House Tour: Our Virginia Beach Home

It's been quiet around here, and a lot of that is due to life with a toddler (you mamas that blog and mom are so impressive!), but a lot of that is also because we have officially moved! Virginia has been our home for 4 years, but as of this month, we are Texas residents once more!

We bought our very first home in Virginia, and while every place we have lived is sentimental for one reason or another, this place is loaded with memories and nostalgia, and we were so sad to leave. We brought our son home to this house. We conquered our first deployment in this house. We just love this house. 

Here we are in June 2015 when we bought the house!

I always like to do house tours on the blog after we leave, and thankfully I have a lot of pictures of this house since we just sold it! I wish I had pictures to share when it was a little more decorated, but we took down a lot of pictures/personal decorations before we listed it for sale.

The front of the house is Aggie maroon, which was totally coincidental, but we loved that!

The downstairs was basically all one room with the exception of a small bathroom. It was very open concept and made for a great entertaining space.

Downstairs:

Upstairs:

We really loved the layout of the upstairs because all four bedrooms were upstairs, and the laundry room was upstairs too. Having our bedroom just across the hall from the nursery was very convenient, especially in those early days where I was up 4 times a night!

Nursery:

(The canvas is from Canvas On The Cheap... great prices, great service, great product!)

Guest Bedroom/My Office:

 

Guest Bathroom:

Parker's Office (we hung our diplomas but other than that, nothing was really done with this room):

Master Bedroom:

Balcony Off Master:

Master Bath:

That's our Virginia home! The memories we made inside these walls will last a lifetime. The time we spent going on walks around the neighborhood, swimming in the neighborhood pool, and hanging out in the cul de sac with our neighbors was our favorite. I don't know if we will ever love a home and neighborhood as much as we did this one, but I sure am grateful we got to live there while we did!

Here we are on our last day of living in this home! Preston and I boarded a plane for Texas immediately after this picture was taken, and Parker and Jenny joined us a few days later!

Making Memories With My Mom

Some of you know that I went home to Texas for a good chunk of this deployment. I left early August and intended to stay about 2 months. Well, 2 months turned into almost 4, and I ended up staying until Thanksgiving! I never anticipated spending so much time back home during deployment, but it honestly ended up being a Godsend. I was so distracted and constantly surrounded by people who love me. Not to mention, my twin sister popped out one cute kiddo that I have since become completely obsessed with. 

My mom flew to Virginia back in August to make the 20 hour drive to Texas with Jenny and me. That was her second time doing that drive with us, and I was so thankful. I was also 11 weeks pregnant, so kudos to my mom for listening to me whine approximately the whole time about how poorly I was feeling. My rockstar of a mom did the drive with me AGAIN the two days after Thanksgiving to make sure Jenny and I got back to Virginia safely and in one piece. This time, rather than being accompanied by 11 week pregnancy sickness, my mom got to hang out with 7 months pregnant have-to-pee-need-to-eat-all-the-time me. #blessher

20 hours in the car is a long time, but doing it with my mom is seriously so much fun. When you live far away from family, any time you get is a precious gift, and this road trip definitely gave us the gift of time! We pushed farther the first day and drove about 13 hours so that we would only have to do 7 the second day. We left on Black Friday and arrived Saturday afternoon, and we were so blessed with an easy trip and no traffic. Thankfully everyone was at the mall instead of on the road!

I give Jenny MVP for the trip. That's just not a fun 2 days for a pup, and she spent the majority of it doing this. I guess that's comfortable?

 My mom was able to stay with me for a couple of days in Virginia before heading back to Texas, and we had a full to-do list! We walked through what the nursery will look like, redecorated a few spots around the house, tested out gliders at Babies R Us, and online shopped our little hearts out (tis the season for Cyber Monday, yall). 

