brian

Today is one of those days that I’m even MORE thankful for Brian. He is off work this week on vacation. Today was his only completely free day, and he took me out to lunch, ran errands, picked Cora up, straightened up the whole house including hanging up my piles of clothes, baked me brownies, and most importantly, is currently helping me get this kid to bed because we’ve been trying for almost 2 hours now, and I would lose it by myself. 

Yesterday, he watched Cora more than half the day since school is out, went to the grocery store, cooked all afternoon and made dinner for our friends with a new baby, and more, I’m sure. My memory is bad.

He is awesome.

off day

I was off work today just because I wanted to be. Here’s what I’ve done:

• doctor appointment
• breakfast at home – I made coffee by myself for the first time!
• haircut
• lunch at Earth Fare
• browsing at Ross
• browsing at K-Mart
• manicure – first of my life!
• TED Talks

Not the coolest day ever, but it’s been nice! I can’t believe I didn’t take a nap.

sandwich

My latest weird fave is peanut butter & apple slices. I just had one for lunch!

busy weekend

For once, I had a busy weekend! Thanks to Sheena and her contest-winning luck, I went to Art on the Rocks at the Birmingham Museum of Art. Here’s one thing we were looking forward to:

We thought drinks were included in our ticket, but we were very wrong. Tiny cocktails were $8, so we both got only 1. They were delicious, but they weren’t big enough. Thankfully, Sheena brought along her flask of bourbon! That’s what you see pictured above. We also found out how small Sheena’s flask was. Now, we know. Here’s us at the party with Leslie:

I’ve never known a photo booth to not have a countdown or something so you know when the picture will be made, so I blew our opportunity for good pictures all except this one. We had food, looked at art, laughed at people, and had a fun friend date. All in all, it was a success!

On our way home, we went the spontaneous route and stopped by the Rainbow Tunnel by Railroad Park for some photo ops. Here are my faves:

 

On Saturday, Brian, Cora & I went out to eat breakfast at Dimitri’s. It was great! We saw tons of people we knew there, and that is one reason I love going there on Saturday mornings. After breakfast, we came home and let Cora play in her pool. That is always quite the show. She napped, and so did I! It was great. We went out to dinner at Longhorn! It was deeee-licious, and Cora ate really well and was so cute with other people there. We hung outside the restaurant after we were done eating so she could look at the flowers and play in the rocks by the waiting area outside. After she went to bed, Brian & I watched the 4th Harry Potter movie (goblet of Fire). It wasn’t my favorite one ever, but it was good.

Sunday was church! It was a good service with a great sermon, and I had fun singing. Cora fell asleep as soon as the service started in Phella’s arms, and it was so cute! She needed a nap, and I could tell Phella loved having her sleeping in her arms. She woke up at the perfect time right before church was over. The best part was that it meant we could go eat lunch at Five Guys! We figured we’d have to go straight home and put her to bed before we knew the nap was going to happen. Lunch was yummy, and Cora did great again. She’s so good at restaurants because she loves watching people and interacting with them. After lunch, Cora took a LONG nap. When she woke up, we headed to Brian’s parents’ because Ann was back in town, so we all got takeout so Cora could play with toys. Sunday was a long & tiring day, but it was good.

Yay for good weekends!

long weekend

Yay for long weekends! Brian & I took off work Friday and gave ourselves long holiday weekends! Wednesday night, I had band practice, so we got the party started on Thursday (actual holiday). We woke up, packed, and drove to my parents’ house. Later that day, we had family time and food at my grandparents’ house. My uncle and cousin also surprised everyone by coming into town from North Carolina earlier that week, so it seemed more special that way. Also, my other cousin that we don’t see much drove up from Atlanta, too! Cora played in front of my family after warming up to them, and everyone basically stared at her the whole time because they don’t see her much. She didn’t like that in the beginning, but she got over it since she’s such a ham.

On Friday, Brian, Cora & I met my friend Misty for a Mexican dinner to chit chat. It was good even if Cora dribbled cheese dip EVERYWHERE. I must add that Cora is OBSESSED with my mom, her Grandmama (mommom for now). She even woke up screaming Friday night/Saturday morning and ended up hollering for Grandmama. We could not calm her down, so I actually woke my mom up at 2 something in the morning to help get her back to sleep. It worked.

Saturday, we stayed half a day and then came back home. It rained all weekend, and it REALLY rained on our way back. We were able to hang out with Ann that evening, which was also great because Cora had been asking for Ann for about a week, too. We got some CFA for dinner so I could give Cora a bath, unpack and wash diapers before bedtime instead of spending our whole evening at a restaurant.

Sunday, times were back to normal! We went to church and sang some of my favorite songs to sing there, and then I had lunch with Sheena at Whole Foods! We also bought some groceries. The toffee/sea salt chocolate bar I bought is amazing! 

Do I really have to go back to work???

