Long Overdue!

So...it has been MONTHS since the last post (oops). Life just seems to get in the way and consume any amount of free time possible! You would think I have a house full of kids to care for, a job that travels a lot, or that I work 80 hours a week...I have none of the above, but am amazed how busy life can get!

So, here's what we've been up to the last few months!

I guess we need to go all the way back to November! I left off right before my second half marathon.  My first race was in 2010 in Wilmington with Mariana and Leslie. This one, I did on my own--there were many times that I considered not registering, but Justin talked me out of that. I did a personal best of exactly 2 hours! This race was in Charlotte and is also a Boston Marathon qualifying race, so there were so many people right there with me trying to break 2 hours. This was a great race that I'm thinking about trying again this November---would love to do it with a group this time!

Then of course, home for the holidays! This year was my "off" year for holidays, so I didn't have to work on Thanksgiving or Christmas. With my new (and quite awesome) schedule, I have Fridays off--so we made a long weekend out of it! We did our traditional Thanksgiving Day and then headed to Swansboro for the weekend.

This is probably my favorite place...and we were given some amazing sunsets!

Christmas was much more rushed! We were only able to come home for a total of 42 hours...maybe...with two family gatherings and two grandparent gatherings, it gets very busy! Don't get me wrong--we feel SO blessed to have this problem and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world! My family is pretty flexible, so we started a new tradition of the Gourleys coming to Charlotte for our own little Christmas celebration. Even with a few tiny major plumbing issues, I think we have started a new family tradition!

Granny's tradition of taking the family on a trip continues---this year was Cancun and it was pretty awesome! We have done a bunch of trips to different places--this one was probably my favorite. We spent most of the day sitting by the pool--a nice break from freezing temperatures in Charlotte!

For New Years Eve we rang in the new year at a concert of our favorite band--The Avett Brothers. The concert was amazing! The end of 2012 could not have been better!

So fast-forward to March (where does time go?!?)

Friday, Justin was given ACC Tournament tickets from a co-worker so we made our way to Greensboro. This was my first tournament game and it was really fun! There are so many fans from different schools---each as passionate as the next! NC State won that game and we headed to Kiawah Island after.  Grant had a conference and invited us to join him! The weather was perfect and we found plenty to do!

Saturday, we drove to Charleston and found a bar to watch the State game (that wasn't the fun part).  After licking our wounds, we went through the market, got ice cream, you know...any and everything touristy!

This morning, we woke up and got bikes to ride around Kiawah and on the beach---I was sad to leave, especially knowing that the weather is going back to the 50s for the rest of the week!