What We'll Miss About Living in Atlanta (The LIst)

1.  Our friends.  Obviously.  (I'm not going to go into detail about that now because then I might slip into the "ugly cry," and I'm too tired to ugly cry right now.) (Also, I've gotten much closer to my cousin who lives here, and I hate that I won't see her as often, too.)

2.  Our church.  Goodness, we love our church.  We've learned there, grown there, made friends there, worshiped there, led/been part of small groups there.  I think we are saddest about the fact that Amelia will miss out on the great programs they have for kids.  The one consolation is that -- while we plan to find a church home in BR -- we can watch online. (Also...on a side note...Andy Stanley's current series "Christian" might be my FAVORITE series of all time.  You can listen to / watch it online.  After every sentence out of his mouth, I want to say "WORD.")

3.  QT.  You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

4.  Seasons.  I have loved having all four seasons here, especially fall with all of its orange and yellows. :-)

5.  Seasonal festivities.  From pumpkin patches to the Pink Pig, I love that there are all those kinds of traditional things to do here.

6.  Lots of stuff to do.  Braves games, musicals, museums, the Aquarium...Atlanta has it.  In spades.

7.  Our house.  Bless its heart, we tried to sell it three times, so maybe it felt unloved.  The third time was the charm, I guess.  This has been a good home to us, though, and when I think of all the memories here -- celebrating holidays, doing everyday life, bringing Amelia home from the hospital -- well, I could go into the ugly cry mode again.  So I'll stop there.

8.  Some yummy eateries, primarily Dutch Monkey Doughnuts, Chuy's, and Rico's.  True, we are going somewhere with delicious restaurants, but sadly, these three aren't there. :-(

I feel like I'm leaving something out.  What am I leaving out???

Edited to Add:  I thought of two more...

9.  Publix.  For reals.  Love me some Publix.

10.  My hairstylist (who has no website).  A good hairstylist is golden.  After going from one pricey salon to another, I visited Kelley on the recommendation of my friend Jess.  Kelley works with a friend in the basement of her friend's house (that might sound shady, but it isn't...).  She's so sweet, and I've been going to her for about six years.  (And her prices are great!)

A Big Move...Literally

A couple of weeks ago I alluded to something "big" going on in our lives.  Well, here it is:

We are moving back to Baton Rouge.  Saturday.

We're excited.  We're ready to go.  We're also nervous because it is a big life change.  And of course we are sad at leaving the place we've called home for the past nine-plus years.  And the friends we are leaving?  Well, I don't even want to talk about that right now.

It's kind of a long story at how we have arrived at this decision, but for the sake of brevity, I'll spare you lots of details.

Basically, the story is this: I have a very likely opportunity (that has been unofficially-but-should-soon-be-officially confirmed) to return to the job I once had as a full-time college instructor.  While I enjoyed teaching high school for the seven years that I did it, I felt that I wasn't really balancing motherhood and teaching to my satisfaction after Amelia was born.  I often found myself wishing that I could go back to a college teaching schedule for the sake of being a more involved mother, but honestly, full-time instructor positions seem to be a rarity in these parts.

My friend Martha jokingly mentioned that she bet I could get my old job back if we returned to Baton Rouge.  I laughed it off at first, but then Darryl and I started talking about it.  And the more we talked about it, the more we were drawn to the idea for many reasons besides just employment for me.  (I'll get into those in a later post this week.)  I got in touch with the people I needed to get in touch with, and the ball started rolling from there.

But we were skeptical.

We'd have to sell our house in a terrible market.  We got a contract on our house in about 45 days.

We'd have to find a place we liked for Amelia to go to school.  We found it.

Darryl would have to get approval to work from a remote location.  He got it.

Things just started falling into place, and we are certain that this is the right move for us to make at this season in our lives.

There are several things I feel the need to clarify, though...

1.  We do not feel that we made a mistake in moving to Atlanta when we did.  This isn't a case of "Atlanta isn't for us, so let's move back to what is familiar."  We have loved living here, so much so that we told ourselves in the beginning that if this Baton Rouge move didn't work out, we would be just fine here.  And that is the truth.  I can't even get into the things we've gained from living here, but we are so grateful for the experiences we've had in the past nine years.

