Pink Burruss

My camera is soooo much fun! I'm going to do color swapping on everything!!!

Navy OCS...Here I Come!

Finally, after almost a year of anticipation, we have a date for OCS! I will be reporting to Newport, RI on September 8. I will hopefully be commissioned some time in early December and be back in Hampton Roads for the holidays! As fun as landscaping for the awesome Town of Blacksburg is, it's time for a job with some benefits. Angela will be well taken care of by the new man of the house, Mr. AJ for three months!

Angela In Wonderland

Butterfly Kisses

I love wedding season!! It’s such a beautiful thing to see people getting married when you can see the love shining between them! I love it!!! I’m such a hopeless romantic sometimes. My best friend from high school’s little sister was married this summer, and they were absolutely adorable. Rachel and Will are perfect together, and they had a beautiful wedding at the Botanical Gardens in the Butterfly Garden. Leigh, Jennifer’s husband did the service, and it was really neat to see him up there! And of course…my favorite part was that I FINALLY got to see lil’ Roy Leigh Ray IV, aka Roy Leigh. He was absolutely adorable, and I love him! He was so fun, and good natured, and so cute. It was completely worth driving four weekends in a row to the 757 to be there! Mr. Howland put together a slide show of the couple, and it was Beauty and the Beast. I was laughing soooo hard about Will being the Beast, and I’m not sure his family enjoyed that quite as much as I did! Ha! Before they left for Florida for the honeymoon, we filled up their entire car with balloons. It was funny, because a few weeks before I had an incident with a balloon popping in my eye, causing a black eye and a small scratch, and me having to leave work, so I was too scared to blow any up! But, I tied lots of them! :-) It was so cute watching them try to get into the car, and watching the balloons float out as we were blowing bubbles at the newlyweds!

New Shots!!

After three great years of my first digital camera, I decided it was time to let the Kodak Easy Share go. I had dropped it one too many times (probably...about 20 over three years) and broke the flash. So, for the last 6 months, my camera only took good pictures outside and any time you took a picture of a person, they were glowing white! I have hundreds of pictures filled with ghostly looking people...and it was too much to handle. With important life events coming up like James' commissioning, weddings, and another season of football... it was time to invest in a new camera! :-D I am happy to introduce our newest camera, a Canon PowerShot SD 1000 that is absolutely awesome!! I think you will notice the difference!

Orientation 2007

Orientation... Orientation... Orientation!! Orientation is coming to a close on campus after three weeks, and like always, it has made the summer go by sooooo quickly. This year was interesting, as I have never been on the academic side of orientation before. University Studies held our session at the Math Emporium, because we see over 100 students a day, which causes problems when people are late because they don't know where the math emporium is. Angry parents are never fun, and I had the pleasure of dealing with MANY of them over the past three weeks! Now that I have an official looking name tag, it seems proper to yell at me for classes not being available for their students, or because they got lost and showed up 30 minutes late and we would no longer take them. I take it with a smile though, and then on the way to the car, I don't make eye contact at all...no eye contact means no questions, comments, or complaints. My favorite part of the day is working with students on their schedules, because making your schedule is so much fun. It's an exciting new step, and you just don't know what is lying ahead of you the next semester. It makes me realize what a dork I am, and how much I love school and taking classes. Although, I definitely don't miss the Math Empo, despite it holding over 500 gorgeous Macs! (If you don’t know…I'm an Apple person...and I am SOOO happy that we have another Apple person in the family!! YAY MARY!!) My memories of the math emporium are awful...with Cathy (my freshman roommate) and I sending hours and nights staring at math problems and putting red cups on our computer because we had no idea what we were doing. I hadn't been back until this year!! :-) Although, this year was much more exciting, and I made it through another orientation! Go Hokies!!

Our Balcony Garden

Who says you can't have a garden in an apartment?

Mary's Graduation

In June we embarked on an ambitious 4 weekend drives to Hampton Roads in a row for various activities (weddings, graduations, basket makings, bridal showers, and car wrecks!). One was the happy occasion of my little sister graduating from lovely old Denbigh High School. My proud parents are really excited about successfully raising four kids through grade school, (particularly my Dad). Mary graduated near the top of her class and is heading off to James Madison University in Harrisonburg next month to study industrial design. After the short ceremony at Hampton University Convocation center, we had a short reception for her back in Bad Newz. The whole ceremony was very familiar to me, as I attended 5 Denbigh graduations in a row from 1998-2002! Being an extremely proud alumnus of Virginia Tech, it was nice in a way to ponder on my primary education from the Newport News School District. Angela headed back to Virginia Beach to host another bridal shower.

