Lucky

I just wanted to write a post about the great things going on in our life and the lives of those around us. I feel really lucky right now and happy for all of people in my life! Here are some great things that have happened recently. If I left you out I am SO SORRY! Please let me know and I'll add you :)

1) Marriages- As you have seen over the past few blogs, we have had a lot of friends get married recently, and we have more still coming. It makes me so happy that my friends have found loves that they shall spend the rest of their lives with. Being married ourselves, we can only hope that others get as lucky as we are to find their other halves that make them whole! To name a few: Danni and Reed Cozens, Stephanie and David Chastain, Kate and Matt Prince, Michael and (soon to be) Katherine Haywood, Matt and (soon to be) Robin Freeman. Love you all and are so happy for you!

2) Engagements- First ones engaged recently were our friends Torie and John. They went off for a weekend together in Charleston, and John proposed to Torie in a BEAUTIFUL church with an equally as beautiful ring. They are special friends to us and we can't wait for their wedding! They have the date set for May 25, 2012, and I am lucky to be a bridesmaid in their wedding. I can't wait!

Second ones to get engaged were my best friend from high school, Jamie, and her boyfriend Chris. They met in Pharmacy school at UGA and have been dating for about 4 years (I think... correct me if I'm wrong Jamie or Chris). They took a day trip to Athens and ran some errands and they Chris proposed in the park that they had their first date in! He also got on his knee and gave Jamie an amazing ring. They have been engaged for one week exactly so the details of the wedding are still to come. Jamie and Chris came to Atlanta on Friday and I got to have lunch with them and hear the full story. I AM SO EXCITED for them! Love you guys!

I have a hunch there will be a few more engagements soon, so I'll keep you posted ;)

3) Babies- I have a few friends that have recently announced they are pregnant! One of those is my friend Valerie whom I met working at BBQ Street, and her husband Jayson. Their baby is due in December. Excited for them! I also have another friend that recently found out that she is pregnant, but I don't think it's public knowledge just yet, so I'll let her and her husband share that news when they are ready! BUT I am SO EXCITED for them as well.

Kelsey and Greg (my sister and brother-in-law) also became an aunt and uncle this morning (or maybe last night... I got the text this morning)! Greg's sister Pamela and her husband Ryan had a healthy baby boy, Hudson Bennett Ingram. Congrats Pam and Ryan!

Our good friend Ashley is getting ready to have a baby girl, Allie Delane Croxton, in August, so we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their bundle!

4) Jobs- This year was much better for teachers and thankfully Greg got a full time PE/Health position at Simpson Middle. They are so relieved and have now begun the hunt for a house! They are also going to try to have a baby sometime soon. We could not be more relieved or excited for them.

Our good friend Kent also got a job he had been hoping for at Kennesaw Mountain High School. He just graduated in May and got lucky enough to get a great job. Congratulations Kent!

Our great friends Bryce and Mandy have also been on the job hunt. Bryce just graduated from Southern Poly in May with a degree in Construction Management. Bryce was looking in a few different areas for a job, and he found a great position in Augusta! He starts work in a few weeks. We are thrilled for them, although we are sad to see them leave. We know it's for the best but we will miss them terribly!

5) Graduation- TONS of people graduated this year. We are so happy for all of them, and wish them all luck in their new paths! Just to name a few: our brother-in-law Jason graduated from BYU and has begun Physical Therapy School at MCG in Augusta, our wonderful friend Ashlyn graduated from Dental Hygiene School at the top of her class (SO PROUD OF YOU ASHLYN) and will begin the hunt for a job as soon as her license comes in, Kent (mentioned above), Bryce (also mentioned above), and my cousin Justin graduated from high school.

Trent will be graduating in December as long as his student teaching goes well :). Can't wait for him to start teaching and hopefully coaching baseball. Katie will also graduate from her Masters program in December. So proud of everybody!

6) 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!! We have already passed the one year mark. I can't believe how fast it flew by!! It seems like the wedding was just a couple weeks ago, but it's already been a year. We have done SO MUCH in the past year that when I think of everything we did, it actually does sink in how long it's been. I am so grateful to have Trent as my husband and thank God for him more than once a day. He has been such a blessing to me and has made my life a million times better. I will post another one sometime soon to give details of our anniversary trip to New Orleans. It was fun!

More posts to come soon because I have lost of pictures!

Hilton Head

So some of you may know this already, but Hilton Head is probably my favorite place on earth. I'm not really sure exactly why, but it's just such a gorgeous place, and so fun to go visit! It's a short 5 hour drive (ha), but it doesn't seem so far when you are on your way, because of the knowledge that you'll be in the most amazing place when you get there. Not as enjoyable on the way home.... (unless of course I have left my husband behind or my favorite dogs)

The occasion for Hilton Head this trip was for my dear friend, Danni's wedding. She has been a great friend since about 10th grade. Her brother, Kent, was dating my best friend Kristyn's sister, Kate. Since Danni was in between our grade and their grade, Kate introduced Danni to Kristyn. The rest is history. Danni's family loves Hilton Head equally as much as I do, so that's where she decided to marry her man. Danni's now husband Reed, is such a nice guy, and you can tell when you see them together that they are so in love! Thank you Danni and Reed for letting us share your wedding day with you.

