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Virginia State Fair

Both girls had a class field trip to the state fair a few weeks ago.  This is the first time I've ever been.  It's held in Richmond.  2nd grade through 6th grade went on the field trip.  A good time was had by all.  There were alot of 4H animals and farming exhibits for them to experience.  I think the kids got the biggest kick out of seeing the huge pumpkins and watermelons that they had on display.  The cute little bunnies and chicks of course helped out alot!  They had a great horse show right before we left that the girls really enjoyed.  They put on a great presentation dedicated to the service members.  We also saw the horse that is the grandson of Secretariat (you know..from the movie).   Here are some pictures from our trip....enjoy:

Disney Princess on Ice 2011

We had a blast at the 2011 Disney on Ice:  Dare to Dream last week.  Have to thank my wonderful husband who won us the tickets off the radio station...oh yeah, and thanks Eagle 97 for the tickets :).  We had fantastic seats, so I was able to get some great pictures!  The 3 princesses they featured were Princess and the Frog, Cinderella and Rapunzel.  Here are a few of the highlights:

Drop Box

The girls had a great time, even Hannah who is really not into Princesses. If they happen to be in your area, it's worth the $ to go see them, or win tickets :).

Gas Prices

We just spent a week in Northern Virginia - Broadway/Timberville/Harrisonburg, VA for Tom's family reunion.  We had a fantastic time!

I was so amazed at the difference in gas prices there vs. here.  Gas prices here in Hampton Roads are around $3.69 and that is if you ride around and try and find that price.  Gas prices around Tom's Uncle's house was $3.39!  Yowsa!  We were so amazed, we had to take a picture of it!  An even better reason to move!

 

CHIP Chesapeake's Amazing Race 2011!

I had the priviledge of running the Children's Health Investment Program (CHIP)'s 2nd Annual Chesapeake's Amazing Race with some amazing women on Saturday, May 21, 2011.  We had a blast.  We are The First Wives Club and we consist of myself, Charlene Till, Carol Rood and Karol Sabastian.  We all ran the race last year as A.R.M. (Amazin Racin Mom's), and came in about 9th out of about 24 teams.  We decided to change our name this year to help boost our chances of winning :). 

We started the day at Chesapeake Town Center at 9am with registration.  They then had all team leaders (me) stand in a hoola hoop and each team member went to stations.  The stations consisted of diapers, bibs and bonnet/binkies.  We had to stand with our hands behind our backs and couldn't help our team mates put the items on us, so we stood there while they put the items on us, then we had to race to grab a baby bottle bank and run around the fountain and grad a marked bag and begin the Amazing Race.  Our first official stop was Greenbrier Florist, so that's where we headed.  If you are friend of mine on Facebook, I've posted the video of the whole baby-dressing and you can laugh just like we did during the whole thing.  We were actually the first team done with our baby-dressing and the first team to our mandatory first stop. 

I won't go step by step of how our day went, but a few of the things we did were: carried a strangers groceries, sang "The Loving Feeling" to a store clerk, bought a teacher an apple, hugged a service member, did a conga line through a grocery store, wore orange jump suits in front of the Sherrif's office, stopped-dropped-and-rolled in front of a fire department, took a picture with a mascot, searched for golden ducks, delivered flowers, visited a park and had fun on swings, searched for several misc items such as houses with christmas lights, cars waiting for trains, house numbers, red-headed children, elderly people, etc.  Let's just say it was a BLAST and we will certainly be back next year!  The race finished at 3pm at Abuelo's in Greenbrier.  Along the way,  you had to collect $ for CHIP and ask strangers for money.  This was very hard for us to do, but we persevered and got the job done.  Heck, Carol carried a stranger's groceries for him and he gave her a $20 tip..woohoo! (maybe we should just do that all day next year :)

If you've skipped to the collage below, then you know how the day ended.  The exit process was very long and drawn out, but worth it.  Our team actually came in FIRST!  We were complete shocked-speechless- beyond words - if you know any member of our group - that's very hard to do!

 

The trophy presentation took place at a Chesapeake City Council Meeting, last night, 6/14.  You can watch the video here.  If you look below the video and in the drop-down menu, click on presentations and then go to time:  1:56:10, you will see Trish (head of CHIP of Chesapeake) starting the presentation of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners.  3rd Place were the Health Nuts and 2nd Place were the Politicos.  Sadly, Carol and Karol could not be at the trophy presentation because their children came first and had other obligations. I know, what are ya gonna do?  We didn't get to choose the night, blame the Mayor for that one!

Unfortunately we only have 1 trophy for all 4 of us to share.  But we will share it indeed.  I took it first, so I'll have it for the first quarter (3 months) and since the rest of them live in the same neighborhood in Suffolk, they can duke it out who will get it next and then next and then next :)!  We'll rotate and then all we need to do now is win 3 more times in the next 3 years and we will all have a trophy and won't have to share them!  Yeah, that's the ticket!

