Halloween wrap-up

Another Halloween here and gone. Ian and I met on Halloween, you know. That means another year has gone by, and we are still going strong. Which is good, since this relationship is legally binding these days. This Halloween was our first one in our cute little house. We had about twenty trick-or-treaters. Super cute. The day before Halloween we went mountain biking (my first time!) and then went to a party at Bim and Hannah's. Super fun. Overall a good weekend. Check out the pics!

Getting ready to carve up some pumpkins. Neit is ready.

Ian carving. Neit being a curious spectator.

Carved pumpkins in the daytime. Look at Ian's manly spider pumpkin.

Night time pumpkins, all lit up.

Pre-Halloween mountain biking. Kind of reminded me of my BMX days.

Halloween party time. What Ian was going for...
How Ian's costume turned out...

What I was going for...

How my costume turned out...

Here at the party, Hannah as a watermelon and party goer (Diego?) as a bag of chick feed. Eventually, they declared themselves winner and runner-up in the costume contest. It was a little shady, but they probably deserved it.

Hope you enjoyed! This weekend, John and Judy are coming to visit. Should have some good stuff to post soon. See ya then!

Intro to Fall

Fall is in the air. I couldn't be happier. We are getting outside as much as possible because we know cold weather is right around the corner. We had the pleasure of hosting Mom, Dad, and Mozie a couple of weeks ago. They came to help with post-birthday and post-prelim passing celebrations. We were blessed with a beautiful day on a Saturday, and a rainy day on a Sunday. That was fine with us, we we hiking on Saturday and came home for a late night camp fire. We spent our Sunday watching movies, staying out of the rain, and recovering from our Saturday hike and whatnot. Neit was so happy to have his only friend in the world, Mozie, come play with him. We had a lot of fun hosting. We sure do miss our families and love when they come visit.

Mom and Dad and Mozie by an old chimney along our hike

Trekking up the steep uphill. No problem

Mozie trying to make it over one of the two stiles along the hiking trail. No problem.

Mozie trying to clear the second stile on the trail. A little more of a problem this time.

Neit, taking a breather. Good hike!

This weekend we took advantage of some warmer-than-normal weather and hopped on the motorcycle. We took a self-guided motorcycle tour of the beginnings of the fall foilage in the area. It looks like this year we will get some pretty colors as opposed to last year, when the leaves turned from green straight to brown. Next, we took the motorcycle to a pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins this year. We had a pretty productive day today, putting up curtains, cleaning out the garage, and mowing. Good weekend! We are looking forward to another great Fall in Hokieville!

A little color showing from some trees here in Southwest VA, as observed from the back of the motorcycle (at a stop light, of course).

A little scenery from our motorcycle ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Ian at the pumpkin patch, trying to find that perfect mini-pumpkin.

Happy Fall! Here's the centerpiece I made from our pumpkin patch mini-pumpkins (and gourd) and some construction paper leaves.

Promises Promises

Good news everyone! I passed my prelims. That means I get to continue getting my PhD, as opposed to not passing my prelims and getting kicked out of grad school. Now that my prelims are over, I have a little bit more free time.

I promise, promise to get a new post up by the end of this weekend. We actually have had the opportunity to do a few fun things in the past couples weeks. One fun thing includes drive-thru animal feeding, and the other includes family visiting. I'll stay vague about it in this post, and elaborate soon. By the end of this weekend. I promise. It's good to be back :)

Interstate bloggings

So the month of August has been a busy one for me. I have traveled from Virginia to California to Indiana back to Virginia then to Tennessee and finally back to Virginia. A little before my travels began, my dearest old friend Elizabeth came to Hokieville to visit and to ride her bicycle around our beautiful mountains. We loved playing host and hostess to her and hope she comes back real soon.

Me and Elizabeth

Next stop, California. I went the Anaheim to present a poster over my research at the International Association of Food Protection annual meeting. It was a pretty good experience, lots of learning and whatnot, but not very action packed. I did walk down to the downtown Disney area one night where I managed to capture this blurry picture...

(it says C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A)

but all in all, not a lot of photo worthy happenings.

I left California and headed to Indiana for the second annual Riverstock arts and music event. It was a pretty big deal this year. Mom and Dad busted their tails getting the event together, including bands, food, friends, and a little arts and craft booth. Klayton and Molly put together some pretty cool t-shirts which they nearly sold out of, and O.P. roasted some mean Boston butt (so I was told). We managed to raise over $200 for the Red Cross of Greater Indianapolis. And we all had fun doing so. We were blessed with great weather. We couldn't have asked for things to turn out any better than they did. Just ask Dad's horoscope that day. Another successful year. Good job Mom and Dad.

The art booth

The blurry band.

The blurry crowd.

After Indiana, I came home to Hokieville for a few days before heading off to Nashville for Tegan and Jesse's wedding. The weather was not on our side in terms of temperature. It was at least 100F the whole time we were there, which limited our willingness to get out in the city and explore. That is the only negative to the trip though. Tegan and Jesse had a beautiful wedding and a great reception. We rarely get all of Ian's side of the family together in one place, and we really loved hanging out with everyone, and meeting new family too. Here are a few of my favorite pics from the event.

