We Love Savannah, But She Doesn't Love Us Back

I’ve come to realize that this blog is a lot like the Coke down here. Up until a few weeks ago, all my Coke Zero cans said “Share a Coke Zero with a Reindeer”. Which makes me laugh every time because I try to imagine a reindeer holding a can. I’ve been hanging out with too many 4-year olds.  And now all the cans have football helmets, in preparation for the Super Bowl that was 3 weeks ago. In March, we’ll finally see the Valentine’s Day promotions. I secretly love it—like we’re not ever being subject to Coke’s marketing schemes. So take that, evil corporation! Although, I think they have the last laugh since I’m addicted to their product. Anyway, I’m always blogging about our trips and adventures a month or two or more after it actually happened, so hopefully you can still enjoy the Coke even though it’s a little too late.

For our 5^th anniversary, we decided to hop on a plane down to Savannah, GA and spend a few days there. It was great to be on our own and to be able to just play for 4 days straight. We somehow managed to have the worst luck imaginable while still not ruining the whole trip. First of all, we slept through our alarm, so we woke up to my Dad knocking on our door saying “Time to go!” And I never snooze my alarm. I wasn’t even conscious of doing it. I honestly think my Fitbit was screwing with us. I usually can’t sleep very well the night before a flight because I have nightmares about missing the flight or forgetting my toothbrush. Yes, I am psychotic, but I’ve never missed a flight except when it was the airline’s fault. We raced to the airport and even had a few minutes to spare to go in the family bathroom and brush our teeth and wash our faces.

Then, when we go to get our rental car in Savannah, they give us a truck. Actually, not just a truck. A decked-out four-door Dodge Ram. Billy was giddy, until the first time he tried to find parking for that bad boy. So, that was an adventure. Then, we take our pimped-out ride to check into our hotel, but we weren’t allowed to check in until 11. Luckily, we had the massive truck, so carrying our one suitcase around was no big deal. Shout out to the light packers over here—us—we fit all our stuff into one carry-on and we each had a small backpack. I’m raising the roof as I type this. I did really need a shower after being on a plane, but Billy already knows what my stench smells like, so that was manageable. After going to McDonald’s to get some Diet Coke and some WiFi to tell my family we made it, we headed into historic Savannah. We strolled through Forsyth Park (how do you not stroll through a park?) and explored some of the squares and tried to map out our game plan for tackling Savannah. It was a beautiful 80-degree day, and the charm of the South was already rubbing off on me. Everyone just seems so happy and friendly.

After a while, we get back in the Ram to head towards the waterfront to find some food. We find a free parking space (hallelujah!) and I go to grab my phone. Not in my purse, or my back pocket. We do a strip search of the entire truck—which took quite a while because our suitcase was still in there and I had changed in the back, so our crap was everywhere. At this point I’m starting to panic, because my life is in that shitty iPhone 5. It may not have an American phone number or data plan, but that gem keeps me on Instagram when living in a foreign country. And I hadn’t backed it up in forever, so all my pictures on there would be lost forever. Such a tragedy. Then, I start thinking about how I would need to get a new one—which I’ve obviously been whining for a 6, so that was kind of fun to think about. But then I remembered that we have to go back to Grenada and they’ll probably charge me duties on a new phone, plus the electricity has fried all of our electronics, and none of them can hold a charge anymore, so it’s probably not worth it to bring down a new one. So, all these thoughts in a matter of 30 seconds led me to believe that I would be phoneless for our last term and I was doomed. I’m telling you guys, my anxiety/inclination to exaggerate is real.

Billy had the bright idea to retrace our steps. Which, me being the optimistic person that I am, I scoffed at. I knew I had it on the way to the park, because we used my GPS. (Side note: for any international travelers that don’t have international service—we use the maps.me app where you can download a whole country or state before your trip and then you can navigate without having service. It’s been a lifesaver for us in Grenada, Virginia, and Georgia since we don’t have data. Although, using it in DC is a nightmare. The roads are all so close together that it gives you a headache). ANYWAY, I was guessing that my phone had probably fallen out of my pocket at the park, and we walked all over the place, so there’s no way to tell where exactly it happened.  Plus, after the day that Billy left my Hydroflask water bottle in class, and someone stole it, I lost all my faith in humanity. I still keep my eye out for the person on campus sipping out of a 40 oz black bottle. Watch your back, thief.

