Georgia on My Mind

As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, this past weekend, G$ and I packed up the car with Kairo and drove down to Georgia to visit one of my besties from high school Heather, her husband D and their beautiful 18-month old daughter Grace down in Columbus/Fort Benning, Georgia.  Google Maps said it would be about a 12 hour trip, but we were able to make it in under 12 hours with food, bathroom, and gas breaks – a feat that G$ and I were both very proud of. :)

Heather did a great recap of the weekend and I’m apparently not in a “writing mood” so I will be brief with additional information.

The highlights in my book:

• Grace.  She was so cute and I don't want to toot my own horn (toot, toot), but Heather said she warmed up to me muuuuch quicker than she usually does.  I was holding her the first night while we were playing outside with the dogs and had her in my lap for breakfast the following morning.  Such.a.cutie.  Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of her with me... :( 
  And no, me spending a weekend with Grace has not convinced G$ and I to have a child any sooner than we are planning to, so I'll just get that idea out of your head up front!
• D.  He just cracks me up.  I love how he says what's on his mind!
• Heather's beautifully decorated house (sorry D, we all know Heath is the brains behind this!).  It has set the bar high for our new place. 
• The beautiful old, historic mansions we saw on our river walk - which I later zillowed and found out the ones for sale are at or under $300K...  The same house in the DC area would easily be over a million.  Sigh. 
• Having a door to the outside on the same level.  Getting a little taste of sitting outside relaxing with a drink while the dogs played made G$ and I super excited to move.  T Minus 1 month. :)  Also really makes me want a fire pit or heat lamp to ensure the patio for longer when the nights are cool.  Whatdoyouthink, G$? HA!
• The all around good times with good friends - even when we are just doing low-key activities with three dogs and a toddler in tow.  Couldn't have been a better weekend!  

It was soooo great to see Heather, D, and Grace.  It really makes me miss how my three main girls – the bridesmaids in our wedding – are not local.  One (hi Jack!) is living in Durham, NC going to business school at Duke.  Another (hi Al!) is actually on a 6-month business trip in Chester, England, but normally lives in Houston, TX.  I’m horrible at keeping in touch, and even though we try to plan four-way calls every so often, it’s sad that I don’t talk to these amazing girls more frequently.  Heather and I probably are the most in touch, and I really attribute that to the blogs, we always know what’s going on in each other's life (me probably more than her, since I’m horrible at updating this thing), but it prompts us to gchat each other during the day after reading the other person’s blog.  Ali is keeping a blog to detail her adventures in England, so I’m hoping she enjoys it so much that she’ll continue it once she returns to the states.  (hint, hint, but I don’t think Ali even follows this regularly…)



Heather, D, Grace - thank you so much for having us!  We hope to see you soon - at hopefully a closer location! :)

As Heather mentioned in her post, it was sad, we didn’t take any pictures!  I did manage to photo-document Kairo being the cutie-pie that he is while sleeping in the car…

As soon as we got in the car while it was still dark out, Kairo quickly curled up in his bed in the back seat.

Told you I did a good job photo-documenting it! :)  He was a perfect angel and slept for the majority of the time.  Don't worry, he was the spoiled Kairo you know and love... he spent probably about 15% of the trip in my lap:

Us both with "sleep eyes"

And I did get a few of Kairo playing with Molly and Major:

For the most part the drive was pretty uneventful.  G$ somehow managed to drive the entire 12 hours both ways – isn’t he sweet!  One interesting thing did happen on the drive down.  As you know, Kairo has some “bald spots” or “scars” where he’s currently fur-less from playing rough – or getting sidewalk-burn.  Well, we stopped for a late lunch and ate it outside while Kairo stiffed around.  When we got back in the car, all of Kairo’s bald spots were swollen and the fur on the outer ring of the spots was sticking up:

We think he got sunburned!  Since this skin would have never seen the sun before – since he didn’t have them last summer when he was a pup.  After about an hour or two, the swelling died down and we didn’t see it again.  We are going to keep an eye on it next time we are out in the sun for a prolonged period of time.  

Other Friday Randoms: 

• G$ and I are going boating this evening with friends who bought a boat last fall, then doing dinner at Cantina Marina on the SW DC waterfront. These friends are moving out of our building in a couple weeks, so we are calling it the: combined gorge-ourselves-with-carbs-one-last-time and goodbye-Hope-Tom-and-Chester dinner.
• What’s the gorge-ourselves-with-carbs-one-last-time, you ask?  You’ll just have to wait and see! :)
• Wegmans is coming to Alexandria!  It’s still about 20 minutes away, but that’s closer than the existing Wegmans are to us.  Likely not going to be our every-day grocery store – and by every day, I mean every week to two weeks – but it’ll be nice to have one within a more reasonable distance.  Ha, and I just read the entire article I linked to...which is about the groundbreaking...which still hasn't occurred.  It's not going to open until early 2014.  Wah waaaahhhh!  I should probably just remove this bullet...
• This week has been gorgeous in DC.  All the trees are blooming, including the ones right outside our building – they look so pretty during the day, but I think even cooler at night (coincidentally, the same time I had my phone and could take pictures…):  

Hope you all have a great weekend!

<3
K$