Dear Reader, You Rock

Let me share why you matter as a reader.

Most of us bloggers do this blogging gig because we love it. We’re usually passionate about writing – in my case – or photography or interior design or graphic design, or something extraordinary, but we have these things called day jobs or little babes who needs us 24-hours-a-day or both.

SO….this is our place to be, do and share what we love. When you visit our pages, leave a comment, tweet a post, or basically do anything that says you got something out of it, it’s friggin awesome. That doesn’t mean we want you to say you liked something when you didn’t, but if you dig something and let us know, you should know that it means a lot.

A Story of Going Viral 

To give you an example of just how little we get out of this by the form of monetary compensation, let me tell you a story about a little Knoxville, Tennessee blogger (she really is physically tiny) who recently went viral. Her name is Kristen and she wrote a post that so many people read and either loved – and a few hated (gotta love the haters) – that it went viral, being seen by tens-of-thousands. It’s called Let Your Husband Love You and you can find it here (or click on Kristen’s photo) It’s awesome in my opinion.

When At Home Blog

So the thing goes like ape- crazy all over the U.S. and other parts of the world. Does she make a good chunk of change like you would if you were a New York Times Best Seller? Heck no. She ends up dolling out almost $1,000, with the help of some kind folks on a donation page, to keep her server from crashing so she can continue sharing the post for free.

To play this out by the numbers, by one estimation it only takes about 5,000 book sales to make the New York Times bestsellers list. Am I trying to say that Kristen’s situation is unfair and she should be making tons of money? Or that she won’t eventually make some sweet dough by selling ads and growing sustainably? Absolutely not, but the value of what some bloggers provide is pretty awesome. It’s free, folks. Free recipes and ideas and inspiration and some friggin incredible how-to articles.

Everything you could need to be inspired is probably being written by some blogger somewhere. Go out and find them! They will absolutely love you for it. ;)

And by the way, you can buy Kristen’s e-book, filled with 200+ toddler activities here, so she can keep giving the world her blog. 

So if it ain’t for for the big bucks, why do we blog? 

Our hope – and I’m speaking for all of us here which is probably dangerous – but I think most of us hope we’ll find others who share their ideas and hit pause on everyday life with us for a few minutes a day (or in my case, maybe 30 minutes because I really like to write). Good blogging should be like escaping into a book, seeing the world through someone else’s eyes and crawling around in their skin for a while. OK, I just got really Silence of the Lambs on you. Maybe let’s just visit for a bit and share a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin?

I joined this thing called the Mommy Blogger Collective 

It’s a group of fellow bloggers gathered together in the internets world by the very creative Dena Joan of Live, Love, Simple blog. Let me explain why this matters

Live, Love, Simple Blog

to you. Every first Monday of the month, we’ll write a post inspired by a prompt word and feature a fellow blogger, so you can connect with them, learn from them and make new friends. It gives us each a chance to be inspired and reach new eyes and minds who might find some commonalities with us.

Tomorrow will be our first prompt day. The word is ‘dedined’. It will be my birthday. It will be awesome.  I cannot wait to share this post.

The end  

There you have it. My thoughts on being a blogger and the other bloggers I love. I’m now part of this collective and we will also feature one other blogger from the collective every month so you can read about them and see if you think their musings are super awesome and you want to and add them to your weekly reading list.

Hope you’re having a lovely, inspiring day.

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Did you get RAW burlap?: Things Matt has said in the last 5 hours

And this is only in the last five hours….

While packing things for donation delivery:
Matt: I hate this burlap. It left stuff everywhere. This burlap is rediculous. It’s like raw burlap. Did you get raw burlap?
Me: No, burlap is burlap. There’s no such thing as raw burlap. Let’s donate it. Someone will love that burlap.
Matt: No way, I don’t want it in the car. I’ll donate it straight to satan.
Me: Cries into burlap. He doesn’t understand us.

While walking through the kitchen:
Me (thinking to myself): Dang it the Census is here. I don’t have time to fill that out. There is always something in that mailbox that requires me to DO something. Who has time for all this? I’ve got to clean this house and feed the baby and they want me to sit down and fill out a Census. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Matt: Oh look, the Census came in. Yay, we get to fill out the Census, Grayson. You are part of our family now and we get to tell the government. (and no, it was not said with a sarcastic voice. he was completely serious)
Me (thinking to myself): Well that works out well.

