a little delayed...

but i have good reason. see, i wanted to include some pictures from this weekend, but i took them all on the little camera that i keep in my purse. and the cord for that camera? yeah, it looks like this now:
there are some important parts of this cord that are now no longer attached, thanks to pepper. so i had to wait until i bought a card reader this afternoon before i could upload those pictures. sad thing--she did this right in front of us while we weren't paying attention. always notice when the dog is a little too quiet.

also, we decided to buy a new kong this week for pepper. we were hoping a larger one would keep her from putting these toys under the couch and then digging them out, in turn tearing up the underside of the sofa. so we bought the red one this weekend, a size up from the turquoise one in this picture.
it still fits under the couch. fail. i'm thinking staple gun to put the lining back on the underside of the couch, and maybe putting rolled up towels to keep the toys out? our poor couch.

so, we had a very uneventful friday night with justin working late and sudden downpours that made it a good evening to stay in and eat take-out. on saturday, justin got up early and tracked down his palm pre while i slept in and enjoyed a lazy saturday morning. once he got back and we were ready to go out, we went and tossed around a few options with u.s. cellular about the best way to get my blackberry later on this month. after another quick trip to the mall and petsmart, it was time to head towards raleigh to eat at the pit.
my brother just recently ate at the pit and decided it was the place to take dad for an early father's day outing. dad has heard about ed mitchell and has been wanting to go to his restaurant for a while, and THEN after it was featured on "bobby flay's throwdown" on the food network last week--well, we just couldn't miss out.

we got to see the huge grills outside the building, including the "pitmaster" that was featured on the show the previous week.
they had a great selection of meals, including chopped and pulled pork bbq and some delicious ribs, as well as great southern sides like baked beans, mac and cheese and fried okra. so good! we made reservations, which was helpful, because there were a LOT of people waiting to get in. i love the downtown raleigh area--this was in a different neighborhood, several blocks away from the city market/moore st. park area where we've typically gone. but it definitely had its own personality! i loved the cobblestone sidewalks and colorfully painted window and door frames.
we stopped by alan and rachel's place after dinner and got to visit with bella and chester again. bella is lots of fun to play with, especially with her kitten antics and energy.

sunday was one of our full days of church and chores. it started off with this impromptu story-telling session before sunday school. we were all hanging out up in the loft, and it turned into all of the kids coming in and listening as everyone shared stories about the weekend or past camp experiences. we always find a way to have fun, and i love how relaxed the group dynamic is.
funny thing is--we're also pretty impulsive. which means we started out our "planning session" that morning by talking about the renovations we want to do in the loft and ended it by taking down all of the ceiling tiles in the worship room until we had a pile of insulation about five feet high in the middle of the floor. just to see what it would look like. it has definite potential... (pictures of that later, i'm sure.)
then it was worship, lunch, laundry, coupon-cutting, grocery shopping, girls ministry group, small group and back home to get ready for the week. see what i mean by church and chores? i love it, though. especially when i have an awesome session with the teen girls AND get to hold ayden at small group. it's those little things that make it all worthwhile.

today was amber's birthday at work. we had an awesome lunch at olive garden, where she got the traditional singing and birthday cake...

i was proud of my handiwork here--nice writing, right?and we celebrated again tonight at bw3's with some of her "outside of work" friends. always a good time with this group :)

and now i'm about to crash. i can't believe how quickly the weekend went by. i can't believe the school year is over. so excited to get in our summer schedule and so excited that i get to see matt, patrice and jonah this weekend (yay!) and visit with maggie and baxter (woo hoo!)

what are you excited about?