Kid Pics.

Courtesy of our amazingly talented friend Josh. Go see Elizabeth and Jude and his new blog!

Introducing Charlotte.

Watch this. Charlotte was in the discipleship group I taught back in Memphis, but I can take no credit for the relentless love with which God pursued her and captured her heart. She is so creative and talented and lovely and I'm proud to call her my friend.

Procrastination Part 2.

Progress report is as follows: Folded laundry? Check. Packed bags? Check. Vacuumed floors? Thank you, Tony, that's a check. Toilets? Yet unscrubbed.

Sigh.

Here's the question of the night/wee hours of the morning: Am I crazy that I like these chairs? I found them on craigslist today, $35 for the pair. I think they're so interesting. Try to envision them somewhere other than the trainwreck room in which they're pictured. I would only put one of them downstairs I think, and the other in our room. Vintage? Shabby chic? Garbage? Tell me. I want to know.

Procrastination.

I am doing my best to put off doing the various last-minute things that need to be done before one embarks on a road trip. Another road trip. A road trip that starts within 36 hours of returning home from a previous road trip. Anyway, what I'm not doing is vacuuming, folding, repacking, or toilet scrubbing. What I am doing is blogging! Aren't you happy?! Just trying to keep you on your toes.

Here's a little taste of my world the past two days. Saturday contained a fairly uneventful, mostly peaceful drive back to Atlanta, during which both children fell asleep. As you can see from the following picture (don't ask how I managed to take it; you don't want to know, especially if you are either of my parents), E was trying to hold J's hand again, and then...then...her eyelids couldn't take it anymore. Precious.

Today opened with a veritable mutiny before church, which was thoroughly squelched by a little timeout session. When she came out to talk to her daddy, I couldn't resist taking a picture of her in her a-dorable dress, which was a birthday present that finally came in yesterday, darn the mail-forwarding system. The whole time I was trying to get the picture, she was holding up her hand like some camera-shy celebrity and saying, "No, Mommy." So in an effort to support my husband's correctional talk, I put the distracting phone away. But not before I got this:

That's all. Good night. Hello toilets.

Also.

I would like to state officially that I am a self-diagnosed Peak-Too-Sooner. I am denying myself the pleasure of listing all the many, many, many things I love about fall because every year I get all hyped up at the first drop in temperature and all the lovely emotions that fall conjures up in me are spent by the middle of October. So I am resolutely against talking about crisp air, fire smells, scarves, jackets, or pumpkin anything until at least the end of this month.

We'll see how long that lasts.

Meanwhile, there's a deep dark place inside my soul where Little Girl Rachel is giddily jumping up and down and squeaking excitedly about closed-toed flats, football games, and autumnish things.

Wow, that didn't last long at all.

Don't even get me started on Christmas....

Random City.

Eating pictures. Oooohhh, I love my kids! They are the cutest. But I guess even if they weren't cute I'd still love them? Who cares...moot point.

We are celebrating Labor Day weekend with my aunt, uncle, and cousin who came in town last night. Today they kindly watched my children and let me go to the grocery store by myself, and there's big plans of hitting Stone Mountain tomorrow. (For all you non-Georgians--and I know there's a lot of you out there--Stone Mountain is a stone...mountain.) They've built it up like a recreation/history/entertainment park thing, complete with miniature golf, train rides, ropes courses, small village-like areas, outlandishly priced food, and a death-defying (or heart attack inducing, take your pick) tram ride up the rock face. We will NOT be participating in the latter.

In other news, I have wasted every spare minute since yesterday playing on my new iPhone. Why on earth do I need an iPhone?! I don't. I sooooo don't. But it's sooooo fun. Like, ridiculously great. (Disclaimer: I had an upgrade and our phone bill has dropped dramatically recently, so we could afford the RIPOFF $30-a-month required data plan. I'm sorry. I felt the need to justify.)

In other other news, after an 8-hour final push to get them all done, I completed addressing 481 invitations for a friend yesterday. Which is actually 962 envelopes. Which means my hand hurts. But I love doing it and think they turned out pretty well. I also love it because it's funding our future furniture/drapes/householdy things. Got some pretty little ditties in mind, so be looking for updated pictures and general opinion survey questions.

Tonight, dear readers, I leave you with a sweet example of sibling love. E wanted to "hold you" J, who was placidly content to lean in her relatively disproportionate lap and let her rock his hand to sleep. At least I think that's what she's doing. Oh yeah, and they were watching The Italian Job. Highly appropriate, I know.

Take it up with Tony.

Happy weekend!