While filling out the Census:
Matt: When did we get married? 2009?
Me: No, 2008
Matt: No way! We’ve been married going on six years? It’s been that long? There’s no way. I want a divorce.

While trying to make me fill out my portion of the census:
Matt: Come on Grayson. Mom’s got to fill out the census or I’ll take her to jail myself. You have to do it wifes; it’s required BY LAW.

While making a grocery list:
Me: cucumbers, dill weed, tomatoes….
Matt: You’re a dill weed
Me: OK

While waking up in bed this morning
Matt: Hey baby, hey sweet baby. What are we going to do today?
Grayson: Loud pooping/fart noise
Me: bahahahahahahaha

East Tennessee Blogger Love

Quick Note: Welcome, all you new, incredible visitors! If you’re looking for the co-sleeping post, find it here. If you’d like to get to know me better, take a gander and learn about how I left my sweet corporate job to move back to Knoxville and start a family, the ups and downs to being married to a musician, and how we stuck it out in a 400-square-foot bungalow with the wee little one. Now back to our normal programming…

You all know that I love to gush about Knoxville, Tennessee, my favorite city. But you might not know that this fine town is also home to some fantastic bloggers (I know, not just me, don’t make me blush). Take your lunch break early and snoop around these fun sites. They’ve each provided a snippet about who they are and why they blog. Enjoy!

Meet Candace from His Mercy is New! I’m Candace and I blog at His Mercy is New. I’m married to David and we have 3 children that we homeschool; we live just east of Knoxville where my husband and I met at Carson-Newman College about 15 years ago! On my blog you will find homeschooling posts, great reads, posts about faith and especially encouragement for moms struggling with depression. I pray you are blessed and encouraged each time you visit. 

Meet Edie who blogs at Life in Grace! I’m Edie and I’m a lifestyle blogger, wife, momma, writer, home cook, foodie, keeper of chickens, and reader of many books. I’m a lover of home decor, truth, beauty, goodness, cowboy boots, and all things Appalachian.

Meet Heather and her site Kiser Ridge Farm! Hi, I am Heather, stay at home mother of soon to be 5 children. We live on a small farm in East Tennessee. We raise chickens, goats, rabbits, hogs, dogs, cats and kiddos. Kiser Ridge Farm is also my herbal shop, where I combine my 15 years of experience in herbal medicine, with my 20 years in Emergency Medicine, researching and mixing natural remedies. My blog is new and so is my business.

Meet Megan of Lifesong blog! Hi! I’m Megan, a wife (to one) and homeschooling Mama of three. I am passionate about Jesus, teaching my kids, and taking pictures. But I also love baking, Amazon, reading and writing. My blog is a little of everything – homeschool days, recipes, stories, traditions, and encouragement. We have made East TN home for the past eight years, and we love it here! Come say hello at Lifesong!

Meet Meghan and her blog KMac Creations! My name is Meghan and I write. Streamlined & slapstick stories of memories made. Not perfectly, but purposefully. Under blankets snuggled, my space for words is covered with stories of family, fashion, homeschool and design. Faith finds its way in too. Always. My blog documents time honest, hilarious and most certainly hope filled.

Meet Melissa and her blog Finding Joy on the Journey! Finding Joy on the Journey started as I felt moved to record the blessings that occur in the every day. The beautiful blue sky, the warm sunshine on my face, the sweetness of a good book finished. I used to say, “simple pleasures” in high school and college. Only now they’re deeper than that. It’s deep-seated joy that isn’t based on circumstance. So I write here about joy in the midst of infertility, food allergy frustrations, depression, chronic health problems, and life just not turning out to be what we thought it would. (Is it ever?) The Lord’s name is to be glorified in it all, and that is what I want to do here on my little home on the web. I hope you’ll join me!

Meet Melissa from Life Off The Paved Road! Hello there! I’m Melissa. I am wife to Stacy and homeschooling mom to five children. We live in East Tennessee, just north of Knoxville on land that has been in my family for five generations. Life Off The Paved Road is my online home where I talk about natural living, marriage, parenting, homeschooling, and adoption. I hope you will stop by, hang out for a while and come back to visit from time to time.

Meet Rebecca of Life Changes! Hello! My name is Rebecca and I have been married to Brian for almost 21 years. We have 3 adult sons and a 7 month old Granddaughter! I blog about our life, encouraging stories, our faith, things for the home such as frugal decorating/organizing and freezer meals and anything else that comes to mind. I appreciate you taking your time to read my blog and if you have a blog I would love to read yours!

