Christmas 2013

Lordy, this was the busiest Christmas I've ever had!! I have done Christmas almost every day for a whole week - here's the breakdown!

1) Friend Christmas Party!
Last Friday Kyle and I had a bunch of our friends over for some spiked apple cider, snacks, and holiday fun - complication: Kyle got the flu on Friday :( so I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get everything done.  But it was a good time!  I felt like Susie Homemaker because I made the cider, as well as buffalo dip, hot pimento cheese dip, guacamole, and mango salsa.  Kyle had fun despite being sick because his friends brought over their "DJ box" - I forget what the actual terminology is for the music thingy.

2) Paramount Show Stables Christmas party & High School Reunion
On Saturday I went and rode little Leo who was wild (but fun) and I survived.  That night Mother and I went to the barn Christmas party which was great because I was able to catch up with all my friends becasue I really never get to see anyone from the barn because I always ride at like 7:00 at night after I get off of work.

After that, Alyssa and I went to my 5 year high school reunion (weird right?).  I was REALLY dreading it because I do not look back on Broughton in a positive manner (aka I HATE the Broughton type of people) BUT it was not bad and I actually had an alright time.  It was fun seeing what everyone is doing now.  Some people were the same old thing so I just left them to do their usual thing.  Alyssa's sorority sister Grace, and Whitney from high school and I all had fun dancing after we left the reunion, so that was also a highlight of the night.

3) Family Christmas Party
On Sunday, Kyle and I had our immediate families over for a potluck type dinner party and it was TOO MUCH fun.  I had a great time.  I've been wanting to have everyone over for a while to see our house, and also just practice my dinner party skillz.  I made individual beef wellingtons and they turned out SO good, even though I didn't use filet mignon!

4) Christmas Eve
Louise and I took the puppies on a walk out at Lake Johnson which was nice to get out of the house since I didn't have to work on Christmas Eve.  They had a lot of fun!  I thought I took a video of them playing in a creek, but I really am terrible at working with technology, so I only have a less active video  that I took later to show to y'all because I don't know how to press buttons.

Mother made us all the best Christmas Eve dinner, and I think her roast beef was better than ever!!  We killed 2 bottles of Veuve, a huge wedge of brie, and 18 Yorkshire puddings amongst four people - not bad, considering we all ate a full dinner as well.

5) Christmas Day
Christmas was busy again this year, which isn's super ideal because I love to laze around in my jammies and take a lil nap midday, but I did get to see a lot of family which nice.  Kyle and I had breakfast and presents with my dad, and then hung out there until he and Louise left to go to my cousins house in Chapel Hill for lunch.  Kyle and I then and went to my mom's house, where I made her cry with a picture of Cowboy (my goal in life around holidays).  We then went home to get fanicified to go eat Christmas dinner at Gerry & Andy's.  We ate and ate and ate delicious things that Gerry prepared, while celebrating both Cindy's birthday (because she went home to Nashville today) and Christmas.  They are so nice and always make me feel so welcome in their family - I really appreciate it.  Kyle, Matt, and I then made Cindy cry with her birthday/Christmas present which was a hand painted wood barn door with North Carolina and family related words on it.

SO! I've been doing a lot and had a lot to recuperate from because Kyle was really sick for a few days there.  Luckily iContact has been really good and has let us out early every day this week because things have been really slow.

I hope you all had a great Christmas!!!

Introductions

This past weekend Kyle, Sienna, Mother, Louise and I all traveled to Charlotte for some pre-Christmas family time.  Kyle has never met my mother's mother, nor my aunt/uncle/cousins, so it was pretty overdue.

Now, my grandmother has Alzheimers, and was never the nicest grandmother in the world to begin with, so I was a little concerned how she would be meeting Kyle, but both Kyle and her were on their best behavior.  My grandmother was cute, friendly, and welcoming to Kyle, and he was charming, so I was ecstatic with how their first meeting went.

I had big plans for Saturday, but they fell through just a bit... We had brunch with my grandmother, her two wonderful friends Bruce & Reggie, and my aunt, uncle, and one cousin.  It was great, and at a French style bistro, so I had a delicious little macaron dessert at the end, which always puts me in a good mood.

