Years ago, my dad’s family lived and ran a farm in Southern Florida. He’s got a heart for animals bigger than life and a thumb greener than the Jolly Green’s. Last year, he built a fence in my parent’s backyard to house a garden and this year, he planted like, everything! He’s a total farmer through and through.
Over the past few months, my mom and sister have been texting me images of the giant and oversized zucchini that my dad’s garden have been producing. Their counter is overflowing with fresh goodness that also includes bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and green beans. The corn is coming soon and the lettuce already passed its harvest! I’m pretty impressed with this guy, let me tell you (the one on the left is my dad, he’s just posing with his buddy)!
I was answering a question in a favorite online community today about “Why I love where I live” and I had to really think about that one (you haven’t had a photo tour yet, so just you wait and see WHAT the excitement is out here at Edwards), and then the answer was clear to me: Family. I’m convinced the Lord knows better than me how being so close to my family provides a sense of security and happiness- maybe even joy! We are a mere hour and a half from my folks and a three-ish hour to my mother-in-law’s. I LOVE that living here means being so close to them (not to mention a whole lot of good folks that we know from years past)!
And my life is definitely better with this farmer guy closer by, maybe he’ll be able to help my black thumb turn a little bit more on the leafy side, too. Love you, Peeps. Good job on that garden there 
When it’s all said and done, Andy won’t even be home for 48 hours this weekend (he’s home for our older girls’ dance recital), but as you can see, Lauren is making every moment home with him count.
We headed up to 
We headed outdoors for a walk along the trail. I would call it “hiking” but we exerted almost little to no extra energy so a walk it was. The paths were surrounded by a gorgeous mixture of Virginia Bluebells and other greenery.
We later drove over to the farm to see the baby goats, lambs and pigs that were born recently. Here’s Sarah doing another activity she loves: Cartwheels.
Oh– Lauren, too. Hey, keepin’ it real here. We’re not always sunshine and smiles…
2. Opry Mills was a perfect destination for dinner and right next door was the famous Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center. This is just a shot of the INside – Sarah totally requested that we stay here during our next visit to Nashville. We’ll start pinching our pennies now!
3. Top destination point on the girls’ list was the 
4. We wound up at 
5. The 
6. The Nashville Zoo has nothing on the San Diego Zoo as far as animals on display, but it did have this hungry giraffe that made me laugh and the most oversized outdoor play structure that I lost my kids in. Multiple times.
7.
8. Did I mention that I wanted to go somewhere south that was (hopefully) warmer than Dayton usually is during Spring Break? They are about 3-4 weeks ahead of us on plant life blooming, I was happy to see so many beautiful flowers at 
9. It was a perfect spot to do a 2nd annual Spring Break photo of the girls and me:
There was a speech and some introductions, but let’s get down to it- the announcement of the graduates! I became fast friends with a lady in red as I got in as close as I could without bothering other audience members to get this obligatory shot of Andy shaking hands with General W. upon receiving his diploma (for the “love me” wall, of course):
Are you wondering where my husbandly is? He is
I couldn’t be more proud of this guy- I believe graduate school is tough enough, let alone a family vying for your attention in addition to that. I know he feels incredibly blessed for this opportunity here at AFIT and we can probably say without too much reservation, we’re glad to have made it to this side. Congratulations, Andy!
Love it.
If you would like to see the individual pictures in the mosaic, you can visit our 
We might be here for the rest of the month if I chatted up this past week’s fun. In the interest of time and space, here’s a little glimpse into our fun-filled Hallmark holiday… the girls enjoyed making cupcakes, potato stamp painting, sharing Valenitne’s with their classmates and waking up to a table of handmade cards by their daddy. Speaking of- can you see that stinker checking out his iPhone while pretending to kiss me?
The snow made an appearance over the past few days. It’ s been quite beautiful to view and surely helps fend off the frustration of the winter months’ cold. We have all been venturing out- busy shoveling, sledding and snow-shoeing around (I made the last part up, we’re lucky we have boots that fit). I grabbed a few items to make a snow girl with my girls. But, as it turns out, I’m a little bit of a control freak when it comes to trying to build a snow girl- especially since no one told me there’s a learning curve with what snow type to use. We didn’t have a variety of wet and packed or dry and fluffy, so I made do and we dressed her. Let’s pretend that we spilled some snow on it and had to take it off for the picture.