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!