So, we head back to the park, and I see how many people are out and about and I’m convinced all is lost. My only hope is if we can find it on the ground in the parking lot—preferably not run over. We get to the parking lot and I’m crawling all over the asphalt—in white jeans, I might add. That’s how desperate I was. But I didn’t see it anywhere. Then I decide I’m going to go ask the cafe next to the parking lot if anyone turned in a phone. In retaliation for my previous scoffing, Billy scoffed at that idea. But I figured that’s what I would do if I found a phone at the park—unless it was a 6, then I’d keep it. Since I’m already planning out my next step if this café idea fails, I’m contemplating waiting all day for all the cars there to leave so I can see if it was under their tires. I go into the café and wait in line to ask the lady. I ask her, “Did someone turn in a pho…?” She doesn’t even let me finish my sentence, she just smiles and hands my phone to me. That glorious, malfunctioning, half-day battery phone! Someone had found it in the parking lot and came to turn it in. I could have kissed her on the mouth, I was so happy! I considered asking if there was an iPhone 6 there too, just in case, but thought I’d better not. So, that was our first experience of strangers in the South, and it left quite an impression. Or maybe they just didn’t want it since it’s only a 5 and it doesn’t have any service. Either way, I was so relieved!

Our next day in Savannah, we woke up early to go golfing. We got a killer deal at this nice course, so we were pretty excited. I mean, it wasn’t Augusta National or anything, but we pretended. We rented clubs even though I hate not using my own. Tommy Armour’s for life, baby! And they gave us 6 balls each to play with. More than enough, right? Except that for some reason, we kept losing our balls. We ran out of all the balls they gave us (12) on the 12^th hole. It’s not even that we were playing badly and hitting them into the water or woods (although there’s always some of that going on)—it’s that we literally could not find our balls in the grass. And we’re pretty good at finding balls since we’re so cheap and like to pocket them. So, we ran out of balls completely in the middle of the 12^th hole, and are kind of at a loss of what to do—this had never happened before! We’re on the hole the farthest away from the shop, so we make the long trek back to the clubhouse and Billy forces me to go in to buy some more balls. In our relationship, I always have to do the awkward human interactions or else Billy will just freeze up or forget what he’s there for. When I get in there, the worker who rented us our clubs asks, “So, how’d you like the course?”, assuming we had already finished our round. I turned bright red and had to admit that we lost all our balls and needed to buy some more. He felt really awkward and didn’t make eye contact with me after that.

I almost forgot to mention that there’s a reason our early tee time was so cheap. Dew! There was slurpy, wet, morning dew all over the course. Which didn’t mix well with the gooey Georgia dirt.  I would go to hit a ball and mud would spray all over my face. I’ve never been so filthy after a round of golf. But the worst stroke of bad luck (see what I did there?) we had all day was when we saw the Trump campaign plane land. Just seeing that plane ruined my whole golf game. Billy thinks it’s funny to act like he supports Trump and chants “Trump, Trump, Trump!” just to bother me. At least, for the sake of our marriage, I hope he does it to bother me. I can barely even handle being married to a republican, but if he liked the Donald, I think it might push me over the edge.

Ever since we got back, we were asked if we ate at the Paula Deen restaurant. No, we did not. I thought everyone was boycotting her cause she was racist? Or was that just in 2013? But, we DID eat at The Olde Pink House at Planter’s Inn, which was divine. Our entrees were delicious, but my favorite dish was the BLT salad that was recommended by our waiter. This celebrity salad was featured on the show on Food Network called, “The Best Thing I Ever Ate”. It had fried green tomatoes, with brown sugar baked bacon, and a buttermilk thyme dressing. I don’t know if you can even call it a salad. It’s 9AM and I’m salivating over a salad.

When we travel, I have a rule that we can’t eat at any chain restaurants (except for getting my morning Diet Coke from Mickey D’s of course). I want to experience the local cuisine and enjoy places that I couldn’t enjoy at home. I’ll admit we did get Chipotle once in Savannah because we can’t get it in Grenada and because it’s Chipotle, duh. Yelp is our best friend. Every time we stray from Yelp, we are disappointed in our meal. One does not simply see a conveniently located restaurant and decide whether you want to eat there. Ambiance does not equal good food. And we travel so much, you would think we would learn by now. But our stomachs always win over and force us to stop at the next restaurant we see.