After brunch we went to the Charlotte mall, Southpark.  I'd ordered some wedding bands to try on from my favorite jewelry store, Van Cleef & Arpels, because they have a little booth in the Neiman Marcus there, however the woman I was in communication with dropped the ball and didn't follow up on the delivery of my rings, so they had not yet arrived.  I was very displeased because I'd been excited and was let down.  I already really dislike Neiman Marcus, and this did nothing to improve their image in my eyes.  Instead we went and tried on some bands at Tiffany's which were nice, but I just want something sort of unique, which is not really their forte.  We wandered around the mall some more and Kyle was super sweet.  I love love love stationary (like more than is normal) and I was admiring some adorable holiday cards in Kate Spade, and he sneakily bought them for me and I never noticed!  He carried them around for like ten minutes before giving them to me because I was totally oblivious and didn't notice and he didn't want to carry them anymore.  It was so nice of him! I love love love him tooooo.

3 French Hens

We finished out the day eating dinner with Bruce & Reggie at one of my favorite restaurants in Charlotte, Rooster's!  There was lots of good food, wine, and good conversations.

On Sunday, we began our second round of introductions - Sienna met my grandfather!  It's been long overdue, and I wanted him to see her, because she is colored similarly to one of the dogs he had in the past.
She was her normal wild self, but also sweet and happy, so I'm pretty sure he liked her.  My grandfather recently got a new dog, so we tried to introduce them.  Sienna was fairly well behaved, but Georgia is still working on her training, so they ended up being a little too excitable together to go on a walk.  A big thank you to my grandfather for a great brunch of bloody marys and killer blueberry french toast!

Sienna and the Christmas tree at my grandfather's!

It was a great weekend in Charlotte, and I loved having so much family time close to Christmas.  Plus any time I can spend a whole weekend with Kyle to myself makes me happy!  We are both busy a lot, so it doesn't happen frequently.

Side note - I made a KILLER coconut curry soup on Sunday night.  Kyle said it was one of the best things we've made yet (added bonus - shrimp from right in front of my grandparent's house in Gloucester, that I had frozen from a month or two ago.  Shout out to my auntie Mary for giving us the shrimp!)

Recipe here: Coconut Curry Soup

Christmas in Middleburg

I just had one of the best weekends ever - it's always good when I can check items off my bucket list!!

Mother and I traveled to Middleburg, VA to visit our friend, Rachel, and also visit the town.  Middleburg is the horseman's (or woman's) paradise.  It is big hunt country, and could give Lexington, KY a run for it's money as being the most horse-centered town in the entire United States.  We visited Middleburg six years ago when we bought Dutch, and have dreamed of going back since then.  When we visited before, it was a horsey winter wonderland - everything was covered in snow, there were HUGE fields contained by stone fences, with fox hunting jumps built into them, amazing barns just barely visible from the road, and every store in the town, selling horse related/inspired items.  It was magical.  And then we ended up with Dutch to boot, cutie pie baby horse that he was back then...

Rachel moved to Middleburg three years ago, and we'd been talking about visiting her for a long time, so finally we worked it out!!  I don't think I can go 6 more months without going back, much less three or six years.  Middleburg is just absolute heaven.

Robert Duval's farm (and above)

Anyways, Mother and I got up to Middleburg midday on Friday, after traveling through some of the most gorgeous scenery just to get into town.  We ate a quick lunch and I could not even contain my excitement.  Everything was as I remembered it, but also better.  After lunch we wandered in and out of their many antique, gift, and clothing stores.  I feel like at this point, its needless to say I wanted nearly everything, because so much of it was horsey, but also so classy.  I can't even put into words how great it was just looking at all of the neat stuff that is in the stores, but it is all catered to the people who are attracted to the town.

The Red Fox Inn 

After we shopped for a few hours, it was time to meet Rachel, who was almost done working at The Tack Box for the day.  From her tack shop, she drove us out to her barn to see her new baby horses, both of which shipped in from Germany this fall.  They were fancy and beautiful.  Then, we went to the Salamander Resort for drinks and appetizers.  Sheila Johnson, who started BET Network is a huge horsewoman, as is the rest of her family.  They've owned a beautiful farm in Middleburg for a while now - we saw it the last time we visited, but Sheila recently built a gorgeous upscale resort that just opened in August.  It was *so* nice - fancy drinks, great food, stunning decor (horsey, of course) and on top of all that, Rachel is friends with Sheila's right hand man, who dreamed up the entire resort.  He and his wife were ridiculously nice people.  We drank and caught up for a while, took pictures in front of the Christmas tree, and admired the beautiful gingerbread barn, made by the Salamander chef.  Have I mentioned on top off all the regular beauty, how special it was to be in Middleburg around Christmastime too!!