Meet Sara from The Happy Brown House! Sara is a Chattanooga area blogger that writes about life in the Happy Brown House: homeschool, crafts, kids, adoption, and faith.

Sara has started Chatanooga Families!  Sara is also the blogger behind the site, Chattanooga Families, a blog dedicated to helping local families find resources and local fun. Sara shares the reall nitty-gritty details about local events and places that are relevant to families in the Chattanooga area through a weekly newsletter. Want to know where the best park is or what restaurant has a free kids meal? Chattanooga Families is your answer.

Meet Sarah and her blog Sarah’s Heart’s Home! My name is Sarah and I am a homeschooling mom to three young children. I blog at Sarah’s Heart’s Home where I write about daily life as a mom, recipes, homeschooling ,and more. I strive to find Joy in the Journey (as my subtitle indicates.)

Meet Stephanie from The Multi Taskin’ Mom! Being a wife, mother, full time work-from-homer, and a homeschooling mom, means that I must be able to multi task. Come join in as I share the journey along with several other moms on The Multi Taskin’ Mom.

Meet the writing team at Knoxville Moms Blog! At Knoxville Moms Blog we are passionate about parenting, community and the city of Knoxville. We strive to provide moms with relevant, timely and fun information about all things mom here in the Knoxville area. We are a collaborative blog written by and for local moms with daily posts on things to do around town, ways to get involved in the community, parenting solutions, personal essays from local moms, local business spotlights, giveaways, and an opportunity to share with one another in the journey of motherhood.

Meet Mollie, at Love Is In the Details, blogs about her beautiful and amazing life experiences. Read about her mother’s battle with breast cancer, dealing with a miscarriage, and life as her and her sweet family find passion, love and beauty in their home.

A Look Back: Comparing tiny living to the big house

Quick note: If you feel so inclined, I would love it if you took a moment to vote for me on Top Baby Blogs. Just click on the link at the end of this post and then click again to vote (that’s only two clicks and NO registration). You can also click the graphic on the right hand bar if that’s easier. Thank you!

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It has finally happened. We are now back in a real house – a little over 1,400 square feet of house to be exact. By square-foot standard it’s not a huge home, but compared to the 400-square-foot efficiency above our garage we’ve been living in for the past two years (1 year as a family since Matt and I did the long distance thing for a while) it feels positively huge, like unbelievably massive. 

Moving in has been bittersweet, sad to leave the intimate space we brought our first baby home to (and I spent some time laboring in!), but also exciting to decorate and create this new expansive place we call home. Matt says it’s like putting a giant puzzle together. I’m just glad someone likes organizing and putting things up or otherwise we’d keep tripping on boxes.

I’ve been wondering how things would be different for our family once we made the move back to a normal sized house. We’ve been in the midst of tiny living with an infant so I never saw the downside since I had nothing to compare it to. But now that we’re a few days in, I’m able to scratch the surface on what I like and dislike in both living arrangements. So here it goes.

In the treehouse (what we’ve always called the efficiency), I never had to choose to put Gray in a nursery. It was one room so he either slept with us in a co-sleeper or right next to us in a rock-n-play. I actually didn’t know this was considered “co-sleeping” by some definitions. Either way, it was awesome.

He sleeps through the night now (please don’t send hate emails; I figure I’ll suffer for this later, like when he’s a teenager ;), but during those first few months of breastfeeding every two hours and changing diapers it made it so much easier to be within a few feet of his changing table and a comfy couch. No walking down a dark hallway to get to a crying baby in the middle of the night. Even just having to walk down the hall in the mornings now to change his diaper is sort of a pain compared to the two steps from the bed I had in the efficiency.

It was also helpful that Matt could always hear me talk (poor, poor Matt). Is this a surprise? I talk and write a lot; you probably know this if you read this blog. ;) No matter where he was, he could not possibly be far enough away for me to have to talk louder than a normal conversational tone. It would actually be physically impossible for him not to hear me. In the house, if I’m sitting in a different room and want to tell him something I find myself talking louder so he can hear me. I don’t love yelling so if he can’t hear me I just give up and wait until later. This probably speaks more to my laziness than the benefits of tiny living.

