"Caught up in a Southern summer, barefoot, blue jean night"

This was Friday. She was so proud of herself, she climbed into Papaw J's chair all by herself!

So this post is sort of an update as to what's going on in our lives currently. I would love to blog more frequently unfortunately I can barely manage to keep up with work, home and relationship. Personally I think it's more important to dedicate time to my family, friends and religion. So as you can tell blogging often falls to the wayside, but i figure if I get one a month I'm doing pretty good, for me anyways.

 I started this post as a draft today which is Friday Sept 9th before Labor Day weekend, I plan to add to it all weekend and post later on. I have taken off yesterday and today from work to give myself a mini vacay. Although for some reason the other night I was wonder if this qualified as a "staycation" they are always promoting. Since we are only 3 hours from home and visiting family. It's nice to have these lazy days, work has been really busy lately, extremely rewarding and challenging but definitely hard work! LOL

I came down to Meme and Papaw J's house (my mom's parents) yesterday around lunchtime. Me and Emmie had a pretty good drive, besides me be horribly bored when Emmie napped, it was a quick simple trip. Then yesterday evening we went to see Ms. Trina and I got my hair cut, which I desperately needed, nothing drastic just back into my old haircut which I was FAR from when I got into the stylist chair. Ms. Trina did a wonderful job as always, it was nice to be in the beauty chair and just chatting with your stylist. I forget how nice that can be, Trina has known me since I was a little girl. She has cut my hair off and on for years, usually when I would visit my Meme. Then of course the years I lived with Meme and Papaw J she was my regular stylist. She even styled my hair for my wedding. She was so happy to see Emily and of course we all talked about how fast time goes, since I know have a little one of my own who is 18 months old, on Sept 8th. Time flies when your having fun right?

Daddy is going to join us on the coast tonight, and then tomorrow is Grammie day (Zach's Mom).

This past week was fun, I found Emily a halloween costume. Here are some preview pictures, we had to try it on to make sure it fit. Amazingly I found it at CrackerBarrel of all places. As Zach will tell you I love halloween, I'm excited to let her dress up. I'm sure people like to say that's very unchristian, but I think it's really harmless to let a child dress in a costume and get some candy once a year. As long as they don't take too much stock in it. But I'm pretty laid back in that manner.

Poor Zach was all worked up last Sunday.
I had a horrible migraine that night and stayed home from bible study and apparently missed an interesting discussion. Now, I must preface this story by saying I was not there and cannot speak to what really happened as this is all hearsay. Also I must say that I'm telling an abbreviated version as I feel that our discussion was private between a couple not really meant to be shared. But the main gist of the issue that had irritated Zachery was that it became apparent to him that there are still members in our church who seem to have certain views of what they see as "proper" worship practices. Now, like I said I don't know what really happened since i wasn't there, but mostly this spurred and discussion between he and I. He wanted to know what I thought of youth programs which entice youth into attendance with games and social events.

My personal opinion is that it doesn't matter how or when you reach a person, but what matters is the message they receive once you have their attention. I think it's important for youth programs to try and reach children on "their level" so to say. It just like reaching a convict while incarcerated, just because someone recieved Christ while incarcerated doesn't mean they are any less a Christian than me or the next person. I think the same thing is similar with today's youth. They are exposed to so much in this world, between the media and their friends why shouldn't we try and introduce religion through alternate matters.

Okay back to Vacation.

Saturday was in fact Grammie's day unfortunately Tropical Storm Lee came to rain on our parade.

There was a large amount of flooding on the coast. I borrowed these pictures from my friend Rachel Reel's facebook to give an example of the local flooding. Thanks Rachel!

We got a late start to the day. We decided to head out and go to lunch with Grammie. We treated her to some Olive Garden in D'iberville. All four of us stuffed ourselved until I swear we could not move anymore! It was so good though, totally worth it.
After our gorging we decided to visit Aunt Athena, Uncle Mike and cousin Jillian. It was a nice visit. The first time the cousins got to meet and the first time. Zach and I also got to see our neice for the first time. Here are some photos Grammie took with her phone, they aren't the best, but it's what we have and you can see everyone. 

Emily was a little jealous if you can't see. She did NOT like her daddy holding any other babies. Zach said, that will make the future interesting whenever we decided to give Emily a sibling. Hopefully we will be able to convince her that daddy holding another baby is not the end of the world.

We visited for an hour or two and then we headed out. The rain was getting worse and Emmie was exhausted. She needed a nap badly. In fact she passed out in the car when we were like 5 minutes away from Aunt Athena's house. Here is a picture I snapped in the car.

The rest of our vacation was really lazy. Sunday we went out and got Emmie some clothes and me some new tennis shoes but that's really it. It was nice to have a lazy weekend.