Chattanooga!

I am back in NYC, but I am still dreaming of my AWESOME trip south!

Will and I had a great few days in Louisville getting 1,984,789,537 things done. My mom is a champ. In just two days, we had two dinners with dear family, raced through a children's consignment sale and bought Will the most adorable clothes for the fall and winter (including a dinosaur costume for Halloween--ah, adorable!), dropped off and picked up my dress at the tailor's, got a oil change for the warrior Honda Pilot (Clay and I realized we have put 40,000 miles on this puppy in TWO years. Sheesh! It deserves a long winter's rest this year in Kentucky), got 160 pictures developed for my NYC apartment project (see upcoming post), bought three PRECIOUS outfits at beautiful children's store where Mom now works, shuffled through the photo albums to find baby pictures of Ali and me for my toast, and unpacked and repacked and organized organized organized my bursting closets in my room back home.

Tuesday was my mom's birthday. I got her a tiny gift card to the spa. She deserves a week there.

This week once again confirmed that a girl will forever need her mama--and her daddy.

Bless them both. They are the entire reason why Will and I are still in one piece, the car is safely stored in KY, and I was able to participate in Ali's wedding.

Will agrees.

So on Thursday we left for brief visit to Chattanooga.

A bunch of my friends made the selfless effort to come meet us at a local park for a picnic dinner that night despite the suddenly cold temps and the fact that it was a workday and school night.

I LOVED seeing all of them, and Will simply loved his minestrone soup :-).

Gilly is thinking, "This kid is a mess!"

Look at my beautiful friends! And I got to meet baby Elouise!

I miss this girl. Katie continues to amaze me with her faithfulness, fun spirit, and friendship. And she stays in touch on top of being a rockstar mama to her three PRECIOUS kiddos and winning awards in her job as G's librarian. She is one of many people I saw this week who inspire me.

Sweet Will has been a T*R*O*O*P*E*R through all of this transition.

This is how he felt after Chattanooga. That's how I felt, too...but we had a best friend in Birmingham to walk down the aisle!