Amazing Race 2011 raised over $13,000 for the children of Chesapeake -what a WONDEFUL cause!
  

Mother's Birth Day

Saturday, May 7th was my birthday...how old am I do you ask?  Old enough, I say!

I celebrated with my wonderful family and friends and with a Coldstone Peanut Butter Perfection Icecream cake....talk about to.die.for!

Sunday, May 8th was Mother's Day.  We had lunch with my Mom and sister at Olive Garden and then had Tom's family over for dinner Sunday night.  This is a great pic that I took of the girls on my cell phone that is now my screen saver.  One of those rare lovey-dovey moments.

Friday at Girl Scouts, we had a Daisy Mom's Tea Party.  This is Samantha in her cowgirl hat and pinky sticking out enjoying her tea.

How was your Mother's Day?

Wednesday Rambles

Homecoming

This was my homecoming when I came home from Boston a few weeks ago.  Tom and the girls had decorated the dining room with a balloon, flowers and some sparkles on the table.  Not only that, but after a week of being gone, the house was clean, dishes done and laundry folded.  I couldn't ask for anything better than that!

 

Tom's Retirement

Took up our whole chair

Tom has been retired with the Chesapeake Police Department "officially" since 2/26/10.  He got hurt on the job 11/07 and back surgery on 12/9/08 which ended up not working.  So his official diagnosis is failed back surgery.  Right now he can't work, because he can't stand, sit, walk, whatever for any length of time.  So right now, he's just doing therapy twice a week and just in pain the rest of the time (sometimes a pain..but that's another post...lol).

We had a retirement party for him back in August.  The City just had their retirement service on Thursday.  10 retiree's were being honored, but only 4 of them showed up.  From L-R is Tom, Officer Hood, Captain Spruill and Officer Jeeter.  Tom had a total of 17 years with the City of Chesapeake, 12 of them with the Police Dept.

They each received a HUGE plaque...now when I say huge, I mean huge!

I know this picture is blurry, but it shows you just how big it is

Here is the cake they served with all the retiree's names

Side of the plaque with Tom's start date with the Police Dept and retirement date

Introducing Tom

 Here is a video of Lt. Farney reading Tom's bio before they introduced him and he went forward to get his plaque.

 

 

This is Tom and a great friend of the family Chaplain Russell Holland

Spring Break Camping

We had such a BLAST during our Spring Break/Camping week. We camped with friends of ours, the Sindelar's and the Gates'. We camped at Bethpage Camp Resort in Urbanna, VA.  The weather was beautiful, only 1 day of rain, we couldn't have asked for a more perfect week!

Here are some pics from our trip:

Good Clean Fun:

Easter Fun:

We definitely look forward to going back next week and really didn't want to leave.  You know the old addage...you need a vacation from your vacation...that's exactly how I felt when we came back!

Break and Birthday!

Seems like I've been gone from here for forever!

I was in Boston, MA for a conference the week of April 11th and got back on Friday, April 15th. My baby turned 7 on April 16th!

Here she is blowing out her birthday candles at her party! I can't believe I didn't get a picture of her that morning by herself..but it was a rush. See...were supposed to leave that afternoon for a week of camping for Spring break.

Here she is around her first Birthday! Isn't she adorable!
Here are some pictures of her party:

Is it just my children who are obsessed with punch bugs (voltswagon bugs)?

So since the big storm was coming our way, we didn't want to really be in a camper when it hit, so we decided to ride out the storm at home and head for camping on Sunday morning instead. So that at least gave me a little bit more time for packing, cleaning, etc. that had to be done.

Gloucester, VA got hit the hardest in our area. We actually drove past the school, Page Middle School, that got damaged in the storm. Luckily there was noone in the school and noone hurt in the area because of the storms, but the devastation is just that...devastating! They were still doing cleanup on the way back a week later! (the kids from the middle school were moved to other schools nearby, but they were changing the schedules for the other schools...schooling from 7:15am-12:45pm and from 1pm-6:30pm...can you even imagine!)

Spring Break/Camping pictures to come!

New England Aquarium, Boston, MA


I'm in Boston this week for an AUR (Association of University Radiologists) conference with other Residency Administrators. Tonight was our welcome reception at the New England Aquarium. It boasts over 90 penguins, which were just beautiful and had no problem posing for the cameras. We saw sharks, sea horses and something I've never seen before, sea dragons. The tank was very blurry, so picture taking was non-existent..but I got a pic of their picture so you could see it...very beautiful and very unique.

Can you see the anaconda in the very back..it was HUGE...ewwww...at the bottom you can see the snake skin

Here's another picture of the anaconda skin
Here is the picture of the sea dragon

Shark tank

Doesn't this guy look like that penguin from that surfing penguin movie...lol

Food was OK, but the tanks/penguins were much better :). Overall a great time was had by all.