2.  We know there is some truth in "you can't go home again." We know places change.  People change.  People who were our friends before might not have much in common with us now.  On the flip side, I suspect people we weren't good friends with before might have more in common with us now.  We are not expecting life to be just like it was when we left.

3.  No job is perfect.  Every job has its flaws; it all comes down to the flaws you can live with and the ones you can't.  I vividly remember the yucky parts of college teaching, but you know what?  I can live with them.

4.  No place is perfect.  Atlanta is too spread out and has too much traffic.  But you know what?  Baton Rouge has some gross humidity, y'all.  (Darryl is pumped about it.  I, with the naturally wavy/crazy hair, am NOT.)

So that's the big news.  And I'll have some more posts this week about things related to the move.  Keep us in your thoughts, though...we've got a lot to get done this week!

Easter

My parents had Amelia the week before Easter, but they brought her back to us on Good Friday and spent Easter weekend with us.

We had a lot of fun dyeing eggs. They weren't the prettiest eggs in the world, but Amelia surely had a lot of fun decorating them!



This year, we went to church on Saturday night instead of on Easter Sunday. I dressed Amelia up in her Easter dress anyway. :-) (And when I arrived at church, I realized that other mothers had the same idea. Ha!)

Amelia, however, wasn't really up for just standing still and posing, so...








On Sunday, Amelia woke up to discover that the Easter Bunny had paid a visit.


We had a yummy lunch, and later that afternoon, my cousin Vicky came by for some Easter dessert and to watch Amelia hunt eggs. Amelia LOVED hunting eggs. :-)






It was a fun Easter weekend!!

Stuff that Happened Before Easter

That's a clever title, is it not?

Here's just some random stuff that happened while I was on my unexpected blogging break.

Amelia and I took advantage of the nice weather by doing things like going to the park.


We went to a birthday party, where Amelia enjoyed a little Wii Rock Band action. The bare feet and pigtails made me think of Taylor Swift. (By the way, this was an indoor playground facility, so she had to take off her shoes. Just didn't want you to think my child's barefootedness is a common occurrence outside the house.)


Darryl and I celebrated our 13th Anniversary. While we didn't do anything "grand" on the actual day, we did get an opportunity to go to Baton Rouge while my parents had Amelia, and we ate with our friends Rebecca and Damian at Commander's Palace. Darryl took this photo en route from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

A) Yep. We are totally sitting with girls in the back, guys in the front. B) I was busy telling Darryl what kind of photo I wanted him to take. Because I'm like that.

Anyway.

Here's a cool "Making of Bananas Foster" photo.

Also, it should be noted that Rebecca does not always wear a paper chef's hat on her head. It was her birthday, and apparently a paper chef's hat is Commander's Palace's sombrero for birthday celebrations. (The waitstaff did NOT, much to Rebecca's relief, gather around the table to sing.)

And while I'm on the subject of food, might I just say that beignets and I were reacquainted after a long, approximately 10-year separation. I had these at a place called Coffee Call, and they were DELICIOUS.

"Reunited and it feels so good..."

Anyway, those are just some of the goings on over the past few weeks. I promise to put a post up about Easter soon...at least before Thanksgiving. :-)

I'm Still Around

I apologize to my five or so readers for my spontaneous blog break.

There's a lot of stuff going on right now, but I'm not ready to write about it. (I just committed one of my own pet peeves...being vague about something and not giving full disclosure. My response in my mind is typically, "Then why did you bring it up at all???" I just wanted you to know that I have been busy because of all this stuff, and I will spill the whole story soon. Also, just to relieve any curiosity, I'm NOT pregnant, and Darryl and I are still happily married. So you can rule out pregnancy and divorce.)

And my parents have Amelia this week until Friday, so I have relegated myself to the task of going through Amelia's baby clothes. Darryl and I have decided that IF we have another baby (not ruling out that possibility, but we're no spring chickens, either), it would probably be cheaper to just buy new stuff again rather than to pay to store all these clothes. Seriously, with the exception of a few things I gave away through the years, I think I have every article of clothing Amelia has worn. I could open my own boutique!

Anyway, I was afraid I would be smelling every outfit and fighting back tears through this process, but I've held it together very well. The hardest things to go through are the tiny Newborn and 3 Months clothes. Was she ever that small??? Anyway, I'm pushing through and getting it done!

More blogging soon!