Last Week in the USA!

A week before we flew out to Germany, we went to Beaufort to spend the week with family and friends!

Pepper

Enemies/Best Friends

We showed up and Mom was also wearing her "Happy Camper" shirt.

I cut my hair. On the left picture, it's shorter on the right (left in picture) and on the left it's only trimmed slightly. It was doing a weird curling thing and I thought shorter would help.

Oscar snoozed in our bed in the mornings.

We went to Savannah one day! This reminds me that I didn't post the picture of Caleb and Christina with us there!

'

We pulled out "Big Fred and Little Fred". Carson hadn't seen them before (poor guy) and they were made by my dad's grandmother. We put one in the chair and the other on Scott's bed.

Scott did this with Little Fred

We went to church the next day and saw a few familiar faces there. Afterward we had lunch at home and took naps.

And worked on our puzzle.

Mom, Carson and I went to Alvin Ords, home of the best sandwich in the world. 

Then we went downtown. We were planning to go to maybe Savannah or somewhere, but Mom and I got too distracted by the puzzle we were working on that we took too long and ran out of time.

Oh, we also packed. We sort of threw "maybes" in our Germany suitcases and brought them with us to sort later. It was a little hard to pack up our apartment AND pack the essentials for Germany.

The next day, we met up with Nana at one of my other favorite places, The Upper Crust.

Then we got to see her new townhouse and dock right on the river!

We returned home for the dogfight...

I went out to Grandmama's that night to spend the night, and late in the evening, Morgan and Grayson arrives as well! Gray has perfected this angry scowl, that he switches into from a huge smile.

We stayed up late talking, as per usual.

I slept in the latest the next day, because Grayson was up as soon as it was light!

We helped Grayson open his birthday presents from Grandmama and he was not as interested as we were.

Then we walked down to the dock. Grayson had been walking for about two weeks, but stairs still weren't quite his thing.

One of us wanted a nap.

The "wait. Did my mom really just take my pacifier out of my mouth and hide it behind her back?" confused look. And we put Morgan's child on a table designed for gutting fish because we are responsible adults.

(there was also a picture of me with Grandmama and Granddaddy but they said not to blog it so just picture it here)

I got home and wrapped birthday gifts. I gave Becca this old favorite and Carson hadn't heard of it, so he read it aloud and loved it.

Then Dad opened his new birthday guitar, while his groupies looked on.

This sums up his relationship to his dogs.

Becca and Thomas came over, and we had dinner and took family pictures. Becca brought the party (hats).

Scott made dinner and dessert - cheesecake with a lemon blueberry sauce. That's a thing most 21 year olds do, right?

The next morning, Morgan and Grayson stopped by. Mom and Dad hadn't seen him since Thanksgiving and it was fun seeing them with him. 

Dad's baby, Morgan's baby.

"Uncle and Aunt". Can't believe it will be a year before we see this kiddo!

After they left, we got ready to head to Atlanta! Mom and Carson were in the front, while Dad and I had the backseat.

One iPod, one iPhone, one GPS.

We went to Peachtree City, where my aunt and uncle (Dad's oldest brother and his family) live! We had a great dinner and then we went out to Chicfila for ice cream!

Dad did a mile on the exercise bike while older brother kept pushing the resistance up.

After I posted the picture of us the night before, one of my good friends from high school messaged and said he lived/worked not far away in Newnan. So we stopped by and caught up with Brandon for the first time since our wedding (and he's gotten married and has kids in that time so there was a lot to catch up on!).

We went to IKEA from there! Mom and Dad looked at cabinets and we enjoyed introducing Dad to the magical world of IKEA.

Swedish meatballs for all!

We headed back to Peachtree City and had dinner at Outback (everyone pooled coupons).

Next stop: the Atlanta airport! It was bittersweet, and if parking had been more convenient, we would have loved to say our goodbyes at security, but we gave our hugs and waves at the International Terminal drop-off.

It was a great week and we are so glad we got to spend it with family! We got to do a lot before we left for Germany and I'm so thankful for that. We miss everyone already and can't wait for July 2017!