UVA vs. TCU

Our friend, B.J., is currently working on his PhD at University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He was nice enough to invite us to a UVA football game against Texas Christian University. Though the game was pretty much a blowout, we had a great time! We sat in the student section and tried to blend in with the undergrads. UVA has a football tradition called "guys in ties and girls in pearls." It was very unusual because most everyone comes to the game all dressed up!

Da Band


Student Section on the lawn


Game play

An Early Celebration

My birthday this year falls on Labor Day, so I really enjoyed having a day off! We decided to celebrate my birthday LAST WEEKEND and took a day trip to DC. Jimmy was nice enough to take me to the Museum of Natural History in Washington DC and IKEA. We had a great day!

IKEA was fun, we just walked around and daydreamed about having a house of our own in the future and talked about how we would decorate it. We bought much needed new bed linens (finally!) and some kitchenware that needed to be replaced (finally!). I love IKEA.

The Museum of Natural History was incredible and I enjoyed myself very much. I was most excited about seeing the Hope Diamond and all the dinosaurs. There was a mammal exhibit that was awesome too. Now I've now been to all the Smithsonian Museums in DC except for one, The Museum of American History. I'm hoping to get there in October when we're in DC for the Army 10-Miler (which, by the way, I'm getting really nervous about!).

**There are no pictures of Jimmy from our trip to DC because Jimmy didn't like his outfit and refused to be photographed, he he he!**


My traditional birthday cookie cake! I always tell Jimmy that the only thing I want for my birthday is a chocolate chip cookie cake ;0) I think Jimmy picked out the exact same design as last year, he he he.


This is me sporting me new, shorter haircut and the hippo. (I cut about 6 inches off my hair about 4 weeks ago.) Yes, I still love hippos at the age of 29.


This reminded me of our kitties, specifically Lucy (aka Snout)


The mammal exhibit; the lion reminded me of Rudy.


My birthday present from Jimmy... I ended up donating it to the Museum of Natural History and they now call it the Hope Diamond ;0)


More jewelry from Jimmy that I ended up donating.


Dinosaurs!

August in Review

Wow, it's been a few weeks since I've posted an update. Things are going well in the Lehman household. We have been enjoying the last few weeks of the summer. We recently went to Charlottesville and went tubing down the James River. The weather was perfect and the water was so warm! We had a blast and I would have to say it was one of our best tubing trips ever. We are thinking of going white water rafting soon, but we haven't made plans yet... hopefully we'll get a chance to go as summer is almost over.

Although we've been at Fort Lee for more than 2 years, I finally decided to get involved with the Fort Lee Area Spouses Club (FLASC). I guess it can be described as a social club for Army wives. I never thought I would be the type of "Army wife" that would participate in an organization like that, but have been pleasantly surprised so far. I'm now on the Board of Directors as the Scholarship Committee Chairperson, so I'm excited and ready to get more involved. I just hope I'm not spreading myself too thin with too many volunteer projects. What's cool is that I'm heavily involved with the Holiday Helper Program and since FLASC is a sponsor, the overlap will be a benefit for me.

I helped out with a Charity Golf Tournament for our Holiday Helper Program this month. I had fun, but it was very hot and humid. I've never been golfing before, but decided that the only thing I like about golf is riding around in the golf cart and the cute outfits you get to wear ;0) I didn't golf, but a friend and I drove around in a golf cart for about an hour; it was fun!

This is Phil and I after the ribbon cutting at a new building. I was "in charge" of the ever important gold scissors for the ribbon cutting ceremony so I decided to give him a haircut. Phil is the marketing guy that got Jimmy and I on the cover of the magazine.


The organization I work for has many programs to support Soldiers and their Families. One such program is the New Parent Support Program and they teach seminars on parenting, host playgroups and story time, etc. Anyways, they recently acquired an "Empathy Belly." My friends decided it would be fun for me to try it on! I'm not sure how much it weighed, but I looked like I was 9 months pregnant. It even had giant boob attachments! It was heavy and my back hurt only after about 15 minutes of wearing it around the office.

Whitman is 20th best college in US!

Jimmy and I are very excited about this. This is pretty good considering there are 4,000+ colleges in the United States.

