Bloggy friendship: Country is a State of Mind

A few months ago, I received a comment on one of my posts about one of our trips to Ohio. The commenter told me she was pretty sure we were from the same area - and after comparing notes, we concluded that we definitely are - we were even in the marching bands of rival universities :) I started following her blog, Country is a State of Mind, and she followed mine. She said to let her know the next time I visited my parents.

A few weeks ago, I posted about an upcoming trip to Ohio, and Christy commented to let her know if I would be free to meet up. We exchanged a few e-mails and arranged for an ice cream date. I've never met a fellow blogger except the people I already knew before they had blogs (Meg, Valli), so I was excited to get together with Christy and Blaine.

Elle and I met up with Christy and Blaine and had a blast. It's so nice to meet someone when you read about their lives on such a regular basis, and especially nice to find out that they're as cool as you think they are :) Christy is a totally normal, down-to-earth person who I felt extremely comfortable talking with, and Blaine is adorable and absolutely full of energy. I got a scary glimpse of my future as I watched Christy chase an extremely proficient walking and running Blaine all over the place :)

Here are some of the photos Christy and I took:

I guess the secret is out:
Elle and I shared a chocolate cone.

Blaine taught Elle the super fun trick of sticking
your hand in a water bottle - something she
continued to do for the rest of our trip, haha.

It's hard taking photos of moving monkeys!

At this point, someone started taking self-portraits,
and I knew that we had moved in to silly-need-a-nap-mode.

It was really neat to take some time from the general crazy nature of our trip and be able to chat about blogging, pregnancy, breastfeeding and general raising-a-babyness. It made me yearn for a real-life mommy/baby group with my favorite bloggers and their babies. (I think this should happen, don't you agree?) Elle didn't really know what to think about Blaine (she was dealing with a general dislike for grass and a growing need for an afternoon nap), but I am extremely glad we got to meet up with them, and hope to do it again on future trips to Ohio.  

P.S. Beware, oh, blog world, you're going to have to deal with a lot of posts recapping our trip to Ohio, as well as an emotional spew of posts about how my dear sweet baby is turning ONE this weekend. Seriously. Like, lots of posts about both subjects. Considered yourselves warned :)