Guinness's Beach Adventure!

Kevin's family rented a dog-friendly house down the shore for Easter weekend, and they invited me, Kevin, and Guinness to join them!  We were so excited to take Guinness to the beach for his first time ever seeing the ocean! Our little guy is a bit of a chicken though, so we thought maybe he'd be a little afraid of the ocean/waves/sounds, but NOPE!!  He absolutely loved the beach and the ocean. He did keep trying to drink the ocean water, but I don't think he actually swallowed much (he didn't get sick, so that's a good sign!). 

This was him figuring out the wet sand! I think it was a bit confusing for him. 

Checking out the ocean for the first time! 

Cautiously approaching it... 

A little anxious... 

 

Loving it!! 

 And he was having a blast on the beach when he discovered he could dig holes in the sand! 

Here's a funny picture I got of his face when he was shaking the water off his fur. 

Mook (Kevin's sister) took this picture on Day 2!  He was having so much fun running on the beach! 

Such a cute and happy boy!

Gotta love that sand all over his snout! 

The only bummer of the  weekend is that we discovered that poor Guinness is not good at sleeping in a house full of people... He was way too stressed about all of the noises from people moving on the floors above him and below him. He's SUCH a guard dog, and he couldn't seem to relax during the nights. He'd bark or growl anytime he heard noises, so Kevin and I didn't get much sleep either (we had Guinness in our room).  We had a GREAT time, but the lack of sleep for all 3 of us was a bummer for sure. 

Sunset from the balcony! Guinness LOVED hanging out on the balcony! 

And when we arrived back at our house on Sunday, we saw Spring everywhere! Our plum tree in our front yard had tons of pretty pink blossoms! And our daffodils in our yard have started to bloom too. 

Our plum tree! 

A close-up of the pink flowers! 

Our daffodils! 

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!! 

Snow? Again?

Our St. Patrick's Day was lovely!!  We didn't do too much... We had some Guinness beer, and we made shepherd's pie!  The shepherd's pie turned out really great, and wasn't too hard to make at all! 

Last weekend was a weird one!  Well no, the weekend itself wasn't weird... Just the weather was weird!  We got snow AGAIN... Even though we'd had some 80 degree temps earlier in the week! When it hit 80 we were like "Winter is over!!! Hello Spring!!", and then last weekend it really felt like Winter again. 

So, thinking that Spring was here, my friend Colleen and I had made plans to meet up at Longwood Gardens and hang out! We used to work together, and now unfortunately we don't see each other very often. But Longwood Gardens is about halfway between our houses, and it sounded like a lovely way to spend a nice day outside! We thought we could just walk all around the gardens and talk a lot and catch-up!  Well... as the weekend got closer we were seeing that the forecast started predicting snow... but we decided to just go for it anyways, especially since we'd both already bought our admission tickets! It ended up being QUITE cold and snowy, but luckily Longwood Gardens has some really enormous greenhouses that were nice and toasty warm. We literally spent HOURS wandering around the greenhouses because they're THAT big! We saw some really beautiful flowers, so I took a few pictures: 

This was a wall by the bathrooms!  These are all orchids!

Here's one of the orchids up close! They were all stunning (and real!).

This is a blue poppy!!  It made me think of California poppies :)  

These lilies were SO tall!!  They were up to my waist. I've only ever seen the potted ones at Easter, so these were ENORMOUS! 

AHHHH!!  This was a SUPER creepy baby doll attached to one of the fountains. It scared the crap out of us, and we have no idea why it's there... 

I loved these blue flowers! I think maybe they're lupines? I didn't read the marker on these ones... 

These were my favorite! They were SO cute. They looked like little cups... and they reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. 

Here's some of the snow! 

These were orchids growing in the air! The roots were hanging down everywhere. Some varieties of orchids are epiphytes, so they don't need soil and can get moisture and nutrients from the air! 

I thought I'd also give you an update on the Master Bathroom!  It's coming along pretty nicely, though we've been too busy to find a lot of time to work on it... The wallpaper is all stripped, and McGee fixed-up the walls with spackle and sanding, and then last weekend I had time to paint the walls with primer, and paint the ceiling white! I'm glad it's a small bathroom, because painting ceilings is NO fun. I hadn't noticed how dingy and gross the ceiling was though until I painted it! Now it looks so nice in there. We found one part of the wall that still needs more repairing with spackle, so then I'll have to prime that part again... But then it's ready for paint! 

Here's the "before":  

And here's after primer! 

I'm excited to get the Master Bathroom back soon!  We just have to fix that one wall and primer it, and then paint the walls, and then put the toilet and mirror back, and hook-up the new light!  It should go quickly once we're able to paint. 

St. Patrick's Day!!!

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day!!  Yayyy!!  And I was trying to think of what we should do to celebrate tomorrow, and then I decided that I wanted to be bold so I am going to attempt to make Shepherd's Pie!!  McGee loves Shepherd's Pie, and I've never attempted making it before. And I figure I might as well go big, so I found Gordon Ramsay's recipe online and it looks pretty do-able!  Fingers crossed.

