Fall Fun

I have been falling behind with our blog and taking pictures is something we don't remember much anymore.  But thanks to our phones, here are some things we did this fall.

Bike ride around University of Richmond

Goochland Drive In and Todd trying a "Gooch Dog" 

Rock Climbing at the Manchester Bridge with Nelson

Running and biking along the James River

 

Snowshoe, WV

While I was in New York, Todd headed to Snowshoe, West Virginia for a guys trip.  The resort was offering an awesome deal on all you can bike and golf for the weekend so he convinced some friends to go with him.  (He sold them on the all you can golf part, not so much the biking part) 

Matt- Todd- Eric O. (Eric I. was there too)

These are the only two pictures from their trip.  However, they did keep themselves busy by golfing 45 holes and biking every single day.  I kept wondering if I would hear from him while I was in New York.  Natalie and I were the only ones that didn't hear from our husbands! All the other girls talked to their husbands multiple times a day to check in on their kids and stuff.  I did get one text message and Natalie got an email from Matt informing us that they were doing well!  Apparently they didn't have service but I still don't think that would have changed anything!!  They were having too much fun. Maybe being the only ones without kids played a role in that one too!

Todd loves Snowshoe so much.  A few weeks later, we went back for him to bike one more time before they closed for the winter.  Nelson tagged along too.  It was pretty cold that weekend so I decided to stay inside drinking hot chocolate and reading my book.  Unfortunately, about a hour before the resort closed, Nelson had a pretty bad crash and ended up breaking his collar bone.  We have it on video but for some reason it won't upload right now so I'll try again later.

Girls Trip to NYC!!

Labor Day Weekend + New York City + 8 Girls = One Awesome Trip!

Me- Ashlee- Natalie- Paige- Nichole- Danielle- Jessica- Emily

This was my first time to New York City and it will definitely be a trip I will never forget.  These girls are awesome and so much fun to be with.  

The trip started out with all 8 of us piling in Ashlee's van Friday afternoon.  Danielle brought along some old CD mixes and it made the long car ride go by much quicker.  We all sung our hearts out to NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and Britney.  Surprisingly, we all still remember every single word to their songs! 

The plan was to stay at Nichole's friend's apartment because she was going to be out of town for the weekend.  My friends, Nichole, Jessica, and Ashlee, tell this story much better so you should read their blogs.  I'm not a very good story teller and their versions are much better then mine.
Anyways, we put the address in the GPS and off we went.  As we are getting closer to the "apartment," we are looking for all the things she told us, like a grocery store on the corner and a red van out front.  She also told us, she lives a block away from Central Park, on the 3rd floor of the building, and it's on an one way street.  But we see the grocery store and the red van so we figure we are at the right place and find a parking spot.  We unload our bags, pillows, air mattresses, etc... and start walking up to the apartment.  It is well after midnight at this point and there are a bunch of men sitting on their porches asking us where the sleep over is at and we also see cops on every corner (which may or may not be a good sign).  We all just kind of laugh and continue on our way.  Nichole's friend told her she lived in a really safe area so we figured we were good.  We get to the apartment and Nichole cannot unlock the door.  We try multiple times, check the address and have no idea what is going on.  It's the right street and apartment number.  We haven't realized yet that this apartment only has 2 floors, it's on a two way street, we crossed a bridge after being in Manhattan and we saw the Brooklyn Art Museum just a few blocks away.  Nichole calls her friend and starts explaining what the apartment looks like and we are totally at the wrong place.  We all start running back to the van and realize the address in the GPS took us to Brooklyn, not Manhattan.  We safely made it back to the car and all started laughing.  I'm sure everyone that saw us on that street had a good laugh too.  8 white, Mormon girls piling out of the mini van, carrying our pillows to some random apartment at 12:30am was a site to see.  Thankfully no one opened the door we were trying to get in.  We finally arrived at the real apartment and were very happy to be staying in such a nice place after all.

Saturday morning, Natalie, Paige and I went on a nice run around Central Park and wished we lived by such an awesome place to run.  Sorry Richmond, you have no good places to run!
Then the rest of the day was packed with fun.

Times Square

Greenwich Village

(we all love our colored pants!)

Flatiron Building

Washington Square Park

Food Tour

Broadway- Jersey Boys

Sunday was another full day of fun.
Central Park Tour

Riding the Subway

9/11 Memorial

After the memorial, we split up into two groups.  A few of us were hoping to go to another broadway but we as we were walking back to the subway, we soon found out that we had already missed the last show.  So we went with plan B- shop and eat.

Sprinkles

Serendipity 

FAO Schwarz

 

We made it back to the apartment and talked for a few more hours before crashing.  

Thanks ladies for such an awesome trip.  And big thanks to Danielle for taking the pictures and Nichole for making these awesome photo collages that I stole!! 

Backpacking- Mount Rogers

We finally made it to Grayson Highland State Park on our backpacking trip after a few stops along the way :).  The main goal of this trip was to hike to the top of Mount Rogers.  Mount Rogers is Virginia's highest point and is 5,728 ft high.  It is the only state high point East of the Mississippi River that you cannot drive to the top of.  (Yes, my husband knows all sorts of random facts!)  Todd has a goal to stand on top of every state's highest point.

We pulled in the parking lot on Friday afternoon and after talking to a man that goes by the name of "Lone Wolf" we were set.  He told us exactly where we wanted to go and where we should camp.  We hiked in and set up camp not to far from the summit.  It was very pretty and we actually felt like we were in real mountains, not hills.
   

The next day we woke up to rain. So we pulled out our rain clothes and hiked up to the top of Mount Rogers.  The summit was a little disappointing because it's covered in trees so there wasn't much of a view.  But that's okay, it was way too rainy and foggy that I don't think we would have been able to see much either way.  We found the summit seal, took some pictures, and headed back to the tents to enjoy some hot chocolate. 

 

The best part of our hike was all the wild ponies we saw.  They were everywhere.  They were so cute and little.  We even saw a few baby ones.  They were all pretty friendly and would let us pet them.  They just roam around on the mountain and don't seem to mind all the hikers.