Ready for Christmas!

The tree is up, the stockings are hung, the cookies have been baked, the presents are wrapped....we are ready for Christmas!
It's been a busy few weeks--we had Thanksgiving with friends at our house (which I completely forgot to take any pictures of...) and the next day we put up all of our Christmas decorations--

Joel working on putting on the lights...we put our tree in the office this year becuase we were leaving Sammy at home the next weekend while we were in NC for my cousin's wedding

The finished tree

My new entryway trees

The decorated fireplace

This is how Sammy helps decorate for Christmas

Yesterday I cooked all day--I made sausage balls, cheese straws, a chocolate truffle pie, thin mint cookies, peanut butter cup cookies and chocolate cookie bark. Whew! It was awesome though because while I was cooking, Joel cleaned the house for me...I think I got the good end of that deal. So we are all ready for Christmas. Now if I can just make it through five more days of work I'll be done until January 2nd!

I'm going to throw this pic in here and resist doing a whole post on my cousin's wedding...it was quite an experience. I'll just leave it at that. But here's a picture of me and my sisters at the reception--notice how I'm shorter than them? Yeah, I'm wearing three inch heels and they're wearing flats. So not fair. At least I'm still taller than you mom--haha.

Christmas Wish List....

I know I'm way behind in posting....we've been so busy being sick, out of town, and getting ready for Christmas. For now I thought I'd share a few things from my Christmas wish list I gave to Joel. Here's some advice to newlyweds--It's fun to try to come up with your own ideas of what to buy your husband/wife, but it really is much easier to give each other a wish list. That and it prevents any disastrous gifts from being given (just trust me on this one). Growing up I never understood why my mom would buy her own Christmas gifts from my dad, but now it seems to make perfect sense.

Pearl earring wardrobe from Sundance Ling Chang calendar--I LOVE these!

Vera Bradley Java Blue Agenda--can you tell I have a thing for calendars?

And my favorite stocking stuffer--Starbucks Gift Card! I am in serious need of a few White Chocolate Mochas.

Our camping adventure

We definitely had a camping adventure 2 weekends ago...and while I won't give you the play by play here are a few highlights of our trip-with pictures, of course.

• Someone (hm....wonder who it was...) didn't bring the directions...or plates, or napkins, or utensils. Oh, and he didn't bring a hat either. Whoops, did I say he?
• A 15 mile drive to the nearest Walmart to pick up all of the forgotten items and to get dinner at Zaxby's--since we couldn't get the fire started with wood, charcoal and half a container of lighter fluid.
• One very cold night in a tent
• 602 stairs from the bottom of Amicalola Falls to the top
• Hot dogs and smores for lunch and reading the new Colbert book by the fire
• A 2 mile drive down a crazy mountain road to check out a baptist church that is literally in the middle of nowhere
• Prime rib buffett at the lodge (do we know how to rough it or what?)
• Deciding at 7:30 that we're not ready to freeze another night
• Getting pulled on the way home for having a headlight out with Joel's wallet somewhere in all the camping stuff we stuffed in the trunk
  

Joel trying to warm up in the car after his very cold night in the tent...he's already purchased a new sleeping bag that is rated to -15 degrees


Near the bottom of the falls

The view from the top of the falls

"Ranger Joel"


Cooking up some hot dogs

Spotlight on Sammy

Sammy helping me blog

Sammy has really been enjoying the colder weather....on most mornings I find him (head and all) under his blanket, not mine. On this morning he poked his face out for a moment and then went right back under. Even though he does it every day it's still adorable. He tends to not always sleep in the same place, so it's fun to find where he is in the mornings (can you tell that my life is sooooo exciting?).

Turkey Bowl 2007

Turkey Bowl is the annual flag football game of Joel's colleagues in the trust departments at several Atlanta banks. The game is set up as Campbell alums vs. non-Campbell alums (i.e. everyone else), since many Campbell Trust grads are working in Atlanta they can make their own team. Well this year (the 3rd year) was not the best...actually is was technically a forfeit for Campbell since only Joel and one other guy showed up! Nonetheless it was a fun game since Joel was on the winning team and I enjoyed chatting on the sidelines with the other wives. Hopefully next year Campbell can get it together and get a team on the field!

