Furman Homecoming and Disney on Ice

Last weekend we headed up to Greenville for Furman's annual Homecoming weekend. Jeremy and I are proud to say we've been to every single Homecoming weekend since we graduated (er, I guess since we started) college. Although we do seem to spend less and less time there each year as we know fewer people :-( Despite the drizzly, cold weather we got some great pictures Saturday hanging around the Bell Tower. When we got home on Sunday, Sarah and I turned around and left for Disney on Ice with our friends Leslie and Melanie. It was so much fun! Sarah enjoyed every minute of it even down to the trolley (MARTA) ride. We'll, she didn't so much love the MARTA ride back when we had to stand up on the train because it was so crowded...but she loved everything else :-)

Enjoy the pics! Also, I've noticed that I only have one blog "follower" and it makes me a little depressed :-/ If you are a reader (often, seldom, or anywhere in between), I would love for you to join as a follower :-)

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I have been following this blog for a little while now, and the Not Me! Monday! posts are really funny, so I decided to start posting some of my own:-)

This week...(and there's no way all of these happened in one day)
1) I did not walk out of the Carter's store with a new load of clothes Sarah does not need, and I most certainly did not leave the entire stroller inside the store, only realizing it was missing when I got to the car and opened the trunk to put it back inside. (By the way, in case you're wondering, I did have Sarah with me).
2) I would never let Sarah paint while wearing a brand new Halloween dress without a paint shirt, and never, ever, would I let her get green paint on the white part of the dress! (it came out Aunt Mary!!!)
3) I did not let Sarah mess up the packaging in several brand new pairs of shoes at DSW and I did not let her take the "sticks" out of the shoes and wander around the store banging them like drumsticks on all of the mirrors.
4) Speaking of shoes, and this is the worst thing I would never, ever do: I would NEVER let Sarah wander around an antique store without holding my hand, and I would never let her out of my sight long enough to then later see her holding a package of silicon beads from inside a shoe IN HER MOUTH. You know, the beads that say DO NOT EAT all over the package, as if anyone is dumb enough to put them in their mouth or let someone small put them in their mouth. Just so you know, I guess you can actually lick the beads without any major medical disasters, as long as you don't eat the whole package...but I wouldn't try it if I were you. Finally, when I noticed what Sarah was not doing with the package of beads, I certainly did not go over and rip the beads from her hand and proceed to spank her on the hand in the middle of the store, as if it was her fault that I was not paying close enough attention to her in the store!

Fall Fun

Fall is here! It's pumpkin patch time! I decided to buy a Stone Mountain annual membership, so Sarah, my mom, and I took our first trip out there on Friday to visit the Pumpkin Festival. We had fun but it sure was HOT for October! Sarah painted a little mini pumpkin, decorated a princess crown, and put up with me in the pumpkin patch while I tried to take pictures. Then we went to ride the SkyRide. Sarah totally loves anything mountain, train, or trolley related (thanks to our summer trip to Pigeon Forge), so I told her we were going to ride the trolley that goes up in the sky to the top of the mountain, and she was fascinated. Overall, the pumpkin festival was nice, but the Christmas festival is much nicer! We can't wait!

Today, we all headed out to Watkinsville to Washington Farms to have more pumpkin patch fun. Here, Sarah totally impressed me by riding the cow train in her very own seat all by herself!!!! Jeremy and I just knew she was going to back out kicking and screaming when we tried to make her sit by herself, but she surprised us and loved the whole thing! Good girl Sarah! She also loved the slide, hayride, duck races, mini gourds, and petting zoo. You can tell that Jeremy liked taking Sarah on a wild go-cart ride :-)

I also recorded Sarah's conversation with herself when she woke up yesterday morning, just for kicks:
Sarah: Gonna be strong at Nana's house. Watch Bambi at Nana's house! Gonna be bigger! Gonna be strong! Gonna be strong! (sigh) I'm tired. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go. Hi ho! Tweet tweet. MY birdie. Tap the mat (tapping the mattress). I'm ready to go now at Nana's house!

There's another new post below this one...too many pictures for one post!

2 Year Old Portrait Session

We went to Portrait Innovations on Thursday for a belated two-year old picture session. Michael took some great pictures for us in the summer, but I was itching to have some more pictures taken, so off we went. Sarah did a fabulous job and was able to follow some directions from the photographer, which made the session so much less stressful. Of course, we ended up buying more pictures than we need (because we needed NONE, and we got the "free" CD, so here are some of the pictures :-)

Riding in the Car, Riding in the Car...

