Christmas Day

We went to church with my mom at Oakhurst Baptist last night AND this morning! I love the choir there; some of their members even sing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra! This is the church where we got married, so I had to get pictures of us in front of the tree. Thanks to mom's friend Renee for playing photographer-- a friend is going to touch up the first one, so I'll re-post when she's done. 

Mom got us a SoniCare toothbrush for Christmas which is pretty exciting-- our dentist says it's the best thing that we could do for our teeth, and we found it on sale for $40 which is nearly half price! I don't know how we would have afforded it otherwise, so THANKS mom! She also gave me some lavender epsom salts, and a little dremel type tool for Jeremy-- he has a big bad one, but this will be good for if he wants to take it to work or on the road so he doesn't have to worry about losing/breaking it. 

I got Jeremy "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig and "Shop Class as Soulcraft" by Matthew Crawford, as well as "Cowboys and Aliens" and a couple of other things that I'm holding off on... he hasn't gotten anything for me, which I don't mind, but he's making himself feel bad about it so I don't want to give him the big surprise and make him feel really bad :\ I'll wait on that one until our first road trip, he'll be thrilled! 

Thanksgiving Pt. III

We went to Oliver Winery while we were up in IN, which is just the prettiest place around! They also have some very tasty wine, and we took the tour and got to see behind the scenes :)

Bajillion gallon tanks for wine making

The smaller tanks were the original, they're being used to cold stabilize at the moment which is why there are rings of ice around the outside!

It was a great trip and we ended up with some great wine to share with friends and some delicious dip to share with Josh and Sarah (who don't really like wine that much) that night while we watched... CondorMan. A crazy movie from the early 80's that was Josh and Jeremy's favorite childhood memory, it would seem!

All in all, it was a pretty great day after Thanksgiving! We love seeing Josh and Sarah and with any luck, we'll get to see them again this summer!

Thanksgiving Pt. II

Driving over the line to Arkansas-- I wanted to take a picture of each state sign, but the weather was so crummy I couldn't see half the signs!

There are lots of cool old bridges, though!

Illinois gave us some good weather... for about ten minutes.

When we got there, I cooked Greens for Thanksgiving... which apparently Nala loves!

I mean REALLY loves!

All of us at Joyce's for Thanksgiving lunch

Thanksgiving pt. 1

I really love Thanksgiving, but it's always hard to be away from home for it. I'd thought when we first got married that maybe we would do Thanksgiving in Atlanta and Christmas in Indiana-- Christmas means a lot more to Jeremy's family and Thanksgiving to mine. In the end, I think it's nice to switch it up, and this year has been particularly great with having a whole 9 days off to come up and really spend time with Josh and Sarah!

We drove up to Memphis first on Saturday, and I got to meet some of my amazing extended Alpha family and help out with KO's (my home chapter) elections! I got some great ideas from that to bring back to Gamma Sigma, so I'm excited to propose those for next year.

Andrea, my Great Grand Little! She's from the Atlanta area, so I'm excited to get to see her when she's home from breaks!

Maggie and Morgan are on either end-- they're my Great Great Great Grand Littles, and Sam is next to me in red, and she is their big sis, my Great Great Grand Little!

I love meeting my Alpha family, and it was so wonderful for them to be as excited as I was! They seem like really amazing girls and I can't wait to meet my Great Great Great Great Grand Littles next year!! 

In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina...

But only because we were actually there this weekend and had such an amazing time!! My Aunt and Uncle live up there and we used to go all the TIME when I was little-- that place is the best! We drove up Thursday after work and we made the first half in fantastic time since you can average 76mph, and the second half made me want to fall asleep since you can average 45mph...

We drove past a beautiful fair that I would have stopped to take pictures of if we'd known, a couple of places that sounded like cheap strip clubs (but were not), found a Chinese restaurant that popped out of Decatur existence suddenly last summer (hey, they were both named Jin Jin and both had the same sign-- coincidence, I think not!, and arrived unharmed just before Aunt and Uncle hit the hay.

Friday we slept in a bit and then talked Uncle in to taking us out on the boat-- MY FAVORITE THING!

I even "caught" a Spanish Mackerel! Couldn't get any baitfish, of course, but there you go! Afterwards, we went to lunch at the Inlet View which was DELISH. The hush puppies were yummy, then I had a scallop burger with the biggest, juciest scallops I've ever had in my life! They get them fresh, apparently, and you can tell! Before we left, we also picked up some bacon wrapped scallops which I can still taste they were so good!

Me and Aunt Linda before lunch

Inlet View. And a large boat!

Eupogia-- my cousin's idea for keeping bait fish for the many tournaments they fish!

That evening we went to The Cattle Barn and WOW it was amazing. The sushi there was probably the best I've ever had in my life! 

Fresh grouper sashimi-- straight from Uncle's boat!

I ate until I could eat no more, and then Chef Mark stopped bringing food out which was good, because I totally would have kept eating!!

Saturday was a lazy day, we went to lunch at the G-Mac with Aunt, Uncle, and my cousin-twice-by-marriage Stephanie and new baby Blakely-- just pretend like there's a picture of them here that I actually took...

But, there's one of them anyway-- Stephanie is so sweet and Blakely is going to be Trouble (with a capital T!) but cute enough to be worth it!

