Picnic Time!

In Memphis you have a very tiny window of good picnic weather. Between the sweltering heat and crazy mosquitos it's really not that much fun late June- September. But in April it's just right! Here are some shots from our recent picnic in the park.

Pretty girls on a pretty night

Did I mention our church parish has like a billion kids in it..

Bubble chasing

These were my favorite (obviously) I never could get all 5 to smile at the same time

Slight mishap in the bubble chasing led to the bubbles being dumped on her head, I have a feeling she wasn't innocent in this.

 So get out there and picnic folks! It'll be 100 before we know it. And if your looking for someone to go with, I think we'll be in Overton almost every Wednesday from now till we can't take the heat.

Meet me in St. Louis

Last weekend Matt and I hit the road for St. Louis to be in our dear friend's wedding. Dave and Meghan are so fun and of course their wedding had their personality which made it a joy to be in. The worst part was leaving this sweet face on Friday and not seeing it til Sunday!

I mean really....

Matt and I were honored to be asked to play and sing in the wedding. Although I will say, I didn't know we were ALL the music until about 2 weeks before the ceremony which was a little daunting, being that we are not wedding musicians! I was not sure we were going to pull it off when we had our first run through on April 5th (no one tell Meghan), but I have to say on April 13th we sounded pretty dang good! Or at least people lied to us and told us we did.

Here's us and the happy couple at the rehearsal. See---they look happy, we must not sound that bad?!?

Then we hit the bowling alley for the rehearsal party. SO MUCH FUN!!

Dave doesn't look impressed with Matt's form

Adorable!

Saturday we didn't have wedding commitments until 3:30, so we wandered the Central West End and found the largest mosaic collection in the United States at Cathedral Basilica St. Louis. The amount of work in this beautiful church amazes me. The mosaics, which cover 83,000 square feet of the church and contain 41.5 MILLION pieces of glass in 7,000 different colors took from 1912 to 1988 to complete. These pictures obviously don't come close to doing this work of art any justice, sorry. I also snapped a shot of the chair the Pope sat in when he came to town in 1999. I'm not catholic, but that's still cool.

You can see I couldn't get a lot of close ups, because they were having mass at the time we stopped by. We technically weren't suppose to go in at all, but an usher told us to go quickly and be quiet so we did.

I couldn't get a very great picture of the outside because the church is so big. But the architecture was stunning. And Matt read the difference between byzantine cathedrals (domes) and English gothic (spires) is a symbol of the different doctrinal beliefs. Spires point to heaven in the sky--somewhere else, while domes symbolism God bringing heaven back to Earth someday. Pretty cool. So again, not catholic but I can certainly appreciate honoring the prayer "thy kingdom come, thy will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven."

After that we headed to Delmar Loop. A hip little neighborhood by Washington University. It had great vintage shops, a record store and it is home to the actual Blueberry Hill where Chuck Berry evidently found his thrill.

So then it was time for the wedding. Matt and I were super nervous but also excited to get to do some great music, since we both haven't been in a band in years. We had 7 songs prepared for the prelude music, and everything went smoothly until we realized we had no way of knowing when they were ready to start the wedding and we were on our last song....  So we just started the processional with hopes people would start walking out, and when no one came out I just started making up new verses. It worked, and no one seemed to notice "Be thou my Vision" doesn't have 12 verses.

After the service the bride and groom were so happy they collapsed, it was hilarious.

And then we hit up Oliva's on the hill for a beautiful, fun reception. 

Sometimes when you are the blogger in the family, and picture taker, there are never any good pictures of you....this is the best I got all weekend.

Sunday morning we slept in, walked to brunch and then said goodbye to our beautiful hotel. 

What a great getaway weekend! Thanks Meghan and Dave for getting married, see you again soon!

Happy Birthday Ollie Pup!

My baby boy is 7 years old.

Here's a quick rundown about my favorite dog.

• He weighs 17 lbs, was suppose to top out at 12
• He sleeps 22 hours a day and by 22 I mean 23.5
• He can sleep through a concert in our house but jumps up and loses it if a jogger runs by 
• His favorite place in the world in under the covers of our bed
• Peanut Butter makes his world go round
• He is very jealous and demands his fair share of attention every day
• I love him 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLIVER WENDALL WASHBURN!

Wordless Wednesday::Spring Has Sprung

My favorite is the kids running down the sidewalk, it just sums up good weather to me. What about you? What says Spring? Any favorite shots?

Sweet Olivia

My niece is here! She was born on March 22nd at 6:36pm. Two weeks early, but perfectly on time.

Olivia weighed 5lbs 10oz, was 19 inches long and has a head full of beautiful dark hair.

Ok, those are all the words we need, on to pictures!

With my Uncle Matt

Peace out peeps, I'm exausted!

Washburn family with the new edtion

Cousins! 

Seriously, the most adorable thing ever.

Happy First Easter Angel Baby

I could hold you forever.

Suffice to say we are all in love. And so thankful God answered our prayers for Sweet Olivia.

Washington Wrap Up

Very quickly, for my memory purposes. Here is the last day we had in Washington. Day 1 and 2 were great. So we tried to fit in just a little more.

We started at the air and space museum. Can we acknowledge that this was not the best idea we're ever had, being that I am terrified of flying and I had to get on a plane that day. I take happy pills just to get on the plane and then I still have freak outs---on meds. So there's that.

Lies

Hey Spirit of St. Louis! Remember the time you were completely unsafe and against the laws of gravity.

I literally almost passed out watching a take off simulation. Dumb. So dumb.

So after seeing how shaken I was by the trip down flight's memory lane, Matt decided maybe we should try one more museum before we got our boarding passes. So we crossed the lawn to the National Museum of Art.

This museum was gorgeous! And of course all the art was great, but it would be pretty boring of me to take pictures of pictures, so I'll spare you. 

The entry way

My mom has this print hanging in her bedroom! It was cool to see it in person.

This one just really bothered me, I mean that cat is creepy right? You can't really see from my bad picture, but he is staring at you not Adam and Eve.

After the art museum, it was time to head to the airport. Everything went very smoothly, metro->bus->airport. Even check in went super fast. But that meant we had almost two hours until our flight. That meant I had two hours to work myself up watching planes take off and land over and over. Not good, friends.

Finally time to take off. I took my pill. Boarded. Buckled. No turning back. Then we took off and the plance did that sudden drop thing, were everyone kinda goes "whoa" and that was it. The tears came up, the need to yell at the pilot started to enter my head. It was awful. I just wanted to get off and I knew I had to make it two more hours. You would think my loving husband would be patting me and comforting me, you would be wrong. My sweet (amazing in so many other ways) husband was laughing. HE HAD TO HOLD HIS FACE TO STOP. Turns out he cannot keep a straight face when I'm being irrational. True story. As a redemption, when we leaded in Atlanta for our connection he did say he would rent me a car and we could drive back from there. I was very tempted, but I also just wanted to be home and the flight was going to last 45 minutes, I knew I could do it. And I did.

So that was D.C.! Ont o St. Louis next week!