B'ham!...and the longest post ever!

As I mentioned previously, Grant and I went to Birmingham, AL Valentine's weekend to see our friends Christin and Kevin. Christin and I attended Samford University together in B'ham where they have an annual event called "Step Sing" which is a singing/dancing competition performed primarily by sororities and fraternities. It's a big deal on campus. Really it was just a fun reason to go to Samford and visit with Christin and Kevin. We had sooooooooo much fun. We left Maggie with my mom and Benton and everyone won with this scenario. Maggie was spoiled rotten, Mom and Benton had so much fun, and we had a great, child-free weekend with no stress!

Christin and I wanted to see the campus as it's really changed a lot since we were there (we both started there in 1997) and we were pleased to see that the grass was just as green in the winter as it was when we were there. We always joked that half our tuition money went to pay for the landscaping. Every few months you could see landscapers pulling up perfectly good plants and flowers and putting new ones in. Here are two photos of Christin and I on campus.

You can see the beautiful library bell tower in the background of this one:Grant took this photo of some wood carvings inside a beautiful chapel on campus:
Later that night we attended Step Sing. It's funny how some things are better in your mind than when you revisit them. Grant and Kevin were troopers and really were sweet to sit through the whole thing!
After StepSing we went to an old favorite late-night dive, The Purple Onion. They had the best grilled cheese and french fries. It's amazing we didn't gain 40 pounds in college! But it was sooo good. Plus, it felt decadent eating dinner at 10:30 and staying up late talking. Since we usually have to get up early with Maggie we don't normally stay up super late.

The next morning we went on a hike. The hike ended in an abandoned rock quarry that is supposed to have hundreds of fossils but we didn't see any. We ended up exploring a little bit up there and talking for about an hour before we hiked back down. Basically everything we did ended up with us just talking for hours and hours. Do you have friends like that where you can go without seeing them for a while and as soon as you get together you just pick back up where you left off? Our friendship is very special, too, in that we were able to discuss serious subjects we didn't necessarily agree on but we all felt safe to say what we thought without worrying that we might not be friends at the end of the conversation. I think true friends like that are few and far between. Anyway, here's Kevin and Christin hiking and then a GORGEOUS one of me and Christin, sweaty and with no makeup.

Can I just tell you about Christin and Kevin? They are both from Atlanta and moved to New Jersey several years ago to plant a church called The Point. Christin is one of my best friends in the whole world and I feel so lucky that she would stoop to be friends with me! I'm not trying to put myself down but you just have to know Christin to understand what I mean. She is so giving and kind and patient. We lived together in college and she would end up doing the dishes 9 times out of 10 just because she knew everyone else hated washing dishes. I could tell you a million things like this. Maybe soon she and Kevin can come visit in Nashville and you can see for yourself if you live here :)

(She will probably kill me for putting this photo up and saying all this about her!)
We took these photos at he Birmingham Botanical Gardens.
It was just the most fun. Grant and I really needed a restful weekend of fun and we got it! But we were definitely excited to see Maggie when we returned and I'm pretty sure she felt the same way.

Before I forget, let me mention Dreamland BBQ in Birmingham. It's famous around AL for having the best barbecue. In fact, when I spent a semester in London, a guy I'll call "Drew" (okay, that was his real name) told his mom at the end of the semester that if she didn't bring Dreamland ribs with her to the airport to pick him up that she could just stay home. Somehow I managed to never eat there during the 4 years I was at Samford. We decided to eat there this weekend. First of all let me just remind you that the whole big deal about BBQ is that it's slow cooked for hours and hours or even overnight.
Grant ordered their famous ribs and I ordered a pork sandwich. The sauce was GREAT but I kept having to spit out fatty bites. In my entire sandwich I bet there were 7 or 8 huge chunks of fat. And Grant's ribs were okay but they just weren't falling off the bone.
At our B&B the next morning Grant was talking about Dreamland with another guest, a championship barbecuer from Memphis (seriously). The innkeeper chimed in, "Yeah, they cook their ribs right on the grill for at least an hour and a half!" As soon as he walked away the Memphis guy said, "My ribs cook for at LEAST 8 hours." When we thought about it we remembered Kevin asking how the chicken was cooked and the server said, "It's right there on the grill next to the ribs." So it's not barbecue at all! It's just grilled meat! This probably seems silly to some people but in the South barbecue is serious business.
So...the sauce was delicious and unique but in the end we felt very let down by Dreamland Barbecue. All those Alabamians need to head up to Memphis for some real BBQ!!!

Radnor Lake

Grant and Maggie went for a walk on a nice day at Radnor Lake. While they were walking I was having some alone time drinking coffee and reading magazines at Borders.


Maggie loves it when we bundle her up in a big blanket and sit outside reading books or sitting on the porch swing. Here she's sitting on our Adirondack chair.

