Friends

We had our dear friends Nick and Dana Babbs come to visit us at the beach this weekend. We had a great time hanging out with them. They are expecting their first child "Caleb Nicholas Babbs" in early October and he is so lucky to have such great parents to enter into this world to. Taylor just adores the both of them. Here are a few shots from their visit.

My favorite picture of Dana...such BLISS!

Taylor got to enjoy some early birthday presents from Nick and Dana.

"We're home!"

A phrase that Taylor has been saying quite often these days inspired me to write this posting. As most of you know we sold our house, moved to an apartment for 3 months, and then about 2 weeks ago we left that apartment and have been traveling around living with family. Taylor has done rather well in the transitions and no matter where we pull the car into, whether it is Walmart, McDonald's, Grammy/Grandad's house, or the beach condo, she always says "we're home" as soon as we pull in. She never knows where we will end up at the end of the day, but always knows she's "at home" as long as she gets to get out of the car and mommy and daddy are there.

So where have we been in our journey so far? First we drove up to Damascus, MD to spend some time with Brent's family. We then headed to PA for the wedding of Brent's cousin Merritt and his new bride Liz.

Merritt and Liz getting hitched at the Green Gables in Pennsylvania.

Taylor was the life of the party at the wedding and she had a blast on the dance floor.

Brent's mom and dad (on the left) and all of Brent's dads family.

Back in Maryland, Taylor and Noa having fun in the pool in the backyard.

We then traveled to Little River, SC and were met by Amanda's parents, brother, his wife, and 2 sweet kids. We had a blast hanging out with them!

Taylor loved her dolphin.

We then went to Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach with Amanda's parents. Taylor was amazed by all of the marine life (and so were we).

Taylor loved the jelly fish. She also got to touch a horseshoe crab and a stingray.

The Ultimate Pack Job

We have loaded our crate. The day started with 2 movers coming to the house and taking all of our stuff in about 2 hours! That's amazing because it took almost a week for Brent to move everything into our apartment, we love the movers! They then took it to a warehouse downtown and built our crates.

So this is what we had to work with. This crate is a 200 cubic foot crate. We got 2 - 200 cubic foot crates and 1 - 100 cubic foot crate for a grand total of 500 cubes. One 200 cubic crate measures only 86 inches long, 84 inches high and 44 inches wide! Just a thought, 1 king mattress is almost 80 inches high, 86 inches long and 10 inches wide, so 2 mattress is 20 inches wide, almost 1/2 of one of our crates!
Here is an idea of how little space 500 cubic feet really was. Our large sofa took up almost 100 cubes and was 2 inches too long. The guys had to close the door with a fork lift, in order to ship it over seas. We packed every inch of our crate, anything that had a hole, had something inside.

We then stayed two more days just finishing up in Raleigh with no sofa's, no beds, and no tvs, however we stayed very entertained by our little girl. She has made the best of every situation and is loving new toys and new adventures.

Goodbye Raleigh!

A lot of goodbye's are soon to come, but our most recent goodbye was to dear friends we have made while living in Raleigh the last 5 years.

Here are a few of our friends who were able to make it to Pullen Park for our little cookout.
Riding the choo-choo train with Nick and Dana
Taylor hanging out with Heather and Zeke