Festivities

Last week was the big birthday... last one in the 20's to be exact. I sort of like to stretch these birthday things out for several days.. and that's just what I did this year. Early in the week I met some of my dear sweet teacher friends for lunch and a little mini celebration. I love these girls (and others who couldn't be there) and I am so blessed to have these believing women to work close with every day.

The next day Matt surprised me with a little early birthday dinner. This guy is like Chef Boyardee extreme. He is such a fabulous cook and I am so thankful for that because I am a stinky cook. And guess what else.. he loves to cook... even better huh?! He even put candles on the table. He is awesome!

The next day I woke up to this! He decorated the house and even made birthday signs out of construction paper. He was so proud of himself... let me tell you what else he was proud of. The fact that he used color coordinating tissue paper to match the gift bags. I love it!! I scored some good prizes!

Complete with a hand made card and all!! On another not so birthday related note, I am looking a little green in this picture... I had to get up early and go to the doctor that morning to take my glucose test.. hooray I passed and dove into the cake afterwards! Then it was off to dinner with the fam and that was quite the experience. I should just stick to the same ole normal places we eat, but we tried to venture out and it was on the verge of a disaster and when it was all said and done our whole meal, all 6 of us, was free.

And one more fabulous birthday celebration with the fam at the lake this weekend. They all stayed up and decorated again (they know how much I love this birthday thing) and even had a cake for me... and if you look real close you can see that there is an extra letter added to my name. Two e's in Kristen... we will give the credit to my mema for that one :) gotta love her! It was still delicious though.

Fathers And A Treasure Hunt

We spent some time with the fam after church yesterday celebrating Father's Day! We had a fabulous lunch at Beef O' Bradys.
Sister and I with pops. We made him take lots of pictures and thoroughly embarrassed him.

We made the boys sit with mom and keep her straight. Mom and Dad were a little pooped from their all night partying the night before at Mom's class reunion. They are such party animals.

Dad got some good stuff, new shirts, shorts, some tools, and an air compressor. Oh and a lunch spent with his favorite people... us. Happy Father's Day to a wonderful dad who is always giving of himself to others.

And there was a Dad-To-Be in the group... the hubs!! Sister never disappoints to recognize us as "almost parents." Matt is going to be such an awesome dad to little Fulton... I just can't wait!!

Later that afternoon in between lunch and a cupcake baking experiment with sister, which turned a little out of control with the icing, we met up with Drew and Whitney for some geocaching. Have you heard of this? I hadn't until our friends told us about it this weekend. In Whitney's words-- "It's a real live treasure hunt." Here's Matt and Drew doing a little map searching for clues for our first treasure.

Whitney found the first one. We were actually in an old cemetery, slightly creepy, but the treasure was found in that bush behind her. So you open it, you can take something or leave something in it, and you sign the log with the others saying you found it... and on to the next one. It's sort of addicting trying to find these things.

Here's the little hunters looking for one near Lover's Leap in Bluff Park.... this was a hard one. They rate these things by difficulty and the guys trekked all the way down this mountain, while Whitney and I sat on the rock on top, but they never found this one.

Good opportunity for a quick photo opp while we were there though.

All in all I think we found like 4 yesterday. We searched for one for like 30 minutes, after Drew and Whitney had looked for a long time the day before, and we finally found it. Please take that "we" lightly, we were at a park and honestly I sat on the bench most of the time. It was hot.. that was my excuse, that and the fact that I am carrying around a "little" extra weight these days!

Lake With Friends

Last weekend we had our sweet friends, the Nibletts, up to the lake for a day of fun. Cassidy was dying to ride the airhead tube and since there is a life growing inside of me this year I couldn't ride with her. Paige was a trooper and took one for the team and rode it. I was afraid we may not be friends when they came back, but I think they had fun.

And then we got the rest of the fam on too.

Matt and Amy Jordan came up for the day too and it was so hot all you could do was just stay in the water most of the day.

After lunch we had a little surprise birthday cake for the birthday boy. He loved it!

Matt showed Cassidy how to jump off the railing and she was so scared to do it at first and then we couldn't get her to stop. She is an adventurous little booger.

Sweet Tad and Paige, aren't they cute?!

And we went for a little boat ride too.

I can't really do the fast boat this year, unless it's really calm waters, so it's senior citizen pontoon rides for me all summer. It was a fun day with friends and family. And speaking of family, mom and dad were there, I just didn't seem to get a picture of them.

Matt's Big Day

Today was a big day for Matt.. the big birthday!! It's also Flag Day, so hopefully you said the pledge or sang the Star Spangled Banner a few times.

Matt had practice as usual this morning, but we had a little mini celebration when he got home and Chef Kristen actually made breakfast for him.

Matt is very good and will usually tell you exactly what he might want for his birthday and one of those things was another Columbia shirt.. so I found this AL one and he was pumped. He has already started counting down to the start of football season.