Feed the ducks, tuppence a bag

Grant and I just returned from an amazing trip to...the exotic and exciting Birmingham, AL! We went for a mini college reunion with my best friend from college, Christin, and her husband, Kevin, who now live in New Jersey. I'll blog about that in a few days and post some pictures (prepare for some scandalous information about AL's favorite BBQ joint) but first here are two photos from Maggie's weekend without Grant and I.
She stayed with her Mimi & Poppy and they took her to feed the ducks at Centennial Park where my mom took me as a child and where HER mom took her as a child. Apparently Maggie had a great time and was quite tempted by the allure of the white bread they were giving the ducks.
Mom thinks she looks like me in this first one (probably just because you can't see much of her face!).

Don Schrader

This guy is a little wacky and extreme but nobody could accuse him of being a hypocrite. I couldn't access the second page of the article so if there's something crazy there, I apologize for not warning you.

Okay. After I posted the above sentence and link I went back and read a different article about the same guy. I think he's actually...ummmm...crazy. If you are interested in reading about the particulars of his life and are ready for something very earthy, then read this article as well.

I know this is random. Sorry! I'm procrastinating something right now :)

Princess Maggie and the Advent Calendar

Here's a (old!) photo of Maggie wearing a hand-me-down princess dress from Emme Dupree along with our homemade Advent calendar. Growing up we always had an advent calendar and every Christmas we would take turns putting one ornament a day up on the Christmas tree advent calendar. I always wanted to have the same tradition for Maggie but all the pre-made ones I could find were green and red. Our Christmas decorations are white, silver, and ice blue and our living room is in blues and browns, so red and green just would have looked awful. I finally got my act together to make one for Maggie and we had so much fun at Christmas hanging an ornament each day. It was a great way to count down to Christmas for her. It definitely looks homemade but maybe that's part of its charm :)

Sorry this is so old but I just found it and Carol was really wanting to see it. Carol, this is for you!
She's also been saying some funny things lately. Yesterday when we were checking out at the grocery store she told the cashier, "Bon Voyage!" And when we're eating (and at other, unrelated times) she'll say, "Bon appetiti!" She has a very sweeet book called "I Love You, Stinky Face" and in it a child asks his mom, "Mama, what if I were a UFO and all I wanted to eat was bug sandwiches?!" His mom says, "I'd make you the best bug sandwich you ever had and I'd tell you 'Bon appetite!'" So Maggie's version is "Bon appetiti" which I almost prefer.

At the "bon voyage" grocery store I was carrying around a cup of coffee when Maggie decided she wanted to race. I told her I would race her but I probably wouldn't be very fast because I had my coffee cup. She said, "It's okay, mama. I'll hold it. I'm a grown up."

If nothing else she keeps us laughing!

Baby baby baby!

When Maggie gets upset and cries she often will say, "Baby, baby, baby" while she's crying. Last night she woke up around 10:30pm and Grant went into her room to see what was wrong with her. She was saying, "Baby, baby, baby" so he thought she was wanting one of her babies. I just happened to be within earshot of their conversation and it made me smile at this big, manly guy talking about baby dolls with Maggie. Here's how it went:

Maggie: Baby, baby, baby!
Grant: Do you need Bitty Baby?
M: Baby, baby, baby!
G: Not Bitty Baby? Okay, do you need baby Krista?
M: Baby, baby, baby!
G: Okay, how about baby Charlotte?
M: Baby, baby, baby!
G: What about this pink baby?

She was so upset that he finally just put one of the babies in her bed but it was so cute to hear him listing off all of her babies.

I also want to post this quote that is from the book Sacred Parenting, by Gary Thomas. It's a book I'm reading in a Bible study I'm in. The quote is actually from some author named Elton Trueblood:

"[Family life] has no magic about it. The family can be the scene of wonderful affection and it can also be the scene of debasing friction. The family...is our fairest ideal, but it does not come without effort. Family solidarity takes hard work, much imagination, and constant self-criticism on the part of all the members of the sacred circle. A successful marriage is not one in which two people, beautifully matched, find each other and get along happily ever after because of this initial matching. It is, instead, a system by means of which persons who are sinful and contentious are so caught up by a dream bigger than themselves that they work throughout the years, in spite of repeated disappointment, to make the dream come true."

Please don't get stuck on the part about "repeated disappointment." I just think it's a beautiful way to describe the effort that marriage and parenting require. It encourages me to think that this work is to make a dream bigger than ourselves come true.

I hope this encourages you, too. If not, well, I'll try harder next time!

Just checking in...

I hadn't posted anything in a while so I just wanted to check in and say we're still alive! We all caught some stomach bug over the weekend but we have survived and are all doing much better. When I called Maggie's pediatrician's office they said they got, like, 100 calls about the same thing on that day! So at least we were in good company with our sickness.

If you're interested, I just found some photos from Christmas that never made it on the blog.
Look at all these presents!

Oh sure I'm on the "NICE" list!

Our family with our crazy kid!
Unwrapping a new doll:

Showing Grammy a new toy:

You know you really love someone when you want to kiss their booty:
The aftermath:


Here is Maggie with her first cousin, Jack, and her second cousin, Liam. Liam and Maggie hit it off big time when he visited on New Year's Day. They've been around each other several times but this was the first time they seemed to really play together.