Today's Coffee: Counterculture - Iridescent - pour over

     Enough with the promises of "I'll do better this year." I'm not a great blogger. I'm not great at stopping and collecting pictures and uploading them and then trying to have something witty and cute to say about our lives. What I can say though is that when something huge happens in our lives, I do feel enough guilt that I will sit down and write a post. And so, without further ado - something huge has happened to the Russells...

     We have moved back to South Carolina! Thomas is now organist at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia. This is very exciting because we are now much much closer to our families! It was hard to say goodbye to the friends we made in Nashville, but we will stay in touch. The Lord has been good to us, giving us much more than we could ever deserve and we will continue to glorify His name.

     It is hard to know what to type about in a blog. I never want to share too much info about our family, but I do want our friends and family to stay informed on the interesting aspects of our life... so I could talk about what it's like to have 3 kids. That's pretty amazing. I mean, Thomas and I are super tired all the time, drink coffee like fanatics, and have harmonized all the songs that you could possibly sing to children. I could talk about deciding to homeschool W this academic year through preschool. Maybe some insight to our coffee obsession and how it has transformed into a morning ritual (lasting many too many minutes) that we now rely on. Resolutions? How I want to read more, be more diligent about daily violin practice, or my desire to just be better in general? My kids and how W is almost 5 (?!?) years old, M is 2, and T is almost 9 months. How I already miss those funny little stone walls that were everywhere in Nashville, but how excited I am that in Columbia, you can buy wine in grocery stores?

     Well, all those things are true. But I can't talk about them. Because I'm not a great blogger and I don't know how to expound upon those things. So, with that said, here's a picture of the kids from Christmas Eve:

     And a couple of pics from earlier this year:

     So, there it is. Hopefully I'll blog more. Guess we just have to wait for more exciting things to happen...?

In Christ,

Julie

Today's Coffee: no coffee currently

Kids hanging out in the office. 

This post is mostly pictures again. I haven't updated this since May so some of these are several months old. In other news, I am 14 weeks pregnant. Yes, Russell #3 will be making her (or his?) appearance in late April. We are very excited, but this has been truly the worst first trimester ever. I lost 13lbs but am finally coming out of it now. Still cannot stand coffee or the smell of it, but hopefully that will change soon as well. So, the blog posts won't be telling you what I'm drinking in the morning. It's a terrible ginger/mint tea. Supposed to help, maybe it does, maybe not. 

Enjoy the pics.

My men about to cook for me. 

Swings!

She loves this elmo toy!

More swings at the zoo!

When I mow the lawn, I do it in shapes. This is a spiral. I started in the middle of the yard and from certain vantage points it looked like a crop circle. (too many x-files!)

I was watching a beach wedding at Folly. I also sang all the wedding-appropriate songs since they didn't have music. 

Our narwhal we built at the beach.

harvest of green beans and carrots from our garden

she loves camping!

since I haven't updated this since May, I never showed everyone her July 4th outfit!

This green dish had a mirror in the bottom of it and she would slowly lean over and get closer to it until she had fully lowered her head in it.

This is the most recent pic. That's a zamboni behind them.

at the Devil's Kitchen

Our little advocate for handbell choir!

Puppet shows!

M is doing a lot of standing and even took her first steps last week. (not holding anything)

This is just a cool picture. These are some of the guys from Fisk stomping on bad trombone pipes!

Ok, that's it for now. The never ending laundry cycle is calling my name. I'll try to be better about posting!

Julie