Hop Blossom!

Hop Blossom is Winchester's annual beer festival that takes place along the walking mall.  We thought that it'd be fun to invite some friends and family to join us, so we hosted 5 people and 1 dog for the weekend!  Drew and Kristen (and Bat) showed up in time for some pizza and we hung around and chit chatted until Brent and Jessica showed up.  They all brought beer... we'd also bought beer.  We had so much beer it was insane.  We had also told Ben to bring beer when he showed up tomorrow, so we thought "we should text him to tell him not to"... and then I didn't have his number and Drew got distracted trying to find it for me and... he brought more on Saturday.  Our house has more Bud Light in it than it has ever had (and will ever have).

We woke up far too early on Saturday considering the munchkin stayed at Mom and Dad Ballew's house and the only early risers were the pups.  Everybody was awake by 7:30, except Drew, and Kristen woke him up around 8:30 when the pancakes were ready.  Then we kind of just lounged around.  Aaron mowed the lawn to show off his mower, Ben showed up, and we all took turns getting ready for Hop Blossom.

We showed up right on time because we were all ready for lunch and had decided to just eat there.  We ate off of food trucks and I had a half of a grilled mac n' cheese sandwich.  Holy carbs...  It was good.  But it was filling.

We had a great time!  Lots of beer to taste, lots of FREE beer to taste because the breweries "forgot to mark your wristband", lots of plans to get free beer once our bands were completely marked, and generally just fun times with friends.  There were some really good breweries that are close by that I would now like to visit!  And there were some disappointing new breweries that we were really looking forward to (I'm looking at you, Escutcheon).  All-in-all, a great way to spend a Saturday!  We left before it ended, which seems unheard of, but we were hungry and really just in no state to keep drinking.  Me mostly... I think... Whoops.

Instead, we headed back, ordered pizza, played cornhole, and just hung out in the back yard (and some of us took naps on the ground...).

Everybody went to bed relatively early (day drinking has that effect)...

We woke up kind of early again and everybody started heading home.  Aaron and I cleaned up the house a little bit and lounged around watching TV all day.  The best kind of Sunday... if only it didn't include a hangover...

And now I'm in Tennessee only to arrive back home RIGHT AFTER Aaron leaves for his Italy trip (work related... not as fun of an Italy trip as he would probably like).

2 weeks of no Aaron... :(