Erika's Wedding

Talk about horrible timing to break a bone in your foot and have to be crippled for 6 weeks. After #Napagate happened on Friday, I had to head to DC on Sunday.  I was going for a week vacation (DC, Maryland, Delaware) then down south to Newport News for a wedding on the weekend, then fly to Dallas for work for a week, and then head BACK to DC for a wedding in Fredericksburg. Let me tell you, its hard work being not 100%.

BUT it was well worth it to see my besties!  In the photo above is (L to R) Jessica (lives in PA), Nikki (lives in NC), Melissa (lives in VA) and me (CA). That's a lot of locations coming together to see Erika marry her beau in a beautiful church in Suffolk.

Ross looked so nervous!!

Not the best photo but I was too busy crying to get a good one.

Afterwards we headed to Downtown Hampton, VA, back to our stomping grounds circa 2008/2009.  Sometimes we clean up pretty well (and I made sure the person taking the photo cropped out my bandaged foot).

First stop was Taphouse. Man, this place has A LOT of drunken memories. Tears at the bar, phones dropped in the toilet, and plenty of strange men trying to pick us up.

Wish this picture turned out better because I was so happy to have the 3 of us together again!  Over a decade of friendship right there!

And then off to the reception to celebrate the new bride and groom!  Their friends home brew beer and they made all of the beer at the reception! Except for the cider, which was from Bold Rock Cidery (which we visited during her bachlorette weekend).

We waited and waited until we got to see the new Mr & Mrs!

Whoa scary picture!

First dance as husband and wife

Besties :)

SO happy to be together again!

Ok, I'm not ruining this photo. Cheers to over TWENTY years of friendship!  This girl has seen me at my worst (and vice versa) and we're both happy and loving life these days.

The B man and I with the bride. Not sure why he always awkwardly sticks his neck out like that in photos, we're going to have to work on that one...

When you're crippled, you get to take a seat....conveniently next to the beer....

 

And then at the end of the night it wouldn't be in true fashion if Nikki and Melissa weren't in tears...so they did just that and cried. Man, it was fun to be back with the gang!

Bachlorette Partaaaayyyy x2

As a continuation of our adventures that I posted on Friday, we continued the bachlorette party in Charlottesville, VA. Next up was Bold Rock Cidery....I've never been to a cidery before!  To be honest, we probably had had a bit of alcohol by now so this wasn't the clearest....and I don't particularly love cider, but it was F-U-N!

This is what was on tap that day

Emily and I cheersing to the day!

Pretty cool, you get to watch them fill the glass bottles from the sampling room!

And out comes the bottle with cider in it!

I also learned a little bit about cider from their FAQ site:

Am I the only one, or do other people get confused about the definitions of hard cider, sweet cider, apple juice and cider? 

No, it is confusing!  In colonial America, people referred to the alcoholic beverage made from fermented apples as just “cider” and most other countries still say "cider" when they are referring to the fermented alcoholic beverage.  However, in an attempt to get Americans to decrease consumption of alcohol around Prohibition years, the term “cider” began to be used to refer to unprocessed apple juice, which doesn’t have alcohol to start, but which can ferment given time.  The confusion has been there ever since, but here are some definitions that should help:

• Hard Cider is apple juice that has gone through a fermentation process in which its sugars have turned into alcohol.  Just as wine is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grape juice, hard cider is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented apple juice.

• Sweet Cider is apple juice that has not been processed, stabilized, or filtered, often leaving it cloudy and brownish.  Although it does not have alcohol in it initially, since it is not pasteurized or processed, it could begin to ferment in time.

• Apple Juice is the liquid (juice) pressed from apples.  Most apple juice found in stores has been filtered and pasteurized.

• Cider can refer to either hard cider or sweet cider in the U. S. because there is no standard definition for all states.  Other countries tend to use the term “cider” for the alcoholic beverage and “apple juice” for the non-alcoholic beverage and not use the terms “hard cider” or “sweet cider” at all.

So there you go!

And of course we had to stop to take a group photo!

Next up it was time to go home and THANKFULLY we all got to take a nap!  You can't get a group of 30 year old girls together for an all day drunk fest and expect us to rage on through the night. One by one we all made our way to our beds for a quick (ok...2 hour) cat nap.

We all got our glow sticks on and donned our black dresses to head out for a night of fun!  First up was Commonwealth Skybar.

I mean, how fun are all of these glow sticks?!?!?!