This past weekend we took the train into town for the Philly St. Patrick's Day parade! We couldn't make it last year, but we've gone for the past 3 or 4 years before that. We met up at Timmy's apartment in the city (it's in a really great location - by Rittenhouse Park!), and we hung out there for a bit with a bunch of friends. Timmy made some Irish Flag shots, which are actually quite delicious if you've never had one. They pretty much just taste like a creamy mint! And theoretically they're layered (with careful pouring) so they look like the Irish flag, but as the day went on they definitely stopped being layered!

Here's Timmy carefully pouring some Irish Flag shots! They have Creme de Menthe on the bottom (green), then a layer of Irish creme (white), and then a layer of Irish whiskey (kinda almost orange-ish color). Some people put Grand Marnier to get that bold orange color for the top layer, but that's not the kind I've had. And it sounds way grosser to me... but who knows. 

Here are the "Irish Flag" shots that McGee made... Haha. He was NOT careful when pouring, so they're just a green mess. 

Timmy, Fro, Juliff, and McGee! 

After hanging out at Timmy's apartment for awhile, we ventured over to the parade and watched a bit of that!  We saw one marching band group from Baltimore that was AMAZING, and I was too busy dancing and cheering for them so I forgot to take a picture of them!  We had a super fun time, and then we ventured over to a bar that we LOVE called Good Dog. The vibe is very chill, and they have THE BEST food!  They make these cheesesteak empanadas that are just heaven. After we were finished eating at Good Dog, we walked back to Timmy's to hang out a bit more! Timmy and Sarah put on some crazy outfits from Timmy's closet, and they proceeded to put on a bit of a dance show for the rest of us sitting around Timmy's apartment. Once their dance routines were finished, it was time to walk back to the train to head home! It was a very long day, but very fun!! 

That's Timmy, Juliff, Jen, Fro, McGee, and me!  And that's City Hall in the background. 

I love Timmy's excited face in this one!  

Juliff, McGee, and Timmy!

That's City Hall! Such an amazing building. 

Good Dog!  It doesn't look like much from the outside, but it's quite awesome and big. It has 3 floors - both the first and second floors have bars, and the 3rd floor has a pool table. 

Here's Timmy and Fro dancing! They may have been a little intoxicated. And those are teddy bears on Timmy's vest...

We had a very awesome weekend!  And we were super productive on Saturday with house projects, so that felt good too. Oh and we took Guinness to the dog park both days!  The weekends are just never long enough... I'm glad that we're about halfway to the next weekend already though! I hope you all have a great St. Patrick's Day tomorrow!! 

Spring is Here!

Well, today is supposed to get to 80 degrees. Yep, 80. It's a new record for this area... The old record was 73 degrees, so that's kinda getting blown out of the water! Oh, and just like 4 days ago the high was 30-something degrees and we had snow last week, so this weather is INSANE. I think the planet is officially broken.

Guinness had his check-up for his back on Monday night, and he was cleared to resume normal activities!!  We just can't do too much too fast, so yesterday we took him for a small walk. I'll probably take him for a slightly longer and more strenuous walk today, and we'll build-up to his normal activity level. He sure did give us a scare, but he seems healthy and happy now.

This past weekend we went to a beer festival in Philly!  It was the Philly Craft Beer Festival, and it was located in the Navy Yard area of Philly. We met up with a few of McGee's friends down there, and had a great time tasting lots of good craft beers!

Here's McGee and a few of his friends receiving their beer tastings at one of the breweries.

Here's my tasting glass! And it was pretty chilly that day (which is why I'm wearing gloves) which is why it's SO crazy that it's getting to 80 degrees today! 

And I thought I'd take this time to  let you know about a few trips we have planned for this year! 

Next month (for my bday weekend) we're heading up to NYC! We're going to head up early Saturday morning (the train is pretty quick!), and then we're going to take a water taxi around The Statue of Liberty, then go see the 9/11 Memorial, and then in the evening we're going to see Wicked on Broadway!  I'm SO excited. I've been wanting to see Wicked for YEARS, and I'm so excited to see it. We got a hotel right in Times Square for Saturday night, and then on Sunday we're going to spend some time wandering around Central Park before catching our 3pm train back home!  It should be a really lovely weekend. 

 And in May we're taking a long weekend trip to Vegas!  We're only going for 3 days, and it should be awesome. We're going to see a Cirque du Soleil show, and we're also going to see Lionel Richie sing his hits!  OH, and we decided that since we're going to be so close to one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, we want to eat at his restaurant and try his famous Beef Wellington.

And our biggest trip together this year is going to be a trip to Colorado. We're going to go camping in Rocky Mountain National Park for a few nights and do some fun hikes there, and we're also going to check out Denver and Boulder, and something I'm really excited about is that we're going to stay at The Stanley Hotel! It's the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining and it's supposed to be extremely haunted, but aside from all of that it's just a really beautiful hotel in a really amazing location (it's right outside Rocky Mountain National Park!).

Rocky Mountain National Park!! 

Here's The Stanley Hotel!