A little football weekend...

Today we are off to Charlottesville to go to the UVA/Miami game with my family.  My sister was able to get us free tickets since it is Veterans weekend and she is in AF-ROTC at UVA!  So even though I don't particularly like football and UVA has not been doing the greatest, I am excited for tailgate food and hanging out with family on a crisp fall day.  Michael has made pulled BBQ from his first deer of the season and I have made some fun little dessert treats, I will have to post about them later :)

Have a great Saturday!

Erin

September Beginnings

September is upon us and I feel like it was just yesterday that August was here!  I have been out of school for two years now and this is the first year where I actually felt like I shouldn't be heading back to school at the end of August/early September.  I helped move my sister in to her dorm at UVA and that was very nostalgic for me as well as very exciting! All the fun memories of first year came flooding back as we walked around grounds and the old dorm areas.

Just after arriving at UVA!

About to enter her new home - all 16 x 12 feet of it :)

Pretending I was staying forever.

I decided to stay on as a nanny for the year after much deliberation. I can still substitute teach and do my student teaching on my days off, so for now it should be good :)  It is definitely weird only have to watch one kid now, Chase goes to pre-school two afternoons a week but his brothers are gone all day!  

I am looking forward to the coming weekends, wedding events, birthdays (!), craft fairs, fall, pumpkins, cooler weather, oh and that 5K I am supposed to be running on Saturday...should be interesting.  I have started working out more but I usually avoid running at all costs, especially once I realized that a) running sucks and b) there are way more fun ways to workout that don't involve running.  Michael and I are getting along pretty well, we will be married for FIVE months on Friday, which seems weird to me - but time flies when you're having fun (or when you are too busy to notice).  We are looking forward to some more low key weekends so that we can work on some of the many craft projects we have planned for our house :)

Speaking of Michael, he and Sadie wanted to say hi so they posed in a special picture just for the blog.

Bridal Showers and Birthday Parties

This past weekend was a whirlwind weekend, but a great one at that.  Friday started out awesome because I was able to bake some cookies with the kids (recipe to come) and baking always makes me happy.  Friday night Michael and I decided to head downtown to be a more social married couple, but we still ended up hanging out just the two of us at the bar and being home by 10 :) He probably won't like me admitting to that, but it was still fun and we had to get up early the next morning!  Saturday I had the privilege of heading down to South Boston VA for another bridal shower for my friend Jackie - lucky duck!  I got to meet some of Kyle's family, which was great, and meet the wonderful cops of Prince Edward county, not so great...

Anyhoo, after that I drove back up to Richmond to meet Michael and my friend Eddie for the night and we met up with Michael's sister, Sarah, and her husband, Jason at Peter Chang's - which was AWEsome!  Later that night we had a nice time catching up with some old friends and chatting with Eddie, who was kind enough to tell me that he felt he was being yelled at in my blog from the over use of exclamation marks - so in his honor I will be trying to cut down on that - but if you know me at all, you know I like to talk in a loud, excited tone anyway, so what's the difference?  But honest feedback is always appreciated :)

Yesterday, Michael and I drove back from Richmond and drove out to King George to make it to a circus themed 4th birthday party!  It was really cute to see all the kids so excited, and the cake was amazing:

After the party, we made a quick pitstop downtown to jump start Michael's mom's car :) and then to his parents' house to pick up some last minute items for my sister (she's leaving for college in 2 days!) and then we were finally off to our last event of the weekend - Theresa's going away family dinner!  To quote Michael, dinner at the Stoecker household is always "entertaining" and we did not disappoint on this occasion either.  There was lots of yelling, laughing, arguing, and crazy picture taking - and it was a great time.  Theresa is going to UVA (mostly because she I made her) and I am so excited to help move her in on Wednesday.  

After a long but fun weekend, I am relaxing today after a painful but necessary run (Hillary - I hope you read this!) and welcoming our 2nd sale on Etsy!  Stay tuned for tomorrow, I will be posting about the delicious cookies I made last Friday.