Since mom has lived in Texas her whole life, she's missed out on the beauty of a real Fall (I had too until the Navy sent us East!). One of my favorite parts of the trip was hearing her "ooh" and "aah" about the colors of the tree leaves. We made sure to do a few nature walks once we arrived in Virginia so she could really appreciate it! Jenny loved showing her Grammy around her neck of the woods!

Cheers to you, mom. The most selfless woman I know. I don't know what I would do without you!

Virginia Is For Lovers

When you enter the state of Virginia, you are greeted by a giant sign that reads "Virginia is for lovers". I suppose it's the state's slogan. When we first moved to Virginia, I was open in saying I wasn't necessarily the biggest fan. It was cold, it was different... it wasn't home. Fast forward 2 years, and I couldn't love the place more. It really has become home, and even though we would love to end up in the South again one day, Virginia will always be home to me. I am thankful we don't have any impending moves because I am just not ready to say goodbye to the lovers state!

I have spent a large chunk of the Fall in Texas, but this past week, I came back to Virginia to spend some time with friends. It was just the best and much needed! I was with my friends every day and rarely spent any time at home. It was a week so full of love and just really has me counting my blessings. The military isn't always the easiest lifestyle, but it sure has produced some of the sweetest friendships. 

The first part of the week was spent prepping for a baby shower my friends and I threw for our friend Ali. I helped with food and the crafting/DIY portion, and my friend Karly and I stayed up until midnight the night before crafting for the event and loving every minute of it. Here are the hosts with the mama to be!

Fun fact about Ali and those sweet babies (she is pregnant with twins!) she is carrying: they are due on the exact same date as my baby. Neither of us had an easy road to parenthood, and the three babies in this picture were so wanted and so prayed for. Getting to walk through every step of pregnancy together has been such a joy!

I had a dinner with some fellow deployment warriors to celebrate hitting a deployment milestone, and our sweet husbands sent flowers for the event. Parker made sure my bouquet included lilies because he knows stargazer lilies are my favorite flower. He told the flower shop to add stargazer lilies but that if that wasn't possible, regular lilies were great. The bouquet was full of beautiful lilies that made me smile from ear to ear. It's the little things, yall.

I ended the week with a little girls night. Good old conversation, yummy food, and lots of laughs. Very thankful for them!

A few of the husbands met at the same restaurant and had guys night on the other side of the restaurant. It was funny seeing them every time Ali and I had to get up to go to the bathroom, which was quite frequently because #pregnancy. 

There were so many wonderful little moments that I didn't take the time to photograph, but overall it was just the best week. Friends make life better, and they sure do help deployment go by faster!

Busch Gardens

From the time we moved to Virginia 2 years ago, we have been talking about going to Busch Gardens. Busch Gardens is a giant theme park in Williamsburg, VA that reminds me of Six Flags over Texas. Lots of food, lots of lines, and more importantly, lots of roller coasters!

Fun fact about me: I'm not a roller coaster girl. I so want to be the girl that loves the thrill of a roller coaster and is fearless of plummeting to her death, but that just isn't me. So, as much as we have been talking about making a Busch Gardens trip, I was also fine with delaying it for as long as possible.

Parker really wanted to go over Memorial Day weekend, so I put on my big girl britches and off we went! We went the Friday of the long weekend, and it ended up being a pretty good day to go. It was crowded, but not near as bad as it could have been! We arrived excited for the day ahead of us!

There are 7 big roller coasters at Busch Gardens. My plan was to ride none of them, but that would make me a pretty darn boring companion, so I sucked it up and accepted the fact that I was in for a day of roller coasters. I can be such a head case sometimes because we ended up having a blast! I was shaky and scared before each big roller coaster but had a lot of fun on each. 

The griffon was definitely the everest of the group. There is a 205' straight drop... yikes! That was the one I probably enjoyed the least, but even then I still quite enjoyed myself when it was all said and done. Each time we got to the top of a roller coaster before a big drop, I yelled "I love you!" to Parker because I still thought there was about a 50% chance we were going to die. Dramatic, party of me. 