GOOD THING: safe travels
BAD THING: Cora will not stop asking where Grandmama, Ann & JoJo are ALL. THE. TIME. At least she loves them!

wake up

In these bodies we will live, 
in these bodies we will die.
Where you invest your love, 
you invest your life.

awake my soul.

round-up

Weekend round-up!

FRIDAY: bought Cora a pool for the back yard. She loves it!

On Friday, Brian knew I’d had some rough times, so he said we were going on a date. He asked his mom to keep Cora, and we went to Brio for a delicious dinner. After Cora went to bed, we watched the first Harry Potter movie. We’re going to see them all in order and get caught up!

SATURDAY: Brian let me sleep in! I slept about 3 extra hours! (I was interrupted once when Cora really wanted to bring me my bra that she found in the living room.) She likes to put things “up” and where they go. She figured I needed my bra. After that, I went and got my first massage ever! It was nice. I could tell a difference in how I felt when I laid down for bed that night. For dinner, we all went to New York Pizza. It was good as usual, but we were sort of full early on, so we both brought half of our pizzas home. We went to Publix on the way home. Cora loves grocery shopping! For the rest of the night, I worked on making a photo book of Cora’s first birthday.

SUNDAY: church, then lunch at Newk’s with the Pascos! We love the Pascos, and we hadn’t had food with them in a while. It was fun times. After lunch, Cora took a long nap while I worked more on the photo book. I’m spending a LOT of time on this book. I’d be finished now except I have 2 pages that I can’t figure out what to put on because I’m out of pictures, but I don’t want them to be blank. ANYWAY – here’s one of the best parts – I said we should go to the park with Cora so she could play outside, and we ended up running into an old friend of Brian’s from school! They didn’t recognize each other for a minute, but then they figured it out. They have a little boy that is 15 months old, so he and Cora played great together! I liked talking to them (his wife showed up a few minutes later), and they asked for Brian’s number. She friended me on FB when she got home. Potential new friends! I worked the rest of the night on the photo book. I can’t wait to get it finished and printed!

borrowed wisdom

“Sometimes when I want to put myself in Adele’s shoes [she’s gay], I imagine an alternate universe in which Christians have chosen a different biblical condemnation upon which to fixate, such as women uncovering their heads or people getting tattoos. I imagine TV preachers claiming that 9/11 happened as a result of God’s wrath on the gossipers and the greedy, and churches raising funds to support an amendment to the constitution making remarriage illegal for people who are divorced. I imagine people carrying signs that say ‘God Hates Gluttons’ or ‘Stone Disobedient Children,’ and I think to myself, Boy, I’m glad we didn’t pick ‘lifestyle sins’ like materialism or judgementalism to obsess about, because if we had, I’d totally be screwed. That’s when I realized that if anyone’s an oxymoron, it’s me. Or maybe it’s anyone who claims to follow Jesus.”

-Rachel Held Evans in “Evolving in Monkey Town”

help me

Yesterday, I ate this junk food:

strawberry cupcake at work
1 bite of another wonderful dessert (chocolate/caramel/salt brownie thing)
5 Chips Ahoy cookies (chewy) at home after Cora went to sleep
most of 2 Steel City Pops thanks to Halley at band practice (she didn’t like hers, so I got it)
5 more Chips Ahoy cookies before bed

On top of that, I had large amount of fruit while Cora was eating fruit, and I made an awesome juice concoction to drink with dinner.

I need help!

highlights

I got ’em, y’all! They aren’t in my hair. They’re on my blog about my weekend! Tricked ya.

FRIDAY:
dinner at Bottega Cafe with Brains – we dropped Corita off and went out! I got exactly the same dish as I got with the girls, and it was excellent. Also, I could fully taste the food this time. We didn’t get dessert, but we got the baked feta we’d heard about. It was good, but it wasn’t what I had envisioned. Dinner took longer than we thought it would, so instead of going to Urban Standard afterward, we stopped by O’Henry’s before picking Cora up. After she went to bed, we watched 3 episodes of Arrested Development. I really wanted to take a picture of us together, but we just didn’t. We looked hot!

SATURDAY:
We went to Homestead Hollow with our friends, Charlie & Maddy and their kids, Lucy & Frank. It was better than I thought it would be. 

After that, we took naps. Dinner was at Newk’s, and it was grand. Cora loves their little breadstick cracker things.

SUNDAY:
Mother’s Day! It’s been a fun day spending time with my little one. Brian made me biscuits for breakfast, and I had flowers on the table waiting for me. Church was good. Cora looked super adorable in her dress that she chose to wear today. 

She was so sleepy that we had to skip lunch, so we went to eat Five Guys after she woke up at the random time of 3 PM or so. It was great! My gift was a new swing for the backyard since ours needs to be thrown away! The new one isn’t wood and can’t rot or be ruined by carpenter bees. I love it! Brian also made me brownies this evening, and I got the cutest card ever.

Now, I’m going to watch some Parks & Rec and probably Arrested Development! (Casey, I like it now. I’m not sure why I didn’t before!)