Father's Day 2012

This weekend, we trekked up to NC to attend an Inch family wedding and celebrate Father’s Day with Meme and Pa. Avery occupied herself with her DVD player and ponies on the trip up. 

Avery opted out of the wedding festivities and spent her day with Meme and Pa. She had a blast going to Discovery Kids, having lunch at Chick-fil-a, and then making “nilla” ice cream in Meme’s ice cream machine. By the way, Mom, the Smithsonian called, and they want their ice cream machine back!

 When Avery wasn’t busy with Meme, she “admired” the miniature doll house I kept. She wasn’t exactly gentle with the contents but a little wood glue soon made things good as new.  

As evidenced by a trip down the toy aisle at Target last week, Avery is infatuated with Barbie. I had quite the collection back in the day and figured my parents still had a few boxes of them up in their attic. After we had lunch on Sunday, Pa and I decided to tackle the attic and see what we could find. We scored two Barbies, a Ken doll and a Skipper doll along with two shoe boxes full of very fashionable 80s ensembles. Avery’s face lit up when she saw the collection and couldn’t believe I was giving them all to her. We had fun dressing and undressing them in the car that afternoon on the way home. When I needed a break, Avery watched her Barbie Mermaid movie with the dolls in her lap.

My only complaints about our trip is that it wasn’t longer, and that Avery's been referring to me as "Sweetie" ever since we got back.

Birthday Sleepover

Our friends the Chisolms joined us on Saturday night to help celebrate my 35th birthday.   Since we planned to consume our fair share of adult beverage after indulging in horseradish, cheddar and caramelized onion stuffed burgers (YUM!)  and grilled chili-lime corn on the cob (YUM!), we made it a sleepover.    The highlight of Avery's evening was getting to wear a nightgown just like her friend Naomi!

All of us were amused by Naomi and Avery's hairstyling the next morning.   Greg was a good sport, and looks quite fetching with hair bows!

As for me, I'm still celebrating my youth as I'm only 83% as old as Greg! 

"If you ain't first, you're last."

 After running 8 half marathons between 2004 and 2005, I took a brief 7-year running hiatus due to injuries, pregnancy, and in general, being very busy with a small child and full-time job.   I decided 2012 was my year to get back into distance running and signed up to run the Virgina Wine Country Half Marathon on June 2 with Heather, Jamie and Allyson.

My training wasn't as thorough as I'd intended, but I didn't let that deter me and decided to enjoy the race and run as much of the 13.1 as a I could.   I was far from last, but I was the slowest out of my girl friends who completely crushed it on the hilly course!  

 Of course, the real fun began after the race ended.   After a surprisingly delicious post run lunch at Bob Evans (Allyson, you know you want a cappuccino - just have one!) we enjoyed wine tasting at 8 Points North and Bluemont Vineyards.

 Everyone enjoyed the girl's weekend, but I'm thinking running should be prohibited on the  next weekend away!