Justin's 30th Birthday Week!

Justin turned the BIG 3-0 on Tuesday Dec 14th! I had so much planned for him! The night before I gave him the first surprise, Wizards-Lakers tickets 10 rows from the court! A co-worker friend of mine's husband's boss had them and wasn't going to be able to go! So, I gladly took them off his hands for a fun birthday date night with my hubby! The plan was to go to eat at Corduroy, a neat restaurant we've been wanting to try and then head to the game! At about 4:00 pm on his birthday, I began feeling sick. I ran home to lay down for a bit and hopefully shake it off for the fun night ahead. I made the mistake of checking facebook and seeing that 10 people that had been at the church party I went to on Sunday night had food poisening/stomach bug. Welp, I did too! Justin called his friend Travis last minute and they were able to enjoy the game. Needless to say I was out of commission for about 2 days!

All along, I had also been planning a surprise birthday party for him. It went AMAZINGLY well! He had no idea! I had about 25 or so of his best friends waiting for him and he was very surprised! My brother and his girlfriend even came into town for it! My good friend Holly took a lot of pictures (since crazy me forgot the camera) and I've got to get them from her to post on here! I promise they will come!

We capped off the birthday week with a ginge

rbread house making party at our friends' Ross and Catlin's. It was so much fun and our house turned out pretty well!

We had ANOTHER big event during Justin's birthday week! We had put a deposit down on an English Cream Golden Retriever puppy and she was born on Thursday December 16th! We aren't sure which one will be ours, but she will be one of these cuties (maybe, this is a picture of 4 of the 6 puppies from the litter!)

Tis the Season!

Here we are tonight at Ford's Theater after seeing "A Christmas Carol". It was wonderful and we got to see our good friends Matthew and Ingrid! What a great Christmas Surprise!
These are backwards, but here's the man of the house putting the star on the tree!

GO HEELS!!!

We walked down to the tree lot about 6-7 blocks away with our "city" shopping cart and pushed it all the way back to our house the true "cityfolk" way! :)

Merry Christmas!

End of the Year Resolution

Hello Blog Friends! I've decided to make an "End of the Year Resolution" to post on our blog regularly! I stopped around April, which is when I started my new job! I absolutely love it, but its also kept me MUCH more busy! I'm going to make an effort to keep up with it from now on and let everyone know whats going on in the Waters lives! :)

Tonight we are going to see A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theater! We are so excited! We've got a busy December going on right now but I'm going to keep up with this and post some pictures! Tonight I'll post some of our house decorated for Christmas and us decorating the tree!

We're Back!

Ok, so the last post said we hadn't posted in a month and now this one is a month later! AH! We've been so busy! I started my new job and I absolutely LOVE it! It's such a great fit for me. I'm still trying to figure everything out, but I'm getting the hang of it!

Justin has been SO busy with school. He's doing an extra consulting project for work and working very hard!
My parents came to visit near Easter and we had a blast having them in town!
Recently, we got tickets to the White House Garden tour and I had my friend Libby's bachelorette here in DC. Here are some pics!

We missed a whole month!!

Apologies for the lack of posting! We've had a pretty busy March! Our camera however, saw its final days. I'm going to try and get some of the pictures from March and post them later, but we will hopefully have a new camera VERY soon! Things have been mostly normal in the Waters' Household. Work/play and school (for justin). Sarah finished up her second cake class and REALLY enjoyed them! It was a lot of fun! Justin has started his second set of classes for the semester! AND..Sarah got a promotion at work! She is going to be starting her new job this coming Monday as Political Programs Manager! She is VERY excited! More posts to come! I'll try not to be so slack!

Sarah's Chapel Hill Weekend and Valentine's Day 2010

This past weekend I went to Chapel Hill for Courtney's birthday and a girls reunion! Here are some pictures from the trip! We had such a great time! :)

I booked a flight back to I could hurry home to my valentine! He was so sweet! He came to pick me up and brought me BEAUTIFUL roses and a REALLY cute cake!

Then he had planned out a meal for the two of us to make together and had gone to the grocery store to get the ingredients! We had SO much fun cooking together! We made Chicken Parmigiana with HOMEADE noodles and caesar salad and yummy wine!

And here I am at our candlelit table ready to eat! HAPPY VALENTINE's 2010!

OH! And he was so sweet and got me the cutest card that made me tear up, sweet "I love you" stones and tickets to GREASE the play! :) We're going tomorrow night!

Snowmageddon!

Well as you've ALL heard I'm sure, DC got a LOT of snow last week! We were out of work for 4.5 days due to over 2 feet of snow and then another foot that arrived about 3 days after the first snow! It was absolutely crazy! I've never seen that much snow! We had a great time, got some SERIOUS cabin fever, and enjoyed getting to spend so much time together! Here are some pictures from the snow! :)

Snowmageddon Absence!

