Flowers are in Bloom!

The first "official" day of Spring isn't until tomorrow but the past weekend was gloriously Spring-like and so we took advantage of the wonderful weather and tried to spend as much time outside as possible all weekend long! 

I had grand plans; after Friday being a gorgeous day all day long, of sitting out at the lake with Ryan to have our dinner and enjoy the gorgeous weather! We cooked a pizza and headed for the lake but the clouds had rolled in and the wind had picked up, so we ended up gobbling down our pizza and coming home pretty quickly to finish Masters of the Air and also watch an episode of Somebody Feed Phil before crashing for the evening! 

Ryan and I have been hoping to start hiking again every Saturday in March and finally - the third Saturday in March was an absolutely glorious day! So after Ryan returned from the Men's Bible Study, we packed our lunches and headed into the Shenandoah National Park for a huge chunk of the day. 

We decided to hike the Compton Peak Trail - and my navigation skills led us first up and down the Compton Peak Fire Road for a little over two miles before I realized we might be in the wrong spot. *face palm* Thank goodness it was a beautiful day! After returning to the car and eating our sandwiches, we headed out on the ACTUAL trail! 

Compton Peak is not a long trail - only 2.2 miles round trip - but be aware that the first mile is essentially all up, over rocks and switchbacks... but hey, once you've conquered that, the rest is flat or all downhill! The views from Compton Peak are gorgeous and we realized pretty quickly that we could see the Christendom College Cathedral from the peak - and beyond. 

Y'all know I can't not be goofy, so I had to get Ryan to take a picture of me pretending to "fall" off the side of the mountain, ha-ha! We stopped in at the Dickey Ridge Visitor Center before heading home to get clean and chill some and then grill burgers for dinner. We watched John Wick 4 to end the night and I slept like the dead after almost five miles of hiking! 

Sunday was another gorgeous day and after church, Ryan and I popped over to the Arboretum to see what it was looking like. Alas, Spring is still on it's way and not much was in bloom quite yet. We will have to make a return trip in the coming weekends! I spent a huge chunk of the afternoon soaking up the sun on the back deck and reading - and had Mission BBQ for dinner! It was a wonderful weekend!

And because I cannot resist sharing cuteness whenever I see it - my younger sister has been doing some training for work and while she was in her classes, a roommate stumbled upon a sweet pup that had been abandoned on the side of the road, so she brought her home! Have you ever seen anything quite so cute as this little lady?

The last report was that the little lady was going to be adopted - so her story will have a happy ending. And she was certainly spoiled for the 48 hours she was living with the girls in their crash pad! Okay - that's all I've got for today, please enjoy the pictures of flowers and the puppy!