Driver's Education

Hypothetically speaking, if you are ever in a rush to get to the pediatrician for a well-baby visit, and your best friend has come over to babysit your older child, and you aren't used to having another car in the driveway when you back out of the garage, make sure that you have all doors closed when driving in reverse. Just saying. Because if in fact, like this hypothetical situation, the driver's side door is wide open when backing out and there is a car on that side of the driveway, chances are your car will clip the other car, causing quite a bit of damage to both vehicles. 

Okay, so maybe it isn't so hypothetical after all 

Oops!

Yes folks, that is a 90 degree angle. And for the record, no- car doors are not supposed to be perpendicular to the rest of the vehicle. 

1. Luckily all little people, animals and best friends were inside the house at the time of said incident.

2. Luckily, I carry collision insurance. 

3. Yes, I have definitely learned my lesson. 

4.  Car accidents, even minor ones where one vehicle is stationary and the other is going maybe 2 mph, are expensive. (i.e. a dented bumper on an SUV costs $700 to replace. And we don't even have the quote for my car yet!)

5. One day we will look back on Landon's 6 month birthday with a fond chuckle, saying 'Remember that time I backed into Weslie's car? Ha ha ha...'

Literature

A Literary Meme, courtesy of Yes, I Must Be Crazy.

Here's how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or change the color of ) books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below. I am a book horse, I love to read anything and everything and 99% of the time I have a book at some stage of consumption laying around the house. There are so many books on this list that I have always wanted to read, I think it has inspired me to get a library card and get back to the classics!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

First Haircut

It was a long time coming, but I didn't know how she would handle it so I kept putting it off. I found a cute little place at the International Mall in Tampa that specializes in kids haircuts so I decided to try it out. It went a lot better than I thought it would, and she looks so cute!

She only lasted in her pink Jeep for the first cut, then she wanted to sit on my lap

After being such a good girl getting her hair cut, she got spritzed with yummy smelling vanilla hairspray and then got sprinkled with fairy dust

She was so proud of herself afterwards. I called her a beautiful princess and she said, "No, I'm a beautiful fairy!" She doesn't miss a thing!

Eight years

Eight years ago today I was 17 years old, enjoying summer vacation up in Gainesville. I had a rough junior year of high school and needed to get away, and my parents knew it. So they packed me up and off I went to live with my sister for the summer. I was not expecting to meet anyone, and especially not my future husband! 

Eight years ago today I got dressed in a little blue sundress, was picked up by Brad and off we went to the Olive Garden. We sat across from each other at a tiny little table, tucked in an alcove and decided to label this thing we had started- exclusivity, boyfriend/girlfriend. I was giddy. I was so young. 

We have been through so much in the last eight years- a long distance relationship; dealing with the pressures of our age difference [in the early stages of our relationship, while I was finishing high school]; the loss of my best friend 6 years ago that affected me so deeply, I am still dealing with it; a marriage proposal, wedding planing, becoming man and wife. Law school, exams, papers, losing Brad's beloved grandaddy. A positive pregnancy test while he was still in school, preparing for our first baby, law school graduation, the bar exam, the birth of Savannah, the move to Bradenton, building and buying our first house. Brad changing jobs, a second positive pregnancy test, a much different pregnancy with elevated blood pressure and bed rest, the unknown (a boy or a girl?!) the unbelievable surprise when Landon was born. Going from a family of two to a family of four in two short years. 

And now here I sit, eight years later and more in love with Brad than I ever thought possible. Just watching him with our children, the babies we made together and were so blessed with, the love that we share and the faith that we share and knowing that we have the rest of our lives to spend together, but somehow that still isn't enough. And the peace in knowing that when we are gone, we will spend eternity together with our Creator. And that is enough- more than enough. 

I love you, B. 

Independence Day

Whew, what a whirlwind holiday weekend we had!!

It started on Thursday night, baking a yummy carrot cake for our family reunion on Friday. Savannah was very into helping- she wanted to count all the carrots as I was peeling them, and then of course couldn't wait to get her hands on the beater after I whipped up my cream cheese frosting!

Friday we headed to our cousins home in Tampa for our annual family reunion. Savannah was so excited to get to play with her cousin Olivia. Of course I couldn't get a good picture of the two of them playing. But Savannah and Landon looked too cute in their matching nautical outfits!

I LOVE this one of Savannah, she looks so grown up!

Landon's first football photo!

My sweet babies

After the reunion we headed down to my parent's house for the weekend. Last year one of the neighbors across the lake did a big fireworks display, so we were hoping for another.... unfortunately he didn't do it (the first time in 4 years he didn't!) but luckily a lot of people around the lake were shooting them off so we still had a good show! It was so nice floating in the pool and watching the fireworks. We did a lot of swimming this weekend!

Landon with his PaPa

Landon LOVED floating in the pool!

Savannah discovered her inner daredevil and spent most of the weekend trying to jump in the pool. She is crazy but had so much fun!

Random Landon cuteness....

And a great shot of our family!! I can't wait to print/frame this one!