Summer Lovin'

So, still catching up on summer happenings... we were invited to several weddings this summer. Sadly, two of them fell on the same day and we couldn't make it to my great friend Pryor's big day in Knoxville. I did, however, make it to Jenni's wedding in Valdosta, GA, and we both made it to Garrett's wedding in Huntington, WV.

In case you didn't know, I have a group of 12 girlfriends from college who I get together with pretty much every summer. They are amazing and make me laugh harder than anyone in the world. We can all be ourselves when we're together and we talk about nothing just as much as we talk about everything. Here are 9 of us at Jenni's wedding (Nikki & Julie couldn't make it and the bride was MIA).  *by the way... NONE of these pictures for Jenni's are mine. I completely forgot my camera and have stolen all of these from E and Courtney. Thanks girls.

All of us with the bride at the bridal luncheon. Jenni is sporting a Clemson garter that all of the married girls in our group have worn and initialed/dated and passed to the next person, and she's also showcasing a jewelry box (version 2.0) that we all get with a little engraved message and a picture of our whole group with the bride AND groom on their wedding day.  It's the little things :-)

We worked all afternoon putting together centerpieces for the reception... and they turned out pretty good if I do say so.

And here we all are getting our picture with the bride and groom for Jenni's jewelry box. I'm sure he wasn't overwhelmed by us at all...

Exhibit A of why I love my friends: Meg decided her bridesmaid dress was too hot and too restrictive for dancing so she and Liz cut it off. Did I ever mention how classy we are?

Exhibit B of why I love my friends: we all fall to our knees (not pictured) and break out in air guitar when "Livin' on a Prayer" comes on.

Here is Liz with the beautiful Pryor whose wedding in Knoxville I missed a few weeks ago.  I just saw pictures and it was beautiful and perfectly Pryor.

However, we DID get to go to Huntington, WV - literally one of our favorite places on earth - to attend Garrett and Allie's wedding. Garrett is Hunter's brother, and Hunter and Jeannie are some of our very very best friends. Schub and I spent several Thanksgivings with Garrett and Hunter's family when we were in St. Louis and it was too far to travel home. They are like a second family to us and we are so so excited that beautiful Allie is now a part of the family too! ... not that we're REALLY family, but I often mistake myself for family, so I feel like I can welcome Allie to the family :-)

How much do you love her dress?!

Seriously... she is beautiful

Schub even ran into some old friends that he had gone to Slovakia with (also where he first met Garrett) that he had fun catching up with.

Schub and Hunter... besties :-)

Hunter, open your eyes!

Yes I wore the same thing to Jenni's wedding. A girl 7.5 months prego only has so many things she can wear to a wedding.

Me and Marilyn, our wonderful Thanksgiving host and mother of the groom.

Me and Jeans... the other besties :-)

I love summer and I love weddings. 

Family Vacay

So I have been way behind on the blog posts lately. I never posted about our 4th of July with the Littlejohns, or Jenni's wedding in Valdosta, GA. But I will jump ahead to our vacation that we took last week. We went to Ocean Isle Beach, NC with my family and had an absolute awesome time.

I spent most of the time in a chair down by the water reading a book and it was wonderful. Although I did play a little paddle ball, a little corn hole, did a little sea kayaking, and I even boogie boarded.

Here's Brooke bringing it in after a little boogie...

Here's Dana and Brad coming in with the kayak... yes, Dana is using her oar as a guitar.

 

And passing it off to Jason and I... there is my big belly for you guys in all its glory.

And on the way back in I fell out of the boat and Jason (accidentally) hit me on the back of the head with his paddle. Don't worry... it was shallow and I was fine.

I think this was the only family picture we got... not the best quality, but I think everyone looks beautiful and beachy :-)

... And then my sister made a music video. Apparently it was on her "summer bucket list" and we were the lucky ones to be a part of it. You can watch it here :-)

Sisters.

Dana and Brad are leaving in about 2 weeks to go to China for an entire year. The rest of the family will get to see them before they go and will probably go to the airport with them. But Jason and I had to say goodbye to them on Friday when they left. It was strange because I felt like they were just leaving the beach and not leaving the country... and I was really sad. I was really really sad to see them go, but I'm really excited for their journey in China. They will be teaching English at a university there and those students don't even know yet how lucky they are going to be to have them as teachers.  Even though I'm going to miss them like crazy, I can't wait to see how awesome their year is going to be.

My parents were obviously there too, although I didn't get any great pictures of them... at least not together. They were/are awesome. My Dad had flown back in from Africa the night before we went to the beach and was still up playing games with us, boogie boarding, and cooking. My mom planned meals for each night, went to the grocery store about every other day, and still spent lots of quality time at the beach with all of us every day.

I love my family.