a little late, but...

I finally sat down and made myself figure out iMovie. Well, a little bit. While I quite enjoy the idea of making videos, and some of the process was satisfying and enjoyable, there were about as many moments of pulling my hair out sheer frustration. I'm sure once you spend quite a bit of time with the program and you become familiar with its quirks it gets better. But it is far from intuitive and quite prohibitive at times. Hello? No Save File? For reals?

But I digress.

I made a little video with clips from our stay-at-home vacation a few months back. We decided to save money and not do anything big. Instead, we each came up with several ideas and wrote them on scraps of paper to put in a grab bag. Things like "go to the zoo" "see a museum we haven't been to yet" "get cupcakes" "have a picnic" "movie marathon" etc. Every day we picked something out of the bag and attempted to do it. I say attempted because we learned that after walking around at the zoo and the county fair we maybe didn't want to spend the day walking around Kings Dominion. So we tossed it and picked something else. When we realized that the beach we thought we could take our dog to actually did not allow dogs in the summer, we tossed it and picked something else. The grab bag was a good idea, I think, but maybe not for an entire week. Sometimes a girl just needs to relax. mmhmm.

long weekend

This weekend did not turn out as planned, but it did turn out to be quite spectacular. 

The original plan was to spend a long weekend in a cabin in the middle of the mountains, hosted by one of my best friends on the planet. When a family emergency prompted her to cancel the trip I was a little heartbroken (and concerned for her and her family of course), but the mister and I decided not to just sit around at the house and instead take full advantage of each day that we had off together. It so rarely happens, after all. 

To kick off the weekend, I had an unexpected Friday night off and the mister already had plans to see a movie with a friend so I decided to plan a girls night out! I don't even know the last time this happened. Yummy dinner, a little shopping, and a movie (The Help, actually quite cute) was such a treat and I'm glad we could make a night of it!

On Saturday we decided to head over to Great Falls, since I'm fairly certain I had never been there even having lived here for so long. I have to admit I was expecting something a little...greater. It was pretty and all, but it reminded me more of hiking alongside the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg than anything I would call Great Falls. To be fair there is some water spilling over some rocks. I guess you could call that Falls. I don't know. I generally think there should be a significant falling of water over several stories to constitute a Falls, but that could just be me. It was lovely nonetheless.

On Sunday we picked up a few odds and ends at Ikea, got some Orange Julius at the mall, got caught in a downpour, and did some relaxing. 

Monday was the big day. The one we had planned out. Monday we headed down to VA Beach. We headed out pretty early in the morning and got there before noon, and from the looks of things when we got there we were in for a relatively chilly, windy, overcast day.

Not exactly what you dream of for a day at the beach, but hey, I was prepared to take it. I was just happy to be at the beach. And the wind made for good kite flying (this was not planned, I just happened to still have the kite in my car from the last time we used it a couple of years ago) And then this happened.

It turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day at the beach. The clouds went along their merry way and left the sky bright blue. It warmed up, sent us in the water, and made for a lovely day. Until we realized I was getting burned. I had applied sunscreen, several times, because I know myself. But it was no match for the fury of the sun. And today I can barely walk it hurts so bad. I'm carrying my aloe lotion around with me like a baby with her bottle. Do I regret it? No. Am I going to trust spray sunscreen the next time I go to the beach? No.

Tennis

I've been feeling sorry for myself lately because I don't feel like we have taken full advantage of the summer and those lovely summer days are going to be over before you know it. Like, we haven't gone swimming even once. Haven't gone to a park. Only had one (or two?) BBQs. No Kings Dominion. Etc, etc. I could sit here and make excuses like my work schedule is crazy and the mister and I only have 2-3 days off together most months and when that happens we end up having to do things like clean and run errands and buy groceries. It's not very exciting, but that's what it is. But I am very much looking forward to next weekend at the cabin, and all of the summertime leisure that takes place there. Thank goodness for that.

Oh, and here's a little video that's pretty much what summer is all about. The band's name is Tennis. In case you were wondering.

Marathon from Oncle Spike on Vimeo.

Happy Summer!

Oh and by the way I had a pretty great weekend. It actually felt like a real weekend, which for some reason or another is kind of a rarity around here. I FELT LIKE I had two full days off, and it was amazing. The mister and I went out to eat, did some work on our first home decorating project (a revamped 1970s coffee table, I can't wait to share it!), played at the carnival, napped, read some books, and tended to a cat who decided to eat a bunch of yarn and have some problems pooping it out. Well, that last part wasn't all that fun but so far no surgery so it could be worse. Trying to do some wedding planning. Speaking of which, do you read my wedding blog? Do you want to continue reading my wedding blog? Then I need feedback! That's kind of the point! Ok great, I got that out of my system.