Catching up...

Wow... once again I've failed to blog for an extended period of time. I get in these pockets of crazy busy in all aspects of my life and so this poor little blog has to take a back seat.

First and foremost, I am still thanking God every day for keeping my parents and my house in Birmingham safe during the tornado craziness that hit three weeks ago. The tornadoes went above and below the town I grew up in and where my parents live now. The map below was emailed to me by my mom - the blue dots represent everywhere a tornado touched down and the red dot is where my parents live. Insane.

I was on the phone with my dad as we watched the tornado go through downtown Birmingham -- and I'm pretty sure The Weather Channel was broadcasting from the balcony of my wedding reception venue.

It's been very sad to see updates from my Alabama friends on Facebook - everyone was posting photos and videos of all of the damage after it was over. So sad how random tornadoes can be.

Central Alabama has always been notorious for tornadoes - growing up I remember always being woken up in the middle of the night and going down to the basement. I don't ever remember it being as bad as this though... Truly heartbreaking. It really puts a lot of things into perspective.

On a happier note, we had our engagement photos taken! Yay! First a vintage shoot in downtown Charleston - very Mad Men-esque -- and then a casual shoot on the beach. The photos turned out amazing! I haven't gotten the full CD yet, but here are some sneak peeks:

Then we had a short week and then took off for our annual Emerald Isle, NC beach trip with our friends. It's always a fun, relaxing, get-away-from-it-all trip... we couldn't have asked for better weather. I was inspired by our engagement photo shoot and decided to play around with my ring and our Clemson rings to get some photos on the beach.

We completely forgot to get any pictures of our Clemson rings, and the lighting wasn't so great during the sunset to get pictures of my ring... so I decided to give it a try myself and I am very happy with the results! Our engagement photos photographer asked me to send them to her so she can play around with them, etc. I especially love the Clemson ring photos!

You should have seen the poses I was making on the beach to get these pictures, lol.. my butt was straight up in the air. All of our friends on the trip were laughing at me the whole time...but I don't care, it was worth it! :)

This week has been busy with work and wedding stuff - I finally finished our wedding website and Save the Dates are going out by this weekend! My goal - it shall get done!

How is everyone's week going? I have so much blog catching up to do... sorry I've been MIA with my comments... not that I'm ever good at that anyways. Sigh. :(

Just taking it one day at a time...