I suck! (sorry Brianne!)

Well as we can see it has been a very long time since I have blogged and I received an email yesterday informing me of my lack of updates.  So for Brianne, who it seems is one loyal reader, this one is for you!

Needless to say a lot has happened since the end of August so I will do my best to only highlight the big things and do my best to keep them short and to the point.

It all started just a few days after my previous post when I went out after work and had a few drinks.  Because of that I left my bike in town (drunk driving is bad!) The next morning I went to get my bike on the way to work and as you can see from the picture below, my bike attacked me!  Its a long story but basically I got my foot caught between the kick stand and the kick start and it caused deep tissue damage.  My right ankle is still swollen!

If only that was the worst part of that week...but you'll hear more about that in a bit!  This happened just before Labor Day weekend and 2 days before Lorna came to visit again.  Not a great way to start her 4th trip to the island.  Thankfully since it was her 4th time we didn't have to do a whole bunch of touristy things. What we did do that was awesome was spend a day on Philip's brothers boat.  It was a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon and we made the most of it.  We went pretty much all the was around the island.  I could not think of a better way to spend the day.  After a long day out on the boat we thought it would be best to have a nice relaxing dinner at home with a lot of bottles of wine.  Sounds like a nice night, in theory.  And it was until.......

The Fire!  We were all sitting outside having dinner when I heard a noise (bear in mind I was still on crutches) so Philip went to investigate.  When he opened the door smoke billowed out.  That is really bad because we were in the front of the house and the kitchen is in the back.  He managed to fight his way through the smoke to see that our entire stove was up in flames.  It was a freak accident because we hadn't even used the stove, we were grilling outside.  There was a cutting board left on the top of the stove and it some how ignited and the whole thing went up.  Philip tried his best to put the fire out but I ended up having to call 911 and having the firetrucks come. We were very lucky in that nothing else caught fire.  It didn't spread and it was out out quickly.  The only problem was the entire house was full of smoke, so everything was covered in soot.  It has now been almost 5 months and we are still finding soot in random places!  We ended up having to move out for 2 weeks so the place could be cleaned and painted.  In the midst of it, there was a category 3 hurricane heading for the island! Thankfully it lost speed and it veered away from us. All in all it was an ordeal I hope to never have to go through again!

So that takes us to October which was a quiet month, thankfully!  One big thing did happen in October though, after a 15 year hiatus I have started painting again!

Philip got me a shopping spree of art supplies for our anniversary this year and I am happy to say I have put it to good use.  I did these 3 paintings for Kelly and Ed for their kitchen.  All 3 were of actual pictures Kelly posted of veggies she had grown in their garden.  I think for my first try after a long time off they came out pretty good.  I am doing a lot more painting now that I have so much free time (yup, that's what we call for shadowing!)

Then in November we took a trip to Boston for a long weekend and what a trip it was!  We went with friends we have made here on the island (actually they are our Bermuda family now!).  Kelly and Ed drove in from NY to spend the weekend with us.  Lorna gave up her whole weekend to hang with us as well so it was an awesome time!  We did so much.  Our first stop was to Solas so Philip could start the trip with his favorite beer that he can not get here on the island.

As I said we did a lot of stuff including: The Script concert, mani/pedis, James Bond movie in IMAX, Target, tailgating for Sunday Football, Chinese food and maybe some drinking as well!  

November concluded with Philip turning 45!  Because I love birthdays so much and think that everyone should I wanted his birthday to be fun.  We decided to do murder mystery dinner with a Wild West theme.  It was a blast!

Dirk and Penny

Lynn and David really got into character!

Everyone dressed up and played their parts so well.  We would love to do it again sometime for sure.  

We made the mistake of thinking all of the bad parts of 2012 were behind us (injury and fire seemed like enough!) but we were wrong.  The week before Philip's birthday I was let go from my job.  Of course there is no good time of year for this, but in my opinion this time of year is the worst!

So I am making the most of my free time as I said before.  I have been doing more painting, I have a list of project around the house that I want to get done, plus we have Christmas!  I am very excited that we will be heading to VA for a full 10 days this year!  Look out Reid family, the Butlers are coming to stay! 

Oh, I forgot one thing, last night was my birthday!!!!!  Philip planned an awesome dinner with a few close friends.  It was perfect!  Plus I didn't have to worry about having to get up for work this morning, so bonus!

Philip keeping it classy with the brown bag in the park before dinner!

Thank you to Brie for he kick in the butt I needed to get everyone up to speed on my life!  I will do my best to try and stay on top of things a little more so no falls behind.  (On a side note, most of this has been on Facebook and even my Dad is on there now.  It may be time for you to breakdown and join Brie!)

If you do not hear from me between now and then, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Here's hoping 2013 treats us better then 2012 did!