From Worst to First!

We have been spending the past few days taking our yard from the worst place yard to the first place yard. Well, probably not the first but we are well on the way. As of yesterday, we only had a small patch of sod that was brown, and mud and rocks for the rest of the yard. It was a pitiful excuse of a yard. Chris decided that we needed to sod the yard to make it look better before the baby comes and we have another mouth to feed. (That is a direct quote from his mouth.) Well, I know a landscaper that does some pretty good work so I called him up and asked him to help us out. :) We are so excited by the way it looks now. Thank you Dad, Felipe, Jorge, Chris, and Meredith for laying sod and making our house look so beautiful.

This is a before short. (well not really, but its the closest thing i have to one)Yes, this is Meredith running the tractor.

Chris and Felipe laying the sod. They worked their butts off today. I tried to help but was quickly reprimanded.

The finished product. Amazing! To get a clue of what it looked like before, just picture red dirt and big rocks throughout the whole yard. And make sure to not picture any green in the picture.

Sweet Home Alabama!

During July we went to Alabama for a week. Our first stop was in Troy to visit Chris' college roommate and best friend Justin and his family. They just had their second little girl, Reese. She is the little one Chris is holding in the picture. It gave us a little bit of practice holding a newborn. I think it was also a reality check for me that I have a baby inside of my body! Crazy! We had a great time hanging out with the Hawarah family. It was a lot of fun. I want to thank them for letting us crash with them while they were adjusting to having their new baby girl home.

Our next stop was Mobile. The other two pics are from our time spent with Chris's family. It is always a delight to see them and spend time with them since we don't get to see them as often. The first picture is of us with Chris' grandparents. They are so adorable! I love listening to his grandfather's stories. I reminds me a lot of my own grandfather. And his grandmother is so full of energy and spunk. I love her too death. The other picture is of Chris with his cousin Zack and two little friends Jackson and Carter. I think they wrestled for three hours straight! Needless to say, Chris was worn out and sore after all that wrestling. I think he's getting old. We enjoyed our time hanging out with everyone in Mobile. It was lots of fun.

This summer

This has been quite a fun summer so far. Well, for me, I guess. Chris has been taking classes and coaching summer ball. His summer has been packed full of studying and coaching. We did get to take a great vacation with the family this year. We always travel to Holden Beach, NC with my dad's side of the family. On the way there we got to stop in Greenville, SC to meet up with JD, Danielle, and Jeremiah Adams for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel. It was great seeing them and Mr. and Mrs. Adams, JD's parents. By the way, thanks for breakfast Mr. John and Mrs. Gayla! It was a pleasure getting to see you all.

Attached are some pictures from the beach trip and some pictures of the garden this year. We no longer live at the cabin so its not as easy to get up to the garden to work. But it is a blessing to have a wonderful dad that works his butt off up there quite often. This picture of the garden is only the potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, squash, tomatoes, and peppers. The corn, beans, okra, and more couldn't fit into the picture.

This pic is of Chris and Justin. Justin is my cousin who moved from NC to GA last year to attend UGA and work with dad. He has become my brother through this past year...or at least I treat him like he's my brother. Chris and Justin are digging into the Low Country Boil that Dad and Chris fixed this year at the beach.

This is a group picture of everyone (minus Leslie) in my Dad's family. We all stayed in one beach house. It was a little crowded but we made it work and will have memories for the rest of our lives. Didn't my grandparents raise such a cute family?

Just our family.

Chris and Dad putting some veggies into the Low Country Boil. This is by far my favorite meal of the year. I even sat at the bar where the food was laid out and pigged out until there was nothing left. This year we fed 33 people! I think that is the most ever. Dad mentored Chris this year on the secrets to the Low Country meal. I hope he paid attention and can make this sometime for our friends!

Our New Home

Yes, I know this is long overdue. But since we moved into our home, things have been a little crazy. Between school, Chris starting his specialist, baseball, and the little one in my belly making me as sick as a dog, there hasn't been much time to even fold the clothes coming out of the dryer, much less blog! So with that said, we moved in January to our own home in south Habersham. It was bittersweet. It is hard going from your dream home to a starter home. But this home is ours, so that is pretty exciting! The house in minutes from work. It cut our drive to work from 30 minutes to 3-7 minutes.

The pictures are of the house before we moved in. I haven't taken any since we moved in. My camera was lost in the trunk of mom's car for months before I found it. So I need to take some and put them on here as well.
I would like to thank my husband for being a penny-pincher. He is the lone reason we are able to have this house. He is the "Dave Ramsey" of our marriage. If it was up to my spending habits, we wouldn't have this house but I'd have 5 more pairs of Chacos in my closet and lots of clothes to add to my wardrobe. I think I like the house more than those things. :)

This pic is looking at the front door from the living area.

The living room. It looked so big without furniture in it.

The living room from a different angle.

The kitchen. Where I used to spend most of my time before I got pregnant!

