DuRant Beach Vacation/Father's Day

We dropped Riley off at his great grandparent's house (Geno and Grandma Fran) and headed to Garden City for Paul's family beach week last Saturday. I had really been looking forward to taking some time off work and catching up on some r&r at the beach. We had a great time. I am blessed to have married into such a wonderful family. We all have a great time together, and I especially enjoy getting to spend time with our niece and nephews. I hope that our kids are half as perfect as Walt, Emmie, and William. The kids are especially taken with Paul as he can still be a kid himself sometimes. Paul cooked us all a tenderloin one night, and it made his day when Walt told him, "Uncle Paul, you make the best steak in the world." It puts a smile on my face when I see how sweet and fun he is with all of the kids. Here are some pictures from our trip.

Me with all of our nephews and neices (Walt, William, and Emmie)

Boyd and Rutledge
(photo courtesy of Walt-he is quite the photographer)

Paul playing with Walt in the ocean

Maggie with William on his first trip to the beach!

Me and Paul on the way to dinner :)

Baby William

I also wanted to give a special shout out to all of the wonderful dads on Father's Day. I have a very close relationship with my dad, and I thank God everyday for blessing me with such a wonderful father. He loves his kids more than anything in the whole world, and this is apparent to anyone who knows him. I appreciate everything that he does for me. I don't know what I would do without him. I love you Dad!

9 month recap

There are a lot of fun things that we have done in our 9 months of marriage. It is hard to believe that it has been 9 months already. The saying is very true, "time flies when you're having fun." We really do have a lot of fun together. One of the many things I love about Paul is his ability to make me laugh. Try being mad at him...you will crack a smile within a minute. It seems like just yesterday I was busy planning for the big day and so anxious for it to finally be here. It was everything I could have dreamed of and MORE. So, I will start there, our wedding day.


Then of course we were off on our honeymoon to ARUBA! It was absolutely wonderful. We had the best time. I have caught the travel bug and have been begging Paul to go on another vacation to somewhere, anywhere tropical.

We were lucky enough to be able to take a long weekend trip to Park City, Utah in December. My brother works for Delta, so he was able to get us buddy passes, and my dad and step mom had rented a place for the week. We flew to Atlanta and met Dustin and his girlfriend, Lindsey. We had a BLAST. This was the first time Paul and I had been skiing together. It was a short trip, but definitely worth it.

This was our first married Christmas together. These pictures are very special to me, because it was the last Christmas that I will spend with my Granddaddy Walt. He passed away in April, and I miss him so much. There is definitely a special place in Heaven and my heart for him. We spent Christmas Eve with Paul's family and Christmas Day with my family. These pictures are taken at Granddaddy Walt and Grandma Jane's house.

We actually got 8 inches of snow this year!! This is a RARE event in Columbia, SC. This was Riley's first experience in the snow, and he LOVED it. He ran circles in our backyard.

Our street

Our house :)

We spent Valentine's Day weekend at my dad and step mom's beach house. It was wonderful. We went to the Post House for dinner and just relaxed. This is a picture from our room at the beach.

I work for Bank of America Home Loans. Each year, the company has a tent at the Heritage golf tournament in Hilton Head, SC. We were able to get a free hotel room and tickets to the tournament. I am not a golf fan at all, but this was the royal treatment. The tent was filled with food and drinks with servers who would bring you whatever you wanted. This is the ONLY way I will watch golf. The night before we were invited to Schumaker Home's yacht for a cocktail party. It was so much fun. We found my mom out on the yachts!

We spent Memorial Day weekend at Paul's grandfather's beach house in Garden City. It was the perfect weekend getaway. It happened to be our 9 month anniversary as well. The house is on the inlet. This picture was taken while we were having a cocktail on the dock before dinner. We had a great time together.

There are MANY other fun things that we have done so far, but this sums up my most memorable moments. It is amazing where life has brought us thus far. I can't wait for many more memories to be made. I am truly blessed to be married to such a wonderful man.

Welcome to the bloggosphere

I have finally taken the plunge. I officially have a blog. I am new to this blogging thing. I have always thought, "I should start a blog." Then I would brainstorm what I could blog about...I got nothing. Most people I know that have a blog showcase their adorable children. We don't have any of those. Others share an expertise of some sort (ie cooking), for those of you who know me well, I don't do much of that. (I have blown up an egg in the microwave and set raw spaghetti noodles on fire...) Lucky for me, I married a man who is a fantastic cook and enjoys showing off his talents. So, a cooking blog was out of the question.

I am a journalism major who ended up working in the mortgage business. I avoided even being a business minor is school, because I am HORRIBLE at math. I get nervous if someone asks me a simple math question on the spot (what's 5x8...ummmmmm). But, I am mighty good on a calculator, and I enjoy meeting new people and helping them acheive a pretty large milestone in one's life, homeownership. The one thing I miss about journalism is writing. English was always one of my favorite subjects, and I almost always made an "A" in my English classes (quite the contrary from math).

So, I decided that I could blog about whatever I wanted. I decided to name the blog after one of my favorite topics, Riley, my dog. He is such an important part of our life. We love him like he is our child. I often feel silly, because when friends and family talk about the cute things their children did, I usually share an equally cute (ok maybe just to me) story about Riley. We found Riley almost 3 years ago in Fountain Inn, SC. It was right after Paul bought his house, and he talked about how he wanted a dog. He imagined he would get a manly, hunting dog of some sort. But, I had other ideas. I decided I was going to get a dog FIRST :). I found a picture of Riley's sister on the internet, and I was in love. I convinced Paul to make the trip with me to Fountain Inn, just to look! My dad would know better than this. I convinced him to go look at a guinea pig one time. We ended up with a pregnant guinea pig and three babies that I would not let him give away. So, we get to Fountain Inn, and we look at all the ADORABLE puppies. Riley's sister was white, and not paying much attention to me. But, there was this little boy who was a beautiful color and couldn't get enough of me. Paul said, "I think you should get him." This of course was NOT going to be Paul's dog. I was going to be completely responsible for him. Three weeks later we went back and picked him up. We were BOTH instantly in love. He, of course, is just as much Paul's dog as mine. We got married 2 years after getting Riley, and finally became a legit family. We have been married 9 months now, and have enjoyed every moment of it.

Here are some pictures from this weekend at my Dad's lakehouse. Riley LOVES the water, just not so much when he is in the middle of the lake with no land in sight...