After dealing with a sick baby then a rash baby I was in need of a break (and after Beth Moore I’m secure in my parenting enough to SAY I needed a break and not feel guilty for that!!!). Thankfully, Kye was looking waaaaaay better on Friday and acting more himself as well so I felt okay leaving him. I did, however, feel bad for Zach because he’d been really looking forward to their guys weekend and taking Kye to church just him and Kye and the dr. said he shouldn’t go anywhere until the rash is 100% gone. Oh well! In the post to come I think you’ll all see they still managed to have a GREAT time without Mommy being here 🙂
Friday afternoon I left and picked up Robyn and we headed to Atlanta. I was excited for the drive as it gave Robyn and I a chance to talk! When you’re mommies you spend a lot of time hanging out with your kids on play dates so you don’t get to really talk because you’re constantly chasing children 🙂 On the drive we stopped in Locust Grove to hit up the Outlets (I had a Coach gift card burning a hole in my pocket!) and got some cute stuff for our kiddies. We also went to the potty and realized very quickly that we were getting close to Atlanta…it was a little icky in there! I took an awesome picture of Robyn when she first stepped out of the stall and really captured her disgusted face but I don’t wanna lose the friend I have so I’m not gonna post it haha
The staged “stinky” picture
I ate Taco Bell which made Robyn make MORE stinky faces 😉
Robyn’s sister, Laura, lives in Lawrenceville so I dropped her off there then headed the rest of the way to Danielle’s house to spend the night with her. Of course we had a fun night talking and talking! Typically when I spend the night with her we’ll stay up until around 5am or so…but this time we did better and fell asleep around 2:30. I had to turn around and get up at 6 in order to be ready to go to Beth Moore
so it wasn’t very much sleep but I survived!
On the way from Robyn’s sister’s house I realized she lived only like 5 minutes from the neighborhood I grew up in so on the way to pick Robyn up for the conference I took a 2 minute detour and drove by my childhood home. Gah I LOVE this house. I can still describe every part of it in detail and it’ll always be home to me. I actually saw that my best friend from childhood (Michelle) was in town as her car was in the driveway but I thought it might be kinda strange if I rang their bell at 7:15 in the morning 😉
We made great time to get to the conference and it was AMAZING (post to come!) Afterward it worked out great because we met up with Zach’s sister, Casey, and her man, Jordan, at the Cheesecake Factory. Robyn had never been to the Cheesecake Factory before and it’s the restaurant that has my FAVORITE dish ever (Crispy Chicken Costoletta it’s FABULOUS!) so duh, we had to go. It was nice getting to catch up with Casey and Jordan is such a nice guy. We had a GREAT time!
It was hardcore raining all day on Saturday and my hair and rain just don’t mesh well together. By this time in the day my hair was AWFUL and it made me feel insecure (after a conference on insecurity you’d think I’d be past that haha). Casey got up to go to the bathroom during dinner and when she came back she said some girls were in the bathroom fixing up for prom so I jumped up and ran in there to ask them if I could borrow their straightener! They thought I was hilarious for doing that but you do what you gotta do ya know? This was obviously taken pre-straightener experience 🙂
After dinner I took Robyn back to Laura’s and then left from her house to head to meet up with a blog friend who I was finally getting to meet in real life! On the way I passed by both my elementary school and middle school. I also could have passed by another house I lived in but it was raining pretty bad and I just wanted to get where I was going. It’s so strange being back in my hometown for me. It’s like everywhere I looked I saw a memory and I enjoyed the driving as it gave me a chance to go down memory lane without being annoying to anyone in the car talking about it a bunch (We LIVE in Zach’s hometown so I get tired of hearing all the same stories over and over…).
Cedar Hill Elementary (who I just realized are no longer the Bulldogs…so sad!!!)
When I first thought of the idea of coming to Atlanta I was really hoping to meet up with some of my blog friends. I know how those types of things go though and I didn’t expect too much to come from it! I’m SUPER happy that Kelly Ford has now moved from my “people I’d like to meet” blog following list to me “people I know in real life” blog following list! I started reading her blog back in January in a link from Rachael’s blog. I commented one day and then she started reading my blog and we hit it off. She’s a babywise
mommy too and has been a GREAT source of advice for me! Recently she actually called me and we talked for almost THREE HOURS! Zach thought we were nuts to talk so long when we are pretty much strangers but sometimes you just click with someone and that happened with us for sure (actually Robyn and I met through this blog as well!)! I liked her as a fellow mom just from reading her blog and seeing that we have the same parenting style but once I talked to her on the phone I liked her as a Christian role model too!!! She really lives her life for the Lord and don’t we all need more friends to help build us up spiritually?!?
It’s a funny thing to pull into someone’s driveway whom you’ve never actually met haha. Her husband, Jeff, answered and it was funny to me to be saying “nice to meet you” to him when I walked in HIS house!!! After giving me a tour of their beautiful home we just sat and chatted for a good long while. Even on only 4 hours of sleep I enjoyed every second of it!!! I wish Rhyan, their daughter, hadn’t been sleeping because I would have liked to have met her too…but there’s always next time 🙂 She had actually had surgery the day prior so she needed that rest. I got her the cutest dress (but ALL girl things are cute to me haha) from The Children’s Place Outlet and I hope they liked it!
