Spring Break is over and so is our trip to Florida. I quit providing updates because I didn't think Dad was viewing what I had already published but turned out he finally was. Anyway, we had a great time. I'm sunburnt and missing the warm weather but other than that it went very well. I have lots that I could share but to prioritize this is the most special. Chad's birthday was while we were in Florida so Dad missed it. It was sad but in the way JB always does things he did something really fun and special for him. Attached is the eCard Chad received the morning of his birthday:



This was thanks to JB spending lots of time creating the "words" and bluemountain.com for providing the card. Prior to leaving I had just re-established my account with bluemountain.com and for some reason shared that news with JB. He decided to take advantage of it and ended up sending us 4 of these beauties! It was so fun. We laughed so hard!!!

I don't believe there is a way to save it to my computer, it's saved in our account with bluemountain.com. But, I wanted to share and to keep it for us to remember always so I taped it with our handy dandy flip. I guess I'll find out if this was a no no or not. Until then, enjoy it!

Day 2 consisted mostly of driving thru Georgia. Not my favoriate day. I thought St. Louis was bad right now with all the highway improvements it was doing but it's basically the entire state of Georgia ungoing it's improvements. This added on at least 1 hour of travel time. Sitting in traffic going 3 miles per hour is not fun. Then once we got going the speed limit kept changing - 70 miles per hour, 50 miles per hour, 60 miles per hour, 70 miles per hour... It was crazy! Note to Georgia, decide what the speed limit is going to be and keep it consisitant. 70 miles per hour is my vote! Although while undergoing this torture I did come up with a new idea, cars should have programmable buttons on the steering column (similar to radio buttons) where one can program several different cruise control speeds. That way I would have just had to hit the appropriate button insteading of fiddling with the current cruise control set-up. Do you think I could make a million with this idea?

Ok, so we are now in Lake City, FL. I believe I previously said we were stopping in Gainesville, FL but it's actually Lake City. Here we are crossing over into Florida:



Our hotel is better then last night, although I do have a question about something in the bathroom. Will discuss in a seperate post with a photo if I remember to take it. The boys have their playstation plugged in and we are watching Blades of Glory with Will Ferrill (a family favorite actor). Everyone has showered and we are happy. We have already eaten at a lovely little place down the road. Chad wanted seafood and the town isn't too big so there wasn't much choice. Below is a video of the boys eating a favorite:



Did you hear the music? How could you miss it right?! Although they were good, they were way too loud. It was very challenging holding a conversation. Crab legs in Florida is much more reasonable cost wise and tasty then in St. Louis - imagine that!

Getting ready to go to bed because we have our remaining 5 hours of driving tomorrow.

Love you JB - dad. Miss you.

Day 1 of our trecking across the country (ok, only to FL) without dad. We arrived in Chattanooga, TN, which Chad has renamed to Chadanooga. Pretty clever I thought! We used our TomTom the whole way and it was wonderful until it ran out of battery life. Thank goodness we had our mapquest paper directions as back-up. Note to self, always have backup! We had a minor mishap while passing thru Nashville. We blew a fuse and didn't have any power in our electrical outlet. This is why TomTom ran out of juice. Wasn't until this morning that I was able to run over to a local Nissan dealership and had them fix us. Not only are we fixed but now we have three extra fuses, and I know how to change them! Thanks Moutain View Nissan Dealership!

Last night the boys and I ate at Big River Grille and Brewing Works which was great! They said it was an 1 1/2 hour wait for a table. I told them inside or out was fine. We left to walk around downtown Chattanooga and within five minutes we received a phone call that an outside table was available. Five minutes! We ran back, ate and had a great time. The whole time Alex was spying the horse and carriage rides passing by. He was especially fond of the man with the top hat and the dalmation dog that was so calmly sleeping on the seat next to the man. If you haven't guessed, we ended up going for a ride. Did you know dalmations are so soft?!

This morning we ate the City Cafe Diner which was hooked up to our hotel. It was good food, good price. Chad enjoyed the atmosphere. We are getting ready to check-out and head out of town towards Gainesville, FL but we wanted to get this out there first. Following is our first video podcast of our trip - all for you dad! We will get better at taking and posting them. Also, we will work on better backdrops and more energy as we speak. This is all new for us. Enjoy!