Sorry for the long time with no posts! I have a quite a few pictures from our adventures during snowmageddon and snowverkill, my chapel hill weekend and Valentine's Day! I'll be sure to do a few posts for those really soon!!

As promised...

Culinary Victories! This week I made a Sweet Caramel Cake for my book club meeting. I think it was rather tasty and it proved to be a hit at Book Club and at work the next day! I got the recipe from http://topwithcherries.blogspot.com . Her blog is fabulous!

Here is the Sweet Caramel Cake in all its Glory! :)

And, I made homeade Salsa last night!!! It was mighty tasty and super easy to make! I got this recipe from, you probably have already guessed as she is one of my favorites, The Pioneer Woman! You should really check out her blog if you haven't!

Tonight I'm making Beef Stroganoff and might try and bake something new! Justin has some homework for his Saturday class, so that leaves me to the kitchen :) Tomorrow we are going to try and go see the Georgetown/Duke game, but tickets are MIGHTY expensive right now, so we'll see! Tomorrow night we are going to Michelle and Jarret's housewarming party/Michelle's birthday party, it should be a blast! Sunday we've got church and a game watching party for the Tennessee Game! Fun filled weekend for the Waters!

Justin's headed to Frozen Nebraska!

So Justin flies out tonight to go to Omaha, NE for work. Just an fyi, we had a high of 60 here today and he's headed for frozen temperatures. So, I do feel a little bad for him. I never like it when he goes on work trips. As silly as it may seem, I miss him terribly! It will be just me and the dog until Wednesday night, but I think we can manage. Tomorrow night, I'm going to make a Sweet Caramel Cake from scratch for my Wednesday night Book Club meeting. Besides spending any time I can with my husband, Book Club is my most loved event! I just absolutely love getting together with my girlfriends and have a few (too many) glasses of wine and discussing the book we've read while munching on delightful snacks! This month we read The Help. It is FANTASTIC!! It's probably the best book we have read so far and I am so eager to discuss it - I think we all are!

Happy Monday! If I have any culinary victories this week, I'll share those!

My husband is a HARD worker!

So I decided to treat him last night. I made my first (first successful) homeade cake, COMPLETELY from scratch! I got inspired by The Pioneer Woman's blog and made one of her recipes: Strawberry Shortcake Cake. It took a lot of work and patience, but I was SO proud once it was done! I think Justin really enjoyed it!

My finished cake from the top and then from the side!

Chesapeake Beach, MD!

On the Sunday of MLK weekend, Justin and I went to Chesapeake Beach, MD for the night. We had a free night's stay at the Chesapeake Beach Resort and Spa from buying two Wizards tickets because they are so bad. They literally have to pay you to come, but we were ok with it! :) We had a blast! The town is SO cute! Our resort was really nice. We had a nice seafood dinner and then went upstairs to play SERIOUS bingo! We had so much fun. We were definitely the youngest folks by a good 30 years, but we really enjoyed ourselves. We had a nice breakfast and walked around the cute bay town for a little while before heading back to DC. It was only 30 miles away from the city, but we felt like we were worlds away! So much fun!

Justin and I on the pier at our Resort!

New Year's Eve!

This year for New Year's Eve we bought tickets to the DC Downtown Countdown New Year's Eve party with Third Eye Blind. We had a GREAT time! Katie and Nick came up to visit and Courtney and Liz came to the party with us. It was a lot of fun, minus the Vols losing their bowl game.

Nick, me, Katie and Justin about to ring in the new year!
Happy 2010!!! Me and Liz!

Me, Liz's friend Sarah, Liz, and Katie having a blast!

KD girls ready for New Year's Eve!

Me and my handsome husband in his Vols formal wear! :)

Christmas Extravaganza!

So we did the Christmas Extravaganza again this year, except this year we had to leave one night early. We packed up really quickly and left on Friday night when we were planning to leave Saturday. The threat of the Blizzard of 09 was real, so we wanted to hit the road. We only made it to Fredericksburg (about 60 miles away) before we had to pull off and spend the night. The next day was a lot of driving, but we finally made it to Myrtle Beach, SC to see my extended family. We stayed there until Monday and then went to Gastonia, NC to spend some time with my family and my Aunt Dannie and Rick. On Wednesday morning we left to go to Tennessee and see all of Justin's family. Justin's 10 year high school renunion was Wednesday night and we had so much fun at that! We spent Christmas morning at his mom's house and then at his grandmother's house and then Christmas night into the next day at his Dad's house. We had a wonderful trip! We drove in that little car of ours so much that when we got back we decided we needed a new one! We got a 2007 Camry and we love it! :)

The girls at Grandmother's on Christmas Day. Tara, Kimberly, Ashley and Me.

Justin and I on Christmas Morning

Justin's 10 year reunion gang!

Justin and I at formal Christmas Dinner at Uncle Stewart's

My family at Formal Christmas Dinner! :)