Weekend in Fairhope

This weekend, I traveled with my friend Nicole to Fairhope, AL for her first baby shower! Nicole is married to one of Michael's best friends Chris, and she and I became great friends when we moved to Birmingham. I feel so blessed that she asked me to be a part of this special weekend. Her wonderful parents hosted us and treated us to a delicious dinner on Friday night at the Fairhope Inn and took us on a tour of this sweet Gulf Coast town, including the property where Sweet Home Alabama is filmed, before we left on Sunday. The rest of the weekend was devoted to showering Nicole with all things blue for Baby Boy Arvin who will be debuting April 24th!



Me and Nicole before the shower



Her sister-in-law and sorority sister Meghan came down for the shower.



Nicole and her mom Brenda, who just may be the most excited grandmother ever :)!!! It's so sweet how much she loves her grandson already.



The precious and delicious cake!



The diaper cake. These are such a great idea for a baby shower.



Nicole and Baby A's cube. She was so excited about this gift!



Nicole and me in the gardens at The Grand Hotel at Point Clear



I love these trees!

I cannot believe that Nicole is about to be a mom. I had a wonderful time sharing this experience with her!

Good Stuff

It's still winter, it's been raining a lot lately, and Michael works all the dang time!!!! My plan to find something unique to be thankful for every day is proving to be harder than I thought at times. Doesn't that sound awful? Of course I'm thankful for God, my family, friends, health, job, and so much more, but I am trying to dig deeper and find the daily little things in my life for which to be grateful. Thankfully, I have some good stuff to share with you!



I shared last week that we have changed our diet to become less dependent on processed food. Though I feel better than I have in a long time, and we have both lost weight, it has been difficult to stay within our grocery budget. Here comes EMeals to the rescue! I have known about this menu planning service for a while, but they recently answered my prayers and added a meal plan for 2 at Whole Foods! I signed up on Friday, and enjoyed my first shopping trip yesterday. I am happy to report that we are within our budget this week, and we have delicious and healthy dinners on the menu for this week. The service offers a weekly menu, recipes, and itemized shopping list for different budgets, grocery stores, diets, and family size. I am convinced everyone should try this at least once. You pay a 3-month, $21 membership fee to join, and you can change your plan once a month if you aren't happy with the plan you've chosen. You can also google "Emeals coupon code" and get $3 off the membership price. I have been spending hours planning our weekly meals to try to marry our budget with healthy food, and this made my week so much easier!



Michael and I are co-hosting our first baby shower, and my project is the decor and invitations. I'm in heaven!!!! We are creating a woodland owl theme, and my head has been filled with so many ideas, but executing them was going to prove to be a little tougher than I thought. Here comes my crafty friend Laura on the scene! Thankfully, she loves crafts, and she offered to help me with a few projects that only her Cricut machine can do. Together, we created some awesome pieces for the shower like the handmade owl cupcake topper above! I wish I could show you more, but mommy reads my blog and I want there to be some surprises. I am thankful for my crafty friend Laura who is willing to help me create the cutest baby shower ever for our friends Nicole and Chris!



Go to Amazon.com and buy this book. I am thankful I did! It is funny, simple, and life changing. It has spoken to me on so many levels and has convicted me to change areas in my life that I didn't really think about before. If you are looking for a positive experience that will challenge you to grow, then spend the $10 for this book. You'll discover that believing in God is not enough, and when your daily life lines up to what you claim you believe in, an amazing transformation will occur. It's too bad I didn't have this book about 10 years ago, but in God's perfect timing, I am thankful it's part of my life today!

Life Lately...in Pictures

I would be lying if I said that we have been so busy with lots of fun stuff! It's not true folks. Life has been slow-paced here (for me, not Michael), and it hasn't given me much to write about. Michael, on the other hand, is officially juggling basketball, tennis, track, baseball & softball, so Scarlett and I don't see much of him lately. This is his event schedule for the month of February. I guess busy for him is an understatement!