Love you dad (JB)!

Ick.

Spring Break is next week and the boys and I are getting ready to drive to Florida to celebrate! We've never done this before but since my parents are now officially snow birds we are going to join them for a week. We are taking our time getting there, taking three days. Going to stay in Chattanooga, TN for one night, possibly going to see an imax movie that evening. Next night we are staying in Gainesville, FL. The third day we are possibly stopping in Tampa for lunch with a friend of mine. Then after we get to Fort Myers, Florida, will get to see our best friends who will be in Sanibel at the same time. Sanibel is only about 30-40 minutes away from where we are. The boys can't wait! Crazy that our friends have two boys the exact same age. So cool. Last time we saw them was when we went to New York City.

Been creating our game plan, making hotel reservations and pulling out our summer clothes. Hope to have lots of pictures to share.

So, verandah - here we come!

A few photos I have captured over the past month that have tweaked my interested:

Love the floors, love the open floor plan, love the windows, love the colors and contrast, just plain love it.


This reminds me of my mom so I love it. Been toying with the idea of creating a real terrarium with moss and stuff. Have I ever told you how much I love moss? It's odd I know but I had a moss encounter when I was little and going thru some tough times that meant a lot to me. Will share in another post. (Have I peeked your interest?)

What's up with the photo? I wasn't in the mood to post without one and I didn't have anything new so I decided to pick one of my favorite oldies of Chad. Wasn't this so sweet?! I have another super cute one of him winking too that I'll have to share another time. Now onto the real post...

Took this picture this morning - oh how handsome. We are working hard on the smile thing. Captured this one by having him say "cheese", a tried and true method I usually forget to have them do. I think we'll have to use it more often because this turned out well. Love him.

Today was a snow day and this came in the mail. Unfortunately I did work a lot today and wasn't able to sit down and read it until this evening but it was well worth the wait. I highly recommend this book. Happy to say I'm not "toooooo" far off from what she recommends. Need to let what I've read process and see what changes I may want to make.

What I really like is that she has developed a system that once in place it allows photos to flow thru it to be pulled out and used in a flexible manner. Some photos will be scrapped, some will not (archived but available to be pulled back out and put back into pending mode). It made me realize that scrapbooking is a process of documenting our lives (I know that's be said 100 times) and although I may get get "done" with some of my photos, but I will always have photos. I will never be 100% done. So why not set-up a system that allows this process to happen in a creative and flexible way. The best part, is if I decide for awhile to take a break from doing actual pages, I would still have a good place to store my photos for those moments when I'm ready to pick it back up again.

On a sidenote, ran into HomeGoods the other day and snapped a couple pictures of pieces that caught my attention. I just *heart* HomeGoods. Love rounding the corner of each aisle to see what goodies I might find. This first piece would be a wonderful addition in a large scraproom as a worktable. It's basically standing height which I can't believe but I'm warming up to. I do not need this, nor do I have space for it, as I'm using my huge, old drafting table that I found at an estate sale now as my work surface which is working out very well. But, this is the first alternate table that has me drooling. If only I had that HUGE loft workspace I have designed in my head. This would be perfect for another work station!

Isn't it special?! Oh, and this for our backyard would be lovely. Unfortunately it's a bit costly and it wouldn't fit the space anyway but I snapped a shot of it for inspiration:

Three words that have a lot of meaning for me lately (and yes, I'm counting to-the-point as one word). Ali Edwards is big into words and I think of her when I repeat these words over and over in my head. I have to do something with these three words soon, especially Deliberate and Powerful. They are always in the front of my mind each and every time we leave church. The way they run everything there is amazing and the more I learn about who they are the more I admire what they have done, and the way they have done it. The way in which they go about handling everything is such a great model for both life and business. Some other words I've heard described about this church; creative, energetic, real, different, addicting. Our class on Monday evenings is close to the end and it has been so powerful it wouldn't be unrealistic to take the class a second time. DH and I have already used a lot of what we have learned outside the church buildings. Yeah for us!

Deliberate. To-the-point. Powerful. Yep, those are my words. And, one other... Awesome!