Parker absolutely loved the roller coasters, and hearing him so happy and laughing during each made all the scariness worth it. I loved seeing how excited he got for each ride! He was the best buddy to go with. 

Seriously though, check out that drop! They also dangle you at the top for about 5-10 seconds. Just long enough for you to start losing your ever-loving mind. 

Standard at amusement parks, there were cameras along the ride to take pictures that you could then purchase. The cheapo in me started taking pictures of the screen to get the pictures and then played dumb when I got in trouble every. single. time. Oopsies. This one is from the Verbolten, one of our favorites because it was pitch black most of the ride!

When Parker asked me at the end of the day what my favorite ride was, I quickly said "the log ride". And it really was. I did actually enjoy the roller coasters, but I also had a minor freak-out moment before boarding every single one. The log ride was pleasant and fun and we laughed the whole time. I love you, log ride. 

I was promised ice cream in exchange for riding the roller coasters, so I happily cashed in and had myself a cone. Happy girl indeed!

We took a small break from the thrill-seeking to catch a dog show. I think it was called a dog show, but they had dogs, cats, birds, and even a rat. It was adorable! The animals did little tricks and just enjoyed being on the stage. At the end, they told us all of the animals were from rescue shelters, which of course made me love it even more! 

Then, my life became complete. They had a sloth named Casey. I got to pet her. Be still my sloth-loving heart! We watched her waddle around on the ground and hang idly on her tree. Love love loved the sloth!

After 5 roller coasters, I started to feel really nauseous so I threw in the towel. I should have just sucked it up but I had hit my expiration date! We caught a show before heading out that reminded us a lot of the type of show we saw on our cruise. Then, it was time to go home. Busch Gardens was a ton of fun, and I'm so glad we finally went. Hopefully it will become an annual tradition for the remainder of our time on the east coast!

Parents In Virginia, 2016 Edition

Earlier this month, we had the pleasure of hosting Parker's parents for the long weekend! We really love having people stay with us and were so excited for their visit!

Tim and Leigh are always such awesome visitors. They are easy going and fun, and we just love hosting them in our home here in Virginia! Parker's work schedule has been very unpredictable lately (#Navylife), so we were so thankful he ended up having Saturday and Sunday off to hang out with us!

Saturday morning, we went on a long nature walk with the pup and basked in the glorious sun. When you live in Virginia, you wait a long time for that precious sun to come out after wintertime.

We got cleaned up and headed to downtown Norfolk for the afternoon! It's funny, because when we moved to this area of the country 2 years ago, I really didn't care for it. At all. But the more time I spend here, the more I fall in love with this place. We have a really cool downtown area, and it seems like there is always a festival going on! 

This particular day, we stumbled upon a hole in the wall restaurant that (in my opinion) has the best burgers in Norfolk! Locals, stop in Jack Brown's Beer & Burger Joint! Parker and I split the Danny Laruso, a burger topped with cream cheese and jalapeno jelly. I'm still thinking about it. So good!

We walked along the water to our afternoon activity... a dinner cruise on the Spirit of Norfolk! Tim and Leigh were so sweet to plan this, and we honestly had the best time! It was a 2 hour cruise with dinner and dancing. Pardon my picture of a picture below. 

The food was absolutely delicious (I thought it was better than the food we had on our cruise to The Bahamas!) and the dancing didn't disappoint. Parker and I are the first to admit that we are absolutely terrible dancers. I lack any semblance of rhythm and am one of the worst dance partners you could have, but we absolutely love dancing together. We danced most of the cruise along with Leigh (and Tim at one point too!). The dancing was our favorite part!

The top of the boat made for some pretty sightseeing as well!

The dinner cruise was definitely the highlight of their visit, and I am grateful to them for giving us that fun experience! Their visit was over too quickly, but isn't that how it always goes? Loved our time together!