingdom. We had the PERFECT spot for the fireworks. It was incredible! And, although I warned Ryan that it might happen, I didn't cry when we left the park that night! (Oh, don't act like you never teared up when leaving Disney...)

Isn't it pretty?!?

On Friday, we drove down to Punta Gorda to visit Ryan's grandfather. We had a great time getting dinner at a yummy local seafood joint, getting the tour of Punta Gorda and just spending time with him.

Venice Beach, Florida
We had an AMAZING vacation. It was much needed and a great way to celebrate our first anniversary!

Just a few short weeks later, we took another road trip. But this one wasn't so far...thank goodness! More to come!