Our special visitors and our first ride on a train!

A few weeks ago my Mom, Aunt, and my Grandad (Daddy Jack) came to visit us for a few days.  This was such a special trip.  My grandad is 83 years old.  I haven't seen him since I went home last year in July.  They flew into Portland which is a 2 hour drive and got tickets to ride the train into Eugene.  I had some money someone had given me for my birthday that I was trying to decide what to use it on and decided that Deci and I would take the train up to Portland and ride back with them.

 This was mine and Deci's first time riding a train and it was SOOO much fun!  Deci did great and it was only 30 minutes longer than driving.

My Aunt Mary Ann and Deci

Of course we had to take them to the Oregon coast...

My mom (Dee) and the girls.

We're trying to decide whats wrong with this child...she likes eating sand and chalk! Silly girl!

After my Mom, Aunt and Grandad left they took a plane to California to my cousins house and met up with 2 of my moms other sisters just in time for fathers day with their dad.

Thanks for coming to see us!

To read another post about my grandad click HERE. :)

Our May Visitors

Yep, you read that right, our MAY visitors.  I know, I know...It's June 19th.  BUT If you don't know, I'm pregnant (in other words, I'm tired, sick, and exhausted.), plus my insane choice of editing (picnik) no longer exist forcing me to find another photo editing program.  If you know me you know I love change but not when it comes to technical stuff. (as if I haven't complained enough about that lately.)  ANYWAYS,  I'm 13...or is it 14...(I've lost count) weeks pregnant and feeling sooo much better! Thank you LORD! So, I'm going to try and play catch-up and do a few catch-up post about the month of May and June.  I know, I know, I really probably should just skip it all together but for my sake (and isn't this why I really blog anyways?? ha!) I'm going to bore some of you to death.  Hang in there with me. :)

Enough rambling...time for some PICTURES!  My Dad, his wife Debbie, and my brother came to visit the week before my birthday!

We decided to hike Spencer's Butte

 We also went to the Coast and they road the Dune Buggies!

My Dad also helped us plant our garden while he was here.  Everything's doing great so far except for the okra which I think is more of a southern vegetable....maybe it doesn't get warm enough here..or something...  Our 86 year old widow neighbor asked us what okra was the other day.  She had no clue.  I hope ours comes in so I we can cook her some fried okra! :)

We took them to 2 of our favorite Winery's.

We also got to spend the evening in Portland for my birthday before they left.  They took me to eat and we got to meet up with my dad's cousin that lives in Vancouver, Washington.  So nice to meet family that lives close by.

Such a fun week!  We really missed these guys after they left!  Come back soon, please!!!

(Are my visitor pictures starting to get repetitive?? haha!  I guess I should start finding new places to take visitors!)

One Last thing:  Today over at The Williams' Post, my most amazing sister-in-law is having a giveaway So go check it out!  I am in love with the new wallets she made.  That's right, she made all of them herself and if you buy one, 100% of the money goes to help her and her husband go on a Mission trip to India!  Go check in out! :)

Are you reading my husbands blog???

I hope you are, because I've been MIA for most of this month and so much has gone on!  If you haven't checked out my husbands blog go check it out now at http://qcrashing.blogspot.com/ also check THIS POST out where he makes our BIG announcement.  Yep, that's right, I'm PREGNANT! YIKES. 3 kids.  This one wasn't planned and it's been a little overwhelming to think about but we've always wanted more kids (we just thought it would be thru adopting) but the pregnancy stage and newborn stage kind of gets the best of me.  If you read my post HERE where I announced I was pregnant with Journey, you will see shortly after that I stopped blogging for ummm... almost 2 YEARS! Eeeeek!  I can't even look at the post around that post where just looking at the pictures I remember how sick I felt.  I'm honestly going to try and stick with this blogging thing but honestly 3 kids seems overwhelming at the moment.  It starts getting "easy" again after they turn one...or something like that.

What else has been going on this month?  Well, we decided to do the 7 challenge inspired by Jen Hatmaker's book 7.  This month we decided to only wear 7 articles of clothing for the whole month.  You can read more about that on my husbands blog also HERE.  Seriously, I hope you have been reading my husbands blog this month.  We also had visitors from Alabama.  Our friends Michael and Heather Bledsoe and My Dad, his wife, and my younger brother came for a week.  Then my birthday and mothers day.  AND so much has been going on with The Beautiful Mess (which you can also check out on Q's blog).  ALSO, Deci got to be a model for ZozoBugBaby's Spring/Summer 2013's catalog and that was so much fun!  After we took the girls to the Zoo.  We also planted a garden and the weather has been absolutely BEAUTIFUL! 
 
