The Hughes Family: I'm Baaaaaaaack!!!!

Greetings! It's been a while, huh? More than a month, to be exact! Did you miss me?? I think this is the longest blogging hiatus I've ever taken and I must say, it's been KILLING me to get so behind in my posts!! If you know me, you know that taking pictures is my happy place.....and sharing them on this blog for all of you to see is my super happy place. If there's something fun going on, chances are I've got my camera in hand and I'm snapping away. So you can imagine with all we've had going on the last several weeks how many photos I've managed to snag. It's around 1,000. Yes, I said 1,000. So please be patient as I spend the next several days sharing (almost) all of these photos with you!

I feel like I need to give a little update of all that's happened since my last post. We traveled home to Tallahassee/Thomasville for Christmas on December 21st (I think??) and enjoyed a wonderful Christmas with both of our families. (Christmas post coming up next!) A few days after Christmas, Matthew and I left Kyndall with my parents and we flew to Jackson on a house hunting trip. We had basically two days and only a few options to choose from. Keep in mind, we found out we were moving on December 1st, and Matthew had to be in Jackson for his first day of work on January 7th! That didn't leave us much time to dilly dally around. Thankfully, we found a wonderful house in a brand new neighborhood in a great part of Jackson. I couldn't be happier with our choice, so we left Jackson feeling confident in our decision and excited to get the moving process started!

We returned to Tallahassee just in time to spend the next day celebrating New Year's Eve with my family. (Another post coming up on that as well!) On January 1st, Matthew and I left Kyndall with his parents in Thomasville and headed back to South Carolina to begin the packing/moving process. We were SO BLESSED to have a moving company do ALL of the work for us! Matthew's employers paid for all of it and for that I am so very grateful! There's no way we could've done it on our own and also enjoyed our Christmas vacation. We most definitely wouldn't have been able to travel home for Christmas had we been faced with the task of packing the house ourselves.

It was hard saying goodbye to Kyndall for those six days, but it was the best thing for all of us. There's no way she could've functioned in the chaos that took place in our house during the packing process. The packers did a great job and got our entire house packed in about 12 hours. The next day, the movers came and loaded all of our things. Again, it was pretty much an all day process! Matthew and I spent the next several days in a hotel so that he could finish out his last work week in Summerville and I could spend those days saying goodbye to friends.

On Sunday January 6th, we said goodbye to Summerville once and for all. Matthew went west to start work in Jackson and I headed south to Thomasville to pick up Kyndall. It was a sad feeling driving out of that little town knowing I'll probably never be back again. I drove by our house again and walked around the yard, looked in the windows and checked the mail one last time. The realty company had already placed a key box on the front door knob and placed a "for rent" sign in the yard. Not a single sign of the Hughes family remained, other than a small bucket of Kyndall's sidewalk chalk that had been left on the back patio as well as a patch of dead, crumpled grass where here playhouse once stood in the backyard under the pine trees. Sad.

For the next week, Kyndall and I hung out at my parents' house in Tallahassee while awaiting my cousin's upcoming "Say Yes to the Dress" wedding weekend! The wedding was so much fun and I'm so glad that I was a part of it! HUGE blog post coming up soon on all things wedding related!

Two days after the wedding, Kyndall, my sister and I made the inaugural drive from Tallahassee to Jackson. Kelly had asked if she could come spend a week with us to help me get unpacked and settled and of course I said YES! Plus, it was great having her help on the trip up, since it's about a 10 hour drive.....a good 4 hours longer than our drive from SC to FL had been for the past 4 years! I was really nervous about how Kyndall would handle it, but she did GREAT! I cannot sing her praises enough! Truly an answer to prayer, especially considering the terrible driving conditions we were faced with as we got further and further north. Rain, ice, sleet and even snow---All things these Florida girls are NOT used to driving in! With the good Lord's protection, we made it safe and sound in just over 10 hours. Though we were all tired (mostly from the stress and tension of the weather conditions), the drive really didn't seem that bad. I think our tag team approach of switching off drivers really helped with that. Thanks a bunch, Kelly Bug!!!

