8 Month Catch-Up

I am a blog-slacker. Everytime I get caught up I swear I'm not going to slack off again, and I do, so I won't make that promise again! Here are some highlights from the past EIGHT months!
  
1. We were blessed with the birth of another niece! My sister-in-law, Kristin had a baby girl in March. She made her appearance rather quickly into the world much to everyone’s surprise, especially her parents! She is beautiful, healthy and (in my opinion) looks exactly like her big brother when he as a baby! 

2. My Gma Bev has made great improvements in her battle with breast cancer since receiving treatment in Atlanta Cancer Treatment Center of America.  Her overall health has improved and more importantly, she feels so much better! Praise  the LORD!

From Key West... ;)

3. Drew and I traveled to Aspen and Key West since my last post. I will have to post about these trips in greater detail later! We had a great time on both trips though and are planning our next trip to Colorado already (well, in our minds at least). ..

4. I had neck surgery in March to repair a ruptured disc in my neck that was causing severe pain down my right arm. Fortunately the doctor who performed the surgery did an amazing job and I feel so much better; I’m not 100% pain free yet, but we’re working on that!

first day home, notice the nurse (unnecessarily) shaved my hair - it's now growing into a rat-tail circa 1990. 

First day back at work with my fancy foam necklace! 

5. Drew bought a new toy.. a Jeep.. Although I was very reluctant in the beginning as to why we needed another vehicle, I must say it’s pretty darn fun to drive. Side note: It has a manual transmission; when we test drove it the first time Drew stalled out, I didn't.. I just felt that that was an important piece of information to share. ;) 

The in-laws driving us around :)

6. Both if my sweet nephews are another year older! It's so sad how quickly the time is flying by.. Their moms both did a great job on their birthday parties!

7. Three of my girlfriends are pregnant! Lori is due in February, Kathryn in March and Caroline in April! It's going to be a busy spring next year! 

Sweet Sadie

 Sadie made her arrival into this world early Halloween morning! L&D took a long time, not sure if it was as long as Parker’s birth, but it was a looooooooong time!   Sadie is 7 weeks old now and looks remarkably similar to Parker as a baby. She has a wonderful temperament and rarely cries, or at least I rarely see her cry! Parker loves being a big brother to her and tries to be as helpful as possible. I asked him the other day if I could take Sadie home with me and he said “No! That’s MY baby Sadie!”
I've got high hopes that Sadie will want to be a snuggler! (Parker would rarely indulge us long enough to get a good snuggle out of him; he still doesn't want to sit still long enough to snuggle!).

July run-down

Wow! It has been over a month since my last post! Seems like I just wrote about Has Lina last week! Here is what has been going on since my last post:

We went to HHI for the 4^th of July! It was a lot of fun! We stayed in Folly Field. The traffic was terrible on the island though! We went shopping, spent time on the beach and ate ….a lot! Drew, my mom and brother even played a round of golf together at Indigo Run.

Mama and Parker

There were a bunch of birthdays this month too! Our nephew turned 2! Here is opening his Harley Davidson BIG wheel from Aunt Bean and Uncle Drew! I LOVED my big wheel as a kid and I hope he enjoys this one just as much!

Kim turned 27 this month too! I forgot to take a picture at dinner (we went to Myabis!) so her is a picture from a Kenny Chesney concert we attended in 2009! That was such a fun night!

My mother-in-law also had a birthday! I took a picture of her at the Mexican restaurant in a ridiculously large sombrero that I will decline to post… for now! ;) Here is a picture of us from 2007, I believe this was our first picture together!

Last Saturday was Caroline’s 30^th birthday! We went to Augusta to celebrate.. Beamies for dinner! Here is a picture of the girls before we headed out (by the way, this is Caroline’s front porch on their BEAUTIFUL new house!)

We have also started a few upgrades on our house! The bathroom was out of necessity (the tile grout was leaking (ughhhh!)) and we had the kitchen back-splash tiled too. The bathroom is almost finished (we decided to replace the countertops and then we added bead board to the walls since we had a mess on our hands anyway!).

Kitchen before and after!

tile coming down

mid-crazy-mess that was the bathroom. 

Drew and I have also been working out together in preparation for our upcoming trip! I will post about that soon.. But back to working out, I purchased a polar watch and heart rate monitor and I'll admit it’s pretty impressive (and keeps me motivated!). Among other things, it tracks your calories burned based on your heart rate during the workout (granted you have to wear a small strap around your rib cage while you work out and that can be a little uncomfortable at times.  I got mine on Amazon, of course.