I KNOW Kelly and I are meant to be friends…when I was about to leave she told Jeff to take a picture of us together, which is exactly what I’d been thinking!!! A girl after my own heart for sure 🙂
The drive from her house to Danielle’s was the toughest of the weekend for me. I’ve had lasik eye surgery done twice and it’s left me with horrible night vision. On top of that it was storming SO badly which makes it harder to see but also scarier too. AND I hadn’t ever been to Kelly’s before so I didn’t know where I was going and I had to refer to the directions she wrote me often. AND it was 10:30 at night and I was running on very little sleep. On top of all of that I also got stuck behind a truck majority of the way who thought he should go 10 under the speed limit the whole way and once I got on 85 (with only ONE exit to go until I got off) I got stopped in traffic due to a pretty bad accident. Rough drive for sure (well worth it but still rough!) and I was thankful to get to Danielle’s again. I somehow managed to stay awake (although she did say I was pretty much talking gibberish) until around 2 again! I didn’t want our time together to suffer because I was tired so I fought it pretty hardcore.
I did get to sleep in until 9 though Sunday morning which was SO nice!!! Once I got up I ate my chicken leftovers for breakfast (which I’d forgotten to bring in so they sat in my car all night…no worries I didn’t get sick although it’s so amazingly yummy it’d be worth it if I had haha) then drove over to meet Danielle at her church (Hopewell Baptist). I’d never attended a baptist church before but I realized that it’s the same as our church other than a few minor differences! I LOVED that their preacher was hardcore about the Word and that he said you shouldn’t pick a church for any other reasons than that they follow God’s Word and love the Lord 🙂 My kinda guy!!! I also got to meet two of the other bridesmaids in the wedding, Chelsi and Laura, while at church and both of them were super sweet! On my way to church services I had to turn on Candler Road…made me miss my little baby (Kye’s first name is actually Candler for those not-so-hardcore-blog readers haha).
Since Danielle and I always spend our quality time together staying up late and talking we NEVER get pictures together so we made sure to do that at church 🙂
Jonathan, Danielle’s fiance, goes to church with her and we all three grabbed a quick bite to eat after services. It was only my third time ever meeting Jonathan which is hard to imagine because I feel like I know him so well from Danielle! The first time I met him was actually back during my engagement before one of my showers. I remember thinking he was pretty nice and kinda cute but now OMG he’s such a CATCH! I dunno if it’s just that he’s aging well or what but dang they are gonna make pretty babies 😉 I honestly think that he’s become better looking and has made more of an impression on me because he’s got a devotion to the Lord now and is living his life for Him…plus it doesn’t hurt that he’s madly in love with my best friend. I hadn’t gotten to really talk to Danielle since their engagement and I feel SO great about them getting married after this weekend! They were so smart to be patient and wait to make sure this union is what God wants for them and they are just thrilled to get to be husband and wife. She literally just wants to skip to the wedding right now so she can spend every night with him. Isn’t that how it should be?!? I know they will have such a successful and happy marriage and I’m pumped to get to know Jonathan better in the future (Zach has only met him once, at Kye’s party, but after reading the blog entry Jonathan wrote on their proposal he knows they’ll get along haha!!!).Go ahead and click on this picture to make it bigger…you know you wanna see how cute Jonathan is 😉
After church we rushed over to the dress shop so I could try on and order my bridesmaids dress and Danielle could show me her wedding dress. Gah I wish I could post the pictures of her in her dress..it’s SO amazingly beautiful! I LOVE it!!! I joked with Jonathan that once you get past the huge shoulder pads it’s pretty (you gotta throw the guys off ladies). I am also excited about the bridesmaid dresses. It worked out great that they had it in stock in the actual color so I was able to get a really good idea on how it’ll look! Of course the only size they had was a 12 so it was a little big but I made it work!
with the bride!
I seriously feel so LUCKY to get to be part of Danielle’s (and Jonathan’s) special day. It’s going to be a wedding straight out of a magazine, so far it sounds like the most fabulous day ever. I’m mega pumped about it and LOVE that I’ll be able to wear the sexy dress again on the cruise we’re going on a few weeks after the wedding. It’s funny that in our time together neither of us talked much about what you’d think we talk about…I didn’t talk about parenting and she really didn’t talk much about wedding stuff. We’re DEEPER friends than the surface stuff that’s for sure 🙂 Seeing Danielle isn’t something I look forward to or hope to do occasionally, it’s something I NEED! It’s so hard to find people who truly understand you and who you can be your 100% open self around and she’s my person for sure 🙂 I love our friendship and that as we’ve gotten older we’ve both grown and changed so much but yet we’ve both actually changed in the same ways, especially in our faiths.
After the dress shop I met Robyn and we headed home! I’m SO glad I was able to get her home to her baby girl before she went to bed. It was Robyn’s first time leaving her and while I can’t really remember how that feels (here’s the first time I left Kye…um he was 8 weeks old haha) I’m sure it was tough for her! Even though she was missing Lorelai I hope she had half as good of a time as I did. I felt like we really bonded and got to know each other SO much better.
Even though it was a weekend about the girls…it really became a weekend about God for me! Of course the Beth Moore Conference was all God-focused but all three of the ladies I spent the majority of my time with ended up having conversations all about the Lord as well! I felt very blessed this weekend and so glad that I went on the trip. I got to bond with my forever friend, get to know my newer friend on a deeper level and meet someone who will be a long-time friend I’m sure! It was such a GREAT time and I totally want to plan to do it again someday in the future.
After I dropped Robyn off at her house I couldn’t drive fast enough to get home. I made it back 10 minutes before Kye went to bed and I was so happy to see him! I was even happier to see how LIGHT the rash is now! Almost gone yay 🙂 I had an amazing weekend but I was glad to be home to my guys 🙂
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