Kelly and I got to work right away unpacking, organizing and throwing things away! It's amazing how much STUFF a family of three can accumulate over the years! We got a lot done and I truly couldn't have done it without Kelly's help! Not only did she unpack boxes, but she also made dinners, changed diapers, entertained Kyndall, ran errands, and even babysat so that Matthew and I could enjoy a date night at the end of the week! I hated to see her go, but we sent her back via Southwest this past Saturday and I'm already missing her help. She kept me motivated and now I'm just being LAZY. I still have plenty to do, but without her here I just keep putting it off. Oh well, it will all get done eventually!

So that pretty much catches you up on the past several weeks. I'll be blogging about each of these things in more detail, but there's no telling how long it will take me to do so. I'm hoping to get caught up this week, but as I said there is MORE than enough to keep me busy around here besides just blogging!

No blog post is complete without a few pictures, so I'll leave you with just a few. Prior to heading home for Christmas, we met up with as many friends as possible to say our final goodbyes. Knowing that Kyndall wouldn't be returning after the holiday, we wanted to squeeze in as many "goodbye" lunches and dinners as possible.

We had lunch with Paul, Kristi and their twins Allie and Alex. This family is SO special to me and always will be. When Matthew and I moved to SC in July of 2008, we had only been married for three months and I had no job and no license to practice dentistry in SC. So, I decided to try my hand at nannying. I had been babysitting since the age of 11, so I knew it was something I loved and something I was good at. Kristi so generously hired me to take care of her precious babies, who were just infants at the time. I loved taking care of them and I thought of Allie and Alex as my own babies and I felt like family to Kristi and Paul. It was just such a perfect fit and truly an answer to prayer to be placed with such a wonderful family! Now, the twins are 6 years old and a far cry from the "babies" that I helped raise so many years ago. I knew I couldn't leave SC without telling their family goodbye. We caught up over lunch and vowed to keep in touch, no matter the distance. Kristi, I'm holding you to that!!! =)

Here's what they looked like when I started keeping them.......

And here they are now, with my own baby!

I just had to get a picture with Allie and Matthew. When Allie was about Kyndall's age, she called Matthew "My Matt". It was the sweetest thing ever!

I'm including these next pictures just for kicks. When we got home from lunch with our friends, Kyndall insisted on walking over to the neighbor's house and checking out their obnoxious inflatable yard decorations. This became a theme every. single. time. we got out of the car from this day forward! Unlike me, she does NOT think they are obnoxious, but rather thinks they are the greatest thing ever.

Personally, I do not like this blow up yard decoration. To me, it looks like Santa is sitting on the toilet reading the newspaper. Am I wrong??

This one became a framer. Love that little face so much!

We also said goodbye to Matthew's boss Keith and his wife Heidi and their two girls, Kinsley and Kadyn. The 3 K's have had a lot of fun together over the past couple of years, so we were sad to have to say goodbye. However, like Matthew, Keith just got a promotion as well and they will be moving to Atlanta in the next few weeks. So whether we had stayed in SC or not, we would've been saying goodbye to them either way. Hopefully our paths will cross again since both of the hubs work for SEFL!

With three wild and crazy girls, it's nearly impossible to wrangle them all up for a picture. Here's what I got.....I'm including all of them just for comedy's sake. What a true representation these pictures are of our girls!

Kyndall was completely OVER having her picture taken. Can you tell??

Lastly, I'm sharing a few pictures that I hope will give you some insight into the mind of Kyndall Anne Hughes. I returned home very late one night after a midnight Christmas shopping trip to find the following scene on my coffee table. I couldn't help but smile when I saw it. The house was quiet and Kyndall and Matthew were sound asleep, so I quietly grabbed my camera and captured these next few shots. It seems that Kyndall decided to take my ceramic manger scene animals for a ride in her monster truck at some point while I was away. Notice how they are nicely loaded up and ready to go. Jesus and monster trucks......oh, to get inside the mind of that little girl!