We have also had a couple lazy afternoons too!  

The sun!! 

Lazy Summer Catch-Up

So far it has been a lazy summer for us (although summer does not officially begin until this Friday). We have been staying in more than usual and I must say it is nice to go all weekend without having to put any makeup on. We need to stay home more often! Drew has been playing more golf lately and I've been torturing myself at the gym after work a few days a week; other than that it has just been work and home, work and home. Here are the highlights from the past couple of weeks:

1. It’s a GIRL!

We found out last weekend that J&K are expecting a girl this fall! I was convinced it was going to be a boy but “boy” was I wrong! We are all thrilled to be receiving a baby girl into our family. I don’t believe I mentioned this yet but J&K asked Drew and me to be the godparent’s of P and Baby #2. Such an honor that was! As far as I know they have not decided on a name for baby girl yet but they need to do so quickly so I can feed my etsy addiction!

Kim and Parker after the confetti drop!

Me, Kim & Courtney; my 2 oldest friends.

Here is my first purchase for baby girl! 60 hair bows!!
Let's hope she isn't bald 'til age 2 like I was!

 

2. DONE. WITH. CLASSES. FOREVER…. Or a while at least.

I finished my LAST class for my MBA program on the 10^th! I am thrilled to be finished with classes and now the only thing left to complete is my MBA project. I am about a 1/3 of the way finished with the project and have until September 30^th to submit it. I’d like to think I can get it turned in early, but if my past performance is any indication I’ll be rushing to finish at the bitter end! I would like to think that I am officially finished with higher education, but getting my PhD is pretty tempting. Dr. Bean – I like it!  

check!

3. Mama’s birthday! The 9^th was Mama’s birthday! She turned 49? … Yes, let’s go with 49. We had a mellow evening; Chinese food and birthday cake! I’m pretty sure we were all sick afterwards from eating too much.

 blowing out candles before "wopening" gma's presents.

 

4. Effective today I am offically a part-time reduced hours employee. It will be a while until I can consider myself an actual part-time employee especially with the increased workload businesses now face with the implementation of the Obamacare Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) in January. I went to an ACA seminar last Friday and I am genuinely frightened for the vast majorities of small businesses. This "Affordable" act is going to sink far too many businesses than benefit the individuals who already receive free healthcare need access to insurance. ... Okay, off my soap box.

 

Photo Updates

We have had (mostly) remarkable weather for this time of the year these past 2 weeks or so and have even ventured into the 80 degree realm on a day or two! Yessssss! I for one think it should be 90 and sunny year round but very few others share this sentiment with me. Anyway, on to the pictures... I was able to get together with Catherine and Amanda on Tuesday evening of last week to take pictures of their sweet daughters. Both Savanna and Emma decided that they were going to be serious models for the shoot though! We managed to get one smile out of each, but we sounded like a group of idiots in the process! "Are you going to smile for us? Awww smile for us! Smile for mama! Be a sweet girl! Sssmmmiiilllleeeeee!" 

 I also took pictures of my nephew on Saturday because he is 18 months old now! Wowza! I have been taking his pictures for a little over a year now at different milestones and it is so neat to look back on the pictures and see how much he has changed in such a short period of time. 

Here are a few of my favorites: 

Savanna (3 months old)
(This was actually the first one I took of her on Tuesday so I thought this was going to be an session and we would get lots of smiles!)

But boy were we wrong! She stuck her tongue out at us and that was it for facial expressions for the day! How cute was this though?!

Most of the pictures looked more like this though:

She is adorable either way! We are hoping for a better performance when she turns 6 months old! :)

Savanna is the baby that was cooking during these pictures: Catherine and Lee

Emma - 4 Months Old

She was such a little doll; this was kind of a smile, right?!

 

Here are her proud parents, Robert and Amanda. (Still no smile from Emma!) 

Lastly, here are 18 month pictures 

We had no issues getting laughs or smiles out of this guy though! 

Again, all smiles! 

This was my favorite picture we took that day! 

Falling behind...

These past 2 weeks have flown by and I am still not sure where all the time went! Its been almost 2 weeks since my last post (sorry!) so here are a few of the highlights from the past couple of weeks:

1.We have started the process of building Drew a 'man-shop' (which I assume is different from just a regular shop?). When it is finally complete Drew will have a place of his own and will get all of his 'treasures' out of the house and the garage! (I really am excited about this part!). The dimensions are roughly 32x50 and this is similar to how it will look when complete (different colors, add a cupola and extra window and swap the door positions).

