cruisin' in december

the beginning of december was spent on the FUN ship with a FUN family!

the whole heady crew packed up their bags and headed for charleston to board the carnival fantasy for a week long cruise to exchange the cold weather for sunshine, sand,  and a tan :)

getting settled in our home for the week!

 at our muster station waiting patiently for the emergency practice to be OVER!

what a beautiful view of the arthur ravenel bridge.  not used to seeing it from this direction.  so pretty.

 the sun setting over fort sumter was so gorgeous as we were leaving port!

 the southern patriot!

gair and i as we are pulling out of port and heading towards warmer weather :) that is fort sumter behind us! 

tay and curt at dinner the first night!

after leaving charleston we had 2 fun days at sea ahead of us before arriving at our first port of call.  on the first day we headed up to the pool to see if we could get some sun and it was still quite chilly because we hadn't made it very far from the states yet.  on the ship they have all kinds of fun little game shows and activities going on all the time.  we were sitting right beside the big stage and they were about to start the "hairy chest competition" of course i looked at gair and he immediately says, "absolutely not" but if you know his mom, she wasn't about to let this go! thank goodness...because i wanted him to do it so bad, but since his mom was the one pressuring telling him to do it, i didn't get yelled at in trouble :)  lets be honest it didn't help the situation that he is laying out with his shirt off and the carnival staff is hollering at him to come up on stage to compete! ha!

there were 3 parts to this competition:

1. strip tease dance taking their shirts off (picture before shirt was off)

2. booty shaking competition

3. swinging through the air like tarzan and then hollering like tarzan

(please check out the competition...santa clause on the far left)

....and the winner was.....Santa Clause (with no chest hair)

i was bummed.  but all that booty shakin' paid off because he got a gold medal anyways!

 after the "hairy chest competition" we played a little bit of ping pong before going down to get ready for the captains dinner!

i played some too. and i'm actually really good not bad. surprisingly!

gair and i at dinner the night of the captains dinner.

here is a picture of the stern of the boat from where we were laying out one afternoon

this picture is looking towards the bow of the boat and the swimming pool :)

i had to post this picture because first of all curt's face c.r.a.c.k.s. me up and second of all check out that sky. . . .we had just avoided a bad storm and you can see how dark the sky is.

tay and curt showin' off the mixologist winning drink that was on the menu every day after tay one the competition :)

"skip n' shake"

aren't they one good lookin' couple :)

precious little elliot eating her banana split after dinner :)

such a beautiful family :)

gair and i at dinner! this is one of my new favorite pictures! how handsome is he :)

i just thought this picture was funny! we were walking down the hall back to our room probably to make a drink and then go watch karaoke...where we actually sang attempted to sing!  we sang picture by kid rock and sheryl crow. . . .and r o c k e d it!!!

anywho . . . . check back in a few days and see more from our december cruise and where our FUN ship docked when we woke up the next morning :)

florida keys

now to tell the story of the florida keys.

longest road trip ever with such wonderful friend. 

the end.

ha.

the trip began, for gair and i, just a day earlier when we left for disney world.  then we left early saturday morning from orlando and drove south bound on the florida turnpike.  the trip was lengthy, but i got to spend lots of quality time with gair :)

fun times in the car. ha.

look what we found in isla morada.  one of daddy's boats. 

finally on the 7 mile bridge towards key west.

we were the first ones to arrive at our house for the week, and gair didn't waste anytime before laying out by the pool.  i walked out back and heard gair yell "holy sh** bray, look." 

this is what we saw.

totally unexpected. apparently this is completely normal around the keys.

once everyone arrived we picked out our bedrooms for the week. unpacked. and hopped in the pool. we were all pretty tired from the l.o.n.g drive so we just ordered some pizzas for dinner and chilled around the house. we planned on doing a lot of chilling around the house because it really was the coolest house ever.  we had a huge, 5 bedroom house on the water (with a dock), and a pool.  it had a screened in back porch, and under the back porch was a covered patio with a big tv where we spent a lot of time watching tv, playing cards, playing corn hole, and relaxing pool side.

here are some fun pictures from our trip. in no particular order (basically because i don't feel like putting them in order) ha.

drove to key west for the night!

the girls before dinner.

these guys were "practicing for st. patty's day" ha.

little instagram love with my girls :)

gair and i :)

irish kevin's in key west

me and the girls again :) love them!

me snorkeling and gair scuba diving!

as you can tell by the pictures, we had a fabulous time in the keys and we are already looking forward to going again next year :)

disney world

a little over a month ago gair and i were headed to the keys with some of our best friends.  if you remember back in march, he and i went to disney world with his whole family for elliot's 2nd birthday.  when we were there we bought a 2 day hopper pass that didn't expire and we only used 1 of those days while we were there in march.  since we had a 1 day hopper pass left we decided to leave a day early for orlando and spend a day at the most magical place on earth, disney world!