And then there’s the losing things aspect. I’m sure this will get easier once the clutter is managed and we have all our items put up, but right now it’s this constant battle of which room did I leave that boppy in? or where are my dang glasses?, and then I run around in circles looking for them in each room. It probably goes without saying that in 400-square-feet all I had to do was turn my head 180 degrees and I probably found what I was looking for.

But there’s of course lots plusses to all this space. For one thing, when I’m trying to soothe Gray by walking around with him we have further than ten feet to go. We have ROOMS, people. During the first night at the house I walked out of his nursery and into another room and it felt extravegant, like the feeling you get when you’re enjoying a four-course meal. It just keeps coming and you keep eating even though you know you’re full. Weird, right? It’s just a few rooms and I grew up in a pretty big house. But again, moving from the treehouse, so maybe a mini culture shock was in order?

And of course with the big house, there’s the decorating and having our own space thing, which is awesome. We’re not all crammed into a tiny room, and I’ve been able to roll out area rugs and put up my china. We have things I definitely don’t remember having and could easily go without, lots of things, that were in our storage during the time we were in the treehouse. Tiny living really does help you realize how little you need to be happy. I’ll try to keep that as cheesy as I get in this post, but it’s like nothing, people. As long as you have food, running water, clothes and a washer/dryer, life is pretty dang good.

Having us all in one room all the time is something I know we’ll miss. There’s a closeness and unity that you share when you’re crammed into a tiny space like that. No one can run and hide in a different room, even if you’re having a “heated discussion,” as I like to call tiffs. If all couples all over the world were forced to live in one room together, I now firmly believe that you’d either kill each other or fall more madly in love every day. It’s extreme. You’ve either got to embrace it and become the most patient version of yourself or get annoyed with the running into table corners or stepping on the play mat or each other…cause it’s gonna happen…a lot.

The things that I love in the big house are probably some of the amenities, like an oven, stove and automatic drinking water from the fridge. No more filtering water every night – yay! We are also falling in love again with our tub. If I had tiny living to do over again, we’d spring for the bathtub installation, totally worth its weight in gold. And the big sectional couch. It’s really nice to lay on one side of the couch and look at Matt’s face when we’re talking, instead of sitting right next to him staring at the TV. And I like that I don’t have to walk down the stairs to wash my clothes, but I guess that’s also a benefit of one-level living rather than not living in the treehouse.

That’s it in a nutshell. I really am enjoying all this space. We gave the whole house a new layer of paint, so it’s doubly sweet to look around at colors that make me all warm and fuzzy inside. At the heart of it all, nothing’s really changed. We’re still our tiny little family loving our life together.

Except for that tub. It’s different and I really am digging it. ;)

Valentine’s Fun – Ya’ll stayed in or Winged It

Side note: The Giveaway for a free Turkish Towel from Longest Thread has officially closed. Kristen was the winner and she’s been notified. Thanks very much to everyone for participating! I’m hoping to host another giveaway next month. 
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So our Valentine’s Day poll results were definitely not split down the middle as I had originally thought would happen. About 50% of you guys planned to stay in but were excited about it; 40% of you just winged and left your night up to fate; and only 10% of you guys made plans to have dinner out on the town. What did you guys get into?

Me and my two Valentine’s stayed in which was so relaxing, but I do love me some Melting Pot fondue, so maybe next year. I didn’t really think about it ahead of time, but Matt had this great idea to go by Kroger and pickup all the makings for a fantastic sundae, staring with vanilla Haagen-Dazs. He even warmed up the chocolate fudge. Delicious! And no one could stop me from pouring all the rainbow sprinkles I wanted on mine.

Around the internets, I really enjoyed seeing some colorful family breakfast parties and lots of yummy donuts. Donuts looked like a very popular meal for the day. And why not? Sprinkles on some heart-shaped donuts makes any holiday fantastic, right?!

Or a chocolate sundae…

New Photo App by A Beautiful Mess Rocks

At 4 AM, during one of my weird insomnia moments that have become regular occurrences with this whole pregnancy shenanigan, I decided to download the new IPhone app by blog duo Elsie and Emma over at A Beautiful Mess. And guess what, just like everything they create over there, it’s a.w.e.s.o.m.e. Their little logo sits smiling at me in all its cheerful red and pink glory now, just urging me to open it and spend another hour editing my Iphone photos. Why, yes, I think I will.

