First Fam Trip to Raleigh

For a while now, Josh and I have been thinking about moving to Raleigh and I’m pretty sure that this weekend just sealed the deal. We have always wanted to be closer to my sister Sarah and brother-in-law Danny along with letting M and Lilly grow up together. This past weekend we had SO much fun and we stayed home for a majority of the time. It was just so nice!

Thursday night we loaded up in the car to meet my mom’s side of the family in Asheboro at Sir Pizza (YUMM) for Syd’s going away dinner. My little sister is all grown up and heading to college now! I know that she is going to have a BLAST!!

Then we went straight to Raleigh to spend the weekend with the Baums. Thursday night was really nice because we got to relax and hang out with Sarah and Danny. Friday morning Sarah was finishing up some work and then Stephanie came over with Hadley to play with us. The boys eventually went off to play golf and I got in a great nap!

That afternoon is what made me want to move more than anything. All because of this:

We were hanging outside with Lilly and M while cooking ribs and then one by one it became baby central. It was AWESOME. Only one of our friends that live close to us is pregnant. And as much as people say, “it doesn't matter” for you to be the only person with a child. It totally does. And because we’re the only one with a child, we don’t get out as much. And we could get out to do a lot more things but we’d want (or have) to bring Mason. And we want to spend as much time with him as we can, especially on weekends when we’re able to do that. The problem is, not everyone wants to be around kids. Especially our single friends or even couple friends. They would never say anything and we may just be paranoid about it but babies cramp your style if you’re not ready for them. Yes, going out without Mason every once in a while would be nice but we want most of our time spent with him. He is our life now. Unless you are ready for that lifestyle it can be really hard and we never want to be “those people” that always bring their kid places. It was just SO nice to be able to hang out with all the kids. My vote? Let’s move to Raleigh NOW!

That night the cousins had their first bath together and they were just too cute! Lilly is such a good helper with M!

Saturday started off with us going to the Museum of Natural Sciences. Another perk of Raleigh? It’s got so much kid friendly FUN things to do FOR FREE!! Here are a couple of photos from that:

L helping burp M

That afternoon once Lilly got up from her nap, we had a blast playing with her. Lilly is probably one of the smartest kids I know. Having that said, she just repeated her first curse word this week which was said by my sister. This week she said the word “damn it” as she threw something down on the ground. She had seemed to have gotten over it and hadn't repeated it lately until… Saturday she picked up the ball and threw it across the room as she yelled “DAMN IT!” My sister was trying to play it off and not draw attention to it but it was so clear and so hysterical!

Sunday morning we decided to take a trip to Pullen Park. I am so disappointed that Charlotte does not have something like this. This park has small boats for them to ride on, boats to ride on in the lake, an indoor carousel, a small train, you can feed the ducks and play on the many different playground options. Here are several pics from that:

All in all, we had so much fun in Raleigh and we are SO excited to start looking to make a move! Now I must get back to getting ready for my first day back to work tomorrow :’((((((