I feel so grown up!

Joe and I made a huge purchase. We bought a new sofa and love seat set! This now officially makes us grown up! Don't mind that we have purchased and sold a house together, a car and yeah had a kid together. BUT new furniture? I guess I feel grown up because our old stuff was given to us by Kristie and Kenny when we got married and we were so grateful for such comfy and free furniture as a newly married couple. Those couches followed us from Glendale, CA to Denver, CO, to the storage unit we rented in Kennesaw, GA and then moved into our two places we have lived in here in Atlanta (actually 3 places counting the basement we lived in for a few months!) They were apart of us. And now they have moved on to two college room mates who I found on craigslist. I worked hard for the new couches. I put the old stuff on craigslist and dealt with all the emails of people who were interested in them. I also watched Will and Russ (two 5 year old twins) to save for our new stuff. So, yeah I feel like we are officially grown up and I am loving our new furniture! Yay!!!

I'm so excited!

September 4th I start a Precept's Bible study on 1 Thessalonians. It's an inductive Bible study that teaches you to REALLY study God's word in a way I have never been taught before. It's hard core from what I hear and requires about an hour of homework each day-YIKES! But as overwhelming or intimidating that sounds to me, I'm sooo excited to start and can't wait to dive in! I feel like I am craving a closer relationship with God and really lack reading his Word. The main reason I feel I have always had a hard time with this, is because I read The Bible most things fly over my head. There is always so much history and back round information that when you don't know what is exactly going on it tends to make no sense. So, I am hoping that this class will give me the tools to really help me study and understand whatever I read in The Bible. 1 Thessalonians is just 5 chapters and from what I have read so far as preparation it is packed with some great stuff!

My sick kid

This is what I have been seeing a lot of these days. Lot's of sad faces from my boy.

Pulling Daddy's hair.

My favorite boys

There's my sweet smiling boy.

Ohhhhh Faye!!!

Here's the thing...I hate tornado warnings, or watches or anything to do with them! Since I woke up this morning I have been glued to the T.V. because Cobb county (our county!) was under a tornado warning. Let me first explain, to the best of my knowledge, the difference between a warning and a watch. A warning is that there might possibly been a touch down of a tornado, and a watch means the news people have actually seen a funnel cloud that has touched down. So, like I said we were under warning. This crazy weather is due to Hurricane Faye. Which thank God has brought Atlanta a lot of rain, but with that comes tornadoes...I guess.

The weather people scare me because they watch and watch and watch and put all this scary stuff on the news that scares the pee out of this California girl. The scariest part is that since we moved to the new house we can't hear the warning sirens as well as we could at our last house. So, sometimes I don't even know I might be in danger!!! For example when Joe was in a staff meeting a few months ago and there was a tornado watch- there was a funnel cloud like 5 miles from us -and he sent me a text that read "You and Owen need to go to a safe place in the basement!!" Scary!! I guess that just means if the weather looks stormy I should turn off E TV and turn on the local channels right?

I would prefer earthquakes. Actually Natural disaster's are not my most favorite thing, BUT I would truly like to go through and earthquake rather then this stuff. Earthquakes are VERY scary too, but they are quick and you never know when they are coming. I hate being glued to the TV and being scared whether something bad is going to come or not.

So, thanks Faye for the rain, but not so much for the tornado stuff!

Visiting with The Hazelton's

Aynsley's foot on the left Owen's on the right! She's almost 2!!! He has huge feet!

L-O-V-E

Lauren and Owen

Sweet lil' Harper

Aynsley and her "baby Ownie" (as she nicknamed him in the hospital)

We have been so happy this week as we have had the chance to visit with our very good friends Jeremy, Audra, Aynsley and Harper! Tuesday morning Owen and I went to The Scott's house and had a nice time with just the ladies and kids. Last night we had a big family style dinner with everyone. It was just like old times, except everyone is growing up and we growing in size! We miss Jeremy and Audra so much! They are great friends to us and we were happy to get to spend such fun times with them. Hopefully we can make it up to Maryland and visit them soon!

"The Face" AND "The Cough"

Here is are two things Owen is doing that are new. Both are caught on video...He cracks me up! "The Face" as I have named it is something where he scrunches up his nose and eyes trying to be cute. And well "the cough" is a fake cough he does to get our attention.

Ohhhhh no!

So, Owen is in his pack n play this morning enjoying some time with his blocks and his airplane and I was on the computer checking my email. Well, I hear Owen getting real quite and and the sound of his velcro type thing on his diaper. So I get up and check on the little guy and sure enough his diaper was almost all the way off and he was just chillin' with ALL himself out of the diaper! Oh no!!! It is starting already! Note to self: no more hanging out around the house in just a diaper for Owen!

6 Months!!!

I cannot believe yesterday Owen turned 6 months old! Time has flown by and he is such a joy in our lives. He now is army crawling ALL over the place and is into everything! He is eating all kinds of veggies and fruits. He is sitting up by himself if you put him that position. He is babbling Ma, Da and Ba sounds. Most of all he is sooooo happy! We just love him to pieces and are so grateful for his life and the sweet sweet blessing that he is.

6 months ago when we first met Owen.

My sweet Love Bug-So Yummy!

A walk on the Comet

Yesterday evening me, Joe, Charlie and Owen went for a family walk on the Silver Comet. It was a good time and the scenery was gorgeous. We went at about 6ish so the sun was setting a bit and it was great weather!