If you love Hipstamatic and other photo editing apps, I’d say go ahead and splurge with the $1 buy. It’s the easiest thing in the world to use and they’ve really thought through all the little details. As a brief overview, you can basically pull up any photo you’ve taken, add preloaded borders, doodles and phrases and then incorporate your own text and play with six different filters. How cool is that? I can’t stop using it. Out. of. control.

I’m including below a bunch of shots from our weekend road trip and some oldies I’ve edited using their app. I did manage to do other things this weekend, such as an exhausting but productive trip to Charlotte, NC for the Ikea visit (my first by the way), and then an overnight stay in Asheville because we can’t get enough of that sweet mountain town and their delicious Salsas restaurant.

We stocked up on a ton of new furniture – smaller, much smaller pieces – that Matt spent the afternoon piecing together so that we could free up some space in here. I’ll provide a rundown Tuesday of all our new items that are making this place look swanky, and enabling me to walk around without tripping on things, which is particularly wonderful for an already off balance pregnant lady.

On a VERY different note (you  know I love to hop from subject to subject), have you ever seen someone wearing red contact lenses? I walked into Kroger this afternoon to get my dinner ingredients and while innocently heading for a shopping cart looked up long enough to catch the (red)eye of a younger looking girl. For a split second, before my brain could adjust and register that they were contacts (duh), my heart dropped straight into my stomach. They caught me completely off guard, and I really hope she didn’t notice my moment of surprise. Tattoos, piercings, crazy clothes; I’ve never been physically effected by physical alterations. I’ve seen purple and blue contacts before and in our vampire-obsessed culture they just don’t seem to have the same effect.

Matt said she probably wore them for the shock value which makes sense. But all I can think is, great, congratulations, you scared the pants off this little pregnant lady and probably a bunch of kids today. On the other hand, they are pretty interesting and funny. Is she going for the vampire look because I think that’s exactly where my head went. “Oh crap, there’s a vampire in Kroger.” My fetus was probably like, wow my mom’s officially insane.

Enjoy the shots below and can’t wait to hear if any of you have already started playing with this app or fall in love with it as much as I have managed.

And P.S. if there are any prego ladies reading or those needing a nice refreshing non-alchoholic drink this summer, here’s a delicious looking compilation of recipe ideas over at A Beautiful Mess.

These were some random old shots I started playing around with when I needed something to keep me busy during the car ride over to Charlotte. Thanks, Matt, for taking on the 8-hour driving gig.

Life With a Musician

Even though I’ve been blogging since 2009 – wow that’s crazy to read – I’ve never formally talked about my husband’s music, which has played both the role of job and glorified hobby throughout the years. Now is a fitting time to dig in since he just introduced his first album – Paper Wires (produced at Baker Acres in Knoxville). Our lives seem to have always had a band of some sort involved, starting with Llama Train, his college band, then Tenderhooks and a short stint with the Tim Lee 3 band. Matt is a drummer first, but plays all sorts of instruments which keeps our little treehouse filled with music most days.

Not all the time, but during the past eight years of our relationship I did my fair share of touring, sleeping on floors and in the houses of new friends we met while on the road. I didn’t mind and it makes sense now that his music and the lifestyle where most likely big reasons I was attracted to him, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. There was always something nomadic and mystical about packing a bag, barely even knowing where we were going much less where we would stay, and then the exciting uncertainty of meeting people who were nice enough to invite you into their home, maybe even make breakfast for you and share their stories and things they love. For most musicians, these friends can become their family and they are some of the most honestly open people I’ve met, the type who purely want to create and share their art, learn about yours and create things that make the world more interesting.

From New York to small towns like Whitesburg, KY, Matt went where the gigs were calling. I’m not exactly a night owl but I did love being on the road when I could, seeing new small and big towns and discovering the unique ways each venue creates its own personality and crowd, from college kids to bikers. You also get to know a band in a very different way than you do normal friends, especially when you’re on the road together, sometimes sleeping in the same tiny hotel room and eating almost every meal together. I totally get why people love it because every night is something new, filled with different scenery, different personalities and conversations that run on and on – packed with things you’d never get to discuss during the normal busy 9-5 work day.

Today though, Matt is doing his own thing musically, which gives us a lot more freedom and him the chance to focus on his full-time job but still dedicate a lot of his free time to producing new songs and playing live, working the shows in around our schedules. It’s very different than the years we spent when he was playing regularly with bands, but it’s perfect for us right now.

