Litchfield Beach 2009

Andrew and I had the pleasure of vacationing with my family this year in Litchfield, SC during the first week in August. As I previously mentioned, Litchfield is about 45 (ish) minutes south of Myrtle Beach, SC. It is a lovely little place with nice, quiet, uncrowded beaches. The place we stayed in was a beautiful oceanfront condo that was rented from a family friend of ours. We had such a great week! As usual, most of our days were spent relaxing by the pool or the beach and our evenings consisted of delicious dinners and venturing north to the "wonders" of Myrtle Beach. I really loved getting to spend quality time with my family and Andrew, as well as the opportunity to really relax and get away from all of the stresses of everyday life here at home. It was so hard to come back home and go back to work, but it leaves me really looking forward to the next beach trip. Here just are a few pictures from our trip.

Andrew and I

Siblings

The whole Sharpley fam :)

ahhh, the beach

It was a really pretty sunrise

The dunes

Looking down the boardwalk

There's nothing like having your toes in the sand

The sunset over the marsh behind us (Hey y'all, LOOK! A gator!)

an "artsy" shot of us walking down the boardwalk, hand in hand...awww

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The Card: A Family Tradition

Anyone in my immediate family knows about the card. However, for those of you who don't, this is the story of the card.

This new "family tradition" started about 3 years ago around my mom's birthday. My dad's mom gave my mom a simple, pretty birthday card for her birthday. Apparently my dad hadn't gotten my mom a birthday card yet, so he just took the card that my grandmother had given to my mom, crossed out my grandmother's note and signature, and signed his own note and name and simply "recycled" the card. From then on, whenever anyone from my family has a birthday, they have the pleasure of receiving the card. It is then their responsibility to keep the card until the next person's birthday and then pass the card onto the next person. And thus, the tradition of the card was born.

This year marked the 3rd time that I have given the card to my mom as my birthday is before hers. The card lived on our refrigerator from May through July and it is now time to part with the card yet again. As I put the second paper insert into the card because we have once again run out of room to write, it is really neat to look at where the card has been and the birthday notes that are written within it. Hopefully the tradition of the card will continue for many years to come. And God help the person who misplaces it.

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A weekend in PA

Sorry I'm a little behind in posting about this, but better late than never I suppose! This past weekend we went up to York, PA to visit Andrew's family. We left on Friday after I got off work and we stayed through Sunday. After we got there and caught up for a little while, we watched Marley and Me, which was really good, but also kind of sad. On Saturday we went to a baseball game between the York Revolution and the Lancaster Barnstormers. We literally had front row seats! The stadium was very nice and the game was fun. The York Revolution put up a good fight at the end, but the Lancaster Barnstormers took the win. After the game, there was a free Steve Holy concert (he sings "Good Morning Beautiful" and "Brand New Girlfriend"). As if we hadn't had enough fun already, we played putt-putt after that. I do believe Nancy (Andrew's mom) took the win and Andrew and I tied for second. For dinner we went to Cracker Barrel, which is always a crowd-pleaser. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing and we watched Madea Goes to Jail (very funny!). On Sunday we enjoyed a nice breakfast and lunch relaxing on the back porch, and then it was time to head on back to Roanoke. As always, we had a great time with Andrew's family and we look forward to going back up there soon. Here are some pictures from our weekend.

Andrew and I at the game

The York Revolution

This guy would stand up when the York Revolution was batting and get the whole section to yell, "HIT THE WALL!" He is quite the fan, as you can see that the back of his shirt says "Section 5" and "Hit the Wall."

Steve Holy

All of us after our game of putt-putt

I think we'll be taking it easy this weekend and start to get ready for our trip to the beach. We'll be going to Litchfield, SC the first week in August. If you have never heard of Litchfield, it is just south of Myrtle Beach. I am really looking forward to going to the beach, especially since I haven't been in two years. I think working full time also makes me appreciate vacations a whole lot more, too. Well, I better go get ready for tomorrow! TGIF!

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The Zoo!

It's hard to believe that this Sunday, the 12th, is Lauren and my first anniversary. This past year has flown by! I think it's been a really good year.

To celebrate, yesterday (Friday the 10th) we went on a little day trip to the North Carolina State Zoo in Asheboro. It was only about 2 hours and 45 minutes away and was a very easy drive. We got there around 10:15 and stayed until around 4:45, so it was a full day.

Admission was very reasonable ($9 for adults with AAA). You can leave and as long as you have your receipt they let you come back in, which was nice, because we packed lunch and had a little picnic under a tree right outside the entrance instead of getting $5 hot dogs. That seemed to be the popular thing to do, as several other families were also having picnics under trees outside, too!

They had a lot of animals and you were able to get pretty close to most of them, which was very nice. Since it was a Friday, it wasn't very crowded, either, so there weren't any lines or big groups to fight through to get up to windows, etc. The zoo is split into two areas, one with a North America theme, and one with an African theme. All the plants in the areas match the theme, with different non-native plants in the African area, and more local native plants in the North America area. There were lots of trees, which was nice because all the walking (we figured about 6 or so miles) was in the shade.

The best part of the zoo is, of course, animals; so here are some pictures we took while we were there.

Giraffes

Ostrich

Elephant

Zebra

Humans

Gorilla

Orangutans

Bobcat

Polar Bear

Sea Lions and Seals

Cougar

Crocodile

Hummingbird

Grizzly Bear

"Oh give a home, where the buffalo roam..."

Elk

Black Bear

Miami Vice

Ocelot

We took a lot more pictures, but these are the highlights. All in all it was a really fun (and exhausting) day.

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Our "new" kitchen!

Everybody (okay, whoever does most of the cooking...in our case, that's me) spends a lot of time in their kitchen. Therefore, I guess it's fair to say that it's important to like your kitchen. When we moved into our townhouse, our kitchen was decorated with a very obvious theme: CHICKENS! EVERYWHERE! I really don't mind chicken-themed kitchens at all, and I even added a few of my own (okay, my mom's) chicken decor. Well, I guess the chickens started to get to me after a while, so we decided it was time for a change. This past 4th of July weekend we re-designed our kitchen. Let me just say, I LOVE IT! Andrew did such a good job taking off the wallpaper, which was a real headache to say the least. I worked on painting the cabinets and some of the walls, and Andrew also did a lot of painting, too. We also replaced the hardware on the cabinets. To give you an idea of the transformation, below are some of the "before" pictures. Some of these were taken a while back before we even moved in, but you can get the idea!

This is what our kitchen used to look like. As you can see, the cabinets were white.

This is a picture of the wallpaper and the border...CHICKENS!!

And of course, even the cabinet hardware was chicken-themed.

Alright, now that we have seen the "before" pictures, here is what it looks like now. I hope you like it! We think it looks much more modern and clean looking.

TA-DA!

A closer look at the cabinets and the new hardware, compliments of my mom, who was also replacing her kitchen hardware at the same time!

Like I said, I don't totally hate chickens, as you can see by what we call "the chicken coop," aka, our pantry. I think it looks nice in there, and that is enough chickens in one kitchen for me. James also decided to make a cameo appearance. He likes the new kitchen, too. Actually I don't think he noticed the changes because they can't see colors very well.

So anyways, that was our adventure this past weekend. Lots of hard work, but definitely worth it in the end. We did manage to go sit in front of the South Roanoke Fire Station to watch the fireworks at River's Edge. They put on a good show!

On the agenda for next weekend: OUR FIRST YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

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