Teddy!

Beau!

Beau! 

Myself, my mother, and Rachel

The gingerbread house of the barn at the Salamander Resort

Painting of the Middleburg Christmas Parade, in Salamander Resort

A stunning painting in Salamander Resort

Saturday was an early morning, because we had to go save our seats for the Christmas parade at 9 am!  The horse and hound parade was at 11 AM, and then the regular parade was at 2 PM, but thousands of people come into Middleburg from Washington, DC to watch the parade, so we had to claim our spot at the bar early!  It was great fun - we met Rachel's friends, drank Bailey's & coffee, did some serious people watching, walked around some more, watched the parade - it was like upscale tailgating!  My favorite part, which was on my bucket list, was the horse and hound parade.  The Chronicle of the Horse magazine is headquartered in Middleburg, so they cover the Christmas parade every year, and so it became an item on my bucket list.  While that part of the parade is fast, only a minute or two of about 20-30 huntsman, it was perfect.  We had a great spot to watch the huntsman and hounds go by, and it was just as I imagined!

...drool

I just love it!

The Corgi Corps

Ruby & Rachel with the Corgi Corps

Corgis everywhere - Kyle's heaven!

gal time

So many horses in the parade!

More horses!

and more!

Santa doesn't ride on a traditional parade float in Middleburg!

Hey Sheila!

After the parade we went to one of Rachel's friend's houses to warm up and eat some food, while the traffic died down.  We stayed for a few hours before going home, getting in our PJs, pouring some champagne, and turning on Modern Family in the background while we talked about the fun day, and still caught up more.  It's funny how with good friends, you don't always feel like you need to talk a lot, but it takes days to catch up, because more goes on in your lives than you realize.

Jack the cat, with Rachel's wood stove

Snow 

Rachel's perfect little farmhouse, in the snow that began to fall as we tried to leave

Do we have to go home?

Maybe around midnight we rolled into bed, and then got up early to next day to very sadly leave around 7:30 to beat the snow and ice that was traveling up I-95.  It was a perfect trip in every way, except that it was much much too short.

Fall Days

Kyle and I had a lovely Thanksgiving at his grandparent's house, and everyone ate way too much good food.  

I found out some bad news about one of my sorority sisters.  I knew she'd been battling cancer since high school, but last night it finally overcame her.  She was the first person I've known personally who died much too young.  I generally tend to close the door on emotions which cause me pain, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about her all week.  I happened to be at the sorority house last Sunday and they told me she was stopping her chemo, and had about 2 weeks left.  A rather generous estimate seeing as how in reality she only had 5 days.  I sent her a letter Monday, and I desperately hope she received it.  It just makes me so sad because she would have done big things, she was that type of person that was going to be someone great.  It also makes me sad because she was not the type of person who made a big fuss over being sick, but for that reason, many people didn't realize how bad things were.  I wish everyone had the chance to tell her how much she meant to all of them, because she made a big difference to a lot of people, myself included.  

Because I've been sad, it's been nice having the time to get outside in the daylight and walk around.  Sienna and I went for a great walk for an hour on Thanksgiving, and then today she, Kyle and I went out to Lake Johnson for some fresh air.  We had so much fun.  The weather was crisp, it was sunny, no wind.  We let Sienna off the leash at points so she could run, and she tried to learn to like wading in the lake.  Nothing gives me the warm fuzzies more than seeing a dog happy.  There is something about a dog having fun that makes you feel like everything in the world will be okay.  It was also nice spending time with Kyle with no distractions like other people, phones, etc.  The walk today was exactly what I needed to get my head right.  Our walk today was one of the happiest times I've had in a while.  Not like I'm not normally happy, but I've gotten a little stuck in the work/daily life rut.  Adding to my list of things I'm thankful for - I'm thankful to be alive and healthy, as is most everyone I care about.  I'm thankful I have Kyle in my life, and I'm thankful I can have moments like today which make me feel a million miles away from all the negative things in life.

She had a good time in the mud

Notice Sienna's face...

A good looking pair

She love her Kylie

<3