I’ll link to this article because it pretty much sums up Matt’s music career up until this point, and you can gather pretty easily the successes, good times and bit of heart ache music has brought us along the way. When a band breaks up they say it’s like a marriage falling apart, just with more people. I would absolutely agree, albeit my perspective is purely as a bystander; you can call me a groupie if that makes it easier. I did the part of supporter, dancer and CD sales lady, anything needed to earn my food and drinks along the way.

Matt’s debut album is a big deal for us, the first time he’s put his own work out there and also special because it’s proof that despite the bands that come and go, music will always be a part of his life – and thus our lives. In my humble opinion, I think the songs are thoughtfully crafted, emotionally vibrant yet jarring at times while still tactfully kicking in memorable rhythms. Of course you know I’m partial, but it’s a beautiful album.

I do still think at times about what our life would be like if Matt were a full-time musician, the nights he would be gone on the road, the freedom that lifestyle affords but also the money that would pool in and out inconsistently. Our path didn’t go that route (whose to really know if it might not one day) and in some ways I’m sure we are better off, but I still think those years he did put music first were some of the best times of our lives. I would never tell someone not to go after it, despite the difficulties the lifestyle brings. We chose our path for our own reasons – the opportunity to setup a life for our family obviously being one of them – but when we look back at what we’ve done, I have no doubt Matt will be most proud of the music he brought into this world with other musicians that he cares so much about. That and of course this little boy on the way.

This CD has done a lot for us. Besides being the end product of a year’s worth of work, it’s been a great chance to reflect on where music has taken Matt and the opportunities it has yet to bring forth for our family. I hope you’ll take some time to listen to some of his tracks if you’re so inclined. You can find them on ITunes, BandCamp.com, Spotify, Ardio, etc. Thanks for listening in!

And on a very different note, I just joined Top Baby Blogs, which has been really helpful in reaching a new audience for this blog of mine. If you feel so inclined and enjoy reading, please click on the graphic below to vote for me. Thankfully, a login is not required and once you’ve clicked through you’ve successfully voted (it won’t tell you that but you have so imagine me smiling and doing a little jig after you click through to vote). And thanks for reading, as always!

First day on the job…and thoughts on the motherhood balance

I’m heading in for my first day on the new job this morning, and I’m energized, still needing some coffee but ready to get to work. Meeting new people, filling out paper work, exploring my new digs. Here we go, me and my fetus, off to start getting things in order.

Have you spent any time exploring Joanna Goddard’s series on balancing motherhood with work over at Cup of Jo? She talks with full time and part time professionals about what their daily schedules are like, how they emotionally slow down long enough to enjoy being a mom and all the challenges in between. I find them incredibly insightful, especially when preparing to be a full-time working mama.

It’s easy right now when this little boy is attached to me literally, and I sure am relieved that I’m able to start a new job before he gets here rather than trying to do so much “new” stuff all at once. But either way I look at it, I won’t be able to fully understand my own balance until I’m back in the grind with baby on hip, dropping off at daycare, buckling down to get out of there on time for pickup and trying to stay joyful as much as possible. Even though I’ve got months to prepare, these stories of success that Cup of Jo provides are both honest, reflective and educational and worth time exploring.

Working or staying at home, we’ve all got things that work for us and I for one plan to keep reading, learning and stealing tips that work for these ladies. How about you? Have you created your own little secrets – a five minute coffee break at 10 am or little visits to the park on weekdays – to make mommy time and work time fit together?

We had a great weekend by the way, which included a stop at the Knoxville farmers market and a 23-weeks prego shot. I can’t believe this is going by so fast now that the nausea has passed and I swear this lil guy had the hiccups last night. He would not stop moving! Have a great Monday.

Chattanooga won’t let us leave

It’s been raining so hard we decided to ask the movers to come tomorrow instead of today. It’s monsoon weather so we’ve spent the day seeing Monsters Inc, which was adorable, and eating fajitas and drinking hot chocolate while driving around town. I’m actually writing this from my phone since we already shut off our internet. I do not at all remember how people functioned before Internet because we are at a loss completely.

Will we ever get to Knoxville?! We’ve got unpacking to do, a nursery to create and friends to see already. Does the rain dance work to actually stop rain? I’m willing to try anything!

Breakfast on a lazy Sunday (dinosaur style)