A Baby Flood

I thought I'd be lucky to get one baby shower, but God has truly blessed us by giving us a grand total of 4!  I think I can officially say that all these showers created a flood.  Here are snippets from all 3 of my Savannah showers:

Anne can't wait for Baby McD to come!

My church family at Grace Church of the Islands threw me a huge one.  It was so encouraging to see how so many ladies in our church took care of our expanding family by giving us so many baby items that we will need to welcome our baby girl into this world.

This shower was a brunch and this was some of the spread.  I loved the diaper bouquet as the centerpiece!

I had several younger girls assisting me with the opening of gifts.  They were a big help!

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Next up, I had a shower at my work, Mathnasium.  My co-worker, Rachel, was the one who did most of the work for it.  Look at her yummy baby carriage cake!  It was made of funfetti cake, one of my favorites.

My boss says that our baby will be the first "Mathnasium Baby."  As you can see, they decorated it accordingly.  I'm wearing a little sash that says "Mommy-to-be."  It was a smaller shower, but I had so much fun!  They focused on giving me very practical gifts, which I definitely will need once she makes her appearance.

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Lastly, I had a Paris-themed shower for friends that I've gotten to know in Savannah that aren't a part of my church family or work.  The invitations were super cute and said "Ooh La La," and Laura did a great job of including that into her decorations.  Look at this spread!  It was beautiful!

Once again, I had some helpers - these twin girls helped me determine which gifts to open.  :)

I got a pretty good bump shot at this shower - they gave me a boa to go along with the parisian theme.  I was about 34.5 weeks pregnant in this.

All my showers were so much fun!  I have just been blown away by all of the love and support that I've received from all these sweet ladies that have touched my life over the past 3.5 years in Savannah.  I've now begun the task (with a lot of help from my mom) of putting the nursery together.  It is coming along and I think I am in the middle of nesting! 

Reminiscing in North Carolina

My great-grandfather ("Pop-Pop") built a house on a mountain in a little town called Etowah, North Carolina.  When he passed away, my grandparents inherited it.  I remember visiting this place probably once a year for almost every year of my childhood.  In 2004, my grandparents were no longer able to maintain the house as they aged so they had to sell it.  I didn't meet Curtis until 2005 so he never had the opportunity to experience it.  Here's some of the pictures that I snagged as I shared my childhood memories with my husband:

This is on Folly Road - right before you get to the mountain.  The colors were gorgeous!

I used my panoramic camera to take some of these pictures.

My grandparents lived on a private road where there were only 1-2 other families living on that stretch of the mountain.  I walked this road so many times picking blueberries!  My brothers and cousins always loved to ride (or drive) the 4-wheeler whenever we'd visit!

My grandfather would take care of this water wheel.  There used to be a fake duck with little ducklings walking towards the stream.  I was happy to see that the neighbors were still keeping the water running!  

Here's a panoramic view of the area around the water wheel.

This is the house that my great-grandfather built.  I was warmly greeted by the new owners of the house, which was very kind since we showed up unexpectedly.  They gave us a tour of the house.  The new owner is an interior designer and she re-did the entire house.  She did a great job and the house looked great, but a lot of the memories that I would have felt inside the house weren't there.

This is the view from the deck of the house!  It is just breath-taking!

So glad for the panoramic ones - I think I'm going to have to try to develop some of these!

This one was pretty cool - it shows me taking a picture and gives you a little bit more of the deck than my pictures do.

Curtis really enjoyed the view!

Some additional angles of the back of the house (which the neighbors now consider their front of the house)

It was so beautiful.

Next up...I took Curtis to the Pisgah Forest and showed him Looking Glass Falls.

We would come here often with my family and I was happy to share this with Curtis.

We also stopped by Sliding Rock, a naturally occurring 60-foot water slide.  I only got the nerve to do it one time with my grandfather when I was younger.  I have this picture with my mouth open as wide as it's ever been as I slid down!  As for this day, it was too cold to slide (or so we thought), but there were a few people that had to slide down because they lost a bet.  Notice that one of them doesn't even have legs!  I was impressed.

Our trip also consisted of visiting Charlotte to spend some time with one of Curtis' roommates.  We had a wonderful time with them.  We spent our evenings in downtown Asheville, which was really fun.  We ate at some amazing restaurants - Asheville Pizza & Brewing Company and Tupelo Honey Cafe.  We went to Greenville, South Caroline to worship at Downtown Presbyterian Church.  It was such a delight!  

We even found gas for as low as $2.97 in Greenville.  That is so low!

We also went to the Skytop Apple Orchard in Flat Rock, NC.  It was really beautiful there, but it wasn't really the season for apples so we just enjoyed the view.

It was really nice to get away for about 4 days and explore North Carolina.  This will be one of our last trips before I am unable to travel for a while now that I'm getting farther along in my pregnancy.  It was definitely worth the trip!

A Quick Getaway to St. Simons

Last week, Curtis and I traveled to St. Simons Island to visit our friends, Jenna & Dan.  It was nice to get away and be refreshed, even if our trip was less than 24 hours in length!

Jenna and Dan have the beach literally in their backyard.  Here's a good shot of Curtis and I in front of the dunes.  It was really really sunny!

You can see my baby bump starting to show -- I was 19 weeks in these pictures. :)

Jenna and I have been good friends since college when we met in RUF.  She and Dan recently moved to St. Simons Island and we are happy to have friends not that far away.