Chris opening OUR door for the first time.

Our Anniversary

For our third anniversary Chris surprised me with a trip to the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. We had lots of fun staying in their hotel, eating fancy foods, and touring the house with all the Christmas decorations. It was great to just get away for a weekend and go to a place we had never been before. The third year of marriage was full of blessings and had its share of heartache too but we are thankful that God has blessed us with another year of marriage.

too much going on...

Well since I last posted lots of things have happened. Most importantly we have moved to a new house! We are still in Habersham County but have ventured to the south side. We hated to leave the cabin but decided it was time to move into our own home. Living at the cabin was the best place a newlywed couple could ever imagine living! But God has ways higher than ours and He lead us to Baldwin to find our first "own" home. It has been bittersweet leaving Batesville. There are so many things we miss but it is also nice being homeowners at the same time. I have one funny story that came from buying our house...the day we put an offer in, chris and i were driving home to the cabin in sort of a solemn mood (i guess you have to see where we lived to understand) rehashing what we had just done. We were talking about the new house and sharing thoughts about leaving the cabin and how hard it would be. When we got home I got to work on some Christmas projects and Chris said, "You know, I'm going to go out in the woods and see if I see anything." (That is his way of saying, "I'm going hunting.") So he geared up and took off into the woods by our house. He wasn't gone for too long when I heard a shot echo my way. I thought for sure it couldn't be him because he hadn't been gone too long. I mindlessly went back to wrapping presents by the fire not thinking much about the shot. After it started to become dusk, I began to get worried. I would get up from in front of the fire ever so often to peer out the window looking for my mountain man to come walking out from the woods. But he was never there when I looked. Fifteen minutes after my last visit to the window, I heard him coming up the front steps. He came to the door, panting and out of breath, and asking me to get my camera. "That was your shot!" I said. He affirmed my thought and said that since that shot had gone off he had been dragging the buck he shot out of the woods. He pulled at least 200 yards (and that's his estimation...so it's not an exaggeration!). So of course, I took his picture with his deer and then let him go about slaying the animal. I thought that was a cute story...Chris in the woods and me by the fire. Those are the two places we always loved to be living at the cabin. I guess we realized just how much we were going to miss Watts Mill Road!
We miss the cabin but living near work has helped make it easier to pour our lives into our students. I guess living near our students gives us a bond we didn't have before. I feel more connected to them. Just today I got to take a student out after school and still be home by 4:30! That is amazing. Just pray that continues to God increase our impact here in Baldwin through being closer to the students we minister to. And come and visit us soon.

Last week of summer...

Well, I guess summer is finally over. It has been quite eventful though with Chris finishing his masters degree through NGC&SU, visiting family in Mobile, and then touring NYC! I had been to NYC before but Chris had not. We went to two baseball games while in New York, one at Yankee Stadium and one at Shea Stadium. Both games were great games and I have to thank the row of Yankees fans that sat behind us in the bleachers in right field, they made the game exactly what Chris and I expected. We also toured the Staue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Empire State Building, China Town, Little Italy, Central Park, Harlem, and the Musuem Mile. We did all of this in 3 days! Needless to say we were extremely tired when we finally made it to the airport Wednesday night to catch our flight. Upon arrival to LaGuardia Airport we learned that our flight had been delayed from 8:46 pm until 11:12 pm. To make a long story short, after sitting in the airport for 4 hours and experiencing delays until 1:12 am our flight was finally cancelled until the next day at 4:20 pm. This gave us another night in NYC. This night was quite interesting to say the least. We started out looking for a hotel room...which was hard to find since 8 other flights had been cancelled also. We finally found a motel somewhere in Queens and took a taxi there. When we arrived there, we immedietly realized why there were still rooms! Chris thinks you could rent a room by the half hour (if you catch his drift). The lobby was protected by 2 inch thick glass. Chris told the guy behind the glass that we had asked for a room but changed our mind and wanted him to call a taxi for us. We got back to the airport, waited 2 hours for a blanket from airport officals, then ended up sleeping on the floor of the airport. I slept wonderfully and Chris slept horribly. There were hundreds of people sleeping on the floor when I fell asleep and none left when I woke up. Chris and I then ate 3 meals in the airport, bought books and magazines to occupy over time, talked to many people from all over, and then finally boarded our flight at 8:46 pm...24 hours after our first flight was to take off. We finally made it back to Atlanta, got in our car and headed back to God's Country. We only drove a 1/4 mile through the parking lot at the airport before Chris turned on the light and jumped out of the car with ants all over him and crawling all over the front of our car (they were even coming out of the parking brake)! I then jumped out, stripped down, and then started spraying Off and hand sanitizer on the ants. They did finally die, we laughed, and finally made it to Bateville and our own bed. The trip was awesome. We just learned two lessons...1. don't fly into LuGuardia 2. don't park at the airport unless you can park in the parking deck! I will put pictues up soon.