Claire's 3rd Birthday

Alright! Claire (my beautiful niece) is officially 3 years old! And to celebrate, she had parties galore! The only one I got pictures from was her family party. Claire's big present from Granny and Granddaddy was a new water table!!! This held the attention for the kids for most of the time we were there. (As a side note - Brianna and I talked so much about this water table that Oma and Opa bought one for Hunter for his early birthday present!!)

Reese isn't quite old enough to play at the water table, but he didn't really know what he was missing.

Presents abound! (Lots of Spiderman action going on here!)

The three girls waste no time putting Claire's presents to use:

Nothing like cake and matching Spiderman T-shirts courtesy of Claire's closet!!

If there's cake, Hunter wants in on the action!

The three beauties all together!!

And Hunter rocks out the sunglasses in his party favor bag!!

Happy birthday Claire! We love you so much!!

Mondays With My Old Pastor Review

I'll be honest, it was kind of a fluke that I chose to review Mondays With My Old Pastor by Jose Luis Navajo. There weren't any other books I felt like reviewing, and seriously... I loved the book Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom and I wondered if this was a rip off.

That being said, I will admit that I was prepared to hold a grudge against this book. If you have ever read the Mitch Albom book you will certainly see the similarities (starting with the title) but obviously these are two totally different books and two totally different conversations. There are also a few things that are quite confusing and unrealistic to me. For example, Navajo states in the very beginning of the book that he would take a pen and paper to each visit with his pastor. Even keeping that in mind, this book is written in extreme detail. It just seemed to me that he wouldn't be able to write down every word his old pastor said, so there must have been some blanks he had to fill in on his own. He never states that any of this at all is fiction, though. Another thing that confused me is a rose bush he talks about in the book. He meets with his old pastor over a dozen weeks, and each day that he goes to visit it just so happens that a rose bush outside the pastor's house has had one more rose bloom. That seems a bit unrealistic to me, and certainly made me roll my eyes more than once. It seems like something added in just for effect. Also, he writes in the book constantly that his wife's name is Mary - but in the author's biography it states that her name is Gene. These things add up to a lot of confusion for me.  But the fact is, there is still a LOT of wisdom in this book. It just wasn't put into a book the best way possible perhaps.

This book is a must-read in my opinion for pastors, as long as they can get around all the flowery words used by the author, and just absorb the nitty-gritty wisdom from the old pastor. Some of what he says is absolutely awe-inspiring and really must be paid attention to. I would recommend this book to others, as long as you don't get caught up in these things I pointed out earlier. There is so much to learn from the words of this old pastor.

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Asheville 2012

Mom, Jennifer, and I have been very blessed in the last few years. We have had the privilege to take a girls-only trip every year since 2008 except last year (Jennifer's son Evan and my son Hunter were just a little too young to be left alone with the dads!!).

2008 - The famous New York trip. Pictures here and here!

2009 - Greenville, SC. Pictures here! (This was the year that Jenn was 4 months pregnant and I was 7 months pregnant on our trip!)

2010 - Chapel Hill, NC. No pictures, but I did blog here! (This was the year that I was 5 months pregnant with a one-year old and Jenn was about 4 months pregnant with a 10-month old!)

This year we were able to revive the trip! Our men feel much more comfortable watching the kids this year than they did two years ago. So we took a journey to the beautiful town of Asheville, NC!

Our journey begins with an extremely fun drive up the mountain with two of my favorite ladies!! Of course we had to take the opportunity to stop at Zaxby's.

Beautiful skies on the way up the mountain!

Mom wastes no time checking the hotel for bed bugs! I definitely do not remember her doing this on our other trips, but I certainly am glad she did it. (None were found, by the way!)

Three reasons why we ALWAYS. ALWAYS. stay in a Country Inn & Suites. 1) Price. 2) Complimentary breakfast (like, FULL, delicious breakfast!). 3) Free cookies 24/7!!

It was midnight. Jenn and I walked downstairs to get a free cookie and I checked out the library too. Oh, didn't I mention that every hotel in this chain has a lending library? Winning. Jenn snapped this picture of me going back to our room. I feel like if someone followed me around all day they would get tons of pictures of me reading and eating.

