Turlington Times: September 2009

Oh my...I can't believe it's been March since I posted anything! (Well, I guess that shows you just how much of an exciting life Donnie & Courtney lead!) We've certainly been busy over these past months. Donnie has been staying busy stirring up new clients and staying involved in his local Tarheel Chapter of PRSA. He also volunteered for the Wyndham Golf Tournament last month. He worked a lot of early AM hours but enjoyed the experience all in all. We had a great time visiting with friends and family over the summer! It really is great to have been blessed with wonderful friends and family that actually want to come and visit! :)

I've been staying busy with Cat's Eye promos, commercial shoots, portrait sessions and a wedding here and there. The Lord has really blessed my business since we've been down here in NC. On top of keeping up with my normal website I've been trying my best to dive head first into the social marketing craze of Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In and Blogger. With A LOT of help from my social marketing genius hubby (seriously, he knows his stuff), I've begun to get a flow going and understand just how it all ties together! Please follow me on my Cat's Eye blog too! (http://catseyeblog.blogspot.com/)

Here are a few pics with a few of our friends who came to visit over the summer....

Our friends Andy & Catherine McPherson (from Farmville, VA) came to visit this summer. They have a darling little girl named Alley who I had the pleasure of taking pictures of while they were here.

Donnie filling in as my photo assistant during the portrait session.....

Grillin' out on our patio with our good friends Gordon & Melissa Yowell (from Farmville, VA as well).

As for vacations...what is that? We haven't been on one of those nice week long vacations in a while, but we were able to take a few mini weekend/day trip getaways over the summer. We slipped up to Chesapeake to visit with Donnie's family and caught a Tides game while we were there. We were even able to find a spot at the crowded beaches for a few hours of sun bathing! We made a trip up to Busch Gardens for the first time since before Donnie & I were married 7 years ago....wow, time flies! We also took a day trip up to Pilot Mountain/Mt. Airy with Donnie's sister and her family. (We probably could form a whole new blog with our adventures experienced that day, but we'll save that story for another post!) Let's just say we hiked, hiked, hiked and hiked some more that day and with the Lord's help made it back to our vehicles in one piece.

Donnie with his brother-in-law Kenny and nephew Phillip on Appollo's Charriot.

The whole clan eating lunch.........don't they look thrilled??

Me and Donnie hiking at Pilot Mountain.

Donnie's sister, Leslie with her family.

It's higher up than you think!

If we weren't visiting with family & friends or working we were spending the rest of our time in the garden and building our new privacy fence. As some of you may know we have a two wonderful little sweet pea puppies and one of them LOVES to dig and go on long adventures, so we've been in the process of replacing a very cute little fence that was already in place when we bought the house with a "Fort Turlington" version of a 6ft privacy fence, complete with snipers staked out in the surrounding woods. Usually taking her sidekick, Zoe, with her, Bella is the "Houdini" of all dogs. She has figured out how to escape the following, in order, in record time: invisible fence (she just figured out how to chew off not only her shock collar, but Zoe's as well), cinderblock barricades over gaps in fence, welded wire buried under fence, knocked out slats in fence and then we think somehow she learned how to climb up on the swing and swing herself over. Whew, they are a handful, but we love them to pieces because they really are part of our family.