Happy Birthday Joann!

Today is my wonderful mother in law's birthday. We are wishing her a happy birthday today, but what's very exciting is that she'll be in Atlanta tomorrow so that we can wish her this in person. Until then, hope today is a wonderful today!

PS- I know I haven't updated this blog in the new year at all...Happy New Year everyone and I have not forgotten about any of you that I have not been in touch with all month. Am in a prospectus-writing daze and I am turning it in to my adviser next week. There will be plenty to do until I defend it in March, but things will be better somewhat in Feb....Until then, take care!

A White Christmas

We left Atlanta the Monday before Christmas for Park City, Utah where we go every year to ski with family. Although I had a cold for the first few days of the trip, it was a really nice time and I did manage to ski on Friday (and only fell once). Although I definitely don't feel like a 'real skiier', I found myself more confident and able to enjoy it more rather than just worrrying about whether I will break my leg the whole time. It was the snowiest trip since I've been there and it was gorgeous to have a real white Christmas. The highlights of the trip included Matt's cousin Alex's song and dance routines, a delicious Christmas dinner at Chez Betty, ice skating on Christmas day, and major scores at outlet stores. We got home last Sunday with no delays at all. Here are some photos of the trip......

Once we got back home, I was greeted with a lovely stomach bug and then the same cold that kept fighting it's way back to me (and is still lingering).

This is definitely the time of year that above all else, I realize how lucky I am to have such loving and supportive family and friends. I am so thankful and blessed.

Happy New Year to all!

Time flies...

When you are doing 8 million things. Isn't that how the saying goes? I apologize to anyone that actually keeps up with reading this, since I clearly have not been. But, as you know, things have been busy around here. This is why I haven't been writing....

1. The House- We have been enjoying unpacking, buying some furniture, and generally just enjoying our house. We still have some boxes to unpack but we are having a housewarming party soon...so I am hoping that will motivate us to do it by then:)

2. Holidays....We had a very nice Thanksgiving with my family here in Atlanta. It was very quiet and nice. I worked most of the holiday week. After Thanksgiving we bought a very nice, but fake tree that actually looks pretty real. Here it is! It's exciting to have a full size tree for the first time together! We'll celebrate Christmas with my family here before we head to Utah for 6 days with Matt's family for skiing.

3. School/work (same thing)- I've been working hard to get my prospectus (the proposal for my dissertation ) finished very soon. I hope to defend it (OK, have to defend it) in March at the latest which means it's actually due in early February. Teaching 3 classes (but mostly grading for them) and coordinating the program I am has kept me very, very busy. I went to a conference in Orlando for about 5 days recently and while the conference was just "OK", I had fun going to Epcot and Hollywood Studios one day. I'll be doing quite a bit of work over the 'break' since I have a lot of program coordination-type things to do before the semester begins on the 5th....too early!

That pretty sums up the major stuff. We had 2 holiday parties to go to this weekend, but Matt is pretty sick and I am either just plain exhausted or getting sick, so we missed them both:( We are now obsessed with the show "Weeds" (yes, about 5 years late to that) so we've been at home watching that and getting excited about our new bedroom furniture and mattress that will be delivered this week!!!

Shopping, wrapping, packing (and unpacking), cooking, and cleaning are overloading the to-do list, but it's all stuff to be grateful to be able to do!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my wonderful mom's birthday. I am going to meet her for lunch near her work and we are all getting together Sunday for a celebratory dinner. I love you mom! Hope the day only gets better:)

