Star Struck

I am so star struck right now. And just a wee bit on Cloud 9. I met the Pioneer Woman yesterday! I've been slightly obsessed with her blog for a while now. If you haven't been to her site, you have to check it out. She's a city girl who ended up marrying a cattle rancher so now she's living out in the country with her husband, four kids, and lots of cows. Her writing is hilarious and she has a whole section on her blog about photography. She dumbs down the basics of working a digital SLR camera so that even I can understand it. We bought a nice camera a few months back and through her articles on things like aperture and shutter speed, one day I might just know how to take a decent picture!

Anyway, back to my star-struck-ness. I saw on PW's site (PW = Pioneer Woman... she calls herself that, I'm not some crazy stalker fan giving her a cutesy nickname:) that she was going to be in Orlando having a book signing and it was during the time that Dusty & Arin & co. were going to be in Deland, so I saw a two-bird-one-stone situation on my hands. Jared took the day off work and we headed to Deland. We had a great time visiting with them, seeing their new house that is in the process of being fixed up for them to move into (it's going to be so adorable!), and looking at a potential vacation spot on the river. After our visit, we headed to Orlando to meet Ree (PW's real name)!

We got there at 6:15 (it started at 6:00) and did not leave the book store until right at 10:00. I kept thinking, "We drove all this way. I don't want to have driven all the way to Orlando to buy a book I could have bought in Jacksonville." And Jared, my sweet, sweet husband was so patient and said he didn't mind waiting. So we waited. And waited.

And then we finally met her! See, the thing about her book signings is that she often takes pictures of some of the people who come to meet and she puts the pictures on her blog. And I've noticed that she tends to favor a certain group of people: babies. And what do you know, we just happened to have two cute little girls, in particular, one adorable baby who was being oh so smiley. And when Jared showed off the little trick he's done with both his girls, Ree grabbed her camera and started snapping pictures.



She had been there for longer than we had with a smile on her face the entire time, and I heard her tell someone a few people ahead of us that she had to take her youngest to the ER the night before and they didn't get back from that till 7:30 that morning, and that was after two days at Universal Studios so I know she was exhausted. But she was still as sweet as could be and I was star-struck! I said something super cool like, "Hi". At least I didn't spill any hot tea on her lap. I only now wish I had thought to buy a handful of books to have her sign for the ladies in my family and my friends as Christmas or birthday gifts!

My star-struck-ness was taken taken to the level of Cloud 9, when on the way home I saw that she tweeted me!

I had tweeted... "We met the P-Dub! @thepioneerwoman was so sweet and she took some pics of Naomi standing in Jared's hand :)"

To which she replied... "@therollinsworld That was an incredible baby trick! I'll be posting photos for sure. Nothing short of amazing."

So I'll now be stalking her blog even more, waiting to see my baby and her chunky thighs on ThePioneerWoman.com

(I made her French breakfast puffs for breakfast this morning... HEAVENLY!)

New Paint Job

I'm never ever painting ever again. I'm done. Over it. We've lived in our home for almost three years now, and for almost three years we've said, "Why on Earth did they choose such a blah shade of beige? Why did they paint the trim such a dull color? I'm being choked by taupe." So instead of complaining about it and talking about how much we didn't like it, we finally did something about it. And you will probably laugh when you see the pictures because you really can't see much difference in the Before & Afters. The foyer, dining, and long wall the piano is on is a light yellow and the rest of the living room is a light grey with a slight hint of a green. It's a subtle change, but it freshens and lightens the room up a lot. And because every design show you will ever watch will mention the word "zen", I'll go ahead and just say that the colors lend a real zen feel to the space.

BEFORE
The foyer

Dining room

Living room

Living room... with the addition of a step ladder and the old blankets to be used as drop cloths


AFTER





Did you notice those nice and high 12-foot vaulted ceilings? They were one of the selling points of the house for us. A great architectural feature. Also, a great pain in the rear to paint. Or so I assume. My nearly 6 foot tall husband was stretched up on a ladder doing that part. So, no more painting for us ever again. We're done. Most likely. Except that our bedroom is still beige. And the trim of our bedroom is painted in the exact same color! Who does that?! The taupe is choking me once again. I'm off to look at paint samples.

