girls trip....

This past weekend, I went on a girls trip to NYC with my sweet friends Dawn, Anne, and Ashley. I've been so excited about this trip because, well it's no secret NYC is my favorite city! I have to say, this trip was different because it was the first trip to NYC that I've ever been sick! I don't know if it was sinuses or a cold, but I looked like rudolf the whole trip and sneezed and blew my nose more times than I could count. Regardless of being sick, we had a blast! 

Friday, we started our trip with lunch at John's Pizza[my favorite pizza in NYC]. We did a little shopping on 5th ave and had our make up done at Henri Bendel's. We went back and got ready for dinner and ate dinner at Fig and Olive at 9pm and ended the night at the rooftop of the Empire Hotel. It was such a gorgeous view. We stayed out late Friday night, so we slept in saturday morning which was SO NICE!

Saturday, we shopped and ate! We had brunch at Bubby's, shopped in Soho and the east village. We went on a cupcake tour that was a total bust, so we skipped out after the 3rd bakery and instead bought gelato and crepes:) If we weren't full enough from all the food we'd had that day, we finished the night off with dinner at Dos Caminos! 

Sunday, we walked the high line, walked through Chelsea Market, shopped a little in Time Square and ended our trip where we started, with lunch at John's Pizza:)

It was a great trip! We shopped and ATE the whole time:)

 we got photo-bombed by minnie mouse;/

 This was the size of our cupcakes...

refreshing...

This weekend we had a mountain getaway with our good friends, the Rogan's and the Vedder's. I honestly wish I could have stayed for several weeks! I LOVE the mountains and the weather was absolutely perfect: cool, crisp, and fall like. We stayed in the same house that we did at Thanksgiving, and it's in the perfect location. My favorite part is how many deer are around. There's something so breath taking and peaceful about seeing wildlife[the non-dangerous ones] in the wild. Seeing deer, unclose in the woods is such a peaceful thing to me and immediately makes me thank the Lord for sharing His creation with me. 

It was so nice walking out in the cool morning, on the front porch with a big cup of hot chocolate with marsh-mellows in a sweatshirt and pajama pants.

Can you tell I had a great weekend? 

We really had so much fun. I have missed these girls so much since moving to Hartsville. We had a relaxing time and a much needed "catching up" time. The kids loved being together again. 

I didn't take many pictures, but here's a few! 

Kaz actually saw 4 bears! I really wish I would have, but it was a neat experience for him. 

annual labor day trip...

Over Labor Day, we went on our 7th annual Labor Day trip with our good friends from college, the Burns and the Newmans. We go some where different every year. This year we went to the beach, and we couldn’t have made a better choice! The kids absolutely loved it and had the best time together! It was so nice to see them all play together. When they went to bed, we played our annual card games until we couldn’t stay awake any longer and ate lots and lots of cookies:) The last night we ate 29 chocolate chip cookies;/ Annie Rice and Ashlynn became best buddies. They look very similar and had the same bathing suits, so we had to do a double take sometimes to see who was who. We also got a good glimpse into what having 2 girls is going to be like:) One minute they were best friends and couldn’t get enough of each other, the next minute they were fighting and upset. Regardless, they had a great time playing together and Annie Rice has prayed for all of her “friends from the trip” every night since we’ve been back!

We had such a good time and we are so thankful for our friends! We’ve already started planning next years trip;)

 Annie Rice and Ashlynn

 the whole crew[I was on the phone when this picture was taken;/]

yesterday...

I love days that I have bible study. I look forward to it. I love the girls in it, and the Lord has done so much in our group over the last few months. Last night I had bible study...Before I left, my little Annie Rice dressed up like she does everyday. She put on her bow, high heels, and walked around with her pocket book. It was so hard for me to leave after dinner to go to bible study because her and Kaz were snuggling in the bed watching Mickey Mouse. I wanted to do that too....BUT I'm so glad I went to bible study. We had such a good time together and one that I will never forget. Every week our husbands joke that we get home later and later, and that is true. We do. BUT last night, set the record. At about 9:40, we decided to have a girls night. We went and picked up our friend Monica, came back to my house, cooked brownies, watched a girly movie and talked until the wee hours of this morning. I got less than 5 hours of sleep:) BUT I needed that, even though it was at midnight. I think we all do at times. I felt like I was back in college. This morning, I met my friend Jennifer at the YMCA[she's in bible study also]. We decided to try a running group and ended up running almost 4 miles A LOT faster than I am used to! Somehow, I'm still going strong...I thought when Annie Rice went down for a nap, I would want one too as well, but I'm doing pretty good:)  Below are a few pictures from our day yesterday...I treasure my family and the amazing, Godly women the Lord has placed in my life. 

girls trip to NYC...

