Merry Christmas!

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Wishing you and yours a WONDERFUL holiday season!

Giving Thanks

This past Thursday, I was fortunate to celebrate another Thanskgiving with the people I love most in this world. Me, Andy and my mother in law headed to my parents house to enjoy a delicious home cooked dinner. We ate turkey and all the delicious trimmings and enjoyed each other's company. Here's a short list of just a few things I am particularly thankful for this year.

 My wonderfully supportive, loving and FUN husband!

 The absolute best parents and family in the entire world.

Awesome friends who are like sisters.

The good health of myself, my family and my friends.

A roof over my head and food on my table.

Hope you all are as fortunate to have so many wonderful things to be thankful for!

Favorite Things To Do With My Newfound Freetime

Since volleyball season ended with a loss in the 2nd round of regionals last Tuesday, I've been readjusting to life without practice and games everyday. Here is how I've been spending my time with some long-lost pleasures:

•  Hokie Football Games with my favorite diehards. This never stopped during volleyball season, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the past 2 Thursdays with my bestests, grabbing a few beers and yelling at big screen TV's together... even with the many, MANY losses :)

• DVR Shows. I can FINALLY catch up on all of my favorite trash TV. Real Housewives, Big Rich Texas, Real World/Road Rules Challenge... and mannnnny more!

• Naps! Oh man. Last Wednesday, my first official day out of season, I literally came home from school at 3:30pm, put on sweats and laid on the couch until 7:30pm. Yup. I took a nap. I watched nothing on TV. It.was.glorious. 

                                                       

• Running. I am actually enjoying having the time to go running. Not being able to workout consistently and not following a great diet has had me feeling kind of blah for a few weeks. But I am determined to get back into a good routine and feel better about myself before I gorge myself in the coming weeks!

                                                                   

• Getting excited for the Holidays! Probably my FAVORITE thing is having the time to get prepared and excited for the upcoming holidays! I love, love, love this time of year! I feel like Halloween snuck up on me and flew by, but I am definitely going to enjoy every second of Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year!

                                       
It feels great to be getting back to feeling like my old self again :)

Fall Recap

Since I have neglected my blog for so long, I thought I'd play a little catch-up on my busy fall. Here's a look back at some of the highlights.

Virginia Tech vs Cincinnati
In September, me and the thousands of other NoVa Hokies congregated at FedEx Field in Maryland for the VT-Cincinnati game. It was a gorgeous fall day and we set up a fun little tailgate with a bunch of friends. We lucked into finding a friend with 2 extra tickets in the Dream Seats! And boy were they a dream! The 2nd row back from the field! Best seats I've ever had at any sporting event I've attended. Despite another painful outcome of a game, it was a nice little football Saturday.

Annandale High School 10 Year Reunion
The first weekend of October brought around my official 10 year high school reunion. First of all, how is it possible that I am that old?! No way, right?! Eek! Although, it was such a blast getting together with both current and former friends. We spent the early parts of the day at a local pub for college football and then changed into our fancy duds for the reunion which was held at a hotel in  nearby Tyson's Corner. It was a really fun night and I am still to this day proud to be an Annandale Atom!

 Zac Brown Concert
In mid-October, Andy and I went to a Friday night concert at Jiffy Lube Live to see our favorite country artist, Zac Brown Band, in concert! It was a chilly fall night but we had some seriously awesome seats! We purchased tickets in "the Pit" which was standing room only right around the stage. We had a perfect front row view of the entire concert. It was so fun just having a night out with the hubby and singing along to all Zac Brown's awesome hits!

Eric Church Concert
This past Friday, we attended another local country concert at George Mason University. We got tickets with another couple who are very good friends of ours. It was a much smaller arena for a concert. We had a great time having a few beverages in the parking lot and then singing more country songs all night with some good friends!

Halloween
This past weekend my friends and I celebrated Halloween. We went out to a local bar all dressed up in costume. I absolutely LOVE Halloween! It is definitely my favorite holiday! Everything from pumpkins to candy corn to goblins and ghosts. Picking out our annual costumes is always fun and this one was definitely a personal favorite. A League of Their Own is my favorite movie of all time and I was so excited to have found costumes from the movie! Everyone did a fabulous job of dressing up and participating in the fun of Halloween!

I'm Baaaaaaaaack

Sorry I have been missing in action for so long throughout the fall. Lucky for me (or, technically unlucky for the east coast) Hurricane Sandy has provided me with 2 days to catch up on all 9873498 things I have neglected due to the chaos of the beginning of the school year, volleyball season and a busy social life!

Luckily in Centreville, VA, we never lost power and had minimal damage during Hurricane Sandy. The worst was a little leakage from our two windows which directly faced the severe winds and rains. Other than that, Andy and I spent a nice relaxing day in the comfort of our own home, catching up on DVR shows, eating junk food, and staying in our PJ's.

