i'm home!

I'm finally home! Sorry for the extremely slack blogging---it turns out that wireless on the boat was really expensive and we never had time to use it.

We had a FABULOUS time on the cruise! I'm having serious denial about being back in the real world.....why is vacation so much more amazing than regular day-to-day life?!

This picture is from our second day in Grand Cayman. We snuck into the Ritz Carlton and played on the beach/had a photo session. It may look like I'm posing in this picture, but I promise I'm not.....a bigger wave than I was expecting came up behind me and soaked my entire backside. That's right....nothing like having to walk through the Ritz with a soaked backside of a sundress....now that's a walk of shame!

I'm looking through all my pictures right now and trying to figure out which ones to put up on here to show y'all about our trip....I'll post them as soon as I can.

And just for your information, I'm going to be bouncing back and forth between home and Windy Gap (where Josh is on assignment for the next 4 weeks) so blogging will be intermittent at best. But I promise I won't go another 1.5 weeks without filling you in on my crazy-ridiculous-but-still-really-boring-at-times life.

caribbean bound

Ahhhhh. I can nearly hear the waves now. The Caribbean is literally calling my name. Blair, we've missed you---please come take a break from your crazy hectic life and relax with me!

Our cruise was originally going to Grand Cayman and Cozumel, but with the oh-so-deadly-but-not-at-all-like-the-plain-old-regular-flu H1N1, we've had a change in our itinerary. (I will probably catch H1N1 just for mocking it. Dang it.)

The girls and I are driving to Tampa. We're leaving on Sunday to drive half-way. Most of my friends and family have wondered why we aren't flying. To this I say: do you not know that I'm cheap and now afraid to fly? What I love about driving to Tampa (10 hours) is that we'll have plenty of "catch-up-what's-been-going-on-in-your-life-oh-my-favorite-song-is-on-let's-sing-at-the-top-of-our-lungs-can-we-take-a-diet-coke-break-can-I-borrow-those-shoes-later" time on our roadtrip. Its going to be the most fabulous roadtrip ever.

We get to board early on Monday because Taylor and I have cruised before. So Monday morning, around 11am, when you are waiting on your lunch break, we'll be scoping out the Lido deck. Ahhhhhhhh, to have one week of away-ness. Its enough to make me want to move to the caribbean with my friend Laura and open a bar (its her original plan, I'm just going to tag along.)

Bon voyage ya land-lubbers.

PRAISE THE LORD!

This past weekend was a total blur. I had my sister and brother-in-law in town for the weekend. We had my little sister's graduation. On Sunday we had a mother's day brunch, graduation party for some of our YL leaders and then headed up to Concord for a YL conference. Then we spent the next three days in Concord for the conference. Whew. I'm still exhausted.

We had so much fun with our young life family....but the best part is that Bosten threw up all over me. Twice. For those of you who know about my baby-phobia, you're probably really surprised that I was holding Bosten long enough for him to vomit on me. I wasn't actually holding him for that long, he'd just been fed by the time it was my turn to play with him. The first time I was unprepared....the second time I wore a rain jacket and a towel. See how quick my learning curve is?

Ok, so this isn't a post about my exhaustion or about baby's throw-up....its a post about praising the Lord. Drum role please.....Bosten doesn't have CF! Sharon and Ryan weren't thinking that the tests would be back until late next week, so they were certainly surprised when they got the call from their pediatrician last night. Here's Sharon's post from Bosten's CaringBridge site:

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 9:10 AM, EDT
the cystic fibrosis genetic testing
results came back sooner than expected....we got a call from our pediatrician last night and bosten doesn't have CF!!!!!!!PRAISE the LORD!thank you for praying for us...it feels like a huge weight has been lifted from this long period of waiting and wondering. god has been faithful and we have thanked him for the last six months of trial & have asked for him to carry us through what lies ahead with our sweet baby boy. bosten does seem to be responding to this new combination of medication that he started at duke.
he appears to not be in as much pain and is crying a lot less. we have a GI doctors appointment this morning to talk about the higher percentage of unabsorbed fat in his stool and if we need to move forward with treating that. thank you again for walking through this with our family.
we know that god has used bosten in ways that we don't yet understand, but we pray that we can one day know. wish you could see my smile...

Thank you so very much for praying for my friends! Our God is mighty and he works in wonderous/strange/unbelievable/fantastic ways. The Lord could have chosen to not heal Bosten and to make His glory known in some other way...but I am so so so so overjoyed that the way in which God chose to display his awesome power was through giving Bosten a negative CF test. Thank you thank you thank you!!!

baby bosten

Yaaay! Its Friday! And I'm so excited!! Tonight my older-but-shorter-sister Lauren and brother-in-law Jon are coming into town---then we're meeting up with the family for my younger-but-taller-sister Taylor's college graduation. I love time with the sisters!