They took us downtown and showed us the pier, the lighthouse, and we even saw a little bit of an antique show.  We had some fabulous sweets from a little shop downtown while we played Rummikub (a really fun game!)  Jenna was an amazing cook and she even taught me how to make some homemade guacamole.  We also got to walk around Christ Church, its cemetery and the Wesley monument.  St. Simons is a beautiful area and we look forward to visiting again in the future!

All of Curtis' Roommates Are Now Married

Curtis had three close roommates in college - Ryan, Josh and Jeffrey.  They all took bets on who would get married first.  Everyone thought Jeffrey would be the first.

Here's how the weddings actually occurred:

6/7/2008 - Curtis and I

5/28/2011 - Josh and Alicia

10/15/2011 - Ryan and Emily

7/1/2012 - Jeffrey and Jessie

We are so happy that we were able to come to Jeffrey & Jessie's wedding!  Curtis served as an Usher.  Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures.  So, I've taken this picture from the official photographer (not trying to infringe on any copyrights) - if you want to see more pictures, please go to Valentina Glidden Photography.  It completes the roommates all getting married.

The wedding was beautiful and we enjoyed getting to meet Jessie.  Jeffrey first told us about Jessie at Josh's wedding...and by the time Ryan's wedding came around, he was ready to marry her!

We are looking forward to many years spent with all 8 of us (and their families as they increase).  I've never met such incredible, godly men before.  All four of them are very strong in their walks with the Lord.  Three of them have now graduated from seminary, two of them are pastors and the other two want to be missionaries in the future.

Our 4th Anniversary to the Southernmost Point (Key West)

This was my first trip to the Keys, but it was Curtis' fourth trip!  We were there from June 10 - June 15.  We got a pretty good hotel deal through priceline.  Our first day in Key West, we went snorkeling.  I have a slight fear of water and I kinda freaked out on our snorkeling adventure during our honeymoon, but I was willing to give it a try.  Curtis claimed that the best place to snorkel in the United States is in the Keys.

We boarded the Jolly Roger in Marathon, Florida to begin our excursion.

I was a little nervous!

I think I did pretty well!  I was able to swim around and see all sorts of fish and coral.  I'm pictured above in my snorkeling gear.

The view was amazing!  We actually were able to see dolphins when we were traveling to our second location to snorkel.

Unfortunately, Curtis got a little seasick during it, but he was fine once we were back on stable ground.

For dinner, we went to a place called 2 Cents Restaurant.  Everything on their menu was much more than 2 cents, however.   It was very tasty though.  It was fun to see Curtis finally able to completely relax.

On our second day, we took a trolley tour to explore the entire island of Key West.  We thought this was a pretty cool sign above - it showed how many miles away we were from lots of places, in and out of the country.  We actually ended up purchasing a picture of a similar sign that we are hoping to put up in our Master Bedroom.

One of my favorite things that we did was we went to a the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory.  It took me forever to get a good picture of the morpho butterfly pictured above.  I love the blue color!

Orange.

Yellow.

These are baby quail birds.  I thought they were so cute!  They were placed in this ecosystem so that they will eat the fruit flies.  (Butterflies eat fruit, which brings fruit flies.)

Look at how little this bird is compared to Curtis' hand.

There were two turtles there too.

Here we are in the conservatory.  Curtis had a bird poop on him when he was sitting in one of these benches.  It was kind of funny...although, it probably wouldn't have been funny if it happened to me.  He had a good attitude about it though!

We also visited the Southernmost Point of the United States.  We were actually closer to Cuba than Miami.

You have got to love the dorky cut-outs!  Here's our advertisement for Old Town Trolley.

Everywhere we walked, we found baby chicks, hens and roosters.  This was the best one that I got all week.  Apparently, roosters were brought to Key West back in the day for cock fights (which is now illegal).

We also had the opportunity to see not only the beginning...

...but the end of US 1!

We went to Mallory Square because we heard they had some of the best sunset celebrations.  Not only were they selling all kinds of unique items, but they had magicians and performers.  We watched this guy do really cool gymnastic tricks.  I was impressed because he gave all the glory to God when he succeeded. :)

Here's the sunset at Mallory Square.  I even have a sailboat in the distance (on the left) and I caught a bird in mid-flight.  Not a bad picture for a iPod Touch camera.

Of course, we had to try Kermit's Frozen Dark Chocolate Dipped Key Lime Pie!

These pictures aren't the best, but it was my favorite way to eat a key lime pie!  (But I am a chocoholic.)

I think the third day was my favorite.  We went to Higgs Beach.  The weather was amazing and we had shade under this nice palm tree.  You can see Curtis was reading a book. 

Here I am under the palm tree.  I am in the midst of reading The Hunger Games Trilogy.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  What a great book for vacation!  

We ate dinner that night at a place called Paseo and it was probably our favorite place to eat.  We tried to eat there on about 2 or 3 different occasions, but they have really odd hours.  It was definitely worth the wait!

Margaret on Margaret Street.

We went on a Sunset Sail after dinner.  It was beautiful on the boat.  We met some nice people and got some great photos.

I love this picture.

And then the sun began to set.

How romantic!

Yes, this was my favorite day.

We even had an amazing dessert called "Cookie Monster."  It was a half-pound chocolate chip cookie, with 3 huge scoops of ice cream - "Brownie Boom," "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough," and "Cake Batter."

On our fourth day, we went to No Name Key and had a kayak tour!  I had never been in a kayak so Curtis helped me out by taking a double-person kayak.

We were able to see sponges, conch crabs, birds, fish and jellyfish. 

Every day we were there, it was perfect weather.

What a fun experience!

On our final night, we went to the top of the Crowne Plaza to watch the sun set go down one final time.  Curtis and I are already wishing we were still there!