Graduation Party

Happy Monday morning! I'm feeling a little tired this morning after traveling this weekend to go celebrate my sweet cousin's graduation from high school. Stacey, Bentley, and I loaded up on Friday and headed west for the long journey to go see our family. We got into town in enough time to go meet up with my brother, his wife and kid, Stacey's brother Heath and his fiance Elisabeth and our friends Nick and Jocelyn for dinner. Well- they had dinner, we just visited since we stopped at Chick-fil-a on the way over! After a restless night of sleeping with a 4-year-old, I begrudgingly got up to start my day on Saturday. Stacey and I headed on over to my aunt and uncle's neck of the woods a little bit early so we could run down to Foley, AL and hit up the outlet malls before the festivities began. I didn't get too much shopping done due to a mishap on the drive over, but that's for another post ha!

We had a great evening just hanging out and enjoying spending time together as a family, since we are all spread out over AL, FL, and GA. Now let's see some pictures!

Here are Stacey and I will the girl of the hour, Caroline. When Stacey and I ordered our sunglasses a few weeks ago, we got Caroline a pair as well for her to have a little something extra other than just money! And of course, we had to get a picture of us all in our matching sunglasses.

Barrett was our entertainment for the evening. He had gotten a new toy that day at Bass Pro Shop and was breaking it in big time. It was some bug catching contraption. However, he was more concerned with his lizard that he caught instead of random bugs. This poor lizard...

We finally convinced Barrett to let him go, thankfully!

I love that last picture. All three ladies intently hovering over Caroline's shoulder. Ha! And after seeing my pasty legs next to Caroline really makes me want to get some sun on them stat!!

If you can tell, Barrett was refusing to cooperate with having a decent picture made. I can't remember what he was saying, but it definitely wasn't cheese.

I like how all the men were congregating on one side and all the girls on the other. Typical!

Brad was trying to hide from all the picture taking festivities. But you know I couldn't let him escape!

That was Caroline's party. I still can't believe she is old enough to graduate from high school!

P.S.~ You're welcome, Stace!

Friday Faves

Happy Friday! I don't have too much for you today as far as Friday faves. I've been pretty busy this week and haven't had much time to shop online or otherwise! However meager this is, this is what has made me smile this past week.

1) I think my favorite thing of the week came in the mail yesterday.

My Shutterfly order came in. If you have never used Shutterfly before, I recommend it. They are always super fast. I think I ordered these pictures Monday or Tuesday and had them by Thursday. They also offer the option to pick up in the store, which I think most of them are in Target. I haven't ordered any pictures in a REALLY long time, so it was a bit overdue for me to get some printed up. I was finally able to put some pictures in some picture frames. The ones in my bedroom have not had pictures in them for well over 1.5 years! I'm horrible I know.

The pictures on the left are the ones I have on my shelf. It makes me smile because they represent all my favorite boys: David, Moxley, Oscar, Brutus, JR, and Barrett! I also threw one of me and the boyfriend up there as well. When I ordered the pictures, I thought I only had one 5x7 frame, but as it turns out, I had two. So on one I had to improvise with some craft paper. The pictures on the right are the ones that I brought to work with me today. Here's a close up:

This will definitely put a smile on my face while I am working away. Sadly, this is really the first personal item that I have brought to the office. I am such a slacker!
2) My other favorite thing of the week are my earrings that I ordered.

I broke down and ordered the Octopus earrings from Bridier Baubles. Even though I think they kinda look more like impregnated spiders than octopus. They are still cute though!

3) Target finds! I ran in Target to grab a graduation card and some coffee and came across a few finds. I found a pair of skinny cropped jeans in a bright, summer color. I went with the orange pants. Mainly for lack of better options because that was the only color they had in my size!

I also picked up a statement necklace that I had been eyeing for awhile and just never bought. But when I saw it on the clearance rack, I decided to make it mine.

