Home (away from Home)

There are many sad things about moving away from home, but one of the good things is that you end up with TWO homes! I know that no matter how long I live in Knoxville there will always be a home and a room for me in Charlotte. Will and I had a great visit this past weekend. It always seems way to short when it is time to leave, but short visits are much better than no visits at all. Here are pictures from our time together:

I was very excited to see Dave and Anne's new house! I can't wait for it to be finished!

Mom, Anne, and I went out for lunch and shopping on Saturday while the boys played golf.

What precious times when we are all together!

The happy brothers-in-law
Saturday night we went to one of our family's favorite ice cream places, Carolina Cones
Mike, Dave, and Anne cheesing it up

On Sunday, Will and I are leaving for Chattanooga for a little get-away! I am very, very excited about it! I haven't been able to spend half as much time with Will now that school has started again. He has to leave at 7:20 every morning and some days doesn't get back until 7 at night! I will post about our trip on Tuesday when I am back.

Sanibel Island, 2007

It has been almost a week since we made it home from our Kittrell family vacation to Sanibel Isalnd, FL. We had a wonderful time! It was great to spend so much time with Will and the family as well as being able to relax without an agenda and without feeling like the clock was quickly ticking towards Monday morning (which is what happends on the weekends!). Vacation was filled with many adventures, mostly fun, but some that were not so fun. On Thursday morning (the day we got there) I came down with a UTI that over the weekend started making its way up into my kidneys (which means weird lower back pain, fevers, and general bad feelings). Will and I went to an urgent care on Monday (which happened to be located in the same building with a gas station!) and I got some serious antibotics to kill everything inside me. Unfortunately, the antibotics were SO serious that they made me feel really nauseous. All this went on until the following Thursday giving me another day to enjoy the beach before packing up and heading home! It wasn't exactly my plan for vacation, but I was reminded again and again that what I deserve is HELL so being able to be in Florida with a wonderful husband and watched over by a loving God is MUCH, MUCH better that what I deserve! That will give you a fresh prespective like nothing else! Tucked between those sick days, God still gave us plenty of time to have lots and lots of fun! We played Kittrell family putt-putt, Kittrell family poker, watched movies, floated in the pool, read books, fished, saw a real alligator, went shopping, swam in the ocean, went out to eat, Daniel caught a shark, we ate the best milkshakes ever, and much more! About mid-vacation I began to have the onset of post-vacation withdraw. I was in the midst of hoping that vacation would go on forever, when I realized "just a second, I love my life at home too!" So to wrap up my thoughts about vacation, I LOVE vacation and Ihad a wonderful time and I can't wait till next year, BUT I also love home and love the day to day things that make up everyday living! I'm grateful to God for the gift of both! Most people probaby don't care about the previous 3 paragraphs (I know who you are!), so here are the PICTURES from vacation!

Lauren, Will, Daniel, and Brient

Will and I on our last beach day (these are all out of order)
Will and I going out on a date. We are standing on the deck coming off our room.
The putt-putt course had a castle theme, so here are Will and I in the stocks.
This was on the way home! Everyone made fun of me for getting a burger at this hot dog place!
BEAUTIFUL Sunset! This picture is courtesy of Will.
This is the view from the back of our house.
Will and Dan each caught a much sought after "Snook"
The Kittrell Men...I love 'um
My FAVORITE Kittrell Man

Brient checking out the local birds
ALLIGATOR!!!
In front of a map of the island

I'm REALLY looking forward to being in Charlotte this weekend! Those pictures will be my next post.

Pictures!

Today I finally have the winning combo of bringing my camera to work AND not being out of battery power, so I will be able to post some new pictures...

A couple weeks ago went went to beautiful Cade's Cove (where we got engaged!) and went fishing, "hiking" (i.e. - walking), and driving around. It was lots of fun. I always love going up there with Will because we have many, many wonderful memories of time spend there during our courtship and engagement. I am grateful to live so close to such a beautiful place! This past trip, we saw the tiniest, cutest baby deer I have ever seen! I couldn't get any good pictures of him because he was too small and far away.

This next picture is not for the faint of heart! I just thought it was so funny that I had to show it :-) One night Will came home from playing basketball and had been drinking a blue icee. For whatever reason, his body is very "dyable" so whenever he drinks colored drinks his tongue and teeth turn a very BRIGHT color! He was already wearing blue gym shorts so we thought it would be funny for him to wear all blue with a blue tongue and look like a little smurf. The unfortunate part of the story is that the only shirt we could find that was the right color was one of my tank tops! Here is the result...

hehe...fun memories!

As I already posted about, Will and I were housesitting this past weekend and Bethany came to visit! Beth and I got to ride their horses which was SO fun!! Unfortunately, my horse tried to buck me off and he threw me up and over the saddle and I landed on his neck! It was pretty scary, but worth the fun of geting to ride horses! Here are the pictures!

So that it our last couple of weeks in a nutshell! Next post will be vacation pictures!! I can hardly wait (for the vacation...not the next post :-)