this weekend was absolutely amazing.  lauren was down from philly for the weekend.  as you all know, i love my city, and so any time i have a chance to show someone the awesomeness of richmond, i try to go all out.  i think we succeeded.

friday, we hit up the cinnamon band show at gallery 5.  they were awesome as usual and continue to be one of my favorite virginia bands.  we then left and headed to cous cous.  we grabbed a bite to eat and had some amazing drinks.  brett and chris seemed to be making them a little strong and we had no problem with that.

saturday, we woke up hangover-free (yesss!) and headed off to black sheep for brunch.  i had promised lauren a trip there since they were the only place, to my knowledge, that served cheerwine in richmond.  however, once we arrived the peach sangria was calling her name, so we shared that and the cheerwine and had an awesome brunch.

after brunch, we headed to maymont and walked around for hours.  the weather could not have been more perfect.  it was crowded there, but it made for ample people-watching opportunities.  my favorite being the interaction between a mother and her son outside the pen for the grey fox.  he was inching closer to the fence and his mom was admonishing him for it, and he replied “that fox can’t get me, i will punch him in the FACE!”  my kind of kid.

after spending hours at maymont and taking a ton of photos with my new nikon, we headed to meet up with friends for BYOT (bring-your-own-toppings) pizza night at brett’s.  the pizza, as usual, was phenomenal and we had a great time with friends.  i tried to take a few pizza glamour shots, but i obviously still have a lot to learn with my new camera, as they mostly came out blurry.  they definitely didn’t taste blurry.

after pizza, lauren and i watched a movie and had a quiet night.  we watched one of my favorite movies, meet joe black.  it was a perfect ending to the day.

sunday, we accidentally slept in pretty late and were hunting for brunch around 1:00pm.  oddly enough, we bumped into our friends dave and kristin and had an impromptu brunch at ipanema.  the rest of the afternoon was spent just relaxing around the house and lauren left around 5:00pm to head back home.  i spent the rest of the night playing with ulysses and laying low while bill made homemade marshmallows from scratch.  even watching him, i still have no idea how he did it - but my god, they tasted delicious.

all in all, it was an amazing weekend.