Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Anyone who has been around me this week knows that Ben got me an early birthday present because I've been talking about it a lot. What is it, you ask? A banjo!!!!!!!!!!! I love it!!!!!!!!!!

Foggy Mountain Breakdown is a classic banjo song, so I found a youtube tutorial on how to play it...I pretty much just dove right in :) I still don't have it well enough to play it as fast as a pro banjo player would...but hey, it's only day #6 with my banjo - I'll get there eventually!

4th Annual Ft. Walton Trip

Last week, we went to the beach for our 4th annual family vacation with Ben's family to Ft. Walton Beach. All 13 of us were able to be there, so it was perfect...well, except the weather the first 3 days. Tropical Storm Lee was blowing through so the wind and rain were terrible and we were cooped up inside except for a shopping trip to the outlets, pedicures for the ladies, eating out, and church. We got some good quality time together playing The Game of Things and the guys playing Risk.

Luckily, the sun came out and the weather was beautiful the last half of the trip so the board games were saved for nighttime back at the condos. The Costco Relaxation Station was totally worth the money; everyone loved it! It made a great boat on the water and a great bounce house for the kids on the beach. We all laughed at Ben when he wanted to attach an anchor to it, but turns out the lifeguards wouldn't let us use it with the "high winds" unless it was anchored...who knew!

Without further ado, a bunch of pictures.

Can't wait to go back next year!

Senz Umbrella

I bought an umbrella off woot.com quite a while back for $15. It is supposed to be wind resistant, but I hadn't really used it anywhere windy before. Finally, last week at the Ft. Walton Beach during Tropical Storm Lee, I had a chance to truly test it out. I know you can't really hear me in this video, but what I'm trying to tell the camera is that there are hurricane-like winds, double red flags at the beach, and basically, look how awesome my umbrella is after I get it open.

Photo enhancer

Playing around with a photo enhancer app.  The two pictures in the middle are altered (can't get this blogger app to arrange the pictures in the order I want).

Blogger app

Finally google has an app for blogging on a droid! This is just a test to see how it works and if I like it. I think I do! This gives me something to do for the next 7 hours in the car on the way home from Ft. Walton!

Baltimore Trip

We went to Baltimore then end of July to visit Carl, Lindsay, Reagan, and Quint and had such a fabulous time! Shortly after arriving I got a makeover at Reagan's Beauty Shop.

We went into Annapolis that night for dinner and got some good pics by the water.

There was also some huge anime convention in town called Otakon so we saw some interesting people in some interesting costumes! My favorite comment was from Reagan: "SHE had on pink lipstick and HE had on purple lipstick!"

Saturday included some great pool time and some poolside Five Guys. Reagan is a great swimmer and Quint isn't far behind--he loves to hold his breath and stick his head underwater. They both love jumping into the pool and are fearless about it!

We ate some great mexican food that night in downtown Baltimore and walked to the bay afterward to see the boats and snap a few more pictures!

Sunday started with an awesome sermon by Carl at Mosaic. We had lunch at Pei Wei (Louisville needs one of these!) and took a tour of the then-hopeful future building for Mosaic (which is now for sure the location!!). Quint kept asking me to take his picture in the car, so I gladly took him up on that!

Our flight was supposed to leave at 8:30 that night so we got to go to Reagan's soccer game, which was a blast! Uncle Ben helped Reagan get ready for the game.

The warm-up before the game was so cute to watch her with her coach and the other kids. When the game started, it was hilarious how all the kids would run after the ball with no rhyme or reason! Reagan enjoyed watching this at first like us and wasn't too keen to run with the others, but after a couple of back and forth runs down the field and some coaching from daddy, she finally joined the crowd running after the ball.

She got a medal afterward from her coach for being such a great sport!

Notice how before I said our flight was SUPPOSED to leave at 8:30. Our plane, unfortunately, was delayed several times due to bad weather in Florida, where it was coming from, so we didn't make it home until 1:10AM and actually to our house and in bed around 2...and then up for work in the morning, ugh. But it was totally worth it for the great weekend! Can't wait to go back when baby #3 arrives!

Vernon Lanes

Ben bought a Living Social deal for a bowling alley that we'd never even heard of called Vernon Lanes. It was 2 games of bowling for 4 people, plus 1 pizza and 4 sodas, for $20! Can't beat that! It was a tiny little alley with about 10 lanes. We went with Hannah and Dan and had a great time!

...and I won both games ;) Boo-yah.