Post-rehearsal dinner. Ian showing off his bow tie. I couldn't be more proud.

The "Groom's cake"

Tegan and her parents

Some of The Bacon's

The Danielson's

Man, I wish this picture wasn't blurry.

Tegan and Jesse with Harper, Finley, and Hadleigh

And this picture, which I LOVE, Ian and Tegan after the reception.

Now Ian and I are back in Va for a while. School started today, even though I only have one class. I am teaching Food Processing this semester. I also have my preliminary exam in September. I have a busy semester ahead of me, and not much school left. Ian and I are still loving the new house, and can't wait to get some visitors, so get us on your schedules please!

Riverstock 2010

Get ready for River-stock 2010. Our little local music and arts festival should be bigger this year than ever! New this year: We'll be taking donations to go to the Red Cross of Greater Indianapolis. Proceeds will stay to help those in need in Madison County.

Bring a covered dish and lawn chair. Great entertainment , activities, fun for all ages.

So far, the music line-up includes:
Ricky D. Copeland, Jason Beamer, Dan Daugherty, Martha Baker-Green, Earl "the Red Tornado" Shell, James Maidlow, Henry Connelly, Jeff Hardin, Larry Arnold, Phil Sylvester, Barry Seacat, Rick-bob Barton, Steve Loser & Youthgaurd, Doug Wimer, Mark Jacobson, along with Nick & Tony "Bub" Harless...we be jammin'

Be here this Saturday, Aug 7th. It all gets started at 3pm. Leave me a comment for questions or concerns. Can't wait to see you there!

Welcome to July

Whoa. Long time, no post. We still are without internet at the new house. However, we have been staying plenty busy. For example:

Bim and Hannah moved to Blacksburg, and we took them to a little local NASCAR event to welcome them to the South. They were pleased.

We went backpacking over the 4th of July. It was a pretty good time. We saw no other humans while out in the wilderness. We hiked for three days/two nights. We were really smelly by the time we got home, but it was fun. Would do again.

Ian with his pack.
Lovely Rhododendron bloom.

The creek by our first overnight camp spot.

Neat-o spider web spotted while hiking.

And this past weekend, Ian took me to his company picnic. It was a Luau themed, so naturally they roasted an entire hog and put the entire, intact thing (eyeballs and all) on a table and pulled the meat out of its backside. How very appetizing. I guess I forgot to snap a photo of that. However, I did get photos of Ian playing kickball. His team was the grass skirts, and the opposing team was the coconut bras. Don't they know how to have fun?

Kickball game, perspective from the bleachers. I wore flip flops that day, so I sat out.

You'll be surprised to hear that Ian really enjoyed his grass skirt. Here he is happily modeling it after the end of his kickball game.

We are really enjoying our new house. We recently purchased some outdoor furniture and fire pit to make our backyard a little more inviting. Our big plans this weekend are to go tubing down the New River with Bim and H. I probably won't be bringing a camera due to the "ruining it" risk factor, with all the water and what not. Hope you enjoyed the post! I'll do my best to update in a timely manner.

Washington D.C. and Ice Cream

The International Dairy Foods Association sponsored a trip for those from our department who wished to go a trip to D.C. to serve ice cream at the Capitol Hill Ice Cream Party. I guess this event was the last big hoorah for June being National Dairy Month? I'm not sure about all the details, I all know is I worked for about 2 hours serving ice cream and got a free trip, fancy meals and nice hotel included. The next day we had time to ourselves to explore the city, and explore we did. We were out of the hotel by 8 am to check out the sights, and museums opened at 10. We visited the National Museum of the American Indian, along with the standard Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, WWII Memorial, Reflection Pond, etc. Ok...picture time!

Here is the line for the Ice Cream Party. It was never ending.

My homie Liyun serves ice cream.

Washington Monument

In front of the Lincoln Memorial with the reflection pond to my back.

WWII Memorial

Me and Abe.

Crazy squirrel that attacked Mona.

Inside the American Indian museum.

Family in May

Alright guys, I'm posting from work. Don't tell on me. I've compiled some of the best pictures from both John, Judy and Grammy's visit, as well and Mom, Dad, Kalow and Mandi's. We really loved having everyone come and stay with us. We were able to get out and do some hiking with the Danielson's, as well as catch a movie at the Lyric and do some birthday shopping for Ian (Thanks to Grammy for the kitchenware and to Judy and John for our yet to be purchased outdoor furniture!). The Huff's came to Hokieville in their RV ready to camp. We enjoyed hanging out by the river, sharing some pretty great stories, watching people fish, and Mom and Dad got to take the motorcycle out to the Blue Ridge Parkway on our way to visit a winery. Time flies when you are having fun, and we had a lot of fun. Thanks again for visiting, come again soon and stay with us in our new house!

The Danielson Crew in the wooded portion of our hike

A scenic overlook during our hike

Same scenic spot, minus Karleigh plus Ian
Judy coaxing Neit over the stile

Hiking through a field


The Huff clan settled into the camp site

View from the camp site

Group at "The 'chat"

Ian and K with some crazy guy in the background

Scenic view off the Blue Ridge Parkway on the back to Hokieville