The wedding was on Friday night, same day as the Royal Wedding. We drove down after work on Thursday and I woke up to watch the first wedding of the day. I don't care what anybody says... watching it live was completely different than watching it on the DVR. Not bashing anyone who may not have had the opportunity to watch it live, but I was glad I did. I love that I witnessed a part of history (through the television). Anyway, I could write an entire blog about the Royal Wedding, but I won't. We started Friday out by the pool and everyone was sun burnt by the end of the day. Then we made it to the beach wedding.

The wedding was absolutely gorgeous, as well as the bride. It was decorated with yellow, and it was a perfect night. The wedding was right on the beach and it was a small and very special ceremony. We were really happy to be a part of their intimate ceremony. I have posted some pictures of the happy couple and the awesome decorations.


Bride and groom during the ceremony.


Mr. and Mrs. Reed Cozens



They gave out awesome yellow coozies as favors!

All the high school girls together again! I hate this picture of me, but it makes me super happy anyway! SUCH a beautiful place for a wedding!

Danni's niece, Layne. She was so precious and this was the first time I got to meet her. I just loved her.

Since the wedding was on Friday, we had all day Saturday to just be in Hilton Head. We decided to rent bikes. It was literally the perfect day. I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Kelsey and Greg riding and holding hands. Yes, this picture was posed.


Kelsey and Trent in the Salty Dog parking lot.

We also saw two gators. If you don't go to Hilton Head, it's a common occurrence and sort of a disappointment if you don't find at least one on your trip. This was the first one we saw. The second one was swimming in a pond and was eying some birds for lunch.

The end of the evening was also perfect because we had dinner with the Finnells. Not pictured was Greg, Trent, Erik, and Mrs. Finnell. Bryce had his big presentation for school so we missed him.

Perfect weekend. I will definitely remember this one always. Congratulations Danni and Reed!

Indroducing Mr. and Mrs. David Chastain IV

I have been leading up to the wedding of David and Stephanie for quite sometime in this blog with shower stories and bachelorette pictures. Finally last Saturday, April 16th, they became man and wife! These two have a special place in my heart for a few reasons. One reason is because David was literally one of my first friends in Kennesaw. After my first semester at Kennesaw started in the fall of 2004, the "Augusta girls" attended the first Wesley meeting of the new semester. There we met David, along with some other people that we remain great friends with today. It makes me really happy that we met so long ago and have remained such close friends. The next reason is because Stephanie let me live at her house for a little over a year! We met at Barbecue Street and struck up a close friendship, and then I moved into her house about 6 months after I graduated from KSU. We grew even closer being roommates and then she asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding :) The third and best reason these two lovebirds are close to my heart is because they are another manager/server relationship that blossomed at Barbecue Street and ended up in happily ever after!

The wedding was in Big Canoe, GA which is about 45-60 minutes north of Acworth, and it was a beautiful day! Luckily the horrible storms that happened the night before went away for Saturday, and the sun was shining. It was a little chilly, but no rain drops in sight! David was a sensitive and sweet groom (which is hard to imagine if you know David), and Stephanie was a stunning bride. I'll leave you with some photos from the big day. Congratulations David and Stephanie! I love you!!

-Erin

Eating Better

So I'm not going to sit here and tell you all how fat I am just to have everyone write back and say "No you aren't! You look just fine!"; I am not that kind of girl. I hate when people put themselves down for the sole purpose of fishing for compliments. But here's how I feel: chubby. I feel like at this stage in my life I am exercising more than ever and I am just not getting the results I had am hoping for. In fact, I really do think I am GAINING weight all the time! I don't think I'm FAT or OBESE (stop rolling your eyes!), but I hate FEELING fat while I'm just sitting at work, or driving somewhere. I don't think I have every just felt fat sitting around until right now. It sucks a lot.

Although I exercise regularly, I think I know the solution: eat better. Genius, I know. I don't think I eat HORRIBLY, but I also don't monitor or balance the good and the bad very well. What I think the best thing to do would be to meal plan. I have never been that good at trying to plan my meals, but I'd like to choose some healthier options and stick with a plan. Has meal planning worked for you in your life? Pros? Cons? Give me some feedback because I'm batting in the dark right now. I also need to know some good healty recipes. I don't want it to taste like crap, but I don't have a very large repitoire to create a varied menu. Any ideas? Also, I don't eat fish. Yuck.