Our fruit bowl is always full now. I have successfully eaten whole and healthy for the majority of my meals since mid-January. Michael has changed his diet as well, but he cheats more than I do :)! The fast was a great turning point for me, both spiritually and physically, and it proved how shocked you can be when you begin to investigate the ingredients in our food! I feel better than I have in a long time! What we are trying to learn now is the balance between whole foods and busting our budget. This has been extremely difficult, and it's still a work in progress.



This is literally our life lately in pictures. I woke up one day recently and realized we didn't have many pictures of ourselves or our families in our living room. It's so ironic because I take pictures all the time, but I guess I had trouble adding pictures because space is limited in our little place. I have been painting frames, updating pictures, and adding more of them to our living space. I like how the picture displays turned out, and I am enjoying the cozy feel all of our new pictures add.





On Friday, I got a nice surprise at work. We were all eating lunch and a flower delivery van pulled up. My friend Tracey was convinced the flowers were from her soul mate Tim Tebow! (That would have been awesome!) But the flowers were for me :)! They are so pretty and smell so good, and the best part is that Michael sent them to me just because he loves me. I was one happy wife!



This is our spoiled fur baby. Have you met her yet? Just in case you forgot...her name is Scarlett, and she is a princess. She gets a daily walk, eats organic food, and sleeps between our pillows every night. This is her resting after a nice walk today in 31 degree weather. She was in heaven, while we were bundled in layers wishing it was 40 degrees warmer! At the end of the day, all that matters is that the baby is happy. Perhaps this is why we have decided not to have children for now. Ha!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

After the Fast

For the few of you who read about what's going on in McGreevey life, I hope you have missed us! For those of you who haven't realized we've been gone for a while...that hurts! :)

Each January and August, our church prays and fasts for 21 days as many churches do across the world. This is our second time to join the 21 days and though we struggle through some days, we are blessed when the time is completed. For 21 days, I gave up media, including tv, facebook, and blogging. These three things take up so much of my time, and I knew it would really force me to focus on my relationship with God if I gave them up. Michael gave up beer and added more focus to reading the Word...probably because I wouldn't let him watch tv! Ha! During the last 7 days, we did the Daniel fast together, which is a food fast based on the book of Daniel. As Daniel did to gain spiritual and physical strength, people who partake in the Daniel Fast abstain from meat, dairy, caffeine, sweeteners including honey, alcohol, leavened bread, and processed foods.

This was such a humbling experience for me because I realized how much I need to grow and how weak I am when it comes to giving up the pleasures in life. Though God's grace has poured out more than ever before, there are still areas in my life that keep bugging me, and this time helped me focus on these areas. I know that my heart is not always in the right place I guess you can say.

During the 21 days, I set out a prayer focus for 2012 to try and overcome some of the reoccuring issues I deal with. This year, my greatest prayer is to become more content. No matter what my circumstances are, who society says I should be, what happened in my past, and how much the people around me have, I have to grow to believe that God's timing is perfect and He has made me who I am and has placed me where I am for a reason. I struggle with contentment every day, and I can trap myself into believing I'm not good enough so easily that it's almost an art form. A lot of my past struggles with anxiety stem from this personality trait.

I am also praying to develop a grateful heart. I guess these two are one in the same because you can't really be content if you aren't grateful. I am grateful for many things in my life, don't get me wrong, but I honestly don't believe I have a truly grateful heart. I certainly don't wake up every day and thank God for the simple things; instead, I take a lot of my life for granted. Part of it is human nature, but I do want to be more intentional in this area of my life. I pray that I will be grateful for the present and learn to find at least one thing to be grateful for each day.

I am glad I took some time away to refocus, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share this time with Michael. Michael is one of the most content and grateful people I know, which is why God put us together. He shows me every day how to live better.

I hope that each of you are having a wonderful start to 2012, and I pray that God touches your life in a way unlike never before!