A bit too much nature...

So... usually by August I've kinda reached my limit on all of the mosquitoes, biting gnats, and cicadas that seem to go crazy during the summers here. And, I've definitely reached my limit for this summer. I'm feeling SO ready for Fall, and I'd like a few cold nights to start to kill off some of these bugs. The gnats are really bad this year and have been swarming me and Guinness on our daily walks, and the mosquitoes have also been really bad and I have so many bites!!  The cicadas are also REALLY loud this year, and I'm guessing it's just because we have so many trees around us (they live in the trees). And one morning this week I walked outside with Guinness, and BOOM there was a big ugly dead cicada right on our front step next to our doormat. Ew. In case any of you need a reminder of what a cicada looks like, here's a picture:

And they're like 2-3 inches long... They are BIG. And gross. Harmless though, thank goodness... 

Then it was either that same day or the next day I saw a HUGE bug crawling around on the outside of one of our windows (thank goodness it was on the outside!!), and it just so happened to be on a window that also has a HUGE spider that's been hanging out. I'll eventually get rid of the spider, but I've tried to have the whole "live and let live" mentality, and it isn't IN our house (or it'd be SUPER dead by now), so I've just been trying to let it be. Well, I made McGee come over to the window and see the HUGE bug and I jokingly said, "Wouldn't it be crazy if the spider got that bug?" but we didn't think it was really possible partially because that bug was SO much bigger and also because the spider and its web were inside the storm window (but not inside the house... just in that area between the storm window and the regular window). Well, the next day I was working and then I wandered over to the window and what did I see?? 

If you can click on this picture and make it bigger, you should try it... It is a CRAZY picture.

I immediately snapped a few pictures and sent them to McGee at work saying something super eloquent like, "Holy shit!! It got it!!!".  So, I still plan on eventually getting rid of that spider, but for now I'm letting it enjoy its impressive feast. 

Then this morning (Saturday) I woke up bright and early (like before 7am!) and decided to go outside and get an early start on some gardening/weeding that's been desperately needed in our yard. It's been SO hot and humid that I haven't felt like doing it any evenings after work... It was definitely an early morning chore. So, I headed out there at about 7am and got a nice early start. I started weeding and was loading the weeds into some of our yard waste paper bags (that's what you have to use over here... we don't get yard waste bins). We had one bag that we'd started filling a few weeks ago, but it was only like 1/4 full (they're quite big bags) so we didn't put it out with our garbage, and instead just kept it in our garage to finish filling at a later date. So, I grabbed that bag and hauled it out to the street so I could load the weeds as I pulled them, and it was maybe half full when I decided to move it further down the street so I didn't have to walk as far. So, I lifted it up and was about to move it when the whole bottom of the bag just dropped out. I'm guessing it got soggy or decomposed a little in our garage since it had the yard waste from a few weeks ago... Whoops. So, like the proper lady I am, I let out a string of expletives as the tons of dirt and yard waste started falling out all over the street. Luckily I was able to go grab some new bags and kinda shimmy them under the old bag and load most of it in without making too big of a mess. It was an adventure. An adventure filled with curse words. 

So, that was my first adventure this morning. THEN after a bit more weeding I was getting kinda tired, but I still had to pull weeds and pick up a lot of the dead leaves by our walkway to our front door. So, I'd brought a box with me to throw the leaves and weeds in (I didn't want to risk the paper bag again!), and I decided to just sit on our walkway while I pulled weeds and picked up dead leaves. I picked up a big handful of dead leaves and I was carrying them towards the box I saw the BIGGEST SPIDER EVER resting on top of the leaves I was holding. It's body was the biggest body I've ever seen on a spider (like the size of a quarter... I'm not including its legs in that). So, again with the string of expletives. And this time they were slightly worse expletives. And I dropped the leaves as quickly as I could into the box, but the spider apparently did NOT like being put in the box and it literally jumped out of the box and onto the ground in front of me. Yes, it JUMPED. It landed right on the ground in front of me, and it was facing me. It totally freaked me out. So, I think I had the same reaction that anyone would have and I started shrieking loudly like a crazy person. And... let's not forget that it was only like 7:30am by this time.  So, I'm sure my neighbors love me. I tried to flip the box over to squash the spider, but it got away... 

Summary of the story is that I curse too much, I'm ready for Fall, and I'm a big baby when huge spiders jump at me. Here are a few cute pictures of Guinness to make up for those bug pictures: 

Here he is looking sad... 

But here he's looking more like himself! 

And here's happy Guinness!!  

And here is looking sleepy and resting his chin on my knee. I still looooove that little white stripe he has down his forehead!  That and his spotted paws are just so dang cute to me. 

I hope you all have a great weekend!!

A big ol' pig, and some Goonies.

We have had a pretty great week. We've been incredibly busy (as usual... haha), but we've had some really fun stuff peppered into our week too.

On Sunday evening we went over to McGee's parents' house for a birthday dinner for Mo. We were told that Guinness was invited too, so we brought him over and he had fun hanging out with everyone. McGee's cousins were still in town from our Friday party, so they were there and it was great to hang out with them. We also met up with McGee's cousins and sisters on Monday night to see Trainwreck (the movie starring Amy Schumer). It was a hilarious movie, but it had a lot of serious parts too which I wasn't expecting!

