i need another weekend.

Whew. It was an exhausting weekend. And I hardly took any worthwhile pictures. So at least you've been warned. 

But first of all-- I totally LOVED everyone's enthusiasm for my survey on Friday!! Apparently spending free money is right up everyone's alley. And so is voting (so patriotic). Because I've now discovered that SurveyMonkey caps my free account at receiving 100 responses per survey. I had no idea that this limit existed because previously the most votes I've ever gotten on a single survey is 56...well, you guys have already more than doubled that! Holy cow. But I can only see the first 100 responses unless I would like to pay to upgrade my account, which I would not. So anyway. That is really lame. But I will share the (first 100) results soon! Spoiler: Target wins.

I'm not entirely sure if the busy-ness of our past month of weekends has anything to do with the Impending Baby, or if that just adds another layer of stress (like, here I am doing these fun things/going fun places, BUT I SHOULD BE PREPPING FOR THE BABY!!!), but it's been ridiculous. I've never had so many busy and traveling weekends in a row. Probably in my whole life. But whatever. So this was another one, but at least I got to sleep in my own bed the whole weekend, so I guess that's something. I shall divide the fun and productivity of the weekend into categories. That way, if you're sick of hearing about baby prep, you can skip it. If you hate my friends and don't want to hear about them, feel free to skip that. But if you hate imaginary dystopian societies presented in fictional young adult books....I really don't know why you're even here. Move along, now. ;)

FUN WITH FRIENDS

On Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning we had a fabulous little mini-visit from Kristina and James (and their kids Adoration and Asa). We don't see each other nearly enough (they live in Jacksonville...which is far closer than they USED to live, in West Palm Beach, but still not very close), but they were in Georgia for a wedding and a half-marathon and came through to spend the night. I'll take any minutes I can get with them, so it was a wonderful afternoon and night.

On Saturday night we met up downtown to eat with some other (both in-town and out-of-town) friends we don't see nearly often enough. It was a fabulous evening. After dinner we all went back to our house and enjoyed a backyard fire and s'mores in the new fire pit Matt built last week. We were too busy stuffing our faces and laughing our heads off to take a lot of pictures, but I did manage to get one pretty awful shot:

Ooooh...ahhhhh...that's a framer. Not. Our visit was too short but still wonderful. 

On Sunday afternoon I had a fun blog-friend mini-road trip! Amanda G. and I jetted up to Atlanta to visit Jennie and sweet baby JB!

 Since I maintained my perfect record of not getting axe-murdered on blogger dates, PLUS we got hold a baby, eat yummy pumpkin muffins, and lust after Jennie's fabulously cute house, I will call it a huge win of an afternoon. I love it when hanging out with blog friends in real life is just as great as you had hoped/thought it would be. These girls are awesome and we enjoyed a few hours of great conversation and took a few pretty terrible pictures. :) Jennie should not be surprised if Amanda and I start showing up on her cute doorstep regularly just so that she can keep her excellent hostessing skills brushed up and we can keep our baby-holding and coffee-drinking skills up. A mutually beneficial relationship, right? Right.

In addition to these two big 'friend' events, we also had a birthday breakfast with Matt's family and church, so in conclusion: this introvert needs to go hide in a hole for about a month before she can talk to anyone else. Ha.

Baby Prep

Friday night we bought this adorable outfit. Ellison needs something sweet to come home from the hospital in, right? This SAYS it is 'newborn' size but it looks about eleven feet long to me, so I guess we'll see. It has a matching hat that you can't see in this picture.

On Saturday we made a semi-stressful tour of all of the furniture stores in town in an attempt to locate a suitable glider/rocker for the nursery. We ended up ordering one at a local boutique-y store thing. I'm excited because it is exactly what we'd wanted PLUS ended up being cheaper than anything we found anywhere else, PLUS we got to customize the fabric and everything. So it will be perfect. BUT...it is custom. And made in America. Which means it won't be here for like 8-10 weeks!! So Ellison will be in high school or something. So that's a big bummer. Please join me in praying that there aren't any snowstorms that shut down the glider factory in the Northeastern US, as that would further delay things. Ha. But seriously. The girl talked about this issue for like 10 minutes. Apparently it's a big deal.

I'm excited about the glider. I'm NOT excited that the store uses such an awful font (CURLZ). I'm trying to be a big girl and look over that terrible choice, but not until after I point it out on every social media outfit. Just FYI: It is grown-ass women with grown-ass checkbooks shopping at your store, Uppity Baby Store. Cutesy fonts are completely unnecessary. We all understand you're a baby store by virtue of your name and the fact that your store is filled with cribs and overpriced BABY STUFF. We don't need an 'adorable' font to drive the point home. Pick a real font. 

Glad to get that off my chest.

Yesterday morning we got our car seat! Some friends-of-friends gave it to us (don't worry, it still has 2 years til it expires) and showed us how to install it (easier than I'd anticipated). I don't actually plan to leave it in there for the next few weeks, but we forgot to take it out and then noticed it once we were in the car on the way to work this morning. But that's okay because then I could take a picture with it. So anyway. Empty car seat. Yay.

Young Adult Literature Update

ALLEGIANT COMES OUT TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Obviously I am trying hard to save my paid time off for my maternity leave, but I'd be lying if I said I haven't given serious thought to taking a personal day tomorrow in order to devour Allegiant. It's not like I'll be able to think about or concentrate on anything else anyway. Maybe I'll go hang out in a doctor's office this afternoon or something to see if I can catch something that would give me a legitimate reason to stay home tomorrow. ;) Anyone else chomping at the bit to start reading?? Anyone else choose as lame of things to put on your countdown apps as I do? Didn't think so.