pictures pictures pictures

I just thought I would post pictures from what I have been up to.  You can read below what I have been doing, but if you don't want to do that then you can look at pictures!  I've done a wedding, 3 family portraits, traveled to CT and went to the beach. My niece Noelle is the red headed baby!  She is precious.

this could be long

I've been rather busy this past month.  My life has seemed like a whirlwind.  I have been wanting to write a blog for a while, but really haven't had the time nor the energy to sit down and write out what I've been doing.  

This year the 4th was very fun.  I got to hang out with a really good friend of mine for the whole day.  He even came and made it through a whole day with my dad and step-mom and stepsister's family and friends.  We played football, cooked out, watched fireworks, but really just enjoyed hanging out with each other.  The day consisted of me driving to Asheville to pick him up and driving back to drop him off late that night.  We even got together the day I was coming back to Charlotte and ate Mellow Mushroom.  I love that place and hate that there are none in Charlotte anymore.  I'm over that though since I have a friend I can drag there when I go home.

I was in Charlotte for 3 days then flew to CT for a family reunion.  Now I am normally not a nervous flyer, but for some reason this day my nerves were a little on edge.  I am sitting on the airplane about to take off when they say they need 3 people from the front to move to the back.  I guess they needed to balance out the plane since it was just for take off purposes.  The plane is older, and quite noisy.  I really prefer quiet planes.  So we are going down the runway, make it in the air, dip really far to the right, then dip really far to the left and then finally we even out.  At this point my heart is in my throat and I am freaking just a little.  My thoughts are going out of control.  People are looking at each other with puzzled faces, so I know that I am not the only one who noticed the rather scary take off.  I noticed myself getting nervous about the landing.  And the landing was TERRIBLE.  Again, people were looking at each other wondering what was going on.  That was not a very pleasant flying experience!!  The flight home was more enjoyable, and I was able to sleep, so that made everything better.

While in CT I went to NYC with my cousin, went swimming a whole bunch, acted like a kid every day, played a lot with my little cousins, took pictures and had a blast.  I really love my family.  Jonathan and Deana came and brought Noelle.  It was very fun spending time with her and letting her get to know me a little.  It's hard when I don't see her often and expect her to be ok when I hold her and she's not.  I was persistent, and it worked.  She became fond of me rather quickly.  She liked the Phelan's too.  Good thing since she is one!  She is going to fit right in with the family!  My aunt Mary Rita and Uncle Jim (my dad's brother) had the family reunion at their house.  I had so much fun.  My cousin Stacey and I were acting like crazy people in the pool.  We were doing side dives, side flips, back flips, back dives, well pretty much anything that required you to jump, turn your body in a strange way and enter into the pool.  Then best of all my cousin Shannon and I almost beat the boys at cornhole.  We lost by one point.  There was a crowd, and they were all pulling for us.  These two guys had won all day.  And then the most unlikely people almost beat them.  It was great.  Too bad we couldn't pull it off in the end. New York was amazing.  I really love that city.  There is something new to see every time you go.  This time my cousin Pam and I went to Greenwich Village, South St. Seaport, and did a water taxi.  I got lectured by a store owner about how celebrities are people and they don't like other people trying to find them or where they live, I saved my cousin from getting run over by a taxi (several times), ate at a famous pizza place (John's Pizzeria), watched some basketball near Washington Square Park, listened to a street band, walked at TON, went to NYU, saw the Statue of Liberty, went to times square, had a starbucks :-), met a couple people from Canada and talked politics, and walked a TON... it was fun though.

The next weekend I photographed a wedding in a tropical storm and did a 2 family portraits in a tropical storm too.  Needless to say, we were all really wet.  I did get some great shots though!

And then this week I've been at the Isle of Palms all week vacationing and babysitting.  It has been a fun and eventful trip.  There are 3 families here and one family has been to either Urgent Care or the ER 3 times.  INSANE.  I swam a lot in the ocean, played beach games, swam in the pool, put on a ton of sunscreen and still got sun poisoning, played with some pretty amazing kids, had great conversations with the adults, and I am really glad I was able to come.  We turned the closet in the master bedroom into my room so I didn't have to sleep on an air mattress out in the open.  It was actually very nice in there, but I am looking forward to sleeping in my bed!  I've missed that!

My life is slowing down for a while and I am looking forward to that.