So far the  foundation and floors have been poured and they are currently in the process of framing the walls.

2. My parents are out of town this week which has left me with FIVE dogs in my house; this wouldn't be so bad if one of those dogs wasn't a 10 week old terrorist puppy! I am currently sporting a scratch across my forehead and eyelid thanks to this little devil! Her name is Emma and she is an English Springier Spaniel, she is actually a lot of fun but she is just so wound-up all the time. The other dogs do their best to tolerate her but she tests her limits with them regularly! She is a real doll when she is asleep though (apparently this puppy only needs like a 5 minute power nap before she start destroying something again).

3. Drew and I babysat Parker this past Sunday evening and we had a lot fun! We fed the horses, played on the playground, rode the golf cart, watched Rio (sort-of), harassed Emma for an extended period of time and even found time to take a few Christmas-y pictures. 

Dinner followed by a bath and ice cream (sugar free!).  Bean's house is so much fun! 

He loved playing with Emma (or Minga as he pronounces it). he probably enjoyed being outside more than any other activity and he also found time to ride this bouncy-car that was his as a baby. As a baby he wanted nothing to do with this car (and he is about 10 pounds over the recommended weight limit now!).

He actually like the antlers (he refused to take them off for a while!).

He was so excited about this lollipop! 

My sweet boy! 

4. This past Saturday I met up with some of my girlfriends from Waynesboro and we has an ornament swap. It was a lot of fun, and I got to spend almost an hour holding Brigham which was a win for me! Next year I think we should make it an ornament and wine bottle swap! ...why not?! :)

 

Sweet Brigham sleeping in my arms. 

Emma and Brigham; future sweethearts! ;) 

5. Scentsy. Ansley recently hosted a  Scentsy party for one of her friends in Statesboro and since receiving my items I have become a big fan (If I am home I've got them tuned on). I currently have a warmer in the kitchen that has the festival of trees scent in it and it smells so Christmas-y! Drew and I have also been watching Christmas movies lately and it has helped get us into the spirit (along with the overwhelming Christmas decorations that have taken over my living room)! I have a smaller warmer in my bedroom that has a lavender scent in it that is pretty great too. 

Here is her page if anyone is interested: https://laurablair.scentsy.us/Scentsy/Home

6. C4's Christmas Party. We had our annual Christmas party last week at West Lake Country Club. The food was great and it didn't last too long which was great as well! It was probably the best food we've had at one of our Christmas Party (except for the year that the Little Dutch House in Wrens catered). 

We also got some pretty sweet gifts from good ol' Tony-Tone. My sister-in-law, Kim, sells Arbonne and arranged for all the ladies at the party to get an awesome gift-set. I am a huge fan of the body creme and bath wash (the scent is so clean and fresh!). It also came with a sugar scrub but I haven't had an opportunity to try that yet. Here is the website if you are interested in checking out any of their products: www.arbonne.com 

7. I have finished all of my Christmas shopping (well all of the necessities at least). I have wrapped everything and I am pretty much prepared for the Christmas eve get together at my house with mine and Drew's family. I'm particularly excited to see my 2 nephews play together! 

8. I finally enrolled in my last set of classes for next semester. I'll be sooooooo glad when this is over! Although I am considering going back for another business degree in project management. But I will definitely take some time off before I head down this road again.

9. I also got my home-office set up after 2 years of being in our house. Mom and I went shopping for a desk and ended up getting one from Office Depot. It was delivered in 5 different boxes and took me 2 days to assemble everything! I can't find a picture online if my exact desk set but here is the smaller version of the I got -- I will add a finished picture of the office later. I am incredibly excited about getting to work from home some of the time! Yippie!!!!

--I'm sure there are a few more highlights from the past 2 weeks but my brain is out of gas from a severe lack of sleep these past few days... thanks Emma!  

Baby Brigham!

On Sunday I was fortunate enough to get to spend some time with baby Brigham and his parents. He is such a sweet boy and was a real trooper during his pictures! I visited Brigham at the hospital the day after he was born and in the week between that time and the time until we coordinated to take the pictures he had changed so much already! Here are a few of my favorite pictures:

Such a good looking little fella!