In Which There are More Pictures than Before...

Rejoice - my faithful blog readers! All 3 of you. Ha-ha! I must have been much less encumbered by life in general this past week because I just have pictures galore this week. Between exploring, cooking, working and playing this week, I managed to snap photos all over the place. I can't believe that January is almost over; didn't this month just start? I fully buy into the idea that time moves faster every year you are alive...I feel like these weekly recap posts come so fast! Oh well, no time to dwell on the anomalies of time and space. Let's move on to pictures!

What does the fox say? Shops & Restaurants!

Monday was MLK Day and while I did have to work in the morning, I got off at 1:30 and Monday was an absolutely gorgeous day for January - in the mid 40's and sunny! My Mom told me to get home because we were going on an adventure and once I'd had some lunch, we climbed in the car and drove about thirty minutes through the curves and hills of the mountains to Middleburg! Middleburg is this great little small town (I almost want to call it a village, I swear) with so much charm! It has great shops; filled with neat and unique things as well as interesting and different places to eat.

We perused several shops - The Fun Shop, The White Elephant (where I found my awesome Union Jack box!) Lou Lou's and while looking in the Home Farm, we even got a little tea to carry along on our walking. We decided to end the evening with supper at the Red Horse Tavern and let me tell you - they have some of the best White Chicken Chili that I think I have ever eaten. Not to mention the homemade chips that they turn into nachos covered with cheese and homemade salsa - those are absolutely divine. All in all, a delightful adventure to have been on!

My awesome Union Jack box - already filled with goodies!

Cooking up a storm on Tuesday - apple pork loin anyone?

Proof that most anywhere you live, the weather is always going to be weird: Wednesday's intense snow that melted within minutes. We woke up to snow falling; not just any old snow but huge fat flakes of snow falling rapidly, and so I was left to wonder what the roads would be like when I went to work on Wednesday night. Apparently I had no need to worry because at 1:30 I took a short nap to try and shake a headache I'd had all day...and when I woke up at 2, everything was gone! By the time I left for work at 5, the sun was out...the sky was blue...and you'd have never known that at 11 that morning when I walked the dog, we were both being pelted with snow that was so thick it seemed like it was falling in buckets! And just when you think the weather can't get any weirder, when my friend Josh and I got off work at 9:30 and walked out the door, the fog was so thick we could barely see 5 feet in front of us - it was a fog that you could literally feel all around you. I drove home very slowly...mostly because I could only see the road about a few feet out... Weather is weird.

What are these things on me & how do I get them off?

Check out the size of the snowflake stuck in my hair?!?

Holy snowflake!

Snow isn't so easy to get on camera when it's falling...so I was tickled that this turned out so well.

Just starting to stick to the trees around noon....

And then it was 5 PM & the world looked vastly different.

The rest of the week seems to have passed without much standing out in my mind... I ate chocolates at work on Wednesday night with Joshua - pumpkin truffles are cute but not so tasty. I was off on Thursday, so I applied for jobs (I'm telling y'all...the number applied for at this point is at least 200+...I can't dwell on that too much or there will be a spiral) and whipped up some supper in the crock pot - some supper that was a resounding hit! I'll be honest, on Friday morning I was a bum and binge watched three episodes of House of Cards before heading to work. Not my proudest moment, but I think we all have those days...right? I met my parents at the Alamo after work for dinner and a movie (American Sniper) and then drove home in the weird weather. See - weird weather is a theme this past week. It was supposed to snow but it rained and rained and snowed only a wee bit and then sleeted up a storm, so that on Saturday morning, there were little piles of icy crunch everywhere.

Pumpkin truffle - cute but not that appetizing.

What frozen fog looks like on the deck....

Watson watching the world pass him by from my bed...

And also being thoroughly rotten, napping with his dragon Figment.

So intense. So good.

Saturday morning brought with it some more weird weather - would it rain? Would it snow? Maybe a little bit of both? We made a quick journey to the land of Wal-Mart before my Mom and I headed to a baby shower at our church and wouldn't you know, by about 2 in the afternoon the sun had come out again and it was looking like a glorious afternoon! I do love little people...and so I thoroughly enjoyed celebrating the arrival of a new infant; there were clothes and cake and games...and of course, a few little tykes to cuddle in the process. And you may ask....why won't she just type b-a-b-y?? Well, one of the games we played involved everyone starting the shower with a clothespin on their shirt and if you said the word baby, you lost your clothespin. At the end, the winner was the person with the most clothespin - which was yours truly. I love babies but I can hush talking about them when the game is on the line!

I don't know why he sits like this...he's so odd sometimes!

I also have no clue why the ice made polka dots...but it certainly looked cool!

Amelia was pretty tickled with herself on Saturday afternoon.

The shower entertainment - courtesy of Hadley & Amelia & their silly antics!

What's that word again?

Watson got a bath on Saturday night & it was obviously extremely tiring...he could not take it.

Sunday was such a bummy day...after we went to church, we combed through all the boxes downstairs in storage to see what of Lindsey's needed to be pulled out and stacked to the side for her impending move and in the process we found some of my things that I haven't seen for awhile - movies I forgot I had...and things that I can't wait to unpack again once I have my own home again. I know, that doesn't sound very bummy and I guess it really wasn't. Oh well, it actually seemed kind of relaxing, ha! After supper, we redecorated my room with my bedding which kind of tickled me, I'm not sure why though. We watched Downton Abbey and went to sleep bracing for this major snowstorm...but so far, nothing too intense has happened. As I've said more than once this post - weather is weird.

Snuggles with Mia on Sunday morning.

There were hoot owls on her sweater - could it be more precious?

Owl pillow - I have not seen you in so long!

Last but not least - I posted a picture of me with my owl pillow and two people, within ten minutes of one another (two people who don't even know each other...) told me that I looked just like Lindsey in the picture. Lindsey and I agreed that we didn't really see it...but oh well. A picture for your comparison below...

We really look so alike?