Life in the Big House: June 2014

I keep telling myself that I have to get this done. Kind of like getting your taxes done but with this the IRS isn’t going to garnish my paycheck!

So much has happened in the past couple of months. We just got back from our family vacation in Destin, Florida. JD and I are making it a goal to own a beach house someday. We really want that family tradition of being able to have a spot that everyone can go to and just have fun and make lots of memories. We have been going to the gulf for the past four years. It all started with JD and I going there for our wedding/elopement (not sure if that is a word…(umm...no) and we’ve been going back every summer. Every year we have rented a condo in a different location to see where we want to put down our summer roots.

I could stare at this forever

someone's excited!

This year we rented a small 2 bed/2 bath condo in the heart of Destin. It was a requirement for this condo to have easy access to the pool. Last year it was the saving grace for JD and me. We were able to let the girls nap and use the baby monitor to keep tabs on them while were at the pool.

CJ wasn't too sure about it at first

The beach was a super short walk even though our unit wasn’t beach front.

took her a bit to warm up to the ocean

yay!! She likes it!

My parents joined us the 2^nd day and thank goodness for that. They were a huge help with the kiddos. We enjoyed the beach, the pool, and of course all the fresh seafood.

Maemae and the girls

After this trip we can say we have narrowed our prime (would love to live here) location down to about three beach towns.

Harborwalk on Memorial Day

Sophie trying out the hamster balls

A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to be a house greeter at our semiannual Tour of Homes. For those of you that aren’t familiar with our neighborhood, I’ll give you some insight. When JD and I were first looking to purchase a home in the Atlanta area he never brought me to Grant Park. One day we just happened to be driving through, and I was amazed. Huge old homes on wide streets, tons of trees, the oldest parks in the city and just oozing with all kinds of character you can’t find in the suburbs or even in other areas the city. I wanted to smack him (ok, I’m really not a violent person, I swear), so instead I just shrieked “WHY HAVEN’T YOU EVER BROUGHT ME HERE BEFORE???!!!” His response was that this neighborhood had not always been this nice and the last he remembered, it was in a really rough state. Well thank goodness someone decided to fix that. Grant Park is easily the most amazing neighborhood I’ve ever lived in.

Historic Grant Park

Ok, so back to the Tour of Homes. Every year the neighborhood association has two Tour of Homes. One in the spring and one in the winter. Usually they have about 10-13 homes in the neighborhood that are open to visitors. These homes are usually of the historic nature although some are quite modern. It is an opportunity to show off your house and for others to see the variety of homes. The neighborhood association always asks for volunteers to help show the homes and for people to volunteer their homes to be on the tour. This year I volunteered to be a house greeter. I had such a fun time and I can’t wait till the time when we can put our own home on the tour (hahahaha that’s gonna be a while!)

This past weekend we had a visitor, and I love having visitors. So take note all of my out of town friends, I LOVE HAVING VISITORS!!! We have two spare bedrooms, a large sofa perfect for sleeping and even some air up mattresses if needed, so no excuses!

Back to our visitor, my cousin Angie needed a place to crash after a 12 hour shoot for tv show. And even though she came into town Friday afternoon we didn't actually get to hang out until Saturday afternoon. She wanted Mexican food for dinner and was also in search of a few local craft beers for her craft beer club. So we took her to downtown Decatur. A little Raging Burrito for a few tacos and The Cooks Warehouse for the craft beers. If we didn't live in Grant Park, we would probably live in Decatur, such a cute little downtown square with tons of restaurants and shops.

Sunday morning we woke up and took Angie on a short walk to our neighborhood farmers market. Angie has recently started her own little rooftop garden and couldn't contain herself when talking to all of the vendors and trying to get as many tips as possible.