Sleepy Evening

These past two days of camp have really worn me out! I love my kids but spending an 8 hour day with them is so exhausting. My coworkers and I traded yawns the entire ride home and at hardly 8pm I was already trying to convince Keith that we should go to bed haha. I'm very thankful that with such a crazy work load, I get to have Fridays off this summer. Hooray for 3 day weekends! I have a feeling that Fridays are going to include lots of sleeping, laying at the pool and catching up on trashy tv (and hopefully spending lots of time loving baby Elliot!) We've also got a lot of great date nights lined up for the rest of the month thanks to living social coupons; I can only hope that these little treats will keep me going when I'm standing in a room full of screaming 7 year olds.

Before I get too excited for waking up tomorrow and doing it all over again I wanted to share a couple more photos from my recent Florida trip. Why can't more of my life be spent sitting by a pool with my awesome family?

Brother Jake, Mom, Dad

with the addition of Grammy and Aunt Liz

Cousin Mary

Bennett women :)

Daddio

Cousin David, the high school graduate

cornhole

LOTS of pool volleyball 

Just Dance! For Wii!!

Jake was a groove master

and karaoke

and rockband

I took most ofthese with the Pudding iPhone app if you were curious, but I'm kinda bummed because I feel like blogger is cramping my photo quality. Would you recommend uploading to another hosting site first? I'm open to suggestions. Hope you're all having a great week!

A Little Bundle

I feel like I post about Chelsey all the time, but we spent a lot of time together during her pregnancy since the day she announced she was expecting was the day we moved to Nashville. I got to watch her belly grow and expand (and get kicked from the inside) over the last nine months, therefore I'm SO EXCITED to announce that Ryan and Chelsey are now the parents of the sweetest little boy I've ever laid eyes on... Elliot Gray Meyer!!! We got to take a little trip to the hospital this evening to meet him, to congratulate mom and dad, and to hear the incredible story of his birth (Chelsey was a total champion and had him all naturally... I don't know if I'm that brave!) I promise we are not looking to try for a baby for a while down the road, but all this baby fever is starting to get to me. Luckily Chelsey lives right down the road from us so I can pay her and Elliot a visit whenever I feel that itch :-)

Here are some shots of the cutie:

His silky dark hair is the softest thing I've ever felt, and I couldn't stop staring at all his teeny tiny features. We can't wait to watch him grow up! (expect LOTS more photos of this little guy in the future haha) We're so proud and excited for you Ryan and Chelsey!!

Midweekend Update

Just checking in from Ocala! It's been a great weekend so far... when I say I have an awesome family, what I really mean is that they're way better than any family out there. No competition whatsoever. Today we spent the day by the pool enjoying the sun and fighting off a hangover from last nights beer drinking haha. We celebrated my cousins graduation with a piñata and cake and now we've moved onto a marathon of Wii games (undefeated on Just Dance? yeah that was me! Not so much on Rock Band).

Here are some photos from the day:

I'll save the dancing photos for tomorrow, and maybe if you're lucky I post a video haha.

To Keith and Theo, everyone here misses you and wishes you could have come! We promise we aren't having too much fun without you.

Love is...

... buying me a plane ticket to Florida to spend the weekend with our family even though you can't join us because your work is being really lame and not letting you take a day off.

... sharing the Klondike bar with me even though I know you wanted it all :)

... watching So You Think You Can Dance with me. I know. That was a brutal 2 hours for you haha

... putting up with my daily demands to go swimming, and affectionately call me your little fish.

... smiling at me even when I spend the whole car ride criticizing your driving (I'm really trying to get better!! I promise!).

... letting me listen to trashy music on the radio because you know it's my absolute favorite, even when you really want to tune into sports radio.

... dealing with the fact that I'm not the type of wife that loves cooking, or picking up my clothes (or doing the dishes). Oops.

... making it a priority to cuddle with me and the cat the minute you step in the door.

... always letting me steal the covers, and have more pillows.

... buying me a brand new phone and not even being jealous.

I have the best husband ever. Thank you Keith for loving me each and every day!

Tomorrow afternoon I'm headed down to Ocala, Florida to visit my family for the weekend and to celebrate my cousin David's high school graduation. As I mentioned, Keith is not coming with me which is a HUGE bummer, but he has to save up all his days off so that we can take an anniversary trip in August. I'm going to miss him a whole lot, but I'm so excited to get a chance to hang out with my family. Hopefully I'll have some photos to share when I return on Monday! Anyone else doing something interesting this weekend?

Cat Friend

Sorry for spamming you with the same pictures across multiple social networks, but my new phone takes such great pictures that I can't help but share! Theo has definitely switched into summer mode where he lays around the house all day looking for the fan and begging to be pet. I'm loving this because he's usually too eager to play (bite your hand) to enjoy being loved, but now he can't wait to hop in my lap.

