Bowlin Beige

JMU is the FCS National Champion! Or, as Ainsley would say, " We are WORLD CHAMPIONS!!! " Try explaining the FCS/FBS playoff system to a seven year old... A whirlwind trip to Texas (which almost didn't happen because of snow storms) led us to the national championship game. As always, when we're around our JMU friends, we had tons of fun and lots of laughs. Lots of food and drink, tailgating with 200+ people, an awesome game, post-game tailgating, and more post-game partying - what a great weekend. Even better was having so many friends join us on the trip - college roommates and friends from all over the U.S. - just such a great time. Our new custom shoes, ready to go to the game! A veeeeeeery cold Texas morning (12 degrees!) 200+ at the tailgate! Guard Girls!  Luckily the cameraman was a good sport about the streamers... We look forward to making the trip again in 2018!

Fargo?? North Dakota?? Yep - that's the one! JMU had the semi-final playoff game against reigning 5-time champion North Dakota State. Lucky for us,  JMU was smart and chartered at 747 from the valley straight to Fargo. We grabbed two tickets and hopped on board the party plane with a bunch of our fellow Dukes. And what a trip it was! Despite the temperatures (-4) and the snow, we had a wonderful 8 hours there and met some of the nicest people ever. Eric was flying straight from NJ to meet us there (and would then fly home with us) so he missed some of the pre-game excitement. The ND fans were so welcoming and genuinely excited to host us there - they bought us drinks, chatted about football, and wished us safe travels. A guy in the stands even passed out ear plugs to everyone (their indoor stadium is well-known for being loud).  Eric's flight was delayed several times but he made it to his seat 5 minutes before kickoff. Inside the temperature-controlled FargoDo...

If you ever have the odd opportunity to come visit our closets, you will find an awful lot of purple. Purple shirts.  Purple ties. Purple scarves. Purple boots. Purple dresses. Purple jewelry. Purple jackets. Lots and lots of purple. What better way to show off our love of purple than to get family photos taken, wearing purple in the place where we love to wear purple the most. Now that's a tongue-twister!  Luckily our friends got us hooked up with a wonderful photographer - http://www.denisefeagansphotography.com/ and she happened to be in Harrisonburg over Homecoming weekend.  Enjoy!   Keep in mind she had bronchitis during this photo shoot... hence the lack of smiles. Happy Homecoming!

Well, let's be honest here. I wasn't entirely sure this weekend was going to happen. On Wednesday Ainsley came home with bronchitis so things were not looking good. But luckily she had some meds and pulled herself together (for the most part - she was on steroids so we had some anger issues to deal with...)  But it turned out to be an awesome weekend in Harrisonburg with friends and fellow alums.  We drove up Thursday after work. The students open up Greek Row for trick-or-treating, so tons of families showed up on campus. The kids were excited to wear their costumes and get candy from the sororities and fraternities.  We had some family pictures taken afterwards - you might see a few of them in our Christmas cards next month! We had an early night since Ainsley was still recovering, and we pared down our Friday plans so she could continue to rest and take it easy. Eric played in an alumni golf tournament, while the kids and I wandered around town and f...