Climbing Day

Last weekend Keith and I got a chance to relax and just catch up on some things around the house (which are all still slightly unfinished) and on Saturday in an effort to try something new we flipped through our coupon book and decided to meet some friends down in Murfreesboro to go rock climbing. We love spending time with Brittney and Brandon and we had a blast at the climbing gym (even though it was my very first time and everyone had to be patient with me) Now I'm pretty pumped to go back again soon! After an evening of climbing we got dinner at a pub nearby and went back to their place to hang out around the firepit. Thanks Bergers for another great weekend!

He kept trying to get me to spiderman kiss him haha

Brittney was a champion and climbed the craziest course of the night

and while the boys were out back smoking cigars, we MIGHT have placed just dance on the wii

Booze Tour

Apparently the only things that we do with our friends the Berger's involve drinking! 2 weeks ago we doubled up on our weekend hangouts with them once again and met at the local distillery Corsair for a tour and tasting. The tour was pretty short and uneventful but I LOVED their signature cocktails, and the atmosphere there was great for hanging out and talking with our good friends. Here are some photos from our day:

Beers in the taproom before our tour

In front of their historic still

Tasting room

Blood orange soda and vanilla vodka = SO GOOD!

This is what we get when we ask the boys to take our picture... stupid forward camera haha

Brittney and I

Love these friends!!

Our Weekend with the Bergers

This weekend we got a chance to spend both Friday, Saturday and a little bit of Sunday with friends from our small group: the Bergers. We don't see them TOO often because they live about 25 minutes away in Smyrna, but when we do get together it's always a good time (hence the hanging out all weekend thing). Last Wednesday, Brittney kindly put together a ladies night, and so Brandon and Keith got some time to hang out. As we were parting ways we decided that before we ended our current hang out time, we needed to be sure to schedule the next time we would be seeing each other as a way of making sure that quality time together happens more often. It was arranged that we would drive down to their place on Friday night for dinner, which made for quite a lovely evening. Brittney put together some yummy salad and pasta, and we all got a chance to unwind from our work weeks by hanging out back with good beers and good conversations. Somewhere during the course of our evening we all discussed how much we wanted to take a tour of the local distillery in Nashville, Corsair, but they were all booked up. Still though, we vowed to spend part of Saturday together. Plan B then became to take a tour of our favorite brewery Yazoo which we go to ALL the time, but have never taken a formal tour. Brittney and Brandon made their way to our house, we swung by the brewery to reserve our tour time, and then had a delicious lunch at the 12 South Taproom. Our tour was at 4pm, and as we learned a bit about the brewery and the brew process we tasted heavily and left quite happy. We had a couple more beers in the taproom before we moved on to try more local beers at Jackalope (terrible, bleckk) but of course ended up back at Yazoo to fill up our growlers (for free) and then we grabbed some hot chicken at Pepperfire and went home. The Bergers didn't hang around too much longer, and we were thankfully in bed at a decent hour (so.much.beer haha).

I don't know if you could tell from all that I just wrote... but we had one of the BEST weekends we've had in a long time! When we have nothing on the agenda for our weekends we usually do our best to lay low, relax and lounge around the house to try and offset how tired we are from the week. In this case we were VERY thankful that we broke out of our routine a bit and tried some new things with good friends. Here are some photos from our adventures (some from me, and some from Brittney):

Friday Night at the Bergers

Saturday Lunch

First of many group shots

The waitress put hearts in their beers, they felt special haha

Touring.