He is also not very patient if I'm busy at the moment he wants to be pet. This is the adorable face that he makes as he waits:

And here are my two favorites having a little dude cuddle. They are too cute.

In other, non-cat news, I finally changed our calender to the month of June! I've gotten a little behind recently on our mega wall calendar, or maybe April was just such an awesome month that I wanted to keep reliving it. Now I can finally feel like I know what's going on in our life. Hooray for organization! Now we just need to make some plans for June so I can fill it up. 

and if you're interested, you can follow me on pinterest...

EDIT*** After I posted this photo my wonderful friend Amanda McCleod drew this adorable little sketch of our cat boy:

Taste the City

We love food festivals. End of story.

This weekend was definitely well spent regardless of the outrageous temperatures both Friday and Saturday. As I mentioned, we spent our weekend volunteering/enjoying lots of food and beverages at the Taste of Music City here in Nashville. They took over a large street downtown and had over 50 vendors where you could sample food/beer/wine/spirits. Aka, lots of things we love.

Friday night we went to the beer tasting, and tasted maybe TOO many beers :) There wasn't that much food to sample Friday which was my eventual downfall, but who can pass up all you can drink beers??

Saturday we had our volunteer shift from 1 til 4:30 where we sold tickets to all the hungry people ready to taste food and got a chance to scope out the places we wanted to try once we were released of our duties. Thankfully the afternoon passed by really quickly and we even got free tacos from the Chipotle stand because we were volunteers. Once we were done at 4:30 the sun had gone down enough that we weren't completely miserable and we spent a couple hours making rounds to all the different booths. 

Super cool volunteer apron 

Celebratory beers, and Yazoo glasses to replace the one we broke last week!

 Ok, Nashvillians... these are some restaurants that we recommend trying (and we also look forward to adding to our date night rotation):

1). Mere Bulles- we tasted an absolutely delicious crab cake slider from here, and thought their menu looked really interesting. This would definitely be more for a fancy date night.

2). Raz'z Bar and Grill- we didn't actually purchase anything from this restaurants' stand, but they had jambalaya which Keith LOVES so he grabbed a spoonful and thought it was pretty great. It definitely looks like our kind of place.

3). Puckett's Grocery and Restaurant- I didn't even have something from here but I can't WAIT to go. It's downtown, which is super close to us, AND they serve what sounds to be an amazing breakfast (I love breakfast foooood!). Keith had their ribs and described them as "crazy good", and he's pretty hard to impress.

4). Tayst- we pass this place quite a bit off of 21st ave, but now we have some motivation to try it out. This would be another fancy date night option.

5). The Tin Roof- there was a groupon for this restaurant recently that sold out before we could even consider it, which led us to believe that it was somewhere we needed to go. I had a quesadilla, which was amazing! Usually I don't get too excited about things I know I could easily make at home, but everything in it tasted so fresh that my mouth was very pleased. They also do a lot of live music, which is always a plus for us.

6). Delicioux Cafe- I can't find a website for this restaurant, but its over in the Belle Meade area, and we would definitely recommend it. When we were working in the ticket booth we kept asking people what was something they had tried that we couldn't leave without having, and the answer we got most often was "the chicken sandwich from Delicioux". We were not disappointed at all.

Now that I'm reading through this I feel so much like Guy Fieri from Diners, Drive-ins and Dives because all I've done is talk about how awesome everything tasted haha Mmmmmmmm.

Some honorable mentions: Keith had a yummy jalapeno popper from La Paz, we had a taco from Jim 'N Nick's Bbq Friday night that had some pretty tasty cole slaw on it and the watermelon yogurt from Pinkberry was heavenly. I never would have thought to try watermelon, but it was perfect on a hot day.

In conclusion... we will definitely be coming back next year, and we suggest you do the same.

Popsicle Love

Ever since I made frozen drinks on Memorial Day, I've been a little obsessed with our blender. I saw some amazing looking peaches at the grocery store this week and had to have them... unfortunately I let them get just a little too ripe. Not amazing for eating, but PERFECT for a smoothie. Since then I've been enjoying strawberry peach smoothies with a big smile on my face (and I haven't even had to share because my Georgia boy husband somehow hates peaches haha). Last week at Kroger I picked up this popsicle mold in the sale section, and after successful smoothies I knew I needed to start some popsicle making.

They're hanging in the freezer now and I can't wait to try them!! If they're successful than it looks like we will have lots of homemade popsicles this summer, watch out Las Paletas. Yum, anyone have any fresh fruit popsicle suggestions?