Thursday Thirteen-- Thirteen Things I bought this week

I could probably do this post every week...but I'll spare everyone the extent of my shopaholic-ness.

1. Hiking boots to start to break in on our camping trip next weekend. These are supposed to have the "stickiest" rubber bottoms to help me from falling off Half Dome when we go to Yosemite next year.
2. 8x8 scrapbook, paper and stickers to do a small scrapbook of our vacation to Jamaica!

3. A dress for my cousin's "formal dress" wedding in December.

4. A signed 1st edition of History of Meredith College by Mary Lynch Johnson (technically a Christmas gift for myself).

5. Frozen pastry to make Chicken Pastry last Sunday.





6. Thanksgiving cards and birthday cards for my Mom, Grandpa and Grandmother.

7. A baked potato from Wendy's for lunch yesterday--all of my co-workers were jealous.

8. A shelf for my pantry to stack canned goods on--my project to tackle this weekend is cleaning out the pantry. Yuck.

9. This cute hat, again for camping and Yosemite and it will match my purple Columbia jacket.

10. Christmas presents! I love online shopping and I have purchased almost all of the presents!

11. A birthday present for my mom, that will arrive late :-(

12. These alligator Sperry's--I had been searching f-o-r-e-v-e-r for brown flat shoes! They are a lot cuter in person than this pic and they were on sale.

13. ? This proved to be a little more difficult than I thought it would be. Guess I need to go shopping at lunch!

Anyone have any fun purchases this week?

A few updates

My sister Megan and I met up this weekend in Charleston to visit with my grandparents. My Grandfather was diagnosed with cancer in his lungs and chest 2 weeks ago, and we wanted to visit with him before he started his chemo treatments. We had a nice visit and he seems to be in good spirits and has a lot of support from friends and family.While I was in Charleston, Joel was at home finishing up the kitchen tile and grouting. It turned out to be a bigger job than he intended, but of course he is already thinking about his next project :-) We love the way it turned out and it flows nicely with the slate in the back hallway.

A Halloween photo montage...

It sounds like Sharla and I had a similar experience when it came to taking pictures of the dogs in costume. I had tried it out the other night and found that if I put him on the table he would stand still and wouldn't try to jump off--so that was what we tried tonight....but first we needed treats to try to get him to look at the camera

and that worked for a second, but then he was trying to jump off





so we put him on the floor and he proceeded to go into crazy mode to get his outfit off.
Then I reviewed the pics and pouted because none of them were good...so we tried again.




And I thought it was hilarious that all of a sudden he seemed rather comfortable in his outfit and in this silly upright position




I calmed myself enough to take one good picture, and then I let him take the spotlight.

Happy Halloween from Sammy the cowboy!

Quilt Info

http://www.tshirtquilts.com/

Here's a link to the company that made my quilt. They were really easy to work with and are actually a subsidiary of a group called Deaf Initiatives. So most of the people who work on the quilts are deaf and it's a great environment for them to learn and work.

Mountain Weekend

Sharla did a really good post about the weekend--I don't think I could do it justice and I'm also too tired to try! I'm just going to update a few different pictures that were on my camera. After we got back on Sunday I was feeling like I was getting sick, but had to go to work yesterday and today to tackle the budget deadlines that are coming up. So I've worked late both days this week and am exhausted!

Joel working on breakfast on Saturday morning

Joel and I (haha, j/k Sharla)

Ok, so that's only 2 pictures...but I realized I didn't take any good ones and blogger wasn't letting me upload any more. So I give up! Rex and Liz have more on their camera...so there may be more to come later.

Welcome to Meredith- would you like to buy a t-shirt?

I really enjoyed my college experience at Meredith--and trust me, you do just have to experience it-- including every single t-shirt that came with a tradition, event or fundraiser.
I knew that I wanted to have a quilt made and earlier this year had decided on the company I wanted to use, since no one in my family is a quilter, and had ordered some samples of their fabric for the binding and backing. In September I received an email that they were having a sale, so I went ahead and got everything together and shipped off my shirts. This was supposed to be my big Christmas present, but Joel's kind of letting that slide :-) Here she is:

Now you Meredith girls know that this is a VERY small representation of a proper shirt collection. I picked out 4 of my favorite shirts from each year because some were just plain ugly, bless their hearts (though I did include the sadly tragic Ring Dinner shirt, just because I couldn't leave it out). So I still have some shirts to wear and will have this quilt to remember some of my favorite memories!

