A little Saturday morning getaway to Serenbe

Saturday morning, the four of us (Tal counts as a member of the family, remember) drove out to a little town called Serenbe, about 45 minutes south of Atlanta. The idea was for Ryan to catch a morning snooze on the way there, but of course he was just too excited about our plans for the day to sleep. ;)

And then right as we pulled in and were looking for a spot to park, this was what we saw in the back seat. Sweet love.

We walked through the outdoor market and toured the cute little town.

Then found some trails to walk through off of this little bridge.

Our attempt at a picture of the four of us. Ryan looking at his daddy- I melt. :)

Tal was in his happy place when he found some water on one of the trails.

And then we spotted some free-roaming cows and all four of us stopped to take a look. We're city people, remember. Ryan had only seen cows in his books and this one was huge and really close to us ... and not even behind a fence!

You can't see in this picture but these three girls were selling "Free Lemonade" on their Saturday morning. Seriously everything about this little place was so quaint and "small-town." People road by on their bikes or in their golf carts and everybody who passed us stopped to smile and say hello. 

And then Ryan met his first horse. And he LOVED it.

Tally, on the other hand, went ballistic when he saw the massive animal (go figure since this animal was behind a fence and the cow was roaming free), so Matt had to take him to the other side of the barn while Ryan and I pet the horse.

We found out later that there is an area with lots of other farm animals and a petting zoo, but we had already moved on to a different part of the town and different want to take time to walk or drive back to that area. Maybe next time!

We stopped for a little picnic lunch under a gazebo in the "rock rock rock" chairs as Ryan likes to call them. And soon after we sat down, we got a little visitor...

...A ten year old card trick master, ha. He walked up, said hello, and asked if we would like to see a card trick. "Sure!" we said, not knowing he actually had a mini show he wanted to put on for us. He had practiced hard though and actually had some pretty cool tricks- all tricks he had learned from You Tube he told us, ha! ...I don't know why that was funny to us, but it was.

And this was Ryan's face the whole time. Such a patient little audience member. ;)

We asked the boy (who lived there) what he liked to do for fun and he told us there was LOTS to do:

He pointed to the in-ground trampoline behind our gazebo and then said,

"or you can play board games in your house, or video games after 6 if your parents let you"

haha, again, we thought this was hilarious.

Then Matt asked if everyone was pretty friendly around the town and the boy said,

"You could say that. In wouldn't be accurate, but you could say that."

Ha! This kid. 

After the card tricks (or card show we could call it), he rubbed Ryan's head and was on his way. Such an interested little guy.

We checked out the in-ground trampoline...

...and the trucks

And visited this little market where Ryan got to ride an old-fashioned tricycle before heading home.

This was our view a few minutes into our drive home. :)

Today, we have a few fun things planned, including celebrating sweet Maddox's 7th birthday at my sister's house later today. This weekend has been so full and fun- if only every weekend be three days long!

And in case you missed my post on Friday, Shutterfly is running a big 40% off sale this weekend (ends tomorrow 9/8) with promo code CELEBRATE40. I've been working hard on my September photo book goal and hope to get a couple ordered with the sale!

Also don't forget to join Elizabeth and me next Tuesday, September 15th for Mid-Month Confessions! If you need some ideas for your post, you can check out previous confessions posts here.

And speaking of Elizabeth, she has an awesome giveaway going on right now on her blog! It would be worth your time to check it out. :)

Happy Labor Day, friends!

Embracing this stage, a few confessions, and snapshots from our life lately

And it's a long weekend!!!

We're planning a few fun things for this weekend and are super pumped to have Matt home early today and for the whole day on Monday. Bring on the weekend!

Before I get to sharing a few confessions and some pictures from our recent adventures, I wanted to share that pretty much right after I posted Wednesday's post about Google+, I got a notification that they updated their app and now have a separate app for just pictures...

GooglePhotos

...and it is AWESOME! Now you can create albums from your phone, which you couldn't do before, and you can hold and drag your finger to select multiple pictures at once. This will let you create a quick organized album right after you take all of your pictures from a certain event so that (if you're anything like me) you won't end up forgetting to create the album and have to create a whole bunch of different albums at once later on.

So that's my random tip of the day. ;)

I'm a do-er. I love to be productive, have a clean house and lit candles, folded laundry, tasty meals ready in the evenings when Matt gets home. These are all things I love.

But lately, I've been playing catchup in all areas it seems. Even keeping up with this little space has been all out of my set routine that I had in place for a good while. 

But you know what I've realized? 

It is O.K. 

I'm in a season where naps for Ryan may or may not happen and they may or may not be long, and awake time means we're playing together outside or building blocks or making sure he doesn't climb up the oven to reach the stove (because this has happened... it was off and there were no injuries... but the boy's got skill), and waking up before him for my productive "me-time" has just been a bit of struggle!

SO, I'm embracing this stage, telling myself it's O.K. to rest and play and have messes and eat dinner later and not have my burning candles always lit in my house. 

A release of confessions is good for the soul I think.

Which reminds me- Elizabeth and I will be hosting this month's Mid-Month Confessions on Tuesday September 15th, and we would LOVE for y'all to join us!

You can check out previous confession posts here for some ideas. Just jot down some of your most honest, silly, hysterical, or random confessions over these next couple of weeks and plan to link up with us on Tuesday the 15th!

Okay (whoa long post) NOW for some snapshots from our life lately!

These two have a nightly routine of bouncing on the bed after bath time. You can see Ryan loves it. :)

Sharing breakfast with daddy before he heads off to work

Sweet boo took a tumble during our family photo shoot and ended up with bumps on his nose, lip, eye, and forehead. Poor guy. It's so tough to be one!