We also got suckered into waiting in line at Leopold’s Ice Cream. No matter what time you go—when they open at 11 or close at 10, there is a line wrapped around the block. We were intrigued by it—it’s got to be worth it, right? So, we waited in line for 45 minutes to eat some really good ice cream. I wouldn’t say that it’s something you HAVE to eat in Savannah (the BLT salad, you HAVE to eat), but you kind of need to wait in the line just to experience the anticipation and excitement of wondering, “Is this ice cream going to make me a better person?”, or “Has my whole life been preparing me for this very moment?” I’m of the political belief that you can never go wrong with ice cream (except the ice cream they make in Grenada). So, I won’t say that I was disappointed. But for the $8 ice cream cone I had, I was a little let down that I couldn’t see through walls or increase my vertical jump larger than my measly 6 inches. But, I’ll also add that we waited in line again the next day. And kindly note that we are accustomed to service in Grenada, so a 45-minute wait for ice cream is nothing to us.

Savannah really is so romantic. Or maybe I should say dreamy. I’ve heard people describe places as “romantic” before, and I’ve never really understood it. Like, does everyone just walk around constantly wanting to tear each other’s clothes off? That sounds kind of dangerous. Or does it mean that everyone is so in love, they break into song and dance like in the musicals? Cause, I would really like to avoid those types of situations. But after visiting Savannah, I get the use of the wordage and have stopped wondering whether they spike the drinking water with Viagra. The Spanish moss and ivy and old homes and trees and parks made me want to just hold Billy’s hand and laugh about all the crazy unlucky stuff that was happening to us. Nothing could go terribly wrong in a place like Savannah.

Savannah is one of the only cities that doesn’t have an open container law. Restaurants would try and sell us a bottle of wine and add that we could take an already opened bottle to go.  So, apparently it’s one of the best cities for New Year’s Eve! Which was just what we wanted on our quiet anniversary trip. We are big downers on New Year’s because 1) we don’t drink; 2) we can’t physically stay up that late; 3) our anniversary is on the 30^th so by going on an anniversary trip, all the flight and hotel rates are skyrocketed because of New Year’s. Although, recently I have come to see how unknowingly genius we were with picking the date of our anniversary. Our wedding was freezing cold, but I love that we can go on a trip somewhere warm in the middle of the winter. Our anniversary is after Christmas, so it doesn’t get overshadowed the holidays—we can decompress from the chaos of planning Christmas. Plus, we’ll typically get time off of work because of the holiday, so we can go on an anniversary trip. And here I thought we got married December 30 because of the tax break, and because I didn't want any Christmas decor at the reception. Call me Scrooge.

On the night of our anniversary, we went on an adults-only ghost walk of Savannah. It was adults only because it was so late, and too scary for children. Not perverted or anything. It was kind of fun to hear the stories and see the actual houses where people live and just put up with the “hauntings”. The whole tour, I wanted my mom with us though. Not because I was scared, but because she has had a lot of ghost experiences. We would for sure see a ghost if she were there! In doing all of her genealogy, she’s had some crazy dreams and stories and the veil is very thin for her. She loves graveyards because she can sense the good spirits there. My favorite story about this topic is from when my parents and Billy and I we were in Skagway, AK on our cruise. We walked over to the cemetery and spent time looking at the headstones and dates. As we walked through it, my Mom kept saying, “This graveyard doesn’t feel right, I don’t sense anything”. I inwardly rolled my eyes, because I do NOT have that sensitivity. Then we run into a tour guide who is saying to the group that there are not actually any bodies at this graveyard. One year the river flooded and so all the bodies washed away. So, my mom can actually tell whether it’s a real graveyard by the spirits she can sense. I know you’re picturing a woman who wears scarves and long flowy skirts and lots of rings, but I promise my mother is really educated and sensible. She just is also very knowledgeable about the other side. Anyway, I would love to get her sense on some of the houses we saw to try and find out what is true and what is fabricated.

The most haunted house in Savannah also happens to be right next door to my dream house in Savannah. The haunted house has been abandoned for years, but there are a lot of sightings and weird stories that have come from the house. We even have a couple stories of our own. When we were there at night, nothing crazy happened. People were taking pictures of the houses the whole tour, and I hate when tourists take pictures of everything like signs and trees—like what are you going to do with that picture? So, I didn’t take any pictures, but then on the last and most haunted house, I took a few on my phone just cause everyone else was doing it. Then, the next night, I was looking through my pictures and I totally see like 7 different faces in the windows of the pictures I took. I know all of them are probably just from the tree that was in front of the house, but when I was in the dark in my bed and Billy was asleep, I got sufficiently spooked. Now when I look at the picture, I only see 3 distinct ones. I have the picture down below if you want to look at it. We went back to the house during the day to try and spot something in different lighting. Nothing, of course. But Billy turns on my camera to take a picture of me, and the camera is shooting in black and white and the only color is the red lettering in the "Private Property" sign. I’ve never done that on my camera before, I didn’t even know my camera could do that. And then when I go to fix the settings, it’s kind of complicated to change—it’s no like Billy just pushed a couple buttons to make it that way. So, we’re probably haunted now, thus keeping our unlucky streak going.

