Mountain Weekend

This weekend we went to the mountains in the RV with my parents, snoopy, Vegas & Tyson. It was a very relaxing, enjoyable weekend.


Snoopy taking a nap on the way up




Tyson sleeping on the dash board




Tyson on the lookout


Friday evening we didn't do much more than set up camp. Saturday we got up and walked the dogs & headed out to breakfast at a nearby restaurant, Grandview that has a great view of grandfather mountain. After breakfast we went got all of the dogs and went over to Valle Crucis to see the land that my dad's sister's family recently purchased and are going to build a house on. It is right on the Watauga River, it is just beautiful out there and the dogs loved running free for a while.

Playing ball



View towards the river



Vegas can't resist water so of course she found her way down there.

Vegas in the water

Chewing on the stick she brought back up

We also went to the Mast General Store and explored for a bit. I saw a sign there that I almost bought for my classroom :)

Saturday afternoon we watched the Wolfpack beat UVA! Woohoo and had a relaxing evening by the campfire.

Campfire!



Tyson LOVES beer.




Playing fetch in the field at the campground



Sunday we ate lunch at the Daniel Boone Inn. It is so delicious! We explored the Blue Ridge Parkway, downtown Blowing Rock and the Moses Cone House and land.


Moses Cone property



Finally a picture of us! 

It was definitely a fun weekend!

A Pirate Wedding!

ECU Pirates, that is. This weekend we went to the wedding of two of our good friends, Melissa and Terry. They met at ECU and Terry was Petey the Pirate for years at ECU, so it was only fitting that they kept the wedding in theme. The ceremony was just down the road from us at St. Francis Catholic Community and the reception followed at Hilton RTP in Durham.

Saying their vows

The table cards were ECU football tickets with your name and table name on them. The tables were all named after streets or buildings in Greenville, it was too cute! Trey owns a purple suit jacket and was so excited to be able to wear it and fit with the theme of the evening. He really was the hit of the party, he couldn't walk anywhere without being told how awesome his jacket was.

Me & the guy in the purple jacket

Pretty tables (after dinner, excuse our mess!)

Where all of the table cards were laid out

Trey met Terry at his previous job and the four of us became friends quickly and played kickball together last spring. Terry is now in "school" to be a Virginia state trooper! We sat at the "work table" with a few friends that Melissa works with and one from Trey & Terry's old work. It was a blast. One of the couples was from Canada and they were quite the drinkers! Trey went shot for shot with her (drinking tequila... no thanks!) Needless to say it was an incredibly fun night!

Throwing the garter

Bouquet toss

Cheers!

Me & Melissa

The four of us

They are such an amazing couple and I'm sure they will have a wonderful life together. I can't think of a better way to spend our 6-month wedding anniversary, than by celebrating another awesome couple! (Okay well it was 1 day before our anniversary, but whatever.)

Their cake, with Petey the Pirate on top!

My new iPhone 4s :)

I finally converted to an iPhone! I got the droid when it first came out (the original, motorola droid) and it is slowly dying. It has issues with just about everything, browing the internet, changing my ringtone, only charging in one specific position, you name it, it has that issue. And sadly, this all started happening early this summer literally a few weeks after my 1 year warranty expired. Annoying! So then I heard that iPhone was going to be releasing a new phone and thought I would wait to get it.



So pretty!

 Finally in October they announced the iPhone 4S. Most apple fanatics aren't too impressed, I guess there isn't much that is too new/different than the 4. I don't really care, I don't use anything too fancy anyways! I just figured I'd wait for the newest version and then get it! So I got up a few minutes early on the day that they were open to pre-orders and ordered myself a new phone :)

Yay, it finally arrived at 6pm Friday! Last picture with the crappy camera on my droid!

I'm loving it so far. I'm headed to a wedding this weekend and can't wait to take quality pictures on my phone!

Word on the Street

My cousin, Patrick, goes to UNC and is a great musician who is also writing music. He met the members of the band Simplified and they asked him to put some music together to open for a show that they were doing in Chapel Hill. So in about two months he had to throw together a band. That band, Word on the Street, now consists of his brother, Dain, who is also a widely talented musician (and barely old enough to get in to the club that they were playing at!) and my brother, Chad, who plays drums, along with two of his other friends from Carolina, on bass and guitar.

Pictures from my not-so-amazing camera phone



Dain is on the far left playing Mandolin, Patrick is guitar and singing

 They opened for Simplified at the Local 506 a couple of weeks ago. We were slightly nervous, since they only practiced together around 5 times! They did a great job! They played mostly songs that Patrick had written but also a cover of Whatever You Like/Kids put together that was awesome. We really enjoyed it. I knew that all of them had musical talent, but was pretty amazed! I guess those 3 got ALL of the musical talent on the Riley side.... :)




Finally managed to squeeze Chad in there, in the back on drums. (This time Dain is playing trumpet.)