So, lesson for you dear blog readers, if I go MIA again...Go read Q's blog! :)  But hopefully I'll have another moment when I'm free and feel good where I can post some pictures from the month of May! 

Last Week, Visitors, and The Coast...

Last week Q's mom, her husband Alan, and Q's grandmother came out for a visit and we LOVED every minute of it.  I didn't feel so well this week and didn't take a lot of pictures (I could just kick myself now!) but here are a few:

 Maw Maw and Paw Paw bought Deci a kite...well, I should rephrase...I bought Deci a kite at a thrift store for .50cents and after I told Deci to leave it alone she ripped it open and broke part of it.  Good thing the grandparents were here...she got another kite right away.  So we took it to the coast.

 You know how I LOVE the Oregon coast!  We took a girls only trip.  Q had to work and Q's grandmother had never been to the Oregon coast so we loaded up and went.  Alan decided to play golf. Granny stayed in the van for this stop.  Too bad it was so cold and windy...

 This is one of my favorite places to stop at the coast.  You can walk 1/2 a mile up the hill to the light house and take a tour for free and I love all the rocks at our feet.

 These girls love their grandparents so much.  Deci told me this morning that she wanted to be like Maw Maw and let her fingernails grow out. haha!  Maybe this will help her stop biting her fingernails.

 Funny story:  As we were getting ready to go to the coast I picked out clothes for Deci to wear and told her to take them to Granny or Maw Maw to help her put them on.  A minute goes by and Deci come running to get me out of my bedroom and tells me to look at Journey.  Journey was dressed from head to toe in Deci's clothes! Deci tricked them and told them that I wanted them to dress Journey instead of Deci.  ha! :)  We fixed that problem but when we got out at the coast, I told Maw Maw to grab Journeys coat before she got her out of the van.  I didn't realize until later that she put Deci's coat on Journey. :)

 I love these pictures and If I wasn't so mad at picnik for making me switch to another photo editing company, I would have put these two in a collage.  I just can't figure out how to on PhotoBucket! I know it can happen...

 Deci, of course, had to put her feet in the water.

Paw Paw Crow and Deci.  We had such a fun week with them here!  We got to eat lots and lots of Southern cooking and these girls were spoiled all week. :)

These girls sure do love having family in town.  Good thing they won't be without family for long!  My dad, his wife Debbie and my younger brother Kyle will be here on Saturday for my birthday week!

Nick Nick and Aunt B's last day in Oregon

 We took Nick and Brandi to the top of Skinner's Butte to see the view.  They were so lucky to have such beautiful weather while they were here.

Q, Alec, Luis, Nick

Zach Gideon

We went to Sweet Life, a local bakery, to get dessert and coffee.  I'm pretty sure this is where we met up for the day after Journey woke up from her nap...I'm just too lazy to move the pictures around so they will actually be in order.   :)

Jeff, Journey, and Derrick

We walked past Alec's work and waved at him and Mike. 

Then we went back to the base of Spencer's Butte so Brandi could take a few pictures since she left her camera at our house the first time we went.

 

 If you wonder why Brandi isn't in a lot of these pictures it's because I'm pretty sure she would kill me if I put a lot of pictures of her on my blog. ha! :) But these next 3 pictures Brandi took with her awesome camera and I love them.

Side note:  One night we got to go to Albany to hang out with the McKinney family.  The husbands were supportive enough to tell us ladies to leave all the kids (all 5 kids!) with them to go get dessert at a local shop some of their friends own.  It was such a fun night.  For some reason I get away to Albany and have so much fun with April talking and catching up that I NEVER seem to remember to get a picture of us all.  April is my friend here from Alabama that moved here to help with a Church plant. It feels like home when I get together with her.  We can relate in so many ways. She gets me. She also has the son who has a heart that needs surgery that I asked for you guys to pray for a few weeks back. Keep praying.  They have some hard decisions ahead to make. 

Last blog post about Nick Nick and Aunt B for a while.  I guess it's about time I get caught up in real life.  They've been gone since Tuesday.  Nothing much has happened since they left.  I think we were so busy while they were here that we crashed after they left.  Maybe they got an extra day off of work to recover. :)

Check back in tomorrow for Marriage Letters Monday, Tuesday I'm going to TRY really hard to do a post on how I met Q and our story...no promises...How do you write a post on 7(ish) years of dating?? Wednesday I have a post ready on "A day in the life of a stay-at-home mom." :)