the weather wasn't the best on our way down.  it actually was horrible, it poured the entire way!

just being silly on our l.o.n.g. car ride!

my turn to just ride. phewww. tired of driving.

we arrived in orlando on thursday night and got up early on friday morning to head to animal kingdom (that was our favorite park when we were there in march, so we wanted to see what all we didn't get to see the first time).

he really can be sweet :)

going on the kilimanjaro safari ride in the rain to see all the cool animals

keep in mind there aren't any fences or boundaries between us and these animals on the safari tour.

this lioness wasn't looking to happy.  and again, there wasn't any fence or boundary between her and us. ahh!

after the safari we walked around the park for a little while looking at all the neat things and of course people watching, because that is one of the best things to do in disney world.  although it was raining on and off we had so much fun and were able to ride a few rides.  we even rode the Kali River Rapids (and i got soaked) of course gair barely got wet!

after the river rapids ride we decided to head back to our hotel, grab some dinner, and then head to magic kingdom for the evening.  we went to buffalo wild wings which was right near our hotel and had a little dinner before heading back to the magic kingdom.

when we got to magic kingdom, one of the first things you pass when you enter is the theatre where you can meet the princess'...well, the princess' that were there at that time to meet were Belle, Aurora, and Cinderella.  the wait time was only 25 minutes so gair agreed that we could get our picture taken with Belle and send it to elliot because that is her favorite princess.  well needless to say, that wait time was completely incorrect and we ended up waiting in line for over an hour.  i literally thought gair was going to die.  ha.  it was totally worth the torture of standing in line to watch all of these moms putting makeup on their toddlers and school age little girls just to get their picture taken with a princess.  i couldn't believe how these moms were taking this so seriously.  talk about living vicariously through your children.  

any who. it was all totally worth it because i got this picture.

and this sweet video from Belle herself, to our sweet little Elliot.

and we also got to see the real reason why disney world is such a magical place!

the fireworks at magic kingdom.

after the fireworks we walked around magic kingdom for a little bit and then headed back to our hotel for a good nights sleep for our l.o.n.g. drive the next day to the keys with all of our friends.

i will post about our trip in the keys here in the next few days.

off to watch gair's team kick some church softball booty.

coon dog day 2012

this year was my 3rd year going to the coon dog day parade with the heady family!  i am so blessed to have such an awesome family of my own and double blessed that i have this wonderful family in my life as well.

gair and i didn't get to stay in saluda very long on this visit because of course...i had to work :(

(i guess i should start by saying this was the first weekend in july when this took place)

gair and i drove up to saluda on friday night and enjoyed sidestreet pizza and spending time with the family.  saturday morning came very quickly and we all packed up and drove into saluda for the coon dog day parade.  when i say we didn't get to stay long on this visit, i mean we literally had to leave after the first 30 minutes of the parade :(  it was scorching hot outside and we were both sweating like crazy in that short 30 minutes of watching the parade.

you may recognize this picture being similar to the one from coon dog day last year

my good lookin' man :)

the other pictures i got weren't very good...i think because i was so hot, i was trying to fan myself off the entire time.

until next time.

livin' large in texas: part 2

saturday for becca's bachelorette party it was actually her birthday too.  reilly and lauren came up with such a great idea to hire a professional photographer to take pictures of all of us.  we hired Rachel Ledbetter from Fort Worth, TX.  she was amazing and made it so comfortable and fun for us.

(you can click that link to see a sneak peek of the pictures that she took of us)

i will post all of them at a later date.

after our photo shoot we went to an authentic mexican restaurant in fort worth, before heading back into dallas.  it was really yummy and we even got to sing happy birthday to bec.

after lunch we headed back to dallas to hang out and chill a little bit before goin' two steppin' that night.  some of the girls took a nap, i worked on my school stuff, and becca and morgan went to pick up this precious little one.

this little girl used to live at an orphanage in Uganda, where becca lived for 3 months.  when becca and morgan went on their first trip one of the ladies that went with them fell in love with this little one (i mean how could you not) and she adopted her and she now lives with her new mommy and big sister in Dallas, so becca called her up and arranged for her and morgan to go pick her up from her nanny's house and be able to hang out with her for a few hours before her mommy could pick her up.

we ate cupcakes.

 

played with the ball.

 and then her sweet mommy came to pick her up.

 we just couldn't get enough of her :)

after little one left we all started to get ready for dinner and to head out for our night out 2 steppin'

 

rockin' out at Cowboys Red River

 love this pic! ry and bec doin' some of the line dances :)

 love this picture of all of us after dancin' the night away :)

bec- hope you had a fabulous birthday/bachelorette weekend.  i know we all did.

can't wait 'til june 9 :)