All in the Family

This is what happens when you grow up in a small town...

What this chart doesn't show is that Gavin, who is now my brother-in-law, was also my date to the senior prom and that he graduated with me, Shannon, and Kristina. If they wouldn't kill each other within the first week of marriage, I'd say that Gavin and Kristina should get married to add another colored line into the mix.

John 3:16

(Pause or stop the music before you press play)

Rollins Women Weekend

The women of the Rollins family had a weekend getaway to Charleston, SC! I had never been to the city before and was just blown away by how beautiful it is! It reminded me a lot of Savannah, but it's much bigger and there is so much more to see. We arrived to our hotel, the Hampton Inn in the historic district, on Friday evening and left Sunday around lunch. We spent all day Saturday walking around, but I think we only made it down two or three streets. This is due largely due to our need to stop in every store we passed to do some shopping :) It was great to spend some time with just the ladies of the family!

Check out that packing job! We have two strollers and two pack & plays in there, along with the luggage for three women and two babies!


Our whole group... Me with Naomi, Mom, Arin with Asa (the only boy we allowed), Mel (adopted into the family whether she likes it or not), Megan, Whitney (another adoptee), and Amber. Megan pointed out that aside from the mommas with the babies, no one in our group was blood-related. (Picture stolen from Arin's blog).


The Rollins sisters-in-law (yet again, stolen from Arin's blog! Arin, how pale does Amber make us look?!)


Naomi and Asa, ready to hit the town


King Street, where we spent the first half of Saturday shopping


Farmer's Market on King Street


The Market, where we spent the second half of Saturday shopping


Gucci, where we did not do any shopping!


Asa was a little upset so Naomi lent him her thumb


Interesting fact: State Street used to be named Union Street. Sometime shortly before the Civil War (or the "War of Northern Aggression" as it is referred to here in the South), they changed the name for obvious reasons


As we rode past this house on our horse-drawn carriage tour we created our ideal Saturday... sitting on the porch sipping on lemonade and sweet tea, in rocking chairs, watching the children in their matching outfits play in the perfectly manicured lawn, with a nice breeze blowing in from the harbor through the oak trees. We call the children in to let them know it is time to take their naps and they politely reply, "Yes, ma'am!" The men come in from their day of fishing, proudly showing the dinner they've caught for the family :)


I'm looking forward to the Second Annual Rollins Women Weekend!

Happy Easter (two weeks later)

We had a very nice, relaxing Easter (two weeks ago... better late than never, eh?). For the past few years we have spent Easter over in Keystone visiting family, but this year we stayed in Jax for the whole day. We had a great morning of worship with our church family, celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. My mom came to our church and to our house for lunch afterwards. We invited her to have lunch with us and somehow she ended up bringing the majority of the food. I'm not sure how that worked out, but I'm not complaining! Here are a few pictures from the rest of the day...

Naomi snuggled with her Grammy


We put Charlotte in an old t-shirt to dye eggs and she slipped on Jared's flip flops. Poor thing looked like a little orphan child!


Charlotte had a blast dying the eggs. Most of them ended up the same color because she liked to dip the eggs into every color. (By the way, how genius is the wisk idea?! I saw it on someone's blog and it made for a much less messy time of egg-dying than those little wire holders do.)


Charlotte hunted for the eggs


Charlotte dropped the eggs


And afterwards Charlotte was given her Easter basket: Veggie Tale's An Easter Carol, some stickers, a couple small board books, and some candy.

Cutie Patooties

We took Charlotte to the park near our house to ride her tricycle. There's just a little bit more room there than on our back porch :)


Charlotte let Naomi have a turn


Taking Naomi for a ride


"I got a rock." (Name that movie!)


The first time Naomi rolled over!