One of my favorite Christmas traditions, the one that welcomes the holiday season to our house, is our annual trip to the tree tent. We almost always go the morning after Thanksgiving, load up on pancakes at IHOP and then dash around the corner to pick out our tree. Despite the fact that we live in rural Alabama and there are plenty of places to chop down our own evergreen, my girls delight in the big striped tent. It's a family from out of state who operate from an RV for the month of December and sell the most beautiful Frasier Firs we've ever seen. Since we were out of town the week of Thanksgiving, our Friday morning trek into town didn't happen. I lobbied for Sunday afternoon, but the girls were already under the weather and we were exhausted from traveling. We hated to wait an ...
Dear Mercedes Marathon Weekend,
I am so not prepared for you. Yes, there are still eleven weeks left until you find your way onto my calendar, but I usually start training in October. Here I am, eight whole weeks behind. The timing is funny because I asked Josh just a few days ago if it would make me a total wimp for not registering this year. I know myself, though, and I'll be profoundly disappointed. I'll mope about being that girl that ran it two years in a row and then turned into a quitter. Race Day // 2013 As fate would have it, our office decided to put together a men's and women's relay team to run the full marathon and I was asked to take the long leg. It's broken into 5 sections - two 3 mile legs, two 6 mile legs and an 8 mile leg. I tried to convince myself that I would be just as happy about the 8 mile leg ...
Wild at Heart
As a little girl, I always loved hiking and navigating the trails in Fort Payne with my daddy. It was one of the things I looked forward to the most and I couldn't wait to share it with my girls. We loaded up the truck on Saturday morning and made the fifteen minute drive to Little River Canyon and my girls loved every minute of it. We started off at the top of the falls on the boardwalk, but of course my girls did not enjoy being contained. We did look out over the falls and posed for a few pictures, but they were itching to get their hands and feet in the water. But not before we got a picture of Rainbow Dash in front of the falls. Sophie insisted. We found a set of rock steps that led down to the river and these wild ones were at the shore before you could blink. We joked ...
Thanksgiving Camp
Our Thanksgiving vacation was touch and go for a few days, but we managed to pull it off without a hitch. Josh and my dad drove us up to Fort Payne on Sunday afternoon and helped us get our camp set up. They both had to work the first part of the week, so they left us later in the day and came back up on Wednesday afternoon. Desoto State Park isn't somewhere we go annually like Gulf Shores, but we do enjoy a visit every once in awhile. The last time we went for Thanksgiving was right after Josh and I got married and we stayed in a cabin that year. We've gone back to camp twice since then, but neither time was for more than a few days and it was earlier in the season. This is even less exciting that the beach trips because there isn't much sightseeing to be done and there aren't any ...
Dear Monday,
If you had asked a week ago what today would look like, I would have told you I'd be living in a hotel room, wearing suits every day and missing my people. I was scheduled to be out of town this week for trial and wasn't looking forward to being so far from home during the first week of the holiday season. As it often does, my work plans changed and I made the drive home from vacation yesterday instead of heading out of town.If you had asked me yesterday what today look like, I would have told you I was dreading wearing "business professional" for the first time in eight days and not looking forward to my hour long commute at all. Ella woke up out of sorts yesterday morning, but I chalked it up to spending long days outside in the cold and breathing in wood smoke as we watched endless ...
Letters
Dear Husband, You did good. We've been on a lot of pretty cool dates in the last 17 years, but this was one of my favorites. I kind of laughed when you asked if I wanted to see Moon Taxi since they are actually one of your favorite bands, but I was so pleasantly surprised. For all the years I begged you to go with me to concerts, you have sure made up for it in the last year. I'm not much of a dancer, but dancing with you is my favorite. Thank you for adventures, for fun overnight dates and for knowing exactly what I will love. You are still my favorite. Kristin Friday really was the perfect date. We started out with dinner at Babalu, a new tacos and tapas restaurant in Lakeview. I had heard great things and we were far from disappointed. We had house chips and pico de gallo, ...
Friday’s List
I had been doing really good. I made myself a little blog calendar to keep up with post ideas and a schedule so that I wouldn't inadvertently drop off the face of the blog again. Oops. I actually had posts planned for three days a week through the end of the year and then I just didn't write them. Last week, I was so excited about our girls trip that I neglected pretty much everything. Then this week I was trying to get my life back in order, celebrate my birthday and get us all ready to go out of town for the holiday. It's a miracle that I've squeezed it all in, but with vacation on the horizon and lazy days ahead I am excited to get back on the blogging train. Nothing much momentous happened this week, so instead of multiple posts I decided a list was in order to get you all caught ...
Stop, Drop & Selfie
You form all kinds of friendships over the course of a lifetime. There is the default sister-friend that you shared a bathroom with and who stole your clothes. There is your oldest friend who toddled next to you in diapers and knows all of your secrets. There is the church friend who has prayed alongside you and encourages your faith. There is the college friend who watched you do some things you probably shouldn't have and still let you sleep in her bed. I have had the pleasure of knowing so many of these amazing friends over the last thirty-five years. As luck (or divine intervention) would have it, some of the most important friendships in my life are by chance. I find myself part of this group of girls that might not otherwise have crossed paths. My sister, who as hard as I fought it ...