OK, so try and zoom into this picture and make sure your brightness is all the way up. Totally creepy faces, right? The top left looks like a man glaring at me.Top right looks like a woman looking to her left. And the bottom looks like a creepy child.

The ghosts took over my camera

We tried 3 different times to get into the Mercer-Williams house which was the only haunted house you can actually go into. It’s the house from the book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. On one of our attempts, we were 2 hours too late—they close at 4. On our second attempt, our trolley took too long, so we missed the closing time again. The last attempt was on New Year’s Day, and we were early enough but they were closed for the holiday. We also tried meeting up with my friend from college at the house, but since I only have Wi-Fi in certain spots, we kind of just said meet us here at this time, if you can. And I wasn’t sure if she had seen it. Turns out, she did see it and showed up but just missed us! Oh, how happy I will be to have a data plan again.

We also had plans to meet up with Billy’s cousin who lives in Savannah, but our plans got foiled by my nasty cough. She has a baby and she’s pregnant and I didn’t want to risk giving them my croup. Plus, that last day I had completely run out of all my energy. It’s just a good excuse to go back to visit though!

I can’t forget to mention the unluckiest of all the un-lucks(?) besides forgetting our selfie stick--I was on my period. Great timing for an anniversary trip. And I was sick with whooping cough the whole time. I was fine as long as I kept and IV drip of DayQuil all day long. But my coughing fits were long and disgusting—people nearby would flinch and walk away from me. One time, I was coughing and at the end of the fit, I had mucus all over my hand. I know you all wanted to know that. All the adventuring caught up to me on New Year’s Eve and we fell asleep at 10:30.

We had the most ill-fated trip we’ve ever taken, but we still managed to have a blast and fall in love with a new city. It’s the crappy moments where you feel like you’re being Punk’d that make the best memories. Put that in a cross-stitch, someone.

My dream house, except it would be covered in ivy. That sun room is everything.

Oh, Savannah.

Tybee Island Pier

Travel partners forevaaaa

Tybee Lighthouse

Nice try, Billy. You sort of missed the lighthouse.

He was pretty pumped about the double decker bus INSIDE a cafe

Walking around Forsyth Park

Fresh off the plane 

I'll take whatever smiles I can get

About to eat at Vinnie Van Go Go's Pizza

I love my husband, but sometimes he deserves to be flipped off.

See all the dewy footprints? 

Golfing through swampy Georgia

Bonaventure Cemetery

One of the bridges on Factors Walk. Billy made me pose, I promise.

On the Savannah River. Not the prettiest river, but cool vibes.

The legendary Dodge Ram

In front of Planter's Inn on our 5th anniversary. Best dinner of the trip.

I may or may not have ordered the coffee ice cream at Leopold's without tasting it first and it was not very good. So I quickly ordered a Mint Chocolate Chip cone so I wouldn't have to be disappointed in my order after a 45 minute wait. I ate both.

I think Billy likes Leopold's

Touristy trolley tour of Savannah

The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist

Inside the Cathedral

I also want this house

The ivy, though

Christmas in the Motherland

Do you ever get sick of hearing me talk about how much I love our breaks? Cause I really, really love them. But the first week or so of the break is always a little tricky. After each semester ends, there’s a learning curve of figuring out how to be in a co-dependent relationship instead of just always kissing goodbye for the day. During the semester, I manage the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and errands. All scheduled around when Billy needs to go to school. He’s so high maintenance. But then when he’s out of school, he has nothing to do and he’s really helpful and wants to have some say in how the household is run. Which some would think would be nice, and it really is! But this control freak has to adapt to the complete 180 change in our family dynamics. It’s like, by the time I’m used to being an independent woman (I feel ya, Bey), he wants to be included in decision making again and hear about my day. So clingy, right? We have to have a couple solid arguments before we can enjoy our free time, but we’re getting better at transitioning.

