Big News

Does anyone know what this is a picture of?

Any takers on where it's located?

If you guessed the reception site for the wedding I most recently shot, well you'd be correct.

If you guessed the building Carleton will be working in as a brand spanking new attorney come September 1st, well you'd also be correct.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, Carleton got an offer and much to my parents' liking, it's located in Greensboro, NC.

In other news, there is somewhat of a countdown going on for us.

*10 more days of work for me (last day is July 30th)

*13 more days until Carleton takes the bar (don't remind him it's less than two weeks away!)

*20 days until we leave for Paris

*40 days until we return from Rome (We're spending 3 weeks in Europe...France, Switzerland, and Italy)

*39 days until our lease runs out at our apartment

*42 (or 43) days until we fly to Utah (EXTREMELY jet-lagged and sick of traveling) to attend our friends' wedding.

Anything you're counting down?

Our love story...

If Stephanie Meyer wrote our love story, the reader's digest version would go something like this...

Carleton was a vampire and he loved Ashley, the human girl, more than anything, he wanted her to be his forever. Ashley felt the same way about Carleton, that one lifetime just wouldn't cut it for them. So they took actions into their own hands.

First, they got married, after-all, there is an order to these things!

A regular wedding wasn't enough to keep them together forever, so they had to do one more thing to seal the deal, ensuring an eternity of happiness...

Now, nearly two years later, they are so happy they decided to go this route and are loving every second of it:)

Their story never ends:)

I saw Eclipse last week and couldn't resist. Sorry, Carleton:)

So about the events surrounding the movie. Around 4:00 that day there was a bomb scare on I-40 which shut down exits 274-276 (the exits to our apartment). My friend, bless her heart, was going home from work to shower, change, eat dinner...she never even made it home and barely got to the theater as the movie started at 7:30. Thank you for still coming, Jess!

After halting traffic for 3.5 hours, Carleton taking our friends to the airport, them missing their flight, having to come back home (which took forever), then driving them back to the airport the next morning at 4:30, sending in a robot to spray the thing with water (drum roll please)...turns out it was not a bomb, shocker.

Most likely it was nothing more than a homemade bumper for a boat that accidentally fell off while driving to the lake.

p.s. totally unrelated to this post, we have some big news, actually lots of it...stay tuned in the next week or so:)

Outer Banks.

Last month we went to the Outer Banks with Carleton's family. It was so great seeing everyone, especially the little babies! There are some seriously beautiful kids in our family! Now I know what you're going to say, "What, not one SINGLE picture of you guys or anyone else with an entire week at the beach?!" That is correct, I only pulled my camera out once. We heard there was a sea-turtle on the beach laying eggs, but by the time we got there we just saw it's trail back to the ocean, darn!

Every time we walked to the edge of our beach (there's a fence that separates it so the wild horses and vehicles don't come on the other side) I saw birds sitting on these posts. I thought it'd be cool to get a silhouette shot of them, unfortunately the sun was behind me so that wasn't possible, but I shot a few for fun anyway.

Some farther away...

and some closer...

Some with slower shutter speeds...

and some with faster shutter speeds...

We had a nice little pool at our house which was a nice way to cool down and relax without freezing in the icy ocean water. I held live crabs (as in more than one) for the first time (Carleton wanted to show our nieces how brave I am, and used that strategy to try convincing them to hold some, it worked on a couple of them.) We went on lots of walks and found a place that had at least 60 turtles including one huge alligator snapping turtle. We went back later with the kids and fed them lots of bread, I've never seen so many turtles in my life. Some were swimming and probably two dozen or so were sitting on the grassy edge, sunbathing. What a nice life:)

Despite getting sick, and Carleton having to study every day for at least 3-5 hours/day, we had a great time and ate WAY too much yummy food. I think our next family vacation should be in the winter so we can eat all we want and cover up our full bellies with puffy ski coats:) As Lana said, "You don't come on vacation to loose weight." Ain't that the truth!

It's sad, I know.

It's been over a month since I've posted anything on my blog. I can't stand this from other people, since I'm a sucker for good pictures and fun/funny stories, so I must apologize! BUT, having said that, I like having everything in order and have an OCD habit of not posting things if they're not chronological. Well one of the things I was waiting for I just received pictures of...had I actually asked for them before yesterday, I probably would've gotten them sooner :)

Ok so here it goes...the NC Asheboro Zoo. It had been a few years since I'd been to the zoo here, and Carleton and the Connell's had never been, so before they moved (and before Annabelle came) we made the trip!

We left bright and early so we could spend the whole day there and still get back in time for me to do a photo shoot and Kristin to go visiting teaching...I think, it's been a while!

I had to have a picture of the two of us by this statue because I have the exact same picture of my parents from probably 10 years ago!

We hung out with the polar bear for a while, he was SO cool. That ball he was throwing around was a 70+ pound medicine ball and it threw it around like an air-filled beach ball!

The Ririe's went to the zoo a couple weeks before us, after me crawling into this wet/dirty egg we remembered them saying something about putting Tessa in an egg (I think) so I'm thinking it was probably the same one:) I'd like to see her picture...hint hint, Allison.

Kristin is so sneaky and candid...it rained, quite a bit, hence the wet dog look.

I love how Kristin had Annabelle just days later, yet you can't even tell she's pregnant in this picture!

We ended the trip with a stop at Cook Out to get some $1.00 "Big, double oreo" milkshakes, they were AH-MAZ-ING. My mouth is watering thinking about it now....

More to come soon, even if it is slightly out of order:(