Getting ready for this weekend (spending time with my family and it being Mother's Day) has me thinking about family and especially about our extended family. Our friends Ryan and Sharon have spent the past week at Duke with their son Bosten. (You should remember Bosten because he's the first baby I ever saw in the hospital and the newest baby I'd ever held. Remember how scared we looked in the picture? I thought we were going to break him---we had no idea what we were doing. Good thing we were surrounded by medical staff!)


Bosten has been pretty sick for the past couple of months....which is pretty serious when you consider that he's only 6 months old. They've seen a bunch of different doctors in town and were finally sent up to Duke. The doctors were mentioning things like vitamin-deficiency and Cystic Fibrosis.....which had us all scared and sent all of us to our knees, praying for this sweet sweet boy. They spent the whole week up at Duke while Bosten was undergoing numerous tests and having a lot of blood drawn. They are know at home waiting for the results of the tests. (You can keep up with them on Bosten's caringbridge site.)

Please join me in praying for Ryan, Sharon, Elle and Bosten, specifically for:

-peace for the family

-experiencing God's goodness, faithfulness and healing

-the doctor's wisdom and discernment

-that it wouldn't be Cystic Fibrosis

-a readily available treatment for Bosten

-a long and healthy life for Bosten

**picture stole from Sharon's website :)

Josh Turns 32

My hottie husband is turing 32 in a few weeks. And I have no idea what to get him! Traditionally, I give gifts based on a person's hobby and focus in on a gift that is more of a "want" than a "need."

So, I would say that Josh loves cycling, fly fishing, camping, golfing and eating....but according to Josh's facebook page his interests are "steel drums, aroma therapy, collecting coach bags, arm wrestling truckers, color coordinating pillow shams with duvet covers, hi-jacking tricycles and shooting feral cats with a sling shot." What the heck is that all about?


So here I am. Stuck. With no idea what to get Josh to celebrate his birth. And I've already had 54488 calls from friends and family asking me what they should get him.....which would be why I feel like I need to go ahead and pick out what I'm getting him!

Any suggestions?!?!?!?!

viva la mexico

Cinco de Mayo. Is there really more to it than pico de gallo and coronitas? Sources say yes.....but will we ever find out? Still undecided.

So while we we're trying to wrap our minds around Mexico's independence, lets sip on a little margarita and order some queso. So cheers to Mexico! We know there is more to you than meets the eye---but until we figure that out we'll celebrate with our favorites: thank you for tortilla chips, mariachi bands, Mayan ruins, sombreros, guacamole, Nacho Libre, beautiful beaches and chihuahuas (wait, scratch that----those mini dogs kind of freak me out).

May this Cinco de Mayo be all you wished for and more!

how many people does it take to change a lightbulb?

How many people does it take to change a second story lightbulb? 5. That's one to stand on a tall ladder, one to assist from the ground, one to scream from the couch in fear, one to direct the operations from a recliner and one to take a picture of it all going down.


We have a two-story living room, which is awesome....until we have to clean the fan or change a lightbulb....which is probably why our fan is really dirty and we waited until 3 or the 4 bulbs needed to be replaced.


We inherited a long pole with a suction-cup on the end of it from my mom a couple of years ago to help when we needed to change the light bulbs on our oh-so-ridiculously-tall-fan. Thankfully, we haven't had to use it-----can you believe we've been in our house for over 3 years and haven't had to change the lightbulbs?!

Here's Josh trying to figure out how the pole works:

Here's Josh getting the pole to work:

Here's the lightbulb falling out and almost hitting
Ben in the face (while Rachel screams from the couch)

What can I say? Even regular household chores are exciting at our house.

fun finds for the cruise

I've been trying to find some cute new things to take on the cruise that I'm taking with Taylor, Chelsea and Lacey. I've had to come up with legitimate reasons to make these purchase since the economy is in the craper. Here are my oh-so-legitimate excuses, I mean reasons, for buying new things:

1: because I've been dieting and working out like a bandit and want some new clothes

2: because I still have some of my Christmas bonus stashed away

3: because the girls I'm going on vacation with are more fashionable than me

4: because I want to try out my new styles on vacation and see if I can pull them off

So, after fully convincing myself that I am allowed to spend my own money, I headed to the cheapest most in-style store I could think of: Forever 21. Josh hates this store. The first time we ever walked by one he said, "Well, you're not 21 anymore so I guess you can't shop there." He wasn't exactly banning me from the store so much as voicing his hope that I wouldn't try and pretend like I'm 21 forever. Good thing I'm 26 and still LOVE the store. Oh well, I'll check back in with him when I'm 30 and see how the store looks.

Anyways, I went shopping with my friend Bryanna this week and this is some of what I found:

I also found a really fabulous fedora, but I can't find a picture to steal off their website. Sad.

So what do you think of my options? I'm still looking for some fun accessories and tops---I'm totally fine in the dress department (thank you JCrew sidewalk sale!) Please let me know if you know of any good sales!