Happy New Year!

Greg got New Year's Eve off, and so we headed 2 hours south to the Little Grand Canyon in Lumpkin, GA. This is one of the 7 Wonders of GA, and Greg took me here 5 years ago when he was wooing me. The weather was amazing - 70+ degrees and we were sweating in short-sleeved shirts.

It is a beautiful canyon, but it is not that old. It is a canyon created from erosion from poor farming in the 1800s. One day a farmer noticed his land was start to erode away, and within a few years it was this. For real.

We hiked around in the bottom of the canyon rather than hiking around the rim.


See - it's all just sand. Erosion.




We're still just as happy 5 years later!









New Year's Eve

Greg started a new tradition this year. Instead of using party favors to bring in the New Year, we used oboe reeds. They are the reeds Greg made with a Dremel tool, and sound even worse than party favors!

We celebrated with Darah and David.

And here Dave and Greg are trying to get my Christmas gift of marshmallow shooters to work. They never got them working. It might have been a bummer night if the "A-Team" hadn't saved us. Great movie!

Christmas in Charleston

This year Greg and I spent Christmas in Charleston. No, we do not have family in Charleston. It was the off year for both of our families where the siblings go to their in-laws, and so we had no obligations and decided to spend the Christmas holiday just the two of us. It was a perfect Christmas, and exactly what we needed.

We loved Charleston. Here's the view of Fort Sumter from Battery Park.

And apparently Charleston is called "the holy city" because it has hundreds of churches. I love all white churches with big white columns.

Greg in front of the replica of The Hunley, one of the earliest submarines used during the Civil War. That's actual size and 4 men could fit in it. Talk about claustrophobia!

This is one of the richest houses in the area. These houses were old (pre-Revolutionary) and surprising huge. I think this one had 24,000 square feet or something like that.

A lot of the houses have privacy doors. See how there's a door facing the street, but it opens up onto the piazza (plaza)? This is very typical Charleston architecture.

Greg visited Charleston when he was a kid, and his dad had all the kids pose in front of this statue and point. This one's for you, Dahls!

When Greg and I started dating we discovered we had one mutual friend - Wendy! Wendy was a missionary in Greg's mission and they actually traveled on a train to a new destination ALONE (scandalous, I know). I know Wendy from the BYU music dept. where she was a horn major and Lea's roommate. We met Wendy and her husband at IHOP on Christmas Day and had a wonderful time reuniting over hashbrowns, pancakes and stuffed french toast.

We went to the Festival of Lights on James Island. This is one of the biggest light shows in the country, and we were not disappointed making this 3-mile loop of over 30,000 lights.




Tokyo Express is where we had our Christmas dinner. It was much better than where we had our Christmas Eve dinner - the Shell gas station. Did you know EVERYTHING closes on Christmas Eve in Charleston?

It was pretty nice weather, and we missed the white Christmas in Atlanta. However, it did start snowing in Charleston on Sunday and we drove in the snow all the way back to Atlanta. Weird.



Christmas Morning at the Radisson

Greg got Marshmallow shooter guns. Unfortunately they don't work. Fail for me!

But I made up for it by giving Greg an iPad. Now he can play "Angry Birds" for hours on a big screen.

And he gave me a laptop that is Lara-sized. I love my little Netbook and use it mainly to journal every night. No more pen and paper!

And Greg got me a Snuggie--just what I always wanted!

Stain-Glass Window, the best present ever

PRESENTING...

Paