Family Beach Trip 2008

Since I've been given a hard time by a few people about not updating this, I guess its time I make an entry about the awesome beach trip that my entire family just went on. We decided to do a family beach trip from Wednesday, September 17th through Sunday, September 21. My step-dad rented us a 3 story 8BR beach house on the beach in Gulf Shores and it truly was an amazing house! There was a pool on the deck, a huge kitchen and 3 levels, all of which came with 3 bedrooms/3 bathrooms, a living area with a flat screen a small kitchen. It was awesome!



Unfortunately for Justin and I, we were not able to make it to the festivities until late Thursday night. Justin had to work in Oklahoma and I couldn't take too many days off of work since I just started my job. So I picked Justin up at the Pensacola airport and we drove to Gulf Shores Thursday night. However, I did manage to stop by Britton Hill, Florida's highest point at a whopping 345 feet ;)





This is the whole family right after Justin and I got there on Thursday night

Friday came with some pretty bad weather. It wasn't sunny at all so since we couldn't lay on the beach, Justin and I did a little running on the beach. He probably ran about 6 miles while I only ran 4, but after 30 minutes of running, it started pouring down rain. If you have ever run on the beach, you know that if it's windy and the sand is blowing all over you, it hurts. Now, add pouring down rain with about 20+ mph winds that CAME OUT OF NOWHERE!!! It took me twice as long to run back to the house because I was running against the wind. I had to keep my head down because the rain kept getting in my eyes and since i was looking down, I almost passed the beach house. The only thing that kept me from passing it was all 12 members of my family on the back porch yelling and pointing at something. I turned around, but didn't see anything. Later, I was shown a picture....



Yep, a water spout. That is what my family was pointing at. That little person in white at the bottom is me running. I had no idea it was ever there.



Friday night we all went to dinner at a restaurant called Ribs-N-Reds. This restaurant was actually owned by Mike, my-step-dad, when he lived in Orange Beach. We had a blast! It's really hard to get all of our family together like this and this night was one of only two nights where everyone was at dinner together.



Saturday was definitely the fun day. It started out when Jeff Smith (Little Jeff) took Anderson to fly a kite. Naturally I came with them because I follow that kid around everywhere he goes in fear that I will miss a truly good moment! Anderson got tired of flying the kite and wanted to look for seashells, so I helped him look for them in the beach.



We also took our yearly family photos at the beach. Every year, my mom tries to get all of us together to have a family photo and we usually try to coordinate the colors. This year, since it was at the beach, we chose white and khaki.



Anderson loves to "go high" as he calls it



The three sisters

Tomorrow Justin and I are headed to Auburn (again) for the Auburn/UT game. The game doesn't start until 2:30 but we are going to drive down pretty early and spend the day at his old fraternity house. It kind of sucks that I won't be able to watch the Alabama/UGA game, but I can still hear it on the radio on the way home after the Auburn game.

Another Successful Saturday

This past weekend was a good weekend for the Tide. Defeat of Western Kentucky 41-7 made me feel a little better about my team. Yes, it was Western Kentucky and they kind of suck anyway, but I'm very happy that we beat them as much as we did and that it was by no means, a close race :) We had people over as our usual Saturday ritual. There was a lot more people than usual this week. I put a couple of pictures below to sum up the day:

Me and Justin before everyone came over for the games

This is me and my running buddy Margaret

My BFF for 13, almost 14 years graced us with her presence :)

Just a quick shot of everyone watching the Auburn game in the backyard. It was such a blast!

For those of you that are regulars to the gameday parties on Saturdays, it may be a while before we do it again. Justin and I will be out of town for the next 3 gamedays....sorry :( On Thursday, I'm driving to Lakewood Park, FL to go to Florida's highest point so that I can knock that one off my list. It's on the way to the Pensacola airport which is where I am picking Justin up when he flies in from Oklahoma. We'll drive from Pensacola to Gulf Shores to meet my family.

The next weekend is the Auburn vs. UT game. Justin and I will be going to Auburn (again) for this game. The weekend after that is the Auburn vs. Vandy game and we will also be going to that. I am really excited about that game because it is in Nashville and I get to see my Lillian and the Craigger!!! And it will be the first time I've been back since I'm moved to Birmingham. I know, it hasn't been that long, but I kind of miss Nashville. Granted, I would never move back because too much of my life is here, but I do miss it sometimes.

