New Orleans

Sean and I recently went to New Orleans for Jazzfest!! :)  We had a wonderful time exploring the city, visiting family, listening to great music, DELICIOUS food and just enjoying time together.  Here are some of our pics, there are more to come.

Broiled crawfish with champagne

Trombone Shorty at Jazzfest, he put on an incredible show!!  We also got to listen to Bruce Springsteen! 

Part of Jazzfest is celebrating the culture of New Orleans, these are a couple of the "Natives of New Orleans" cultural costumes.  They were marching around jazz fest and looked pretty impressive.

 Downtown (French Quarter) also had it's fair share of musicians.  The one above was being recorded (video and audio).

Thanksgiving

Soo... I thought I posted this months ago and I did on my "other account"...opps

Happy Thanksgiving

I have heard that the Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving with mussels, interesting choice of food. Sean and I stuck with traditional turkey, fried and smoked of course with a little briscuit. We had a great time cooking, and we were definitely rewarded, not to brag, but the food turned out excellent, but the company was even better! The fried turkey took a little longer than expected, but there was no way we could start our Thanksgiving feast without it, needless to say there was no fried turkey left.

For 2 years now we have had the Virginia Tech throwers (discus, javeline, etc) over for Thanksgiving. Most of them are from somewhere in Europe (Croatia) so it is too far to go home, not to mention Thanksgiving is not a holiday they celebrate at home, so they come to our house :) We had a full house with 8 throwers, Randy and Stephanie Aldret (Stephanie is a VT sports med fellow and did her family med residency in Tulsa, Randy is an athletic trainer for Radford University) and our good friends Mark and Krista with their children Connor and Keagan. We have a big table, but I have to say we were a little tight and we ran out of chairs :)

What a great day! So many things to be thankful for, a wonderful husband (who went the store for brown sugar on Thanksgiving day!), two wonderful dogs, an amazing family that we missed, but are excited to see for Christmas, and amazing friends!

Two of the throwers we are the closest with, Sonic (Marcel, who will be throwing in the summer Olympics!) and Dortea (who will very likely show up in Olympics to come) are graduating in May, so we are not sure what will happen next year for Thanksgiving, but we hope to have a full house next year again. We are looking forward to celebrating many more Thanksgivings in the Collins household :)

Spring

Wow, so I couldn't figure out why my post were not posting and I realize, I accidentally have 2 accounts and I was posting them on another account also called Hokies in the Hollow!  Opps, so here is my last post from my other account...

Spring in Virginia is beautiful!! It is full of flowering trees, especially red buds!! To make the most of the beautiful spring days, Sean and I went for a hike just down the road with Monk (our dog). Here are some of the highlights :)

Our front yard :)

Sean and Monk ready to start hiking. They are standing just to the left of an old root cellar cut into the rock. Pretty cool :)

Pretty flowers :)

Break time

One happy pup! 

These are two of our newest editions... The beautiful husky we inheritted from our neighbor and are desperately trying to find her a home.  If you know anyone who wants a sweet, house broken, beautiful husky mix, please let me know!  The second edition is the Croatian flag.  It was a goodbye gift from a good friend of ours, Igor,  that recently went back home to Croatia.  We are looking forward to his return :)

Fun pics

So.. I just got the car I have been wishing for, for about a 6 months!!  It is a beautiful 2010 gunmetal grey 4 Runner, with heated seats and a sunroof!!  I also has an automatic starter and a bluetooth handsfree phone in it, what more could a girl ask for?!? 

My mother-in-law came to visit just in time to pick it up with me :).  This was her first visit as my official mother-in-law, so we decided to celebrate.  On Saturday we took her to a Hokie game (one of our favorite past times).  The pregame show was great with a big plane flying over and the stadium full of Hokies!

After the game we headed up to Asheville, NC to visit the Biltmore, a beautiful mansion built in the late 1800's. Sean and I have been there just after we started dating 3 years ago, so we were excited to go back. The 4Runner (Kathryn after Kathyrn Hepburn) drove great, the trip which was 3 hours felt like nothing. 

Sean & I in front of the Biltmore

Sean & his mom :)

 The spiral stairscase, all the support is provided by the outside wall.  There are no supporting pillars in the stairwell. 

And the gardens were BEAUTIFUL!!!

If you ever get a chance to go to Asheville definitely visit the Biltmore, it's worth it!!  More adventures to come :)