Ron Clark Academy

Tonight I was lucky enough to be invited by my advisor, Amy, to attend the Ron Clark Academy here in Atlanta. It was an open house to raise awareness with the local business community since they are a private school that provides almost complete tuition assistance for most of their students. If you don't know Ron Clark or his story, google him to learn more. The school in its 2nd year and is for grades 5-8, in an area not too far from us. Students visit 7 out of 8 continents before they leave and the school looks like a movie set. A lot of learning is done through song, music, and technology. The energy and passion was everywhere and I enjoyed watching Ron teach a lesson with students. It was an abosultely amazing experience and I learned several students from one of my previous schools attend. I also slid down their big blue slide, located in the middle of the school! The best part was when they performed this song- see the links from Youtube. They'll be performing this on several shows this week. It was incredible and I felt very lucky to visit tonight. This is how all schools should be! I'm hoping to arrange for a group of my current students to go and visit one day to witness the amazing teachers. Check these out and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEKNAZbn9p0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-2g7tYbZ_M

It's official!!

....so I can finally talk about it. We are the owners of an amazing house! It has all happened very quickly, but we are thrilled. At the beginning of September, Matt began to talk to a co worker who expressed interest in buying his first place in our area. We casually invited him over to check our place out, and amazingly, we settled upon a plan for him to buy the place without even putting it on the market and buy owner! This put us quickly into house hunting mode. Luckily, our friend Mark is also a real estate agent (if you are in Atlanta and buying or selling, you MUST use Mark- he rocks!). After looking at many houses, one stalled contract and one cancelled contract (long story there for another time), we found this house on its 2nd day on the market. The previous owners renovated it over 11 years and had pictures to show the transformation. Their love and care of the house was just so evident, and the process went quickly and pretty smoothly.

After a fast week of packing and getting the townhouse ready to go (we had to fix a few small things, which was more of a pain than I had planned but now I know of several good handymen if you need one!), we closed on both places last Thursday! We literally began moving stuff in about an hour after closing, and continued until Saturday when we had movers do the big stuff. Thanks to my mom, we had extra help with packing and some light moving. The first weekend in the place did feel a little strange- Matt described it as like living in a hotel. We have a lot of boxes to unpack, but slowly things are settling down and it does feels like home to me now. We are just over a mile from our townhouse, so not much has changed in terms of our commutes or where we hang out, which is just what we wanted!

Here are a few pics from before we moved in....If you are in town please stop by anytime you may be in the area. And, if you are out of town, please come and visit us- we now have a guest room (we just need to buy a bed, but you'll be our excuse!)

Congrats Lara and Bill!

Sorry for the major lack of postings lately. As many of you readers know, there has been some *major* excitement and stress (the best combo right??) going on in our world these days. I don't want to get into that now, but I will surely try to post more when things are settled and we have great news to share!

For now, I wanted to share some photos of the beautiful and fun wedding we went to in Wilmington, NC last weekend. Our friends Lara and Bill, who we have gotten to know through Matt's friends from his program at Emory (otherwise known as the "Allison/Alison/Alysons", although this group includes people with other names:), were so gracious to invite us to share in their awesome celebration. Wilmington is a beautiful town and we drove there with 2 of the Als (thanks to them, Matt and I did not have to aruge over each other's driving and just got to sit in the backseat!). On Friday night, we had dinner and met up with the wedding party for a pre-wedding shakedown at a bar/restaurant. Saturday before the wedding, we had time to have a great brunch and walk around downtown Wilmington with friends before the wedding started.

The ceremony took place on the beach and was so personal and amazing. I love how they wrote their own vows. The weekend was also great because we also got to meet our friends Erik and Amanda's little boy for the first time, Trent (you can see he enjoyed the ceremony on the beach). They were not able to make it our wedding and so it was great to meet Trent finally. The reception took place in a historic loft-like building in downtown Wilmington (which is SO cute). It was filled with great creative details like a candy bar, a great long table for the wedding party, and lots of brown and blue (our favorite color scheme of course). There was a lot of love in the room for Lara and Bill. They are such a fun and warm couple.

Sunday morning, Lara's parents hosted a brunch at their beach house, which was a great way to get us going before our long trip home. Congrats guys!!!

All photos by Ali P. (thanks Ali). I don't have a little camera anymore so I have to rely on others!