Check out these links:

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/94/colleges-09_Americas-Best-Colleges_Rank.html

http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/colleges-university-ratings-opinions-colleges-09-intro.html

Rhubarb Pie

Rhubarb was on sale at the grocery store and Jimmy decided to make his mom's famous rhubarb pie! I am very proud of Jimmy's baking abilities and the pie was very YUMMY!

Mia

Last Saturday, Jimmy and I babysat Mia and she spent the night! Mia is a good kid, so we weren't worried at all. It was actually a lot easier than we thought. The only problem we had was that she didn't want to go to bed because she wanted to stay up and play with the cats!

Jimmy and Mia working on an art project


Mia and her mom, Shannon, my BFF and gym buddy

Warped Tour @ VA Beach

Last week, Jimmy and I went to Virginia Beach for a few days. I'm so glad we went again because Jimmy was sick the last time. We spent the first day at the Warped Tour and enjoyed ourselves very much. We were definitely older than most of the attendees and it was extremely hot, but stayed for more than 7 hours! We had a BLAST! ;0)

We spent the rest of the time hanging out at the beach at Fort Story. We just relaxed, read, people watched, and admired the huge battleships that sailed near the beach. We would love to go back again before the summer is over.









Jimmy is going to kill me for this! He forgot his sunglasses so begged me to borrow mine... what a DORK ;0)

Ally

We recently had a loss in the small Lehman family. One of our cats, Ally, passed away on July 19th. She was going to turn six next month, which makes the loss so much more unexpected and heartbreaking than usual. Ally's kidneys gave way on her and although we did everything we could for her there was little we could do in the end.

Ally's personality was one of the most unique I have ever seen in a cat. Mary and I always joked about how she acted more like a dog or a person than a cat. She would actually play fetch with milk-ties and would beg for food in the kitchen, sometimes to the point of annoyance, whenever I would open the refrigerator. Her paw would find itself in your cereal bowl pulling it to her, if you weren't careful, and she loved licking the remnants of an ice-cream sandwich wrapper. She was the only one of our cats that we allowed to go outside, although it was sparingly and always under my supervision. She would just roll on the ground and chomp the grass and just lie low like she was in the jungle. She loved watching birds from the window and terrorizing the other cats simply with her stare. It was amazing the dominance that this small cat could command without throwing a simple blow. She allied herself more with me than Mary, which is why I think it is hitting me so hard.

Although most of you have met Ally through your visits with us in the past, I wanted to write this blog for those of you who never got a chance to meet her. Mary and I truly put our animals on equal footing with any other family member and Ally will always be missed. Hopefully this commemoration will do her justice. Take care Ally. Hopefully you will have all the ham and grass that you wish for.



This is a cute picture of Ally from August of 2008.




Ally a month after Mary found her in a mall parking lot.






This is one of my favorite Ally pictures. We always joke about how it looks like she is praying.

This picture was taken around April of this year. Ally and I were enjoying the outside while I was cooking.

Virginia Beach

Jennifer came to visit us last Tuesday. We had a fun time despite Jimmy and I coming down with the flu!

We went to Virginia Beach and stayed in a cabin at Fort Story. The cabin was awesome! It had 2 bedrooms, a loft, full kitchen, air conditioning and a bathroom... now, that's my idea of "roughing it!"



The loft




The weather was perfect, so we spent most of our time relaxing at the beach. Jennifer and I rented a two person kayak and had an adventure in the ocean ;0) We also went to the main boardwalk area and walked around for a few hours. It was such a nice relaxing trip.

The Beach at Fort Story... since you had to be military to have access to this beach, there weren't very many people there. It was so very quiet, peaceful, and relaxing. We loved it!


Poor Jimmy, he was sick the whole time we were there :(


Jennifer and I


Mermaid Jennifer


Pirate Mary


Rasta Jenn, ha ha ha


Jennifer's Bad Azz Tiger










Jenn in the Atlantic Ocean!

Germany

Our BFF's the Vasquez Family are leaving for Germany in August. Jimmy and I are very sad, but sure we will meet again sometime in the near future. Who knows, maybe the Lehman's will get orders to Germany too!

Here are some pictures from their going away dinner at Texas De Brazil.