I am also open to other people's suggestions how to lose a small amount of weight. I refuse to diet. Unless a diet is something that you stick to for your entire life, it just doesn't work in my opinion, and it's not worth it. :)

Leave me your thoughts!

High School

So my friend Kate Plummer from high school is getting married in a little over a month. I’m so excited for her, and it’s the first friend from my Lakeside girls that is getting married (besides myself and my sister, Kelsey). I can’t wait to have all the girls back together again for the evening, and to laugh a lot and have a good time. We’ve been getting together more recently for showers and other small events, but it’s been a long time since we have ALL been together. I hope everyone will be there!

Since Kate’s wedding is coming up so soon, it’s got me thinking back to the good ‘ole high school days. It doesn’t seem that long ago, but when I think about how I’ve already been graduated from COLLEGE for 3 years, it really does! I loved high school, while I was in it. I feel like a lot of people hated it or just think of those 4 years as the “awkward years”, but I genuinely had a good time. I had an amazing group of friends (both at Lakeside and the rival school, Greenbrier), and was active in a lot of groups at school and competition cheerleading. As I was thinking back however, I pretty much realized that most things that happened were completely embarassing. HA! Now that it’s been 7 years since graduation, I can look back and laugh, and I literally just shake my head every time I think of them. I thought I would share some of my embarrassing stories, just to reminisce with the world of my “great” high school experience.

Two of my embarrassing moments have to do with white bottoms… sounds weird I know. The first one happened one day when I wore a white skirt to school. I thought it was a super cute outfit (wow… I can’t believe I thought it was super cute… it was a white skirt, maybe halfway to my knees, and a long-sleeved collared shirt from Abercrombie and Fitch with light blue, gray, and white stripes). Anyway, I wore white underwear with it because I figured, “Hey, it’s a white skirt, I’ll wear white underwear”, so I did. Then I went to Trig. As I was walking down the hall, my Trig teacher, good old Mrs. Lancaster, stopped me and said “Do you know that your skirt is see-through??” OMG I thought I would die from embarrassment. I just played it off like it was no big deal, but I was mortified. What did she expect me to do? I didn't have clothes to change into except cheerleading shorts! Those wouldn't have met the dress code for sure. This lead to my next white bottom story…

Thinking I was learning from my first mistake, I decided to wear white linen pants to school one day but NOT wear the same white underwear. Does anyone remember those awesome linen pants from Express that everyone had in a different color? Well, I had white. I decided to wear them one day, but this time instead of white underwear, I went with a little SMALLER white underwear, if you catch my drift. Well, I thought I was fine throughout the whole day, but when I was standing in the commons area after school, my guy friends started to ask me to turn around or stand in the middle of the group or something. Again, I was mortified. I believe I sat down in the commons for a while and then held my backpack behind me as I walked out the door. Ugh, stupid boys!

Speaking of stupid boys, my next story has to do with a boy. I’ll keep the boy stories limited to one, but I could go on for days being embarrassed about boys. So back then I had a freeonlinediary or whatever the website was called. I guess it was sort of like the blog of 2002. Anyway, I can’t remember if it started out private and then I made it public, or if it started out public and then I made it private. Either way at one point I was writing in it just for my own journaling purposes, and only giving my friend Carty the password so she could read it, too. She probably never wanted to read it because it was always about one boy, who we won’t name. If you knew me, you know who it was. So at whatever point I decided to make it to make it public, I still wrote all of my thoughts and feelings and did not hold anything back. I mean anything. I wrote about every moment that made me giddy or the opposite… everything that should be kept personal and in a real diary. I thought that no one would read it, so it wouldn’t matter. One day I found out that not only did my boy read them all, so did all of his friends. Luckily none of them ever said anything to me about it, but just knowing they had read it was mortifying. What was wrong with me, really? Why would I ever put those moments that gave me "tingles" (which was such a popular way to describe liking a boy back then... now it sounds so dumb!!) out for the world to read??

The last embarrassing story is about cheerleading that you probably won’t think is embarrassing unless you were a cheerleader. Anyway when I was a freshman, freshmen were not allowed to be on Varsity competition. When I was a sophomore, it was still hard to make Varsity. I was moved onto Varsity as a sophomore and I thought I was so special. Pretty quickly after I was moved up, they had me try flying. I was nervous as crap. I didn’t cheer in middle school so this was my first time doing competition stuff. When I was doing my first flying gig I was up in the air and they asked me to “come down”. From what I had seen them do, I thought they wanted me to do what is really called a “cradle”. You know, where the bases (the girls holding the flyer) pop the flyer up and then catch her? So instead of just simply coming down (by them just lowering me), I cradled. Basically I just fell on top of them. Some of them sort of giggled and others were real nice about it. Wow… I felt like such an idiot. Luckily they brushed it off and I was a flyer for that season.