 They're playing again, opening for Simplified at the Local 506, on November 10th! (The next day is a holiday, so I can actually stay out late!)

Here are a couple of videos (they were recorded on an iPhone, not super close to the stage but it's better than nothing!)

This is the Whatever You Like/Kids Mashup

This one is an original written by Patrick.

Go Pack!

My favorite time of year is here... football season! Even though the Wolfpack is having a rough start we still have a great time tailgating and supporting our team.


NCSU vs South Alabama




Trey made us new cornhole boards!



I used my dying camera phone so the lighting isn't the best.

We tailgate in the RV, so we don't just have to pick up bojangles, we can cook anything we want in it! Plus the dogs get to join us and they love tailgating :)



My social roamer found a new tailgate to hang out at



Our set up

Trey and I have been staying the night in the RV, so on home game weekends it's like we have a fun little mini vacation.


I somehow fit in there too.

The wolf pack statue at night



Learning to cook

Trey has always been the chef in our house, while I help or do the baking! In the summer he doesn't cook for me nearly as often because he works 60+ hours a week and doesn't get home until dinner time. I found this website and decided to try out some of their meals.


I love to be super organized, and this website posts a meal plan at the beginning of each week with 7 meals and even a grocery list! I don't necessarily follow it exactly but it's a great resource. I have picked through meals that we want and have tried a few lately. The first didn't go over too well, too much cream of chicken, but they have been steadily improving. I am 100% a person who has to follow a recipe, so I just have to hope that it is a yummy one.


A few things that I have made from the website are enchiladas, baked spaghetti, cottage pie, and an interesting barbeque chicken - potatoes meal in the slow cooker! I love to use the crock pot, but it is actually difficult when you leave for work at 6:30 in the morning... not many meals need to cook for 12 hours, so I'm still trying to find good meals to make in there.


Here are a couple of my successes:

Enchiladas before

Enchiladas after... they were yummy!

Baked spaghetti before

Baked spaghetti after

Desert one night... my mom found FLAT marshmallows perfect for making smores, it was still warm outside so we made them in the toaster oven!



A quick and easy desert, peanut butter chocolate ice cream sandwiches

I love cooking a good meal for dinner that provides left overs... it makes lunch at school the next day so much better than a boring, frozen lean cuisine.

Mexican Mondays

Okay well maybe it's Spanish Mondays but that doesn't sound as fun. Trey and I decided to take a Spanish course, through Wake Tech's continuing education program that is taught at Leesville High School! How convienient :) He speaks Spanish daily to the Mexicans that work for him at Hasentree and has done really well picking up the language. He wanted to learn how to conjugate verbs and properly put together sentences so he thought of taking a course. I took Spanish in high school and enjoyed it, plus I do teach ESL students who are Spanish speaking sometimes so I thought I'd take it with him. It has been pretty good so far, it isn't stressful because there aren't any grades and our teacher will cover basically anything we want her to!

Last Monday, I cooked enchiladas for dinner, so we ate Spanish food then went to speak Spanish for 3 hours! :)

School is in full swing!

I haven't posted in what seems like forever! Ever since school started back I have been going non-stop! This year I am an advisor for the Freshman class (well really, Class of 2015) student council. We do a lot of work to prepare for homecoming week at school, which was super early this year. In less than a month of school we had to manage to get a student council, of brand new baby freshmen, together and get creative.

We had to create a game for Leesville's "Community Night" and had a booth set up to run our game, give out candy for prizes and make a little bit of money for our council. Since the game information was due before we were even able to meet with the students, we had to decide it on our own. My surprisingly creative and helpful husband offered up the idea of a bottle ring toss. So we had to empty lots of brown bottles of their contents :) and then I soaked the bottles to be able to peel off all of the labels. I think I made a pretty nice game! One that I plan to use repeatedly, forget creating something new!


Don't mind the messy table!




Set up so that Trey could try our game


We also do a homecoming parade and pep rally the Friday afternoon before the big game. For the parade each class council or club makes a float to go along with the theme. This year's theme was "Leesville Kingdom" aka disney stuff (Magic Kingdom). Our floats had to be of the theme good vs evil (we are good, the team we were playing is evil!) So our kids decided to do a float version of Peter Pan. We had a girl who was going to dress up as Peter (green tights, green shorts and a green LRHS t shirt) and a boy who was going to be Captain Hook (with a purple shirt to represent Broughton) and then a tinkerbell too :) We had a few girls that worked incredibly hard on the float and managed to do a pretty good job.


I wish I had pictures to show for it, but the week didn't go quite as planned... rain ruined almost all of the events planned for the week.

Next year we will be prepared and maybe we can win the competition!

On a side note, I want to say CONGRATULATIONS to my good friend, Marianna. She and her husband just had a beautiful baby boy, born October 4th at 9lbs 6oz!! Goodness. They live in Oklahoma right now but I can't wait for them to come back to Raleigh for the holidays so I can meet him :)