Week 27: Virginia Beach, VA (Shower)

Charlie hijacked week 27--every decent shot had a little bit of him in it even after we moved around the yard to try to get away.

This week we traveled up to Virginia Beach where Justin's mom hosted our first baby shower. We had a great turnout with some unexpected (but very welcomed) guests. We received a ton of gifts for Ezra and feel truly blessed for our generous family and friends. A very big thank you to "Lola" (Grandma) Yalung for organizing everything, the Brand family for letting us have their house to hold the shower, Charmagne for helping set up, and Jered for taking pictures.

Here are some pictures from this weekend.


Charles Shenanigans

[Charlie & Molly (next door)]

Baby Shower

[Excited to use this stroller]

*Also in Virginia Beach this weekend was the 37th annual Neptune Festival, a huge tourist draw to the area [500,000+ attendance] which features outdoor music, fireworks, a sand sculpting competition, and many other events at the oceanfront boardwalk. Unfortunately, we weren't able to go this year but would have made for some great pictures.

Week 26: Blacksburg, VA (Hokies vs. ECU)

After an abysmal two weeks to start off the 2010-11 college football season, our Hokies bounced back with a 49-27 victory over East Carolina on Saturday. As part of our normal fall routine over the past several years, we made our way back up to Blacksburg for some solid tailgating and cheering.

We also finally cleaned out the nursery in order to take a proper picture of the final paint & wainscoting. Ezra's dresser is on the way, too. Keep watching as Jessica continues to decorate the room over the remaining months.

And lastly, we'd like to give a special thanks to our great friend, Michael, for lending us his wide angle camera lens. Now we can actually take a picture of the entire room for all to see.


Nursery




Hokies vs. ECU Tailgate






Other On & Off Campus

[Justin's college fraternity]

[Lyric Theater in Downtown Blacksburg]

DSLR Basics, Assignment 3

Assignment 3:

Art Photography.

I was left only with a fairly broad description: "Using your skill and imagination, and exercising your freedom to work with any kind of subject or approach, with or without manipulation, produce images that are expressive and subjective, rather than objective and representational."

Let me just say that as a type-A number cruncher by trade, I am neither artsy nor subjective. I went on the Virginia Tech campus today to get my creative juices flowing.

On one end of the drill field, I walked up to the Lumenhaus, an award winning VT architecture project. On the opposite end, the pylons atop the War Memorial Chapel.

None of my pictures ended up at all expressive or subjective, but I still enjoyed taking the shots.

--------------------

Results:

Pylons

Week 25: Durham, NC

Ezra is kicking like crazy; hopefully that means he's just a healthy kid. This week we stayed home to try and get a lot of things done around the house. You can see from the updated pictures below that we have most of our painting done. The wainscoting is finished and all trimmed up. We picked a nursery paint color [green], then we picked another paint color [lighter green]. The original color may not look that bad here on the computer, but in person, it was way WAY too green.

To end our weekend, we went to see the last regular season Durham Bulls game. We won 4-2 over Louisville and ended with the best record in the league. In a later post we will have to re-highlight the city of Durham. It is one of the pieces of the Triangle area that we live in (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill/[& Cary]), and it has really come a long way over the past few years in becoming a fantastic place to go do stuff. If only it had the same quality of school system as our Wake County does, otherwise we would totally consider living here.

Recently the city has renovated the old American Tobacco District, the old tobacco factories from the 1800s, and put them into good use. The space also includes the Durham Bulls Athletic Park for baseball games, the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) for concerts and live arts, and then a number of restaurants and green space for families. The rest of the city is quickly becoming home to a more artsy/hipster crowd which means...better local restaurants. YES.

At any rate, we hope you enjoy the pictures from this week.


Nursery Updates

[We made a headboard this week for the guest room.]

[Bad picture, sorry.]

[This is more what the actual color looks like.]

[Original green color.]

Durham Bulls Game

[Dinner at the park!]

Week 24: Blacksburg, VA

LET'S GO

HOKIES!

Greetings friends and family. It is now week 24 of our pregnancy, and it's filled with all kinds of travel. This weekend Jessica flew up to NY for her sister's bridal shower then drove back down to VA with her mom. Justin drove up to Blacksburg a few days early just to hang out.

Football season is here, and our #10 Hokies have a TOUGH test against #3 Boise State tonight. There's nothing that makes it feel more like football season than a trip to Blacksburg in the fall. Here are pictures from our favorite place on earth.


Off of Blacksburg Road (toward Catawba, VA)



On Campus

[Burruss Hall & April 16th Memorial]

[Click here to read more about this hero]

[Virginia Tech Motto: Ut Prosim ("That I May Serve")]

Canedy Family Neighborhood Views

[Charlie loves it here]