Behind the scenes

Tasters

Goofballs

Yazoo taproom group

Jackalope (lady beers)

Free growler fills, gotta love making beer friends haha

July the Fourth

Our 4th of July this year was a little different than usual because for the first time in my LIFE I had to WORK on the holiday. I guess that's what I get for working at a day camp haha. So while I was complaining and griping about having to go into work while EVERYONE else in the country was drinking beers and partying... Keith made some plans with friends to fill up his time until we thought I would be getting home. Turns out, our usual roster of 300 campers was reduced to about 55, so when our director asked who wanted to go home I raised my hand as high as it would go haha. Needless to say, I was there and back in less than 2 hours. With Keith headed off to the batting cages with Bennett, I toyed with the idea of taking a nap, but ended up going to the gym because I wanted to swim. The outdoor pool was PACKED beyond limits, so I opted to exercise for a bit, and then swim laps in the indoor pool solo. Did nothing for my "tan" but the "ADULTS ONLY" sign on the door won me over haha. After I got home, Keith was done hitting baseballs so I met him down the street at the Music City Hot Chicken Festival. Wooooooof. It was probably around 110degrees outside so even the walk from the car to the park was like crawling across the surface of the sun... meaning we didn't stay too long, because the idea of eating food meant to scald your mouth couldn't have been any less appealing, ugh. We shared a sandwich, Keith had a couple beers and then we headed home to get our house ready to have people over for a BBQ. By about 6pm we a great group of friends hanging out on the deck while Keith grilled various things for everyone and we enjoyed some beers and conversations together. Everyone left by 8 or 9 to get back home, or to see fireworks and Keith and I actually ended up in bed before our local fireworks even went off! Party animals haha. Here are some of our daily photos:

That whole hour I was at work? Yeah, I just made festive buttons haha

Indoor pool... much preferred to the one foot of personal space I would have had in the outdoor pool, yuck.

Feigning excitement at the hot chicken festival... believe me, no one is happy when its more than 100degrees outside.

Keith and David around the dinner table

Other guests: McKel, Jamie, Tytus and Cory

Bennett and McKel, not pictured, their dog Zoey who was under the table at the time... sweet girl!

Cory.

Bein nerds.

I may have staged this patriotic photo of Theo... just maybe ;)

Ladies

It doesn't happen often, but when it does... it's awesome. Ladies night that is. After many "we should totally get together!" 's and thanks to Jordie and Sammie's persistence, we finally made it happen. It was simple and sweet, just a little meet up at a local bar, but I felt like we had great conversations that helped us all get to know each other even better. Now hopefully it won't be so long before we can all make it happen again!

McKel and I

Jordie and Ashley 

(Photo thanks to Sammie)

New York, New York.

So obviously I tried to be good and stay updated on our whereabouts while we were away on our road trip, but once we got to New York... all bets were off. We flipped our normal schedule completely and stayed up til 2am every night, not waking up until around 10 or 11. For as much fun as we had... it felt pretty darn awesome to go to bed last night at 10:30 haha we're so happy being old married people. So where did I leave off?

Last I updated we were in Philadelphia spending time with Dan and Aly Saturday, Sunday and Monday. So then Tuesday morning bright and early we packed everything up in the car and drove north to New York City. Usually when we go to the city we take the bus because traffic is the worst, but that plan didn't make sense this time around, and I had a very fussy husband by the time we made it to Robert and Andi's apartment haha. NYC traffic doesn't mess around. Once we got to town I don't think Andi and I stopped talking for like the next 5 hours, Keith was so patience with our chattiness. We brought our stuff into their place and then hopped on the subway to Manhattan to visit our friend Peter who works at Serendipity. I had never been there before, so of course we had to have their famous frozen hot chocolate. Verdict? It's pretty awesome, even though that restaurant is a total tourist hot spot. Regardless it was awesome to see Peter for a bit, and it gave Andi and I a chance to talk and talk some more :) Afterwards we walked over to Magnolia Bakery (where Andi works) and we picked out all kinds of tasty treats to be enjoyed later. We then headed back to their apartment and waited for my brother, Robert and Paul to get off work and come by with beers. Once we were all together we hung out and caught up a bit before heading to one of their favorite local sushi restaurants and meeting up with Sara B and Peter. Dinner was fabulous and followed up by two for one drinks at a bar down the street. The best part of the night though was when we got back to Robert and Andi's to go to bed and remembered that we had tons of tasty desserts to indulge in before sleeping :) so terrible, yet so amazing!

