Sometimes unplanned visits turn out to be the best!

Saturday, we went to the Family Counts picnic that was thrown by Marty's employer.  It was about 80 miles away from our house, so it took a little time to get there.  Once we passed into Jefferson County, I just sent out this random Tweet:

To which Katherine replied ^^^^

A couple weeks ago, Katherine braved the crowds and went to Pioneer Woman's cookbook signing, surprising me with an autographed copy of my own!

Seriously, the sweetest thing ever!

So, after we left the Family Counts event, we headed to Kat's house to meet everyone!

Now, I guess officially, this isn't the first time I've met Katherine.  We were both at the Alabama Bloggers Lisa Leonard event a couple of years ago, but neither one of us introduced ourselves to each other.  But, immediately after that, I started following Kat's blog, Grass Stains, and Twitter, and we soon became fast friends.  As a matter of fact, her alias, HemmiesFTW on Twitter has been the source of many late night hysterics with both me and Marty.

When we first got there, we were greeted by Katherine and her precious baby girl, Amelia.  She has to be the sweetest baby ever!  

(Pardon the crappy cell phone pictures.  I didn't want to bring in the big camera and make Katherine think I was a freak.)

The only time she cried the entire time we were there, was when I was holding her.  Baby girl did not like me at all!  HAHA!  

This was about 2 seconds before she started crying.

But she had a serious crush on Marty!

She cooed and smiled at him the entire time we were there!

We also got to meet Mr. Jake!  He was SO stinkin' cute!  He had us laughing the whole time we were there!

 

This kid was determined to eat a pear, no matter how much we tried to tell him they weren't ripe yet.  But how could you say no to this adorable face?

After a couple of hours (yes, we invaded her house and refused to leave), we got to meet Kat's husband, Grayson, and her older boys Nathanial and Nick!  They are even more adorable in person!  Well, the kids are more adorable in person...but really, I guess Grayson was adorable too...in a man sort of way.  HAHA!

Soon we realized we had prevented Kat from starting supper (sorry!), so we decided to head back home...but not before we took pictures!  What kind of bloggers would be be without pictures?

Of course, any time you try to get a bunch of kids together for a picture...you get interesting results.  HER kids did fantastic, but my kids...well, take a look:

Yeah, my son is a hot mess.  Katherine's pictures were much better:

We had a GREAT time!  They are the sweetest, most precious family!  It felt like we had known each other forever.  On the way home, we asked the kids what their favorite part of the day was.  Both of them said "Going to Katherine's house!"  We can't wait to hang out with them again!