A view from the bridge we walked on.

A sleepy O

Joe and our Pup Charlie.

My Crazy Boy

Welcome to the world Olivia Grace

I'm so happy to announce the birth of our friend's, Summer and Rob Hathcock's, baby girl Olivia Grace! Olivia was born last night a little after 9:30pm. This is a special little girl with a sweet spot in all our hearts. Her daddy is serving our country in Iraq. He has been gone the majority of Summer's pregnancy, but thankfully came home last week for the baby's birth. The delivery went well and our small group is going to visit them all in the hospital this evening. Pictures to follow...yay God!

It's gonna be a WICKED fun 26th birthday!

That's right people my man is taking me to see Wicked for my birthday in September. I know I have a few more weeks before it is my birthday, but we just bought tickets the other day. YAY!! I can't wait, a lot of my family in California saw the show recently and loved it. I now have to download the soundtrack so I can know all the songs. We are going with our dear friend's Megan and Frank and i can't wait to sing the songs with Megan and embarrass our husbands. It will be great!

I Love Sweet Addy

We have a sweet old lady who lives next door to us and we love her! Joe loves her (he blogs about her too www.peoplearemyart.wordpress.com/), I love her and Owen really loves her-he always tries to steal her glasses. When we first moved in she came truckin' up our long drive way and up our stairs with her cane-how cute huh? She's 87 years old and she said she needed to take a rest and hold and love on Owen after that walk (like I said LOVE her) but the sweetest part is she made us a lemon meringue pie as welcome to the neighborhood treat-who does that anymore, I guess old only people in the South!

Last week we were busy packing up the car getting ready to leave for our weekend away to the lake and Addy yelled over to Joe if he could do her favor. So, the nice guy that he is went over to help her with what he thought was going to be a quick favor. But little did he know he was getting suckered into cleaning out her gutters on her house! I had no idea what was going on and was getting annoyed in the house thinking to myself "gosh how long does it take to pack our car!" Me and Owen were just about ready so I went down stairs and found him all sweaty and explaining how he just had to help Addy. How could I get mad??? So, fast forward t0 Wednesday afternoon and the doorbell rings. Who could it be other than Sweet Addy. This time she had an apple pie in her hands to thank Joe for cleaning out the gutters. Again, only in the South...

My favorite day of the week

Oh, how I love Friday's! Friday's are one of Joe's days off. Sunday is a work day for the staff at church so the wonderful leadership gives the staff Friday's off-and I am so thankful for that. Friday's mean a lot for The Braun family. A lot of the times it means I get to sleep in and Joe wakes up with Owen and does the morning routine with him: diaper changes, feeding him breakfast etc. Oh how I loe sleeping in, plus it's a nice break when I do the morning routine pretty much every other day of the week. I try to schedule doctor appointments for those days so we can go as a family. We try to run errands together-especially to our favorite store Costco. But most important we always try to do something special as a family.

Today, we went to Argyle Elementary School and the staff and their family's served the school's staff a yummy lunch from Moe's to let them know how much we appreciate their hard work that they do for the kiddos in our community. The schools in Smyrna-well most of Georgia-pretty much stink! The funding is just not happening and this particular school can only afford the minimal amount of janitorial services. Which means the poor kid's bathrooms tend to be dirty and it's just sad. So, our church has adopted this school and helps them with cleaning up, doing painting, landscaping and loving on the staff who do such a wonderful job loving on the kids.

So, this is why I love Friday's!

A couple funny pics

This picture cracks me up because Owen will rarely smile for the camera-so he has a goofy look on his face. Plus, he is now big enough for his booster seat. We don't have a highchair and will be using this cute seat for mealtimes. BTW Owen's fav foods are: Bananas, Peaches, Avocado, Peas, Sweet Potatoes, and Squash! Not a big fan of Green Beans or his cereal without cinnamon sprinkled in it-crazy kid!

I love taking pictures of him while he sleeps. He always looks so precious and peaceful. He LOVES his green blankie our friends Tim and Mariah gave him as well as his wabbanub (a green frog that has a binkie attached to it) that Auntie got for him. He sleeps with both everyday.

Sometimes I catch him in funny positions or doing something funny in his sleep, like cozying his crib bumper in this picture.

Some lake in Alabama

Daddy and Owen sharing sweet lake time.

Sweet Ty Ty!! Love this kid!

The boys planning with all the fun toys.

This is Ann and her boy Logan (funniest kid I know) We both LOVE being mom's of boys!

Mommy and Owen enjoying a fun boat ride!Beauty

This past weekend we had an excellent opportunity to hang out with our good friends The Carr's and The Pinson's at the lake. I don't think I ever got a clear answer of what the lake was called hince the title of this post, but we went to The Carr's: Jon, Ann and Logan's family's lake house. It was absolutley beautiful. It was a big enough place for all three of our families to comfortably stay at, it was right on the lake, we had a boat and two jet ski's at our finger tips, yummy food and lots of good family time. It was so much fun to watch Owen enjoying the big boys. He is a big fan of big boys. He loves watching any big boy run and walk all around, and he loves watching them play with their big boy toys. He had lots of fun with Logan and Tyler. They are so good with him and so sweet to him too. Oh and the boy is allergic to Water Babies Sunscreen. See the redness?