Leaving Philadelphia.

Driving through New Jersey... not our fav.

Serendipity.

Frrrrozen hot chocolate. Mmm.

Hanging at Magnolia.

Tastiest treats!

Bros embracing.

Bert and Andi

Dinner crowd.

Candlelight Jake.

Subway riders.

Wednesday we slept in and spent the morning relaxing with Andi after getting some bagels from around the corner. Later, we met up with my brother at the MoMA to check out the Cindy Sherman Retrospective... SO RIDICULOUS. I've never been one for Contemporary Art, but she's absolutely amazing. If you're in the area before June 11th I recommend it. After quickly walking through the exhibit the 3 of us wandered down to Chelsea to get lunch at The Grey Dog (delicious) and when Jake had to get back to work Keith and I made our way to the Highline for a beautiful afternoon stroll. Oddly neither of us had ever been over there before on our various recent trips to the city and we couldn't have been more grateful that the weather took a turn for the better during our visit. What a beautiful and lush place in the city! Again, I highly recommend. After our little touch of exercise for the day Keith and I were able to visit one of the management companies he works with and got a chance to introduce ourselves to the artist Bearcat whose tour Keith is currently booking. It was pretty funny that Keith happened to end up doing work on vacation, but we were way too close not to stop by. When we were done it was time for Keith to head north to the Bronx to meet Peter for his first Yankees game! He had some issues getting there and finding Peter, but once that was all settled they had a really great time together. While they were at the baseball game I trekked over to Brooklyn to meet up with Nickie and her boyfriend Andy (who we hadn't seen since our WEDDING! too stinking long). We had an awesome mexican dinner and caught up on life and then walked down to a bar in the area and waited for the baseball fans to leave the game. Once Peter and Keith found us it was mentioned that the bar across the street (the same one we went to the night before) had karaoke and there were no questions about where we were going next. Metal karaoke night meant that anyone who sang a metal song got a free shot of whisky... I'm sure you can use your imagination but it was a pretty ridiculous night. So much love for all those friends.

Underground

Lunch

Matching... awkward.

Highline.

City love.

Baseball!

Andy/Keith. Karaoke champions.

Nickie clearly earned her shot.

Peter and the Beastie Boys.

Thursday we woke up late once again and had coffee and breakfast on the couch with Andi.  We packed up our stuff and drove to downtown Brooklyn to meet up with Robert for lunch at Shake Shack (favorite) and to say goodbye to them since we were spending the rest of the evening with Jake and Peter at their place. We certainly got our fill of Shack sauce, and I even got my first shake thanks to Andi (the coffee is deeeeeelicious!) Our original plan for the day was to drive down to Coney Island and check out the classic New York beach, but with the torrential downpour we decided to change our plans a bit. I won't write too much about it because I'm planning a separate post for tomorrow... but we ended up meeting with Amanda for a trip to the American Museum of Natural History. Such a good idea! After we had our fill of taxidermy and old bones we took the train back to Amanda's to get our car and drove to Queens for a home cooked meal thanks to Peter and his girlfriend Emily. Jake had to go to band practice, but we had plenty of great hangouts in his absence, before driving over to the bar duck duck to meet back up with Jake and Nathan and Sara. GREAT last night in town! Lots of great cheap drinks, many games of darts and some amazing people watching.

Andi/Bruiser the Bruin.

Robert and Andi at Shake Shack.

Bros at the bar.

New York was SUCH a crazy whirlwind of a three day trip, but when isn't it? We always have such a great time visiting my brother and all of our friends up there but as soon as we leave, it always feels like such a nice relief. City life really isn't for us longterm. Regardless of our readiness to get back to our quiet and sleepy life, I'm SO happy we were able to visit and get to see so many of our favorite people.

Next up... a recap of our day at the Museum, then photos and stories from our weekend in DC!