Here's the birthday boy admiring his new shoes. He desperately needed a new pair of these.. his stunk.. bad! The old ones are going in the trash. From here we went to the movies.. Matt's request. He LOVES going to the movies... me, not so much. It's because I can't stay awake. But he got me a big bag of popcorn and that kept my attention for a while.

Tonight we went to dinner with the fam. Matt had picked that he wanted to go to The Cajun Steamer and we got there and it was packed.. so we went to his second choice, J Alexanders. It was delish!

Poor dad was running on fumes after sitting with Grandma in the ER all night.. he was a trooper to still come. Thanks for dinner mom and dad!

And thankfully the birthday boy let me take a quick photo with him.

Sister and Steven got Matt these exact flip flops that he wanted and another special prize. Not pictured here is the fabulous bottle of spray sunscreen to go with them. Matt loves spray sunscreen and boy that fella can go through some bottles of that stuff.. so I think I will stock up now and give him some as stocking stuffers.

And he opened his gift from mom and dad in the parking lot... a reciprocating saw. Whatever that does. He was excited and now says his saw collection is complete. Thanks to the fam for celebrating with us! Fun day spent with the man I am in love with. Happy Birthday Matt!

He's A Rockstar!

Matt has been doing a lot of painting and putting together of things recently. He is awesome!! With this little bambino arriving in the next few months, there are lots of things to be done. We got the office cleaned out and ready for occupancy and the bed arrived... now it was time to put it together. Sweet brother-in-law came over to help Matt with the bed. The furniture for the nursery is a "French White", basically it's cream colored. The bedding hasn't arrived yet, but hopefully it will soon so I can see how it looks.

And then it was time to paint the room... we didn't do anything drastic.. just a darker khaki color. He painted this whole room by himself in just a few hours and it looks awesome. I felt bad that I couldn't help, so I made myself useful and did the blue tape for him. Somebody's gotta do it.

And then he took a break from painting the walls and painted my toenails. How fabulous is he? really?! He is so amazing! It was getting uncomfortable bending over to do my toes, so he took over and did a great job by the way. If he ever needs a break from teaching I guess he could open a nail salon.

Last but not least.. the other pieces of furniture. We bought 2 pieces of furniture off Craig's List and they had to be sanded and painted to match the bed. This super (to be) dad sanded and painted it all the last 2 days. He is always sacrificing and extremely selfless... I need to take some tips from him. Thanks to husband of the year, Little Fulton now has furniture and some freshly painted walls (and his momma has some good lookin toes). I love this guy!!

Fun Week

Last week we headed home from the lake, stopped for a second at the house and then packed it back up and headed to the beach. Our sweet friends, Charlie and Erin, came with us and we had such a great time with them. The next day we were out in the sand bright and early ready to soak up some rays.

Sweet Charlie and Erin. They didn't realize they were with some hard core beachers... Matt set up our camp for the day, complete with 4 umbrellas, one for every person.

I tried to get in the ocean a little, but the waves were out of control and knocking me down. Big fat pregnant girl falling in the waves= not very attractive.

We cleaned up and headed to Tacky Jacks for dinner. I had some delicious shrimp and grits... yum yum!

After dinner we went by the Wharf and the guys were very patient while Erin and I went in a few shops.. or maybe we went in every shop that was open.

You can't go to the Wharf and not look and gaze at all these amazing boats.

One quick photo of Erin and me before we went for dippin dots. Every time I eat those I think.. why didn't I invent these things?

The next night we had dinner at Desoto's and then Erin had an itch to play some mini golf... but before we could do that I made everyone stop in the game room for some skee ball.

I LOVE playing skee ball. I seriously want one of these in our house. I would practice all the time. I remember many years going to the beach when we were younger with the fam and we would go play skee ball. My poor dad probably had to keep shelling out the quarters for me because I wasn't very good.. but was determined to win tickets to get some plastic spider ring that you could probably buy at the dollar tree.

And then it was time for mini golf. I cannot remember the last time I played mini golf... but everyone actually shot a hole in one at some point, so I guess I still got it!

Erin is a hard core golfer... and concentrates really hard when she plays, can't you tell?

And it's a good thing we played golf the night before, because the guys went for real the next day. They sweat on the course while Erin and I hit up the outlets.

We all met back up for an afternoon at the pool... I can see myself spending a lot of time in the water this summer. It was very hot

We spent our last night's dinner at the Oyster House and Matt entertained us with pictures in the scuba diver cut out. He had to wait in line with the other kids.

Too bad Erin isn't looking at the camera... but it's on the only one of the 4 of us from the night. We kept trying to scope out a good person who looked like they could take the picture.. we finally interrupted this older man sharing war stories with his friend. Bad choice, I guess?!

One last stroll on the beach before dark. It was a beautiful night!

Of course we took Harley out for a little play time. He loves the beach, as usual... and came back in covered in sand. We had a great week with friends!