So as soon as I mention tiling....

Joel gets ants in his pants and decides to go ahead and rip up the linoleum! This was all fine with me though since I had the least envolvement of any project we've done so far! He started the demo on Thursday of last week and started on Saturday morning laying the tile. He officially laid the last tile today, but still needs to grout-so I'll so you some before and during pictures for now-

Goodbye ugly, stained and scuffed linoleum!

I think he actually had fun using his new scrapper.

Hello, wonderful Italian tile!

Blueland and the weekend

We went to "Blueland" to see the Atlanta Thrashers play their home-opener on Friday. The most exciting part was getting to see their first banner raised- the Southeast Division Championship banner--we even got our own little replica banner.

On Saturday Joel went on the annual church golf outing, so I used the day to do some "fall cleaning", try out a new apple pie recipe and catch up on some laundry. It seems like we're still catching up from being on vacation. That and we're still coming down from vacation high. ha ha

Sunday was pretty normal--church and then we picked up lunch at Bojangles (sorry Josh, we had to) and watched the Panthers game--they finally won!

For now we're looking forward to our weekend in the mountains, Christmas and planning next year's vacation to Yosemite. We made a trip to REI last night to check out their fall sale, and Joel picked up a few things. I'm keeping an eye on online sales--there sure is a lot we will need! Oh, and Joel's planning on tiling the kitchen sometime in November (you knew we couldn't resist taking on a new project!)...so stay tuned for some before and after pics!

Ya Mon, No Problem

We are back from our wonderfully fantastic trip to Jamaica! We got back on Thursday morning at 2am, since our flight was delayed for 3 hours, and I haven't had enough energy to begin to put this post together. I'll try to let the pictures speak for themselves, and will spare you the day-by-day run through. The first picture was taken just outside the resort, where the beach is very private and untouched. I had read a review online that you can check out with the guards and are free to wander the beach. We had a fun morning out there all to ourselves.

This was the view that was right outside of our room. There was a pool to the left, so we often used our patio door to get back into the room, rather than going around to the front. All of the rooms are ocean facing, not necessarily ocean view. But we had the best of both having a ground floor room and a nice view.
On Monday we did the only excursion of the trip and went horseback riding. Joel and I had never rode before, so it was a fun experience. A little scary for me though, as halfway through the trip my horse, Big Red, decided that she needed to get to the front of the line and took off in a full on gallop for about 50 yards...that definitely got the adrenaline flowing! Luckily I didn't fall off!

This was one of our favorite meals, outside on the patio facing the ocean. Most of the food was very good and we definitely stretched out our stomachs--we can't seem to get full off of the meals we are eating at home now! Most nights after dinner we played pool or table tennis at the games center. I even beat Joel a few times :-)

These are some photos that the Sandals photographers took on Tuesday. That morning we went on the glass bottom boat ride, tried out snorkeling (I'm getting those developed and will post any good ones) and attempted to sail.

These pictures are from our last day...we had breakfast,

and had a last stroll along the beach before packing up. Then we had lunch and our last drink--see Joel with his sad face. We really loved Sandals and the Jamaican people!

Sandals, Jamaica!

Joel and I took Michael Scott's advice and got 2 tickets to Sandals, Jamaica (Sandals Whitehouse to be specific)....we have never been so ready for a vacation! We'll be back next Wednesday night and I'll maybe get some pictures up by next weekend!

Tour Championship

This past Sunday, Joel and I experienced a new first together--attending a PGA golf tournament--the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. I scored the tickets through work (of course).

We enjoyed some barbecue in my company's suite and then secured a spot alongside the middle of the 1st Fairway--it proved to be a good spot since most of the first drives landed close to where we were standing. We saw Vijay Singh, Sergio Garcia, and Mr. Tiger Woods-the winner of the Tour Championship and the first annual Fedex Cup (10 million...not too shabby).

Us in our complementary commerative photograph--I was glad they had this because they didn't allow cameras on the course!