Good times were had I swear, but when I think back in high school, I can always remember the embarassing things! haha

So what embarrassing stories do you have from high school? I cannot be alone in this…

Lately

We haven't updated in a while, so I thought I'd just kind of bullet some fun things that have been going on.

• The Destin trip with the girls for Stephanie's bachelorette party was so much fun! The weather was amazing and we were so grateful that our family friend Sally let us use her condo. It was perfect and we really just had so much fun! Stephanie was a good sport about everything and we all wished we could have stayed longer.


• While I went to Destin, Trent went camping with Shapour and their dogs Yozh and Olive. Shapour was awesome and sent me pictures of the weekend. Seems like they had a really good time, and will be going again soon. Trent says that camping makes Yozh more manly, ha! They did tell me a story, however, when Yozh was trying to cross a river and came to a point that he did want to go any further. Trent was waiting on the other side waiting for him to man up and keep going, but Yozh just stood on his rock and whined and whined until Trent came to save him! Such a sweet baby boy!


• The little boy that I have been babysitting for since he was about 2 months old, Wade, turned 3. He was ringbearer from our wedding, and the son of my boss when I was an intern at the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I helped out with his birthday party (which was at the Civil War & Locomotive museum in Kennesaw) and got to watch his baby sister, Bree, for a while. I love getting to know her, too, because she is the age that Wade was when I was babysitting every week. Mandy is their babysitter now and gets to see Bree all the time. They're just both the cutest kids in the world, and I'm glad that I still get to babysit them every once in a while, and I can't believe my baby Wade is 3!


• This past weekend Kelsey and I went to Athens and met up with a bunch of friends to participate in an MS Walk. Our friend Kristen from high school was diagnosed with MS a few years ago, and this event helps raise money to cure the disease. It was great to see my friends and help out a great cause. If you'd like to donate, you can follow this link: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?px=9246593&pg=personal&fr_id=16359&et=c1iAbtptlBT78Au5miGV3A..&s_tafId=202114


• We then headed to Augusta and met up with our husbands. We spent the evening at Mexican celebrating Jamie's birthday (a couple weeks early). We all laughed so much and such a fun time! Kelsey made fun of me for saying it, but this is our future! Hanging out with these three couples forever. And I can't wait! Happy early birthday Jamie! Can't wait to celebrate many more!

Wedding Season Begins

Wedding season has officially begun! The first wedding of Trent and my year of weddings is going to be Stephanie and David's wedding on April 16th. I am so glad to start off this year's wedding season with them because I am lucky enough to be a bridesmaid in their wedding! I have known David since my first days at KSU and met Stephanie while working at Barbecue Street (which is also where they met each other, and Trent and I met. It's a great place for couples). I lived with her for a little over a year until Trent and I got married last May. We have now started getting into showers for Stephanie. I threw her a shower at my house a couple of weeks ago and we are going to Destin for her bachelorette trip this weekend! I'm so excited!

This past Satruday I also made a day trip to Augusta for my dear friend Kate's wedding shower. She is getting married in Augusta on May 21st. I love going back to Augusta and seeing all my great high school friends, especially for something like a wedding. Unfortunately since I am going to Destin this weekend I will also be missing a shower for another high school friend, Danni. I do get to make it to her wedding, though, so I'm excited about that. Here's a rough outline of what we've got going on this year as far as weddings go (all of which are out of town).

April 16- Stephanie and David's wedding in Big Canoe (college friends for me, David was Trent's high school friend)
April 29- Danni and Reed's wedding in Hilton Head (high school friend of mine)
May 7- Catherine and Clinton's wedding in Augusta (mom's friend... I am actually more just helping set up and decorate for this one)
May 21- Kate and Matt's wedding in Augusta (high school friend)
June 4- Michael and Catherine's wedding in Savannah (high school friend)
September 17- Robin and Matt's wedding in Lawrenceville (work friends of mine)
September 24- Paul and Amy's wedding in Minnesota (family friend from Iowa)

Whew! I'm exhausted already! I guess this is what happens at this time in our lives, and I am loving every minute of it, even if it's busy. I love love, especially when it involves my friends. You can also add in there an amazing 1 year anniversary trip to New Orleans for the two of us! I can't BELIEVE it's already almost been a year since we've been married. It has absolutely FLOWN by and been amazing! We have decided to splurge and have a long weekend trip to NOLA. Should be very exciting! We are also taking a weeklong trip to the Boston area with my family (yes this is the same trip that started as Alaska, then switched to Wyoming, and is now Boston), a trip with a TBD location with Trent's family, and some weekend trips with friends scattered in there. I am super excited about all of it and LOVE vacation, so I can't complain!
I'm sure most of you have the same types of summers planned. It's such a fun time in life and I feel so blessed to have great friends to celebrate with. It's looking like next year will be quite similar and can't wait to see what happens ;0)