Also, please allow me to marvel for a moment about how my new phone takes better photos than my camera manages to take. Ahhh, I'm in love :)

Food

Now that it's summer and my work schedule is less constraining, Keith and I are really looking forward to exploring some of the awesome festivals that take place in Nashville. Coming up this weekend is the Taste of Music City which is a huge food/wine/beer festival downtown. I found out about it because all the proceeds benefit the Martha O'Bryan Center (where I work) and they were looking for volunteers to work the ticket booth... with the promise of free food and drink, I obviously signed up both Keith and I. We're going to go both Friday night and Saturday afternoon to check out samplings from about 50 restaurants around the city, listen to some live music and taste some local brews. We're super excited to scope out new restaurants to try, and get some time to hang with each other. My only hope is that it isn't TOO unbearably hot outside... we'll see about that though haha.

Anyone have any cool weekend plans?

A Lack of Pictures Post

It makes me sad that not having a camera has caused me not to post anything to our blog. I promise we've been just as busy doing fun things! Our long weekend turned out to be a great mix of getting things done at the house and relaxing, which means I was a happy camper. We got our lawn mowed, and Keith installed the air conditioning units in our windows, which was MUCH needed because Nashville has been hotter than I can describe. Saturday we fought off cicadas at Centennial Park and tried to enjoy some music now that Musicians Corner has started; maybe next week it won't be so bad haha. Monday we enjoyed our day off with a trip to the pool at the YMCA and I definitely look forward to many more summer days over there (since there isn't a beach anywhere near here, boo). Afterwards we had a great group of people over for a BBQ (the daiquiris were a hit!) and spent the evening hanging out, and eating. The boys played some games outside and sweat themselves to death, while the rest of us enjoyed the cool air inside. I'm guessing that most gatherings for the rest of the summer while have to happen like this because I don't see it getting any cooler any time soon.

This has been an interesting week at work for me, since it was the students last week of school. Tuesday I had the pleasure of walking from the school my students attend, to the Titans stadium. At 1pm. In the sun. Up a hill. I have never sweat so much in my life haha. Thankfully it was only a mile and a half away.

We got to tour the stadium, check out the players locker rooms and the owners suite. It was pretty interesting, but above all the kids had a blast (except for the walk) and were just excited that they weren't in school.

Yesterday the kids had a half day, so I only had to work until 3, but came back around 7pm for a lock in. Please don't ask why I volunteered to sleep at work with a group of 25 middle schoolers, but it seemed like a good idea.... until like, 4am. We took the kids to dinner at Applebees, went to the movies, played an epic game of mat ball, lots of uno, basketball, loud music, a scavenger hunt, pool, and just general non sleeping. We finally convinced the children to close their eyes, and I went and hid in a quiet room to catch a little nap before heading out at 7:30 am. With that being said, I spent the rest of today SLEEPING! Keith called me at noon and was surprised to find that I was completely passed out, but I don't think I've been that tired in my whole life. No more "sleeping" at work for me.

Also, in the absence of my camera I've been using instagram on my iPhone. If you have that app you should follow me!

Extra Long Weekend

Today marked the beginning of my 4 day weekend, which Keith and I will celebrate tonight with beers at the Yazoo Taproom, mmmmmm. We're hoping for a super relaxing weekend working on some things around the house and catching up with friends, which I COULD NOT be happier about.

Here are some things that have been going on recently:

- Today I went on a shopping trip with Chelsey and splurged on this beautiful patterned skirt from Anthropologie. I love it :) It so soft and swirly and I want to wear it every day this summer!

- Also today, I went with Chelsey to her midwife appointment and I got to hear her sweet baby's heartbeat. He is coming so soon!!

- I no longer have to work until 7pm! The kids only have a day and a half left of school, then we get a week off, and summer camp begins. I'm not crazy excited about essentially being a camp counselor those 6 weeks, BUT it requires hardly any prep/planning and I get to wear shorts everyday haha.

- Because I no longer have to work until 7, I can start taking yoga/pilates classes!

- This one is a bummer: my camera isn't working anymore :( It got a little wet in my bag this week when my water bottle spilled, and now it just won't turn on. That coupled with my phone that died this morning after listening to half a cd, I'm starting to believe that technology is not on my side this week. I have had that camera for about 6 years and I've been griping about wanting an upgrade, but it's not exactly in the budget. For now, you'll have to deal with iPhone photos (from my phone that only stays alive for an hour at a time, fml) Anyway, I'm still carrying it around in my purse because I'm in denial about it actually being dead. You never know...

- On a lighter note, I got two huge bags of frozen strawberries from work yesterday which I definitely plan on turning into strawberry daiquiris at our Memorial Day BBQ... because that is the American way ;)

Hope you all have a great long weekend!!