Memorial Day Get Away

My in-laws recently bought a lake house and they invited us down this weekend to enjoy it (I forgot to actually take a picture of the house...next time). So we spent Friday and Saturday on the lake. My view looked like this for most of the time:

It was wonderful to escape our every day norm and spend some time taking in the sun and the breeze on the water. Maggie loved the freedom of not being on the leash and splashing around in the lake. She played so hard that the minute we returned home we found her like this:

Matt and I are looking forward to many more great weekends spent at the lake. They are beginning some renovation work this week & we are hopeful that in the near future there might also be a boat to go with the house. But until then, we are thankful for a weekend of rest and sunshine!

Turning 27

Yesterday I celebrated my 27th birthday. It doesn't even seem possible that I can be that old. But it was a great start to a new year of life ahead.

After returning home from a quiet dinner together, Matt arranged for our dearest friends to surprise me at home. I seriously had no idea. We walked into the house, the alarm wasn't beeping, the light we usually leave on was off, & Matt was staring into the living room. My first thought was, "we've been robbed." So I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the lights came on and all of my friends jumped out yelling, "Surprise!" It was great to spend the evening with friends. Thank you Matt for arranging something so special & fun. I love you to the moon and back! (oh and he also gave me a new Kindle so I am exploring the world of the e-reader these days...so far, so good).

Here's to the 27th year!

Debris

The past few weeks have been crazy so I am just now getting around to posting the debris that we found in our yard after the tornadoes April 27. I went out to water the backyard late in the evening the Thursday after the storms and ran across this newspaper clipping from Tuscaloosa!

And then the search was on....I am fascinated by the fact that debris from that far away made it into our yard (and also terrified by the realization that the tornado actually came THAT close to our own home). I felt like an archaeologist trying to piece together documents and figure out where they might have come from. Here is a phone bill I found across the street, also from Tuscaloosa.

Alabama is still reeling from the destruction of these tornadoes. This will be a long term recovery and we don't expect it to go away any time soon but we are glad for some sense of normalcy returning to our lives.