oh spring.. you're so pretty!

Uh can we just TALK about how beautiful these flowers are?! I was in aww of them outside of my work when they first started blooming but when the green leaves showed up on these pretty trees earlier this week I was so in love.

They're so pretty they make these iPhone pictures look goooooood. 

There's just something about the combination of pink and green! I just love it. 

Of course thanks to the frost these babies are already gone.. spring you're such a tease, so pretty for such a short time! 

what's canoe with you?!

We went canoeing on Saturday!! It was so hot, but so much fun. Thomas though I was crazy for bringing my phone, and once we got out their in the deeeeeeep river water (seriously I don't know where the bottom was-- it freaked me out), I kinda agreed with him and figured that my ziplock bag was laughable and seriously wasn't going to cut it if we tipped the canoe. THANKFULLY that didn't happen.
I told myself that I wanted my phone incase we got lost in the wilderness of middle Tennessee and we might need it for an emergency, but the real reason I wanted it was for pictures of course!

We risked it and brought Tuon along with us too! Tuon's not the most adventurous dog.. she's super cautious. So I was a bit skeptical how she was going to do on the canoe. Thankfully she did great. She was not amused when I tried to cool her off and poured river water all over her, but after about 10mins in she changed her tune was more that happy to be drenched by a cups full of river water. The only minor nervous moment she had was with a pile of leaves casually floating along the river. She stared those bad boys down! And when Thomas and I rowed over to them I grabbed the big stick of leaves out of the river and she about climbed up Thomas in fear. We laughed so hard. She overcame her fear after that. No one likes to be laughed at. :)

All in all it was a pretty good Saturday. 

summmmer time!

Oh my goodness what a beautiful weekend to kick off summer! Thomas and I took Tuon up to the park for a long walk on Saturday, and we stumbled upon this great section off the path that was open to the river. Tuon pretends to be not much of a water dog, as prevalent by this lovely snapshot..

But deep down I know she could learn to love it. We just need the coaxing of other dogs with us to show her how fun it could be! 

(ah-hem, maverick?!!) 

.. we'll have to remember that next time! 

We of course ended our fun outing by officially calling it summer by picking up some sonic drinks!
Limeade for the win! 

Tuon got in on the action as well and enjoyed a refreshing ice water.. 

and then looked like this merely 2 mins after we pulled out of the parking lot at Sonic. 

love that pup. :)

Happpppy Summer!!! 

strawberries!!

  

Just down the road one of the farms has opened up their strawberry fields for the public to pick and enjoy. And I tell you what, they were the sweetest people! I was so happy to support them, not only was it tons of fun, but it felt good doing it!

Fresh sweet in season strawberries are the best! I had grand plans for my strawberries, I wanted to can or make freezer jam! But alas, no. We ate these babies so fast is wasn't even funny. My morning yogurt this week was awesome and is there honestly anything better than ending a evening with real whipped cream (yea I'm talking the real stuff) and fresh strawberries?
Nope, very few things can top that.

Jam you'll have to wait.. I guess I'll just have to go pick some more!

oh darn. ;)

four leaf clover

Thomas has an insanely good eye when it comes to spotting four leaf clovers. I truly don't know how he does it. It's become easily one of my favorite things about our relationship. So simple and yet I find it so sweet. He finds a four leafed clover and hands it to me. I come back to my desk at work and I have two sitting on my keyboard.

I'm so lucky to have him 

(yes-- cheesy pun intended). 

I use to be afraid of the moon.

true story. you can blame my dad. I loved the moon, until my dad said it was best friends with lightning. And a friend of lightning was nooooo friend of mine. nuh-uh.

Good thing I grew outta that irrational fear. And I'm not going to lie. I'm quite proud of this picture and I have a full memory card of pictures that look like this hot mess to justify just how proud I am..

It took some fine tuning and some major brains to figure out how to get the bright big moon show up, not to mention that it's freeeeezing outside. Spring?! Where are you!?  

ready to be thankful

oh I'm getting excited for this week. family, food and festivities. 

I can't wait! 

fall, how I love you.

A couple weekends ago Thomas and I spent the weekend at his parents house out in the middle of nowhere tennessee. It's a strange thing not having cell phone service.. but also kind of nice. :) We had a good time, filled with some good home cooked meals and some manly entertainment which included shooting bow and arrows.. :) 

and yes, I did feel like Katniss, 

and yes I'm adding "shooting a bow and arrow" to my bucket list 

just so I can check it off... CHECK! 

Thomas' mama and I spent the afternoon, not shooting bows but instead by looking through catalogs and talking wedding stuff up on the porch.. and I snapped pictures. 

I should also mention that I can check off riding a three wheeler off my bucket list as well.. Thomas' brother and dad found it hysterical that they could hear me screaming from across the field the entire time.. 

CHECK! 

crunch.

Our drive back to Ohio this past weekend was beautiful!! I love fall and this weekend was one of those picture perfect crisp fall weekends. 

happy october! 

some of my favorites

And finally here are just a few of my favorites from our trip.. the rest of them I've loaded up into my flickr account which you can view by clicking here. 

 

hahaa! this one kills me.. 

 I'm not going to lie, I'm slightly obsessed with this picture of Mollie in her pretty red dress. I love everything about this picture. 

 I turned around while we were walking and told them to say cheese.. I got this instead :) 

love it. 

goodbye pretty ocean. 

our last night

 We spent our last sunset of Key West at The Top, it's a the roof top of the Crown Plaza and the view is amazing. 

From the roof top, it also shows just how small Key West actually is.. kinda freighting, and we were more than happy that our Belleville vacation curse didn't bring any hurricanes during our stay ;) 

I had to include this last picture because it cracked us up!! 

Now, in their defense, I didn't tell them I was taking the picture. We were all standing around talking and once I snapped it, we lost it with all three of their facial expressions, could they be any happier to see another sunset? ha! 

 We saw a lot of sunsets and it looks like we're having the worse time, but that's far from the truth. 

caption: everybody's so happy to be watching the sunset.. again. 

or maybe a better one.. nobody wants to leave just yet.