Case in point: Jenn snapped this picture of me when we took a road trip to Virginia back in 2008.

Good morning, Asheville! We are prepared to spend money at all of your yard sales and thrift stores!!

I think we hit a dozen thrift stores and at least than many yard sales too, between the hours of 9ish and 9ish. We definitely lost track of time!!

In between, we did need to eat. Jennifer said it best - the food was more about energy at this point! We had lunch at a great restaurant downtown called boca. Everything on the menu had a Mexican twist to it. It was delicious!!

These extremely large doors were downtown.

Look how huge!!

Booty, booty, booty!!

On the way home, we were talking and I didn't realize my GPS had frozen. We passed our exit but we weren't very concerned. We said we would hit the next exit and turn around. Imagine our surprise when just a minute later we passed a sign - "Welcome to South Carolina"! Hahaha, we laughed VERY hard! And that's how we made it to Landrum, South Carolina!

After a quick stop in Bi-Lo we were back on the road and on our way home to North Carolina!

Stopped for a delicious lunch at McAlister's Deli, one of our favorite restaurants!!

I bought a chocolate chip cookie from McAlister's for Stephen and each kid. They are HUGE!

All in all, I am super happy with our trip. Like I said, these are two of my favorite ladies in the world to hang out with. I loved being able to just talk without worrying about time. I loved staying up late finding out where the best yard sales were going to be. Trying to find local restaurants to eat at. Getting excited over each other's purchases. We had so much fun and honestly, I would be willing to go somewhere with them every weekend if the circumstances were right!

For this trip, I would say definitely the price was right. Since I am so funny about our budget now, I was really keeping up with how much money I was spending on stuff. One thing that helped is that my totally generous dad (and mom) paid for lodging. These are the things I was able to purchase:

3 loaves of bread, 3 bags of hamburger/hot dog buns, 2 packs of bagels (all from a bread outlet store), encouragement cards for church (3 packages), a flower pot for a craft, a new broom, cilantro to grow, head bands (2), makeup bags (2; for a new craft I'm doing), 3 shirts for me, 1 shirt for Stephen, a car bingo game, markers for the kids, a set of 5 glass cooking bowls, part of Kaleb's birthday present, scrapbook paper, 5 books for the kids Christmas/birthday presents, fabric (3 sets for crafting), a new muffin tin, a new (bigger) measuring cup, a book, 2 rings for Brianna's jewelry box, an unopened foam craft kit (for Brianna's birthday next year probably), magnetic tape, an unused set of Beth Moore prayer cards (will use these at church), a huge floor puzzle that you can write on with dry erase, bandaids, and giftwrapping supplies like ribbon and cellophane for when I do baskets.

All of that for $48. You can't beat that!! I seriously wish I knew how much all of that would have cost if I purchased it new. *Note: I just looked up the Beth Moore prayer cards that I bought because I knew they would be pricey - they were $14.99 on the first website I looked at, and I paid $3.* And I only need something else small for Christmas for the kids and I'm done! I will need to get Hunter something else for his birthday but I'll be hitting up some more yard sales before September. :)

Love these ladies! And our husbands for taking such good care of the kids and/or house (as the case may be)! We are very lucky to have such great spouses who understand our need for a weekend away!

Church Stuff

This past month we were able to do several fun things at church or with church friends.

A couple of weekends ago, my parents watched the kids so we could take the motorcycle up to Morrow Mountain with our pastor and his wife. It was beautiful in the morning and by lunch time it was Hot! It was really beautiful and so peaceful.

That evening we went to a friend's house to have a cookout. Lots of other kids were there, so Brianna and Hunter were well occupied with friends!!

Cupcakes are goooood.

Parker shows Hunter how to relax in the recliner:

Then, last Sunday we had an ice cream social after church. People brought homemade ice cream and all kinds of toppings. Delicious!!

Just so happened to be our pastor's birthday too!!

Brianna and her friend Adrianna were totally swooning over Stephen's ability to throw them WAY high in the air!

We've had so much fun lately! And now, this week, Vacation Bible School starts at church! A busy week ahead but I'm so excited!