We hope you all had a safe, dry experience through the hurricane and don't have too much clean-up today!

Kindergarten Funny

So, clearly by my lack of posts, the whole "back-to-school" thing has occurred... again. I'm not sure how it keeps happening every year, but I'm determined to make it stop!

Instead of boring you with my whines and complaints about school/volleyball/lack of sleep/having no life, I thought I'd share a story that made me laugh today. I KNOW RIGHT?! It's about time I laughed at school instead of wanting to pull my hair out! Hopefully this is just the beginning MANY funny moments and good stories from my classroom this year, but I'll start with this one.

At the beginning of every school year, we do a lot of activities where students practice writing and recognizing their first names. The first letters they learn are those in their name. One of my favorite activities that we do is reading the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. 

source

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it is a cute book about a young mouse named Chrysanthemum, who loves her name until her classmates tease her about it. However, a popular, and pregnant, teacher (named Delphinium Twinkle) defends her to the class and her family comforts her each night, reminding her "how perfect" her name is.

The kids teasing Chrysanthemum make fun of how long her name is, including that it has 13 letters in it- exactly half of the alphabet. Every year, I read this story before we graph each student's name in my class to see how many letters every one has.

So after reading the story this morning, and saying the name "Chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum!" about 30 times during the book, I asked the students what they thought Mrs. Twinkle chose for her baby daughter's name at the end of book. This little girl in my class raises her hand all excitedly and says "oh oh oh, Julianne!!!"

WHAT?! My assistant and I caught each others eyes and burst out laughing. I mean, really?! We didn't hear the whole "Chrysanthemum" name repeated 8943974 times?! And what's with Julianne?! No one in the story was name Julianne!

Oh my goodness. I'm either in for a verrrrry long year, or a verrrrry funny one! :)

Guest Bedroom Re-do

One of my summer to-do's was to update our guest bedroom. When we moved into our house, we bought new furnishings for most of the house.... with the exception of the guest room. We took the dressers from my childhood bedroom, lamps from my college apartment and Andy's old college comforter set. Needless to say, it was a little haphazard looking and not at all tied together. So, my mission was to update and brighten the room. We weren't in the market for replacing the furniture right now, so we were looking for cheap fixes to update the room. Take a look at the before and after!

Before:

As you can see, the bed became Andy's catch-all for clothes.

Riley checking out the mess that was the corner of the bedroom where things went to pile up.

Clutter and mis-matching. Ugh.

TV stand wall. Borrrrrringggggggggg.

So, I did some research on Pinterest and checked out color schemes that might suit a seafoam-green paint job (NOT my favorite, BTW). Then, I headed to my favorite stores: Target, Home Goods and Kirkland's for some cheap fixes. Here's the end result...

After:

Love the new yellow/gray colors

Without a headboard for the bed, I got creative with a canvas wedding print and cute sign from Homegoods

I semi-organized this corner of the room, hiding extra linens in the corner hamper from Homegoods and finally used the awesome VT posted gifted to me from a friend for Christmas

Not drastically different (those animals are all of sentimental value-I swear!), but a new yellow lamp and fun clock brighten it up a bit.

Finished result, a brighter, more organized guest room!

 Without budgeting for new furniture, I love the new look! The colors really pop and I am so excited about the canvas print and signage above the bed. The yellow and gray make it a little more sunny in here :) Now all we need is some new guests to come test it out! :) Come on over!

2 Year Anniversary

Two years ago, on this very special date, I celebrated the best day of my life. I said 'I Do' to my very best friend in the world and we became Mr. & Mrs.! I cannot BELIEVE how quickly 2 years of wedded bliss and our 'newlywed' phase has passed. Married life has been everything I've ever dreamed of and more. In honor of our 2 year anniversary, I will share 2 of my favorite, and not so well-known things about my wonderful husband.

• Andy is an extreme sports fanatic, just.like.me. We could spend hours watching sports on TV alllll day long! We also love attending games- football, baseball, hockey, soccer. We always have a great time- especially when we are actually cheering for the same team! :)
• Andy is the perfect compliment to what was my immediate little family of 3. He gets along so well with my parents, which is hugely important to me. He was definitely the piece to complete our little family puzzle. I love that he calls both my mom and dad for advice and can hang with them when I'm not even around. We go on family vacations with the 4 and I can't imagine what it was ever like without him in the family. 

Here's a few pictures to recap what an exceptionally perfect wedding day we shared on July 31, 2010 with all of our most loved friends and family there to celebrate. And here's to MANY more anniversaries to come! I love you Mr. Saulitis!