Haircut

Before...

And After...
He's adorable!!

AJ's Weird Problem

A few weeks ago, we noticed a black spot developing on AJ's skin. His hair started falling out, and I started to FREAK out. We took him to the vet, but since his skin and hair were both healthy, she told us not to worry about it, but to just keep watching it. After we had him groomed (and...he bit the groomer again) we noticed that his hair was growing back in that area, but it is black. It is so weird, because it is really coarse, and nothing like the rest of his skin. It doesn't seem to bother him at all though, so hopefully he's okay!

We Remember...and We Still Mourn

It’s been three months today, and we feel like it was years ago, and yet just yesterday at the same time. Freshmen are bombarding campus, and we know our campus is moving on, as students who were not here replace students who were deeply affected. We have our moments….some bad….some good…but not a week goes by when I don’t spend an entire day thinking about it…looking at pictures of Stack, going to his facebook page, to memorial sites, and just thinking about how much our lives have be changed forever. Although I’m happy we are going on with life, I’m saddened at the same time. We are angry that all of the flowers and memorials have been removed from the WAJ sign just before orientation began. Everyone knows that two students were killed there, and it makes me so mad that Stack’s flowers and pictures are gone. They are working on the new “temporary” memorial in front of Burruss. They say it is temporary, but I would like to see it in that same spot forever…in the center of our campus, with Norris hall just on the left. It’s important that we continue to remember…and never forget what happened on April 16th. I haven’t watched the news since April…or even really read a news page, paper, or magazine. I was disgusted, and although I anxiously await football season, I feel like our season will be exploited. Let us just be our own Hokies again…without the media…and without the exploitation.

Williamsburg Gardens

Williamsburg had so many gorgeous gardens!! I love taking pictures of flowers…and this was one of my favorites from the weekend!

Basketfest 2007

Williamsburg is one of my favorite places to visit, and my mom and I spent an awesome weekend there touring and making Longaberger Baskets. Longaberger takes basket-making on tour a few times a year, and this was their first time ever coming to Williamsburg. It was awesome, because after we made our baskets, we were able to spend the entire day touring the Governor's Palace, and many other attractions. We didn't even have to wait in line to make our baskets, and we were able to make them right next to each other. Mom's weaver was pretty quiet, but mine wouldn't shut up! He made fun of the way I talked, and I was ready for him to stop talking soon after I began weaving. But, I will say he did a good job making sure my basket was tight. It's a really neat unstained color, with a blue edging and silver pineapples, and the lid says Williamsburg with a pineapple on it. It’s amazing how fast the basket-weavers can weave…it really is an art, despite all of the jokes about basket-weaving! And...now...me and my mom are both basket weavers!! :-)

HT PINK = Sad

Three weeks ago, my poor car was hit in a parking lot. (In the EXACT same parking spot it was hit before!!!) Thankfully I wasn't in it, but the guy did a lot of damage! At first, it was a hit and run, but we decided to keep my car there in case someone came back, and thankfully they did. The guy drove a Chevy Avalanche…which is HUGE compared to my little car! The funny thing is that he is from Texas, where the drivers aren't the best. No offense to any Texans, but our insurance dropped over 300 dollars just by moving back to Virginia…yeah. I FINALLY have it back though!! Three weeks and $4,000 later (hurray insurance!)… the HT PINK is back in action! :-)

Mmmmm....Year Old Cake!

Our wedding cake one year later!! The actual cake wasn't bad....but the frosting was gross. AJ enjoyed it though! :-D

We LOVE the Huckleberry Trail!

AJ has learned to love super long walks and hiking...though you can't tell in this picture because James is holding him! :-) He's been great though, and is seriously the perfect dog for us. We got REALLY lucky!! Especially since I convinced James that we absolutely needed him!! :-) This is AJ and James on the Huckleberry under 460. In the near future, the Huckleberry will go all the way to Pandapas pond, to downtown Christiansburg, and possibly connect to the New River Trail State Park trails. Sooooo exciting! :-)