I love the tanzanite-purple color. Which BTW, is my favorite color :-)
4) I love coming across random dachshund finds and I really regret not buying this yesterday when I ran in Hobby Lobby.  I think it would have been fun in my office. But I was lazy because it didn't have a price tag on it and I didn't want to deal with the hassle of the cashier to have to figure out what price it was. So I left it where it was.

I should have gotten it because it represents my three babies. I'm stupid! I might run in there today and see if it's still there and pick it up.

5) And finally, my latest obsession....DrawSomething. I've been playing it for awhile but I figured I would own up to it today. I am totally addicted. I love it!

As you can see, I am such a talented artist. (NOT)

So guys, that is my brief (and sad) list of Friday Faves. Hope you all have a great weekend! I'm headed to Alabama for my cousin's high school graduation, so I'm excited to see all my family!

Just My Luck

I thought I would give you guys a glimpse into how random my life can be at times and how I am usually always caught off guard! And on this particular occasion, it happened at work of all places! We are revamping our website and marketing materials for our company and have hired some people to take things to the next level. The company that we contracted with had a photographer come in all the way from Miami on Monday to take some professional pictures of some of our products, some action shots of our technicians out in the field, etc. They ended up shooting on Monday night until about midnight. (Thankfully I wasn't required to stay and supervise!) After their scheduled photo shoot was finished, our VP decided that we should have some pictures taken at the corporate office (we have another office in TX) and staff for the website as well. This wasn't not known to me at all. Gracie was informed of the impending photo shoot by her husband, who also works for the company and was at the photo shoot on Monday night. So, Gracie strolls in all dolled up in a nice business suit. I commented how nice she looked. We don't usually dress up too much, since we don't deal face to face with any clients on a regular basis. For example, today is Thursday and I am wearing jeans. We are lucky to be able to work in a laid back environment. In typical fashion, I showed up on Tuesday morning not dressed in "business" attire at all. I had on some khaki pants and a tunic. I hadn't fixed my hair and just had it up in a pony tail. I wasn't looking photo-ready. Especially since we had to shell out big bucks to get this guy to come shoot the pictures, not to mention that these pictures will be part of our corporate image. Not good. Not good at all. And since I have an important role in the company, it would not have looked good for me to be all ghetto in our pictures. So imagine me freaking out when they told me that I had to have my picture taken. Oh- and the photographer was arriving in about an hour after me finding out. I was in quite the pickle. So, I rushed off in search of a change of clothes and a curling iron. I should mention that I work in a section of Tallahassee that is not near any type of clothing stores. The only store I could think of was Urban Thread that is a J Crew, Anthro, Urban Outfitter return store and I was hoping that I could find a J Crew suit jacket, pants and a blouse. Or in the least a nice dress to wear. I arrived and much to my dismay, I found out that they didn't open until 11:00! I tried next door at Narcissus thinking I could find a Lilly Pulitzer dress or something to throw on. Again- closed. I was beginning to freak out. Luckily, there is a Stein Mart in the same section of town, so I ran in there because I knew they were open. I was hoping to have some luck because I know that SM rarely has things in my size. So I ran around the store and found a dress almost in my size. I had to go to the Petite section to find it! It wasn't really what I was looking for, but I didn't have many options at this point. I had picked out a dress, tried it on, found shoes, and a pair of earrings all within 15 minutes. Now that takes talent! Then I ran over to CVS and bought a curling iron and a hair brush. I got back to work and frantically started to change and fix my hot mess of hair.

 This is the closest "before" picture I took. Wish I had taken a true before picture, so you could really get the feeling of how ghetto I looked that day.

 I took this picture to send to David to show him how hard I was working! Ha!

Again, this dress wasn't really something I would have chosen to wear, but it had to do in a pinch. But it was an improvement! So I was finally half-way decent enough to feel comfortable getting my picture taken.Then I spent the rest of the morning taking pictures with my co-workers and by myself. It's always a weird day when your office looks like this:

It was a bit stressful, but adapt and overcome, baby. I hate having my picture taken and it was embarrassing, but I survived. Anyways, that was my eventful Tuesday!