NOTE: All of these pictures were taken with our phones, so the quality is not the best:) Our excuse for not using a real camera was we couldn't "instagram" the pictures right away! HaHa

Our trip to NYC was fabulous! It’s no secret NYC is my favorite place to go. Somehow I’ve managed to go at least once a year for the last 8 years:) It never gets old to me...I think I could go every month for the rest of my life and never see everything in the city. It’s such a wonderful place! 

This girls trip was a pretty quickly planned trip:)Every year we go on a labor day trip with friends from college. This year, on a Friday a text was sent suggesting a girls trip/guys trip. I wrote my friend Dawn and said what if we did NYC. Literally, we had the trip booked within 3 days after that text went out:) 

We really had such a good time! It was amazing we actually made it to the city when we did. Supposedly NYC was having really bad storms and they had canceled pretty much every flight going out of the city the day of our flight and night before we left for NYC. We were one of the last flights to make it in:) 

When we arrived, we checked in at the Waldorf Astoria and made our way to SoHo to eat at Lombardi’s for pizza:) It started pouring as we were eating, but we were determined it would not ruin our fun. We then shopped in SoHo for a couple of hours. If you’ve read my blog enough, you know that I love TV and I love seeing celebrities. As we were walking down one of the streets, I spotted filming equipment trucks. I told the girls that something was going on, so while they were in a shop I decided to be a little nosy and walk around the block. Sure enough, they were filming Blue Bloods[only one of mine and Kaz’s favorite shows:)]. So I stayed around to watch while the girls shopped in nearby shops. I never saw a main character and later found out none of the big characters were in that scene, so I was disappointed I didn’t see anyone because I would have LOVED to see Tom Sellek, BUT I loved watching and being apart of the action:)

That night, we had dinner at Balthazar and then grabbed A LOT of dessert after at Little Cupcake ...$36 worth of cupcakes and cake:) We headed back to the hotel for an early night, ate our hearts out, and watched a girly movie:)

Our first purchase was these glitter pens that smelled like fruit:) How old are we? I've already been using mine:)

Blue bloods filming...

our view from our room...

Saturday morning, we went for a long walk in Central Park, had brunch at Bubby’s, and walked around 5th ave and the fashion district. We went into Henri Bendel’s and all got our makeup done...Let me start by saying, every time I’ve had my make up done, it NEVER looks good. EVER! BUT I felt very confident in the guy doing my makeup, because he did all the other’s girls first, and they all looked SO GOOD! I could have cried when I saw myself in the mirror. I looked like I stuck my head in a chimney. My eyes were as dark as soot! I think I’m giving up on someone else doing my makeup...I wore my sunglasses until I got back to the hotel and couldn’t get the eye makeup off fast enough. 

For dinner, we went to STK. It was FABULOUS! I will take Kaz back there for dinner on our next trip there. After dinner, we hung out on the rooftop of the Roosevelt Hotel and walked around in Time Square a bit. That was my favorite night...Lots of laughs;)

see how black my eyes are....

Sunday morning...Well, Sunday was a bit hectic of a day. As we were leaving the hotel, there was something very interesting going on outside of our hotel. We honestly thought a politician was in our hotel, so we decided to stand in the crowd gathered outside to watch. We then proceeded to follow the parade of cops down the street to see what was going on, later to realize NYC was having a “Dominican parade” later that day. The things we will do to see someone famous:) We went to Macy’s, lunch at one of my favorites Rosa Mexicano[there guacamole is AMAZING] and Bloomingdales before heading back to meet our driver at the hotel. He called to tell us he would be there at 2pm. We had about 10 minutes to get back to the hotel..We went the wrong way on the subway, got in a cab to sit still for 5 minutes only to pay $5, and realized the Dominican parade was going on, and we COULD NOT get around it. We were frantic, because we were already cutting it close with our flight. After running around like crazy women, we finally found a way around and made it back to our hotel at 2:25. Dawn is 6 months pregnant, and I really thought she might go into an early labor the way we were running around. We got to the airport at 2:45, through security at 3:15 and made our way to the gate where our flight should have been already boarding...it was delayed over an hour! That was just our luck after the craziness we had, BUT even through things were hectic, we had a great last day in the city! 

It seemed like we were there for longer than 3 days which was a good thing, because looking back it went by so fast! We decided a girls trip is in order every year:)