Our New Home

One of the most exciting things about this year has been a move to our new home in Lakeland, TN.  It is just about 10 minutes from our old house but closer to Matt's family and still close to mine as well.  We are trilled with our new neighborhood and home.  We closed on July 3rd and moved in shortly thereafter.  We had so much help from our family and friends, I can't even begin to thank them! Ashley and JT (my sister and bro-in-law) came in town and along with Matt's sister, Kim, and brother in law, Josh, and our parents, the guys did a TON of manual labor!  In one day they loaded up all our furniture from our old house and unloaded it in our new house.  WOW!  What a blessing to have them help!  Of course we lived among boxes for a bit but soon we were settled into our new home.  

Here are a few of our favorite things about our new neighborhood and house: 

-Large neighborhood with lots of kids

-Great public schools (with the Elementary school literally inside our neighborhood and walking distance from our house!)

-A community pool about 4 or 5 houses down from ours

-More than enough room in our house for our growing family and visitors!

-Room for entertaining

-Great small city of Lakeland with walking trails and parks to enjoy

-Driving home, walking along the sidewalks or looking out the window to see deer hanging out!

Daddy and Taylor at the pool

Swimming in the backyard to cool off on a hot Memphis summer day

Who needs a swimsuit when you are in your backyard?!?!

Taylor enjoying some of her toys in the driveway

I know we will fill this new home with so many great memories.  We are so very blessed to be able to move into such a lovely place!  And now that we are settled and have more room we are ready for visitors!

Beach Trip!

We had a great trip to the beach this summer with Matt's family.  We have made it sort of a yearly tradition to head down to the beach and rent a beach house/condo for a week with Meme, Peepaw, Kim, Josh and Kayla.  Taylor's debut trip was last year at just 7 weeks old.  This time she had a little better idea of what was going on.  She LOVED playing by the beach in this little blow up pool that was at the house.  She also spent lots of time exploring the shore with Meme!  She loved seeing the birds flying around and was quite the social butterfly greeting people as they passed by.  

Daddy, Josh and Kim ventured out for a deep sea fishing expedition again this year.  It seemed to go much better than last year with more fish caught and less sea-sickness :)  We found a restaurant that cooked the fish that they caught for us and it was very yummy!  

Uncle Richard, Aunt Linda, Hailey, Matthew and Garrett were also at the beach just a few minutes away while we were down there.  We spent one night with them which was a nice treat.  The plan was to eat at a restaurant, however there was a major monsoon on our way to meet them and all of the restaurants were full with very long waits.  So, we bought some food from the street vendors and headed back to their condo to spend some time relaxing. It ended up being a great time to hang out and visit for a little while.  

One night Matt and I went out for a nice dinner together while Taylor stayed back with the rest of the family.  Matt loves seafood so he really enjoys all the good fresh seafood at the beach.  We had a great trip and definitely spent a lot of time resting and relaxing!

Staring longingly at the beach!

Taylor spend many fun times by the ocean in her pool!

Matt with one of his fish

The deep sea fishing crew and their catches

Taylor and PeePaw

Meme and Taylor

What a life!

Family picture

Hailey, Garrett, Jenn, Matthew and Taylor

Kayla, the tan momma, and Taylor

Out to dinner