Our sweet contractor is going to be a little lonely at his next job I think. These two followed him around everywhere he went.

Making friends at story time!

Just playing in his toy car in the backyard... butt naked. ;)

I honestly can't remember why Ryan didn't even have a diaper on for these pictures, but I'm gonna go with it was right before bath and he just had a poopy so I figured if he tinkled while he was outside it wouldn't matter.

But really a nakey baby kind of makes these pictures, right?!

So everyday while Matt is at work, Ryan finds pictures of him and points and says, "Dada, Dada, DaDA!" over and over again. In the pic on the left, Ryan is looking up at our wedding picture repeating "Dada"

Oh Tal. He was ready for bed before the rest of us and found some darkness under our curtains. He is the quirkiest dog and makes us laugh all the time.

Packing in to go meet Dada for lunch! Tal came too. ;)

These two are the best buddies.

Daddy's home!

This little buddy loves to snuggle up with his blanky while he sleeps.

Maddox left one of his stuffed animals after our sleepover last weekend and Ryan has been loving taking care of it until we see him again. ;)

:)

Seeing this boy love books makes this teacher's heart melt.

The Eye Book is his favorite from this collection. This night I found him pointing in the book to the eye (or nose) and saying, "eye" (in a very country sounding accent by the way), and then pointing to his ear and saying, "eye." hahah, close enough buddy!

One last thing before I go, Shutterfly is having a big sale this weekend so I'm hoping to crank out two books from my goals for this month (I already finished one!) and maybe even buy a grill with the Labor Day sales?! I'm still not sure what kind of grill to get, so if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Have a great long weekend!

September Goals

I should really stop saying things like, "I'll be back tomorrow to share..." because whenever I write that in a post, the "I'll be back tomorrow" part doesn't happen.

So here I am a day late with my September goals. Better late than never, right?!

I love, love, love September. In my head, September marks the beginning Fall. Forget about the fact that it's still in the mid-80s... crisp Fall air will be here before we know it. College football is right around the corner, my birthday is this month, and this year, we have our last beach vacation of the year planned for the end of this month. It's going to be a great September.

Before I get to my goals for this month, here's a look at how I did with my

1.
Organize Ryan's pictures on Google+ into albums and months

A lot of you mentioned that you didn't know about the Google+ app for your phone either! If you want an easy way to back up the pictures on your phone and have access to them or be able to share them from a computer (you can share them from your phone too), you should definitely download the app.

While it doesn't allow you to view your folders in a list form, you can search for any album you've created pretty easily. For Ryan's monthly picutres, I just typed in the search bar "January 2015" and it would bring up all of the pictures from that month that had been backed up from my phone. Then I selected the ones of him and clicked the "+" button on the top right to create a new album. I titled each of the albums "Ryan _-_ Months" so that it was easy to search for them by just typing in his name.

To get started with backing up the photos on your phone, download the app, click on the menu button on the top left, select "photos" and then pull the screen down to automatically start the backup. If you're like me, the initial backup with take a LONG time, but then it will keep backing them up automatically as you take photos. (Side note- you may want to select that the autobackup happen only when you're connected to wifi if you don't want it to use too much of your data. You can do that under settings.)

Hope that helps!

2.
Read The Longest Ride

I really enjoyed this book! If you missed it, you can read my full review here.

3.
Watch the Movie

The movie was so different from the book, but it was still really good. Matt and I have been on a movie watching kick lately We're in the lull before Fall shows and trying to catch up on movies that we've missed in the theaters... because really who wants to spend a date night in the movie theater these days? Not me. One, they're so darn expensive, two, I want to talk and enjoy our time out, and three, I'll most likely fall asleep. At least when we're at home watching a movie in bed, I can be in my comfies and fall asleep comfortably if I so choose. :)

4.
Visit Eye Doctor
We had a big family outing to the eye doctor last Saturday. Oh how our weekends have changed. I really meant to take a picture of the three of us in the store just for kicks, but I completely forgot. But on this note, both of us walked away from our appointments with improved vision- so either we're actually getting younger, or we had a terrible doctor before. But yay for better eyesight, right?!


And now for my

1. Shoes
First off, I have got to get Ryan some shoes (and for this picture, clothes).

He loves playing outside and has really started taking a lot of steps in the past week or so. I'm totally good with him being bare foot in the house, but I want him to have something on his feet for when we're playing outside. So that's my first goal- find a pair of shoes and try not to get lost in the million-and-one reviews/opinions about the best shoes for a new walker.

2. Dentist
It's that time again. I need to schedule an appointment for the dentist, and Matt does too actually, so maybe we'll carry on our tradition and go to this one together too. Getting these appointments in is a little trickier when you have a little one!

3. Shutterfly Books
I might regret this goal later this month, but I have been wanting to order a few (yikes) Shutterfly books and really need to make a point of putting them together and getting them ordered. So this is my big goal for this month. Which means I'm really going to need to work on that getting-up-before-Ryan goal I've been semi working on each morning.

4. Read The Last Lecture and one other book
My mom suggested The Last Lecture to me and said it's such an inspiring story. It's a pretty quick read though so I would like to read another book this month as well. I'm thinking maybe The Girl on the Train? Got an other ideas for me?!

5. Grill
With summer coming to an end, now seems like a great time to jump on some end-of-summer sales and check off the last item on our to-do list. Hopefully I'll be able to find us a good one at a great price! Have any suggestions on brands I should go with or stay away from?

Thanks for your help! Hope you guys are having a great week!