Trip to see two of our favorite people ever

Y'all, I promise to get on the blogging-bandwagon after this semester is over. This semester is notoriously the hardest and most time-consuming. Plus, my qualifying exam is coming up. So, long story short - IT'S BUSY!! Hence, my severe lack of blogging.  But this week I seemed to have caught a "fun" bug that has placed me in bed for two days straight.  This provides an excellent opportunity to catch up on blogging. Prepare for the onslaught of catch up posts.  To start it off, I will tell you about the awesomeness of Mark and Gayla - of course, if you're regular readers then you already know how awesome they are!

Before the semester started (I know, I know - it's been that long), Bella and I went on a girly trip to Sumter. This was her sweet face when we were getting in the car. Can't you just eat her up? I love this little gal so much.

We had a great time catching up with our friends at "Mark and Gayla's church", as Bella calls it - otherwise known as ADBC.  We sure have some special people there that we love. We also stayed up way too late every night talking about anything and everything. Bella found her new BFF in Gayla. I think they colored 438 pages in her coloring books and played the matching game 29 times.

I also got booted out at bedtime when she wanted Gayla to read books to her.

I also was very excited about taking Bella to Swan Lake in Sumter before we came home. Mike and I enjoyed going there when we lived in Sumter - so, it was fun to take our little gal here.  Unfortunately, it wasn't as dreamy as I thought it would be. The next picture is of sweet Bella saying hi to the swans  - before it attacked her! Those little boogers move quick! It grabbed her turtleneck and would NOT let go. Thank goodness she had a thick turtleneck on or it probably would have hurt her worse. I didn't know what to do - so I did what all other mothers would do. I grabbed her and "made" the swan let go. I'm usually a nice person - but if you mess with my kids all bets are off.  Poor little thing was so traumatized.  We got in the car and she said, "I'm never going to the lake again".  Grrr, I was so mad at that swan. But some ice cream and lots of talking about what the swan did made it better.

Mark and Gayla, thanks so much for such a great time, as always. Y'all are very special to us!

(This next picture was taken before the mean-swan attacked her, obviously).