             After our trip to Cabo, we went to Virginia to spend Christmas with my family. This was the first time that Billy was going to be around my family for longer than a week. We’ve been married for 5 years, and dated for 2, so that’s kind of worrisome, but that’s what happens when you don’t live by your family. He knows my parents and Tanne pretty well because we bunked up with them in Utah for a solid year. Yay for mooching! But for all my older siblings know, I could be getting beat by Billy every night. Too far? Probably. I was so excited/really nervous about everyone spending so much time together. It’s like the nervousness that you get when you combine two different groups of friends. Like, I think that I’m always myself around these friends, but what if I have a split personality and these two groups hate each other? And then realize that they both hate me? And my brothers-in-law are all really tall, so I was hoping they wouldn’t try to play some basketball against my 5’9-with-cleats-on husband. And Billy is so great with the Strong nephews and niece, but can he handle all 6 and 2 of the Griffith nieces and nephews? He has some really great magic tricks, but I wasn’t sure if any of the kids are even into magic? Are these normal fears I have, or am I just a head case? Basically, I love him so much and I love my family so much, so I wanted my family to love him and for him to love my family.

            Well, turns out his magic tricks were a hit, and as is usually the case, I had nothing to worry about. I remember when we were dating, I was helping Billy’s mom with something (it’s more likely that I was probably watching her do something, but we’ll pretend) and telling her about someone we had run into the other day who had raved on and on about how much they love Billy and what a great guy he was. And Stacy stops me and says, “Tori. Everybody loves Billy.” And it’s probably because of the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law dynamic, but I’ve been trying to prove her wrong ever since. To no avail. Everybody really loves Billy. At least as far as his wife and mother know.

            My favorite thing that happened over the break was when going-on-2-years old Sadie went through my phone pictures and found a Snapchat video I had saved of shirtless Billy making it rain with Grenadian money. She would grab my phone, go right to the video, watch it, laugh hysterically, and then watch it again. And so everyone else had to see what she was laughing about, so the whole family got to know Billy's gangster side. And Sadie loved it. By the end of the trip, she would yell “Billy! Color!” because Billy loved to be her little coloring buddy. Thugs love to color too. Watch her annoyance with him in this video. 

             My parents moved to a new house on December 18^th, with the help of my fabulously patient realtor sister, Megan. And we arrived to Virginia on December 21. My brother came in from Miami right after us, and so the 3 beach bums of the family could complain to everyone about how cold it was. When actually it was like 70 degrees because of El Nino or something. No white Christmas for us. Things were a little hectic with trying to get my parents settled, but I guess they always are around Christmas. And with my family. Comcast is the worst and so we didn’t have any internet the whole time we were there. And since we don’t have phone numbers, we spent a lot of time at Chik-fil-a and McDonald’s enjoying their free WiFi and glorious fountain drinks. Which is fine by us. My sisters all live within 15 minutes of each other, so it was really fun to go house-hopping and offer our babysitting services for the day. Which usually turned into them feeding us a delicious dinner, so win-win for us. My mom and sisters are all amazing cooks for some reason. I would resent them for it if I didn’t get to benefit from it so much. For Christmas Eve, my mom usually does an extravagant feast, but with everything in boxes, we all went to Uncle Julio’s—it’s a Mexican restaurant, not our Hispanic relative—for Christmas Eve dinner. The only other time I had Uncle Julio’s was at my sister’s wedding, and to this day, Billy and I still have conversations about their drool-worthy carne asada. They were surprisingly packed, but my dad went all judicial and spoke to the manager who let us eat outside on the patio. If you want to complain about service, just ask my dad to do it. He’s a pro. Although, the one time I saw him truly stumped was when he was at the register at a store in Grenada trying to check out. They compared his signature on the credit card with the signature on the receipt he had just signed and said they didn’t match up. He legitimately did not even know how to respond to that. Leave it to Grenada to quiet the judge. Anyway, during dinner the kids were running around and fenced in on the patio, while I was simultaneously stuffing my own face and spoon-feeding Sadie guacamole. And it was a Christmas Eve dinner to remember. We were a little sad to be missing Tanne and Doug—the last two family members who live in Utah—but hey, more guacamole for me!

