October update

Hey there gang - I'm apparently great at updating pictures and horrible at getting the blog updated. It has been a fun but busy fall - :)

We had a wonderful trip up to see both Gramma's earlier this month - Emily had a chance to wear her beautiful traditional german/swedish dress - she was adorable :) She also really enjoyed getting to just relax and play with her Grammy and Uncle Matt. Then Emily and mom headed over to help Gram Joan clean/sort/straighten/etc the house to get it ready to go on the market - and we had the chance to play outside, visit Roanoke's campus, and visit with Gram for a bit. :) That was the first part of the month.

We had one quiet weekend where we were able to do some hiking and relaxing around the house and then insanity descended again :) Our friend Jenn was walking in the Breast Cancer 3-Day and so our house ended up being the staging location for the entire team (there were 4 walkers and one crew member) because the walk was starting at 0 dark 30 at Lake Lanier (about 10-15 minutes from our house). So Jenn and Michael and Abby came over Thursday night and the girls played and played and played.... and somehow convinced dad/Mr. Jason to be their sled dog and let them use Em's air bed as a sled (see video on the picture site). They all had a BLAST - About 830 we started forcing them to wind down and by 845 or 9 Em was in bed, Abby was on the road home with her daddy and we were waiting on the rest of the girls to arrive. Everyone arrived about 9:45pm and Jason was immediately overwhelmed by estrogen - but he was a great host. We were all up and heading up the Lake by about 5:30 the next morning so that Jenn could be interviewed on the local news prior to the walk - Emily stayed snuggled in bed with dad until I dropped the girls off and then she and I headed to Athens.

The rest of the weekend held a fabulous Saturday of family time, with time on the lake and time at a disc golf course about 2 hours north of us up in the mountains - and then we stopped by a corn maze on the way home. Emily loved the outdoor time, started playing with throwing discs and just enjoying the opportunity to run wild in a deserted area. Sunday we had a pig pickin at church for lunch - where Emily and our godson Jamie had a great time playing - and the adults had a chance to visit over lunch - it helped that one of Em's babysitter's Aunt Liz was there for her to play with :) After lunch, we headed out to Turner Field to watch Jenn cross the finish line and cheeer her on. Emily was super excited to see Abby (she's a bit obsessed with her friend Abby and asks for her all the time) and they had a great time running and being silly with another friend Connor. Emily had her first major spill as she was running at full tilt across an empty parking lot (it was blocked off for the closing ceremonies later so it was the one safe space for the girls to run crazy) - but she bounced back super quickly. :)