Next up was to Escafe!  This place was so much fun! Who knew that under black light, gin & tonics turn this color?!?!

PHOTOBOMB by Jess!

Locations
Bold Rock Cidery
1020 Rockfish Valley Hwy, Nellysford, VA 22958

Commonwealth Skybar
422 E Main St, Charlottesville, VA 22902

Escafe
215 Water St W, Charlottesville, VA 22902

Bachlorette Partaaaayyyy

We continued the weekend off with visiting several wineries in Charlottesville!  We had a full day of wineries, breweries and cideries...just the way I like it!  We had a chauffeur that drove us from place to place.

First stop was King Family Vineyard, such a cute little place!  The outside was BEAUTIFUL!!! 

But first, let's take a selfie! Me, Erika and Melissa.  If I could only count just how many selfies we had over the last 9 years....

MMMM getting the day started off right! Their rose was ON POINT!

Next stop was Veritas Vineyard & Winery.  We got to take a winery tour!

Where they separate and crush the grapes

This is where they ferment the grapes into wine

They re-use the barrels for several years.

Grapes under the overhang

Panomramic picture of us sampling the wine!

Here's a better picture of us all!

After all of that drinking, we were thankful to make a stop at Devil's Backbone Brewery for lunch!  I love that Erika loves beer as much as I do!  We sampled several of their beers while shoveling food in our mouth!

 

And the group photos continue...stay tuned for more bachlorette shennanigans....

Locations
King Family Vineyard
6550 Roseland Farm, Crozet, VA 22932

Veritas Vineyard & Winery
151 Veritas Lane, Afton Virginia 22920

Devil's Backbone Brewery
200 Mosbys Run, Roseland, VA 22967 

Charlottesville, VA

LAST STOP on my East Coast adventures was to celebrate this little lady' engagement in Charlottesville, VA.  I've been to Charlottesville once a couple of years back, when us group of girls went there for a weekend to tour some wineries and celebrate the girls finishing their masters degree from UVA.

I was so excited to go again because we had such an exciting weekend planned!  Erika has some amazing friends who came together to plan a wonderful and fun party with this lucky lady!

The day started off rafting down the river at James River Reeling and Rafting http://www.reelingandrafting.com/ and had a fun day of tubing, fun, and sun. I may have had too much fun because I went under and lost my ray bans. Insert VERY SAD FACE HERE, but alas they were a few years old and had a scratch on the lenses, and honestly I'm amazed I haven't lost them before.  We even had an old school disposable camera (that could get wet), so I'm sure there were a lot of amazing pictures that were taken, but we'll have to wait to see those.

From there, we headed back to the house and got ready to start the evening right!  First, we showered Erika with love and gave her a few things to "stock the bar".  There were these cute balloons and pictures printed of E with all of her friends.

Pictures every where!

E opening her gifts. She had to try to guess who her gifts were from. She sort of cheated because she rode with us and saw a bunch of stuff.  Oh well!

And here's a few throw back pictures to the first time we all went to Charlottesville in 2012.

 Emily, me and Erika

Me and Melissa. God that necklace looks hideous, oh the fashion...

Locations:

James River Reeling and Rafting

265 Ferry Street, Scottsville, VA, 24590

The Beach (No, not that one)

While in D.C. Hannah mentioned that she wanted to check out the new art installation at the National Building Museum, and normally I would dread looking at "art", but I knew exactly what she was talking about with this installation and I WAS SO EXCITED!!!  The exhibit is called The Beach and is around until September 7th...so if you're in DC....GET ON IT.

Little did we know that it was SO popular that we stood in line for an hour and a half to get in!!!  And we cut out probably an hour because we had pre-purchased tickets!!  Totally worth it though.  There were SO many families standing in line waiting to get in.  If I had kids I would NOT have stood in that line!  No way Jose!  And if you go, make sure you wear pants (no dresses here!) and bring a bag you can completely close (zipper or button), they told us they had a lot of people loose things in there!  Just like the real beach!

Well we finally got in....CHAOS, just CHAOS. But what a cool concept!

Hannah fairing well with her bubbles...

Me not so much....Actually it was SUPER hard to do the ball pit!  I guess as a little kid, you're much more agile and able to deal. It was pretty deep (ok, like waist deep), but it was near impossible to put your foot down flat on the floor to stand up. And it hurt A LOT to step on those damn balls to stand up.  A couple of times we had to grab each other's hands to pull us up!

It was pretty funny.

And exhausting!

Buy fun!

Getting swallowed up whole by the balls!