            On Christmas day, we went around to each sister’s house to deliver our presents and hear about all the cool stuff the kids had gotten. Sawyer, Caroline, and Mary Grace all got iPods so now I can text and FaceTime them. I feel like it was a present just for me, thanks sisters! Then, we finally went to see Star Wars and it was glorious, of course. I even got my Dad to wear a Yoda hat to the theater. I’m pretending he did it for me and not to make Sawyer laugh. Grandkids always trump real kids (I’m sorry, I tried to find another word than trump, even typing it makes me nauseous). After the movie, we searched for a Chinese restaurant for dinner (since my Dad wishes we were Jewish), but then managed to settle for the Old Town Grill in Leesburg. Christmas is so weird when you’re an adult.

Oh, I also saved Christmas for Billy. With our lowly student budget and the fact that I buy everything I need anyway, Billy has a hard time getting presents for me. But, since I took up running (and I haven’t quit yet!) this summer, all he needed to get me were some work out clothes and wireless headphones and I was a happy camper! You’re welcome for helping you out, Billy! And we’re kind of the same person, because I got him some Beats by Dr. Dre. But, I totally screwed up and got ones that were NOT wireless. Amazon Warehouse tricked me—they said wired on the description! I feel like they shouldn’t be allowed to specify unless they are wireless. It’s too much information. So, my poor husband has to wear headphones that connect to his computer. It’s so embarrassing. But at least he got me some good stuff.

            We spent our anniversary and New Year’s in Georgia, but I’ll write a separate post about that trip. When we got back, we got to watch Erin’s kids—Hadley and Ari. OK, we really only watched Hadley for like a day and a half, because Megan agreed to keep her (or we may have been asleep when she came to drop her off) but we had Ari for 3 days. Erin and Josh had a friend’s wedding in Hawaii, and so we jumped at the opportunity to watch them! We had so much fun/we were so tired. Turns out, kids are a lot of work. Who knew? Ari was 10 months old at the time and just crawling all over the place. It didn’t help that I threw out my neck the first morning when playing with her on the bed. And she only wanted to be held by me. Really, she was an angel, but we are so used to just riling our nieces and nephews up and then leaving the aftermath to the parents. That’s what we’re good at. But we had to face the consequences of our “riling her up” and so I have to apologize to my sisters and Billy’s brothers. I didn’t realize all the chaos we’ve been creating for all these years. We couldn’t take our eyes off of her for one second. At one point, she may have drunk some of Hadley’s pee from the toilet. Sisterly bonding, right? And both of us were there the whole time—we were able to trade off who slept in and who got up with the kids in the morning. I really don’t know how you moms do it. Especially in the winter. Mickey Mouse Club House became my best friend. And now that I’m away from the kids everyday, whenever I’m lonely, I go look through all my videos of them and wish I were watching them again. Is that too depressing? Basically, I miss their guts.

            This post is getting long and drawn out and I have a lot more to say about our break, so I’m splitting it into two posts. My 2 readers are so lucky I’m considerate of their eyesight. Looking at a computer screen for too long is bad for your eyes and brain.

Uncle "Wobbie" is the best. We all missed Gus Gus though!

Star Wars game face

Looking rough at Christmas dinner.

Christmas dinner at Old Town Grill in Leesburg

My sweet Caroline

Christmas Eve dinner. Guacamole is best eaten with a spoon

My mini-me, MG

Sawyer has the whole Minions movie memorized and loves to tell me the whole movie--it's the best! So, I got him a Minion's hat for his birthday (his birthday is in May, but I didn't get any of the nieces and nephews presents on the day of their birthday, so I got them each an extra present after Christmas. Gift-giving is definitely my love language.

Soaking up all the snuggles I can with my two thumb-suckers. Just like their aunt Tor Tor

I got booted out.

Changing a diaper with a thrown-out neck. I got skillz

Can you see the two teeth marks? Ari was snuggling me and then decide to chomp my neck. Crazy vampire baby.

While watching all of the nieces. Lots of screen time.

My heart.

I could hang out with these girls all day. They keep me young and hip.

We decided to go on a walk during the coldest day of the year. Ari was pissed.

Ari Jane is also known as trouble guppie. Anything she shouldn't do, she wants to.

Snuggling with a thrown-out neck

Sadie is really good at the selfies.

Never a dull moment with these three.

We were so happy that Grandy made the trek out to come see us and the new house. His genes are the ones that I'm counting on for our kids to be basketball players.

My parents' road is so spooky in December--gives me the creeps!

Sadie found herself a boyfriend.

Ari's Christmas present was such a hit, and she wasn't so sure about sharing it.

My tribe

All the siblings except Tanne at Uncle Julio's