First and foremost I’d like to wish a happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there, especially my mom! Since both mothers and spring give birth to new and beautiful life, I thought I’d post some lovely pictures of all the blooming flowers, fruits, and vegetables growing in my future in-laws’ garden!

Lovely Blooming Peonies

This weekend, a dear friend and I are making our way by car, by bus, by foot, and maybe by cab if our feet get tired, to see Disney’s Newsies The Musical on Broadway!  After a two hour drive to Northern Virginia, a five hour bus ride to New York City, and a short walk from our hotel to the Nederlander Theater, we will be seeing Newsies on Broadway after months of planning!

Attending a Broadway play is one of the many adventures on my very long bucket list.  You may be wondering how the fulfillment of this adventure has finally come to fruition.  Well, you’re in for a treat, so sit back, relax, and read on!

There once was a little girl named Sarah whose aunt took her and her cousin to see a Disney movie in the spring of 1992.  This little girl fell in love with the story and the characters and became forever fond of the film.  That movie was Newsies, starring the now famous Christian Bale!

Fast forward 20 years or so; that little girl happens to be all grown up and has become great friends and soon-to-be sister-in-laws with me.  One day, Sarah mentions the movie Newsies and after my response that I have never seen it, she exclaims that I HAVE to watch it and that it will be LIFE-CHANGING.  Well she was right!  I fell in love with the movie too and Ben even gave me the DVD for Christmas.

So imagine our excitement when Sarah learned that for a limited time only, a new musical based on Disney’s Newsies would be playing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey!  So Sarah, our friend Wendy, and I bought tickets and drove more than 600 miles in a weekend to see the play!  It was definitely worth the drive and we even got to meet the up-and-coming Jeremy Jordan who just happens to be a Texan!

 

Jumping for Joy!

Me and my girls getting ready to see Newsies at the Paper Mill Playhouse!

Here I am meeting Jeremy Jordan who plays Jack Kelly and realizing that he is from Corpus Christi!

Here Wendy, Sarah, and I are waiting anxiously for Newsies to start!

We had an amazing trip and the play did so well that they decided to take it to Broadway!

So that is the story of how I came to see my first Broadway play!  Many thanks to Sarah and Wendy for the pictures above and hopefully I will have many more to share with you when I return!

Well in no particular order, here they are:

• Got engaged!
• Test drove new cars
• Bought a new car!
• Bought a wedding dress
• Planned and threw 2 baby showers
• Introduced my dad to my future in-laws
• Became a landlord (i.e., invested in a rental property)
• Successfully competed in Warrior Dash
• Found the only Alamo Drafthouse outside of Texas and watched a double feature
• Drove to New Jersey and back in less than 48 hours
• Saw a production of Disney’s Newsies at the Papermill Playhouse and met the cast at a local diner afterward
• Created a wedding website and registered for wedding gifts
• Got a promotion to Software Engineer II
• Learned how to play the awesome game of Dominion
• Planned a wedding (partially)
• Threw a Silpada party
• Got second place in a Biggest Loser contest at work
• Made a fall wreath
• Became addicted to Pinterest
• Went to Smith Mountain Lake
• Watched an elementary school production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Attended the Top of the Hops Beer Festival, met up with an old college roommate, and met a famous blogger
• Had engagement photos taken by an awesome photographer
• Made my own t-shirts for Shamrockfest 2011, the 2011 Charlottesville Women’s Four Miler, and Breaking Dawn Part 1
• Went to a bridal show
• Participated in Office Olympics
• Got my concealed weapons permit
• Attended Scrum training by one of the inventors of Scrum
• Spent a wonderful long weekend in Disney World with my dad, step-mom, little brothers, and my fiance
• Had an AMAZING girls weekend in the Outer Banks
• Helped plan an engagement brunch for a friend
• Attended the 7th Annual Pink Ribbon Polo Classic at King Family Vineyards and met the owner who attended my alma mater
• Watched the Royal Wedding
• Crowd Surfed during the Dropkick Murphys performance at Shamrockfest
• Saw a real live bear
• Experienced my first earthquake…SCARY

I’m sure there are a ton of things that I’m leaving out and so many pictures and stories to go with all of these experiences, and one day I’ll hopefully get them all up here on the blog.

It’s been an AMAZING year so far and I’m hoping 2012 will be even better!

Hope your 2011 has been as great as mine!

Hopefully everyone is ok and there wasn’t much damage done.  Keeping my fingers crossed that there won’t be any more earthquakes here!

You can see details about today’s tremor here.

These trees look like they’d be perfect to nap or picnic under.  Don’t You think?

The love of my life and I will get married on Saturday, June 23, 2012 (the day after our 6 year anniversary) at the beautiful Clifton Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The Clifton will provide much of the wedding party and out of town guests with rooms for the weekend, as well as catering, linens, and tableware.  I think having a venue that is a one-stop-shop for everything from the cake to the tents is going to make my life alot easier.

The only other official plans I have made for the wedding are arranging for a very talented, local photographer to be there to capture the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, getting ready for the wedding, the ceremony, and the reception.  Aaron Watson takes beautiful photos that succeed completely at capturing the mood and emotion of the moment.  He took family pictures for some good friends of mine and did a beautiful job at portraying the personality of their young family!

I still have LOTS to do…look for a dress, pick out the menu, find someone to make the bride’s cake (that’s right, I’m starting my own tradition:  a bride’s cake instead of a groom’s cake), officially ask my bridesmaids to be in my bridal party, register for gifts, etc.  The list goes on and on and it is quite overwhelming!  So if you wonder where I am or where I’ve been, hopefully June 23, 2012 will be able to show everyone where my time and effort has been going!

I try to go for a walk during my lunch break a couple of times a week since my office building is located in a semi-rural area.  There are some wonderful views and plenty of plant life nearby.

These are some shots of dogwood trees located near the property.   Dogwoods are Virginia’s state tree and flower and I think they are quite lovely when they are blooming in the spring.

Happy Easter from Virginia!

For me, Halloween is about creativity.  Since I began working at VGT in the Fall of 2008, I have dressed up for Halloween every year since we are allowed and even encouraged to wear our costumes to work.  We even have a costume contest where our coworkers get to vote for the scariest, most original, and funniest costumes.  I’m not really an extremely competitive person, but I do like to get reactions out of people so I usually try to come up with something that is going to accomplish that goal.

I know it is nowhere near Halloween, but I dressed up for work today (a dress compared to my usual jeans and a sweatshirt) because I am meeting my dad and my brother at some fancy schmancy restaurant in Washington D.C. for dinner after work that has a stricter dresscode than my workplace.  Wearing something “unusual” to work got me thinking about the other times I’ve traded in my casual attire for something intriguing.

*Halloween 2008* I dressed up as the farmer in the dell…box!  I had just bought myself a new laptop so I took advantage of its packaging!

*Halloween 2009* I was Mario from the Super Mario Brothers.  I was especially proud of myself for reusing the GIGANTIC overalls from my farmer costume I wore the year before.  I never knew how difficult it was to find overalls, especially in my size and these were the smallest I could find!

*Halloween 2010* I decided to go with 80s rocker chick mainly because I had just gotten over Bronchitis and didn’t have a ton of energy to go all out on a costume.  I couldn’t find real legwarmers, so I made my own by chopping the bottoms off of a large pair of tube socks.  I used my guitar hero guitar as a prop to give the costume that extra edge.

I have to say that I think I’ve had more fun dressing up for Halloween in the past three years than I ever did as a kid.  Soon I’ll start thinking about what my costume will be for next year.  I know Halloween is still 6 months away, but I’m going to need alot of time to come up with a costume that will top the previous three!