Swamp Adventures

I can't believe that today is already Wednesday! I guess I better finish up my recap of my adventures in Calhoun County. David's one request for must-do activities in Blountstown was go to his family's swamp down on the river. I could totally get on board with that because I miss being out in the woods, so I happily went with him. It was my goal of the day to take pictures of every animal that we could find. I was still on the hunt for my alligator, but sadly we didn't see any. Maybe next time we will get lucky. I will warn you that this post has lots of pictures!

First off, David and I had a little dare going on. While we were at the river walking around trying to sneak up on a gator, we came across a tree that had fallen across the water. I dared David to walk across it. He of course, said no and asked me if I wanted to instead. I of course took him up on his dare. I did take gymnastics for years, so a big tree is nothing compared to a balance beam! David really didn't think I would go through with it. I had no problem with it. The only thing I asked of him was that if I fell in the water that he would rescue me if a gator came up to eat me. Ha! (this post sounds more and more redneck by the minute!)

So here I am beginning my decent down the bank onto the tree.

I had to look really carefully to ensure that no snakes were hiding in the crevices of the stump. That was the only fear I had, or that a snake would be chilling out in the middle of the tree sunning.

It was a bit tricky trying to get around that piece of splintered bark. But I finally made it out to the middle!

After getting my picture snapped, I headed back in. This is my "you-didn't-think-I -would-go-through-with-it face" that I gave David when he was truly shocked that I am such a "dare devil." Ha!

Actually it was more of a "will-you-come-help-me-back-up-this-bank" face. It was a bit steep climbing back up! After our little game of truth or dare, we got back in the truck to see what other redneck fun we could find. We started to head towards a field that had just been cut and replanted in long-leaf pine trees that David's dad wanted him to go look at. Plus, its the site of the an old Indian Village and we were hoping that all of the clear-cutting and replanting had unearthed a few artifacts. Away we went. But not before David stopped to pick me a flower out of his truck window for our journey.

Isn't he the sweetest? It promptly got put in a lovely and beautiful Coke vase. Fancy! We finally got to the field and hopped out to check out the status of the long-leaf trees.

After checking on the trees, we got to walking around looking for some pottery. Little did we know that this guy was watching us.

If you can't tell, that's a Diamondback Rattlesnake. Thankfully, he rattled at us so we were able to not get to close to him before we saw him. We debated on leaving him alone, but ultimately decided to kill him because his dad is out in this field quite often and it's dangerous to have these guys running around, especially when his dad can't hear them rattle.

He was a pretty good sized snake, about 4 feet long. He was an evil looking thing. Have I mentioned that I hate snakes? Cause I most certainly do! While we were attending to the snake, we came across Morla.

When we first spotted him, we thought he was a gopher turtle, but he was not. And for all of you, this is why I named the turtle Morla:

Hope I'm not the only Neverending Story fan. We came across a few deer and some hogs.

David tried to catch a piglet for me, but as it turns out, he's not as fast as he used to be :)

My favorite find of the whole day was coming across a pair of peacocks...in the middle of nowhere. We still have no idea where these guys came from!

I wanted to catch them and take them home to my parent's house, but David put his foot down and told me he wasn't going to be pecked to death trying to catch them! Speaking of birds, we also came across a stupid guinea, just running down the road like a dodo!

After our adventures in the swamp, we went over to David's family's river house to go check on some wild cats that have taken up under his mom's porch that she wanted gone. We searched and I finally found the kittens.

They look pretty cute, but don't be deceived. They are truly wild and I understand why his mom dislikes these kittens. They are pretty feisty and hiss and spit every time you walk by them. Cute will only take you so far when you have a bad attitude.

After our long day traipsing through the woods, it was nice to sit back and relax on the porch for a spell and enjoy the view of the Chipola River. The perfect ending to a long day.

So that wraps up my weekend adventures!