cute josie pics...

she is wanting to walk so bad.  which is challenging and fun all at the same time. i love sleeping pictures.  or just babies sleeping in general.  there is just something about it.  guys love it too.  or at least russ does.  our seinfield-ness cannot figure out why we love it so much.  josie fell asleep last night while on a walk with thomas.  this NEVER happens.  did i mentions she NEVER falls asleep in the stroller.  so i had to take a picture.

precious.  

below is a video portion of our saturday morning.

cinnamon rolls. yummy!

several new post below.

this past weekend...

we were quite busy.  

friday was spent with jay, linda, ryder and granny.

russ' cousins who were in town with their little one (ryder) from seattle.

we had a blast talking and eating.

because i am a lame picture taker (see post below) i did not take any good pictures of their visit.

thank goodness linda is a professional photographer.

we celebrated russ' upcoming birthday on friday night at stella's.

saturday we had a family reunion at my nana and grandaddy's.

bbq and brunswick stew.  it doesn't get much better.

saturday night kc (my BABY brother) got engaged to his sweetheart brittany.

i will post a picture but please remember i am a lame picture taker.

maybe my mom will post better pictures on fb.

but it was really great because we got to see him propose (i cried).  we were in a restaurant in downtown lawrenceville while he proposed in front of the courthouse.

she did not know we were all in the restaurant so she was quite surprised to see her family there immediately after.

durham and kevin....like father like son.

overall it was a great night.  we are so excited to have brittany join our family.

church is really fun...

especially when you live in a small house and love to crawl. oh, and your second home is at church.

she will do this for extended amounts of time.  head down crawling all the way down the hall.

i am a lame picture taker....

this is what i have been reflecting upon this last week.  also the reason for not updating my blog.  we have had a lot of excitement and blog-worth experiences, i just don't have good pictures to display.  please note my lame-ness in the examples to follow.

example #1

it is my daughter's first easter.  one would think i would take beautiful pictures outside in the beautiful weather.  nope. just some in her room. lame.

she did look super cute (and a bit surprised) in her outfit from gran gran.

example #2

i have an adorable daughter yet i am easily amused by my dog over and over.  is this part of being a stay at home mom?  thomas vs. red georgia clay! lame.

i am not sure who won. notice the forehead and the back.

example #3

josie is in the same position as the easter picture.  this is my favorite outfit day. a day in which she wears my favorite outfit of her collection. lame.

side smirk.  amusing me already.

praise the Lord! obviously, josie and mom practice this over and over when she is at her house!  love it!

example #4

the other day in the grocery store russ and i saw a lady feeding her 8 month old a regular size reese's peanut butter cup.  awesome.  then i took a picture to solidify that i should not have judged her.

"what happens and gramps and mimi's stays at gramps and mimi's."

serious?

So yesterday I observed  a man in a suburban driving down Boulevard (major road in Atlanta) with his side passenger door open.  Serious?  The crazy thing was apparently I was the only one who cared and tried to honk.  Maybe this is a new style like the one pant leg thing.  Who knows.

On another fun side note...

I had a mommy/sitter mixer this past Saturday.  Due to Russ' job with college and young adults, we hang out a lot with some great babysitters.  Having this grand luxury became apparent as I talked with my mom friends at bible study.  One of my friends had the idea of having a party where the moms and sitters could meet each other, therefore you could see personalities etc.

It went great!  The sitters were cute as ever and several of my mom friends from church and my neighborhood came to mingle.  It was great collision of my two worlds.

Russ and I have enjoyed brainstorming on other ways that our life and areas of influence can intermingle for others to benefit.

Any other good ideas for your areas of influence?

top ten costa rica moments...

1.  zipline through the cloud forest.  not rain forest. cloud forest.  where clouds have gathered on top of a mountain making a beautiful canopy of trees and an awesome jungle.  this was no safe american zipline.  it was the real deal.  scary and all.  the longest of the 15 ziplines was 1 km.  yep.... nuts.  it was awesome!

2.  surfing in tamarindo.  we stayed by the beach the last three days.  russ wanted to take surfing lessons of which i thought "there is no point."  but due to the fact that "point break" is one of my favorite movies, i decided why not.  the fun part is that russ and i both truly surfed many times.  we got it down pretty good.  however it was exhausting.  and i can never be compared the "blue crush" girls.  i was proud of myself and my many injuries to prove it.  i felt tough.  sometimes it is hard to feel physically tough when you're a mom.  so i was encouraged to feel that again.

3.  skype.  i had my first venture with skype on the last two days of our trip.  my conclusion is that i was probably better off without it.  i did great without seeing josie for so long.  only getting updates in 5 min conversations.  but upon seeing her... i was always a mess afterward.  crying as i walked to the beach with my book.  lame i know.  children....they get this major hold on your heart that is indescribable.

4.  reading without a time constraint.  i haven't done this in so long.  c.s. lewis "the weight of glory" was my "spiritual" book.  don't get me wrong i had my fun book "middle place" by kelly corrigan.  but i felt like i was in college again reading and reading a spiritual book without any thoughts of time.  it felt right.

5.  luck of the irish.  our last b&b was amazing.  we were one of two couples there.  the other couple was on their honeymoon from ireland.  we ended up chatting with this sweet irish couple for hours.  went to dinner with them and everything.  it was awesome!  we learned a lot about ireland.  for example... they get honeymoon days off work.  like maternity leave here.  nuts.

6.  open air restaurants.  

kristy:  these open air restaurants are awesome.  why can't we have anything like this in georgia?

russ:  because we have cold weather

kristy:  oh yeah

7.  no schedule.  of course you don't have a schedule on vacation.  no the truth is it was nice to not have a josie schedule on vacation.  no thoughts of feedings or naps.  it was nice.  thanks mom and mary!  somebody has to think those schedule thoughts.

8.  waking up to a volcano errupting.  it was awesome.  we stayed in an observatory lodge for the arenal volcano.  we woke up at 4:30am to gurgling and burping of the orange lava.  it was awesome.

9.  jogging a jungle loop.  in the valley of the volcano was some lush running trails. it was great to run a loop (i love running loops so i don't see the same things twice...much more entertaining) with all these amazing sites to take in!

10.  fresh mangos and fried sweet plantanes.  the cook at the b&b taught me how to pick a ripe mango and how to cook sweet plantanes.  oh it was so good.  i am salivating now.

for those of you that are wondering:

russ and i arrived home from costa rica last night.  josie was already in bed.  and the truth is she was extremely confused when i went into her bedroom this morning.  sorry there is no fun story to tell of squealing or smiling.  just royally confused.  i think i squealed though.  i could not wait to squeeze her.