Oh and a quick funny story. I just talked to my sister on the phone who told me that her and Jeff and Anderson went to eat dinner one night recently and two guys walked in wearing jeans and a polo shirt and Anderson completely turned around and stared for a minute and looked back at Lindsey and Jeff and started saying something. It took them a little bit to figure out what he was saying but they figured out that he was saying "That's Justin, that's Justin". I LOVE MY NEPHEW!!!!

It's been a while

Justin has been out of town all week. He left on Sunday to go to upstate New York for work for a week. I really hate not being in the same place as him. I miss him too much when he's gone for that long. But I have been keeping super busy now that I've gotten my first client in Birmingham. Justin will come back in town on Friday and we're having our date night on Friday. Saturday is game day at the house as usual. Both BAMA and Auburn games are at 6pm but Alabama's isn't televised so we'll be listening to it on the radio.

Oh yeah, and like a very bad Alabama fan, I went to an Auburn game last weekend with Justin. We drove down at 7am and did a little tailgating with his mom and dad before we all walked into the game. This was my first Auburn game to go to and I was shockingly able to hold in my Tide Pride :) However, I do think the Bama Gods were trying to punish me by causing it to pour down rain. I was wearing shorts and a tank top and I got DRENCHED! I have also discovered that I will also be attending the Auburn/UT and Auburn/Vandy games. This may be a little much for me, but I do it for him because of all the things he does for me. Granted, he would never set foot in Bryant Denny with me, but he does so many other things that no one has ever done for me, aka, the three dozen roses he sent to my office in Nashville when he was hiking in the Northeast; all the girls were jealous of me then!

I'm excited about the new contemporary service that I'll be going to starting on October 5th. Our church is starting a brand new contemporary service called The Hillside and I am super pumped about it! There's also a Beth Moore bible study that they are doing right now that I am interested in. Beth Moore is one of my favorite authors. My daily devotional that I'm doing right now is written by her. It's about the Life of David. Justin's mom is doing the Beth Moore class so I'm thinking about doing it too, but might wait until this one is over since it already started and join the next one. I'm just ready to get back into a contemporary service. I LOVE my contemporary christian music. It really lifts me up a lot more than traditional hymnals.

I went to Tuscaloosa on Sunday and went to church with my sister and Jeff. I took Anderson to get a Happy Meal after church while Lindsey and Jeff set up for their Bible Study sign ups. I kept asking Anderson "Who's your favorite aunt?" He will now say "Maaaaacccccccie, of course". Not real sure where the "of course" came from. Initially when I asked that he would say Gigi (my mom) or Pop (my step-dad). He got it right after a while though. Lindsey said all weekend he would talk about me coming over on Sunday. That kid truly lights up my life :)

I love long weekends...

It has been an EXCELLENT long weekend for Labor day! I started my new job on Wednesday. I haven't done much yet, just filling out a lot of HR paperwork and reading up on my firms policies and procedures. However, I already love it! Everyone at work is so nice and its great to finally have some Alabama and even Auburn fans at work. At my job in Nashville, everyone was either a UT fan or an Ole Miss fan, so this is quite a change for me. I have my own office (another amazing perk since most people in my field have cubes until they make senior manager or partner). The office is less than 10 miles from where I live so it's very convenient.

This weekend was opening weekend for college football, so it was a jam-packed weekend. LSU beat Appalachian State, Auburn beat Louisiana-Monroe, and best of all, BAMA beat Clemson. It was nothing but happy faces around the house this weekend. A bunch of us went tubing again on Sunday and it was an amazing time as always. And on Labor Day, Justin and Rob and I went to Cedar Creek to play golf (well, they played golf and I putted some and drove the cart). On Monday night, Justin and I decided to print off the map of the Vulcan Run 10K and see where it goes. Note to self: next time I run a 10K or more, I will not drive the route....it is very discouraging. This bad boy runs literally all the way through downtown for 6.22 miles. I'm about to have to stop running so much though. Some injuries from dance team in college are starting to sneak back up. I had some pretty bad stress fractures because of dance and they eventually healed, but they're starting to hurt just a little bit when I get to the end of the run. We'll see how it goes. Here are some great pics from the weekend festivities:

This is me and Justin before the games started

This is where all the game watching happened....it's what I like the call "The Man Castle"

And of course, my wonderful nephew and niece supporting the TIDE!