We ran up to the little farmer's market up the road and picked up some produce, then the grocery store for some wine, and back around to the house for a relaxing afternoon!

Watermelon colored gourds

Stripey gourds

Turban squash

Aunt Linda and her Baby Squash

Later that afternoon, we got to work cooking and then had a great night with my cousin Brant and his family-- the best part? Discovering that all three of the cousins have the same memory of the 4th of July Uncle blew a hole in the beach!!

Guacamole? Check

Pico? Check.

Apple Crisp ready for the oven? Check

Fire pit? Check.

Apple Crisp ready? Check.

Toddler double fisting said apple crisp? Sweet.

Adorable family-- triple check!

Thanks for sticking through this long-- it was a fantastic weekend and we can't wait to get back!

Working hard!

Yep, I've been pretty busy over here for a sick gal!

Agape Events Blog:

Destination Wedding.... Or is it?
I Discover Pinterest
Weddings for Everyone!
Vera Wang comes to David's Bridal
Indian Wedding Inspiration
Irish Wedding Inspiration


I also started a new blog based on my Pinterest obsessions!

The beginning of my caprese obsession...
Bacon Chipotle Poppers
My caprese obsession continues...


I've been wrapping a up lot of AOII stuff and dealing with a major illness. Oh, right, I haven't told you about my whole tonsillectomy thing!

So, as most of us know, I've had tonsillitis since my would-be senior year of college! Awesome fun, let me tell you... anyways, in June my throat started hurting bad enough that I finally went to the doctor in  August to see what the deal is. After a couple of appointments, the PA decided that I've probably had the same infection since June and it isn't going away with antibiotics, so I'll have to go in for surgery.

Lately, I've gotten even more sick and more run down and I have to just make it to December and I'll be good-- unfortunately, they predict a 2 week recovery time and there's not an earlier date that I can shake off two weeks. We're supposed to go up to Indiana for Thanksgiving so I don't want to miss that since we're dying to see Josh and Sarah. We were hoping that Ana would still be there with the new niece and nephew, but it would appear they're hoping everyone will come to them this weekend so that's a no-go. Della's wedding is end of October, right after homecoming at Rhodes/an excuse to head to Memphis and see Marc and Jan, and we're not going to miss out on seeing Aunt Linda and Uncle Rube next weekend since we haven't seen them since the wedding!

Anyway, I'm trying to push my way through-- I've been through worse with less, so there's no reason I can't get through this!

Oh, well, I need to head to bed now, but there will be more updates soon! If you like any of my links above, please do me a favor and share them!

Really, July?

It has gotten hot here. And it's been hot all summer, but now it's just oppressive. I love love love living in the South, but every now and again we have a summer that's just KILLER! Don't get me wrong, I'll take this over the heat in Arizona any day, but GUH it would be nice to walk out the door and not want to walk right back inside!

This summer has been exhausting; there's so much more to deal with than there was last summer and I'm so tired of people expecting a thousand things from me that they know I can't do. If you want hours, don't take days off. If you're bothered by something, mention it instead of letting it fester. The usual obvious stuff! But, after school is about to start and hopefully it will be a little less stressful.

We found out last weekend that Ana and Valerie were back down in Memphis; we'd assumed they were staying in Indiana. I'm hoping we get to go up soon since we couldn't afford to last weekend. It'd be amazing to see them again, and we promised Ana we'd see her before China and Mitike got here. We're not sure about when Matt and Valerie will be able to go get them, but it's looking like it might be a little bit longer so that could give us some time. We keep trying to get everyone to come visit us in Atlanta now that we have extra bedrooms and some great new Ethiopian restaurants under our belt, but so far no go!

September we're going to take a week off which will hurt financially, but we need a break. I'm planning on going up to see my Aunt and Uncle in NC since we haven't seen them since the wedding and the last time we were up there was right after my wisdom teeth surgery so I wasn't very with it! We can go up the week of Jeremy's birthday and maybe have a little bit of a honeymoon (finally...) and meet my cousin's new baby girl, Blakely! November might be excellent because all the school districts have Thanksgiving WEEK off and we may not have to open for Thanksgiving! That means we could go to Indiana early since it's our year to be there for Thanksgiving and here for Christmas and spend plenty of time with Josh and Sarah, and maybe Ana, Matt, and Valerie if the paperwork comes in at the last minute!

I'm excited for the rest of the year. Now that we're (generally) moved in to our new place, I think it'll be easier for us to cook at home a little more and spend less money going out! We're also going to try to get on top of the job search for Jeremy! Hopefully we can find him something he really enjoys and that will get us a little more income... that would be helpful for our travel expenses for sure!

Well, that's enough for now, hopefully I'll have a little more time to keep y'all updated!!

Ciao for now!

Monday Monday!

OK, so back to Memphis for a brief period of time... Monday we got to spend time playing with Ana and having fun, we cooked lunch (my new favorite stuffed zucchini), and then we hopped in the car to head home.

Ana walked around the back yard with Grandma for a while 

Then she put on her new princess sunglasses and played with sidewalk chalk!

 

And then learned a little about badminton!

 

Then she hopped in the old car and drove around

 

We went inside to eat a mid-morning snack and Ana helped me make miso soup!

Then we made a funky alien headband with pipe cleaners

After that, she lint rolled Uncle Jeremy-- he was much cleaner after that!