Wednesday evening we went to a BBQ at Kevin's COO's house. She has a BBQ every year at her house for the Directors of the hospital departments to say "thank you" for all their hard work. It was a fun time and the food was delicious. It was a BBQ so I was thinking maybe hamburgers and hot dogs or maybe chicken... but nope!  It was a whole pig! Snout and all. And the pig had a baseball cap on that said Einstein Hospital (but I just tried not to look at the pig's face/head). It was delicious though. I wanted to take a picture of the pig, but I thought that might not be a great first impression since nobody else was taking pictures and I'd never met any of those people before! It was so great to meet everyone, and everybody was SO nice and my goodness do they all LOVE Kevin!!  It was so fun and made me so beyond happy to hear how much everybody at his work loves him, because my goodness does he work hard. It's so great to see how much everyone appreciates all of his hard work.

I didn't take a picture! But this one's cuter anyways. 

And yesterday (Thursday) evening was my parents anniversary!!  Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!!!  They give me such an amazing example of what a happy and healthy marriage is :)  

And McGee and I had a nice date night last night!  We drove to our faaaaavorite movie theater, the old Hiway Theater (the one I've mentioned a few times that was built in 1913) because they are doing some fun old movies this summer!!  We had it on our calendar that August 13th was THE GOONIES!!!  I was so beyond stoked to see The Goonies on the big screen, and it was pretty darn amazing. It was also kinda funny seeing it in a movie theater with a bunch of kids that hadn't seen it before, because they were CRACKING up!!  They'd especially crack up every time one of the kids in the movie said "shit", and I honestly had never noticed how often they say that word in the movie! But it got a laugh from the kiddos every time. I love The Goonies though, and it was so cool to see it in a movie theater. 

This weekend we're mostly just relaxing, but we do have a few big projects planned. One is that we're going to demo our downstairs bathroom... That bathroom is our next big project. I hope you all have a great weekend!!  

East Coast Party

The East Coast Party was on  Friday (August 7th), and it was super fun!!  The planning was a little stressful, but the party ended up being a total blast.

My friend Lindsey and her husband Mike drove up from Virginia on Thursday, and got here in plenty of time to meet Guinness (he was maybe the most calm he's ever been when meeting new people!  I was so proud of him) and have a house tour, and then we all went out to dinner in the city. We took them to Garces Trading Company for steak and fries, but it turned out it was Restaurant Week so they were only offering a few things (and steak frites was not one of them!). The food was good though! Then we drove to the airport to pick up my friend Melissa! She has been living in Tampa for years, but just a few weeks ago she moved to Texas.  

On Friday I had to work unfortunately (HUGE project for work... and part of it was due that day), but Lindsey and Mike headed to Hershey, PA and Melissa stayed at the house for some relaxation time (moving to Texas was stressful and exhausting!). Melissa also had a phone interview that day, which went really well!  But Friday evening we all got ready for the party, and then took an Uber cab to the venue! The venue was the Merion Tribute House, and it seriously looked like a little castle. The first part of the party was a liiiiiiiitle stressful just because there were a LOT of people that McGee and I were meeting for the first time, so we were busy!  But then it was eventually time to head in to the main room for dinner, and soon after that it was time for DANCING!!  Yayy!!  We had SO much fun dancing the night away. The time flew by once we were on the dance floor!!  I'll just put a ton of pictures here, along with a few captions when needed:

Here's me and McGee with his cousins

Here are a few of Kevin's friends! That's Fro and her boyfriend Ben, and then Reverend Dunn (aka Timmy). 

Me and Kevin with his cousin Shannon. Shannon and her husband brought their PA system for our music, and Shannon and her husband also took all of these photos! 

There was this cool little balcony thing

Here's one of the groups of McGee's family! I think this is maybe just cousins... 

Here's all of our friends that came to the party!  Colleen is standing by her brother (Timmy), and Melissa is in the blue dress and Lindsey and Mike are next to her on the right side of the pic!

Here's the table of Kevin's group of friends! It's Kate on the left (she goes to Solid Sound with us), then Timmy, Big Mike, Fro, Juliff, Ashley (Juliff's fiance), then Anthony and Rob! 

Here's our table! This was during McGee's dad's toast. 

Slow dancing

Dancing!! 

Melissa's getting down!!

This is when I dragged Lindsey out to dance to Rockin Robin with me!  It was a blast :)   

That was the party in a nutshell!!  The food was delicious and our caterer was AWESOME, and the open bar definitely came in handy too!!  A lot of people were thoroughly taking advantage of that and having a good ol' time, which was fun to see. I was drinking the pinot grigio all night, and my goodness it was delicious! I should have found out what winery it was from, because it was a good one and made it wayyyyy too easy to drink more than I meant to! I definitely got pretty tipsy, but I had such a blast. And before we knew it, the party was over and our Uber driver was picking us up to take us back home!  When we got home Lindsey gave us the amazing present she made for us!!  It's so cool, and will definitely help us remember our anniversary date since we're both SO bad at remembering dates!!  Haha :)  It's sad but true (at least it's BOTH of us, right?).  It's a beautiful gift, and so sweet.  And Melissa also made us a really cool and sweet present, so we have to figure out where to hang these thoughtful and amazing gifts!!  Oh and Melissa also got us a little clip that says "Together is a wonderful place to be" (awwwww), and a funny book called "Don'ts for Wives" that is from 1913 so the advice is HILARIOUS and not at all applicable to today's relationships. I think Melissa knew that I'd find that sort of thing hilarious :)

Here's the gift from Lindsey!!  So sweet. And that date reminder will seriously be handy for us!! 

Here's the gift from Melissa!!  I have such talented and creative friends!

The cute little clip and the HILARIOUS book