...we love riding in the car! Well, not really, but we love going on fun trips! Jeremy, Sarah, and I took a mini vacation to Greenville for Labor Day weekend. We went up Saturday and took Sarah to her very first Furman football game. Jeremy's parents were in Hawaii on vacation so they let us have their game tickets. Sarah looked so cute and grown up in her little cheerleader outfit. She enjoyed sitting up in the stands...for about 30 minutes. At that point, I took her out where she could walk around, but she did not want to walk around. So we bought some food, and basically spent another 30 minutes carrying it around (carrying Sarah too) because otherwise she would scream. It had been my idea to leave the stroller in the car (because you can't take a stroller into a stadium, right?), but apparently that was a bad idea. You can in fact take strollers to the Furman stadium, and once we decided to walk back to the car to get it, Sarah was an angel. She also liked getting to take a detour by the lake to feed the ducks her hot dog bun :-) We hung around Greenville until Monday morning, and we visited the Greenville Zoo on our way out of town. Sarah loved the zoo--she was especially fascinated by the giraffes and all of the birds in their respective cages. Throughout the whole weekend, Sarah was slowly coming down with a cold, and she ran a low temp and got pretty congested, but we kept going and having fun anyway. By Tuesday, when we went back to school/work, she was pretty bad off with the congestion and coughing. I had to take her home from school only an hour after we got there because she kept coughing up junk on the floor--yuck! We went to the doctor and they said she "probably has the flu," although I am convinced that she did not have the flu but rather just the awful cold I had the week before. She was fine by Wednesday, which was good, because Thursday afternoon we headed to Saint Simons for a long beach weekend! Jeremy had to stay home because it turned out he couldn't miss work, but we went ahead with my parents, brother (+ Anna) and sister, aunt, uncle, and cousin (+ Shawn). We pretty much had fabulous weather and a GREAT view from our ocean front balcony. We splurged on the unit in our condo since the rates went way down after labor day. It was weird to take off work to go to the beach, but it was SO nice going in September. The condo place was practically deserted, we had no restaurant waits, and the beach was not at all crowded. We had so much fun just relaxing at the beach and the pool. Sarah LOVED the sand and the ocean but was very hesitant to let go of an adult's hand while standing at the edge of the water. She got better and better each day, though :-) She loved having her own personal baby pool to play in (I don't think we ever saw anyone else in that pool the whole time we were there!). Sarah was a trooper in the car on the way home, and I discovered that using the tray for her booster seat as a toy tray in the car was a FABULOUS idea! She also worked really hard during the trip on her potty training, and she stayed dry for both 6 hour trips! It did mean that we had to make LOTS of potty stops, though :-(

At home, we are continuing to work on the potty training. Sarah wore her "big girl pants" to school on Thursday and Friday. She did have 2 accidents late in the day on Thursday and one on Friday morning, so I'm not sure what we will do for school on Monday. I am trying to leave her in the underwear when we're at home, but I am still too chicken to put her in it when we go out "in public." She's really doing great, though :-) Work is going great and we had a fun field trip to the Fire Station on Friday. One little boy got really scared, I'm not even sure why, but all in all, it was a great field trip.

Leslie and I are counting down the weeks (days?) to our 1/2 marathon that's coming up on October 4th--yikes! Today was supposed to be our last "big" run, 12 miles. We had the grand idea to run from her house in Grayson to my house in Bethlehem, since we clocked it to be 11.7 miles. We started out running this morning, despite the awful weather forcast, and we kept going when it started sprinkling. We even kept going when it started solid raining. We went until our shoes were soaked and the thunder began to roll and the cars driving by were splashing us :-) At that point we decided to call Clint, Leslie's husband, to come bail us out. We ended up running about 5 miles, which was still a good run in the rain, I suppose :-) I'm really scared about the distance of the race, but I think we're both ready and it should be lots of fun!


Sunrise from our balcony


Playing with play dough in the car


Aunt Rebecca/Becca/Becky and Sarah


Fun in the pool


Chariots of Fire run on the beach


Do I have something on my face?


Running on the beach


Mommy and Sarah in the ocean


Cute little feet!


Playing in the sand


Sarah making a picture face


Coolest playground ever


Can I climb this tree, daddy?


Go Furman!


Hot dogs, yum! And what a pout!

It's About Time for an Update!

I guess we've been so busy with school and with life that I've "forgotten" to update the blog (ie. have not put it at the top of my priority list). Sorry! Sarah has been doing a super job lately of reading/reciting her favorite stories. Here are a couple of cute read-alouds plus a video of how entertaining the simplest things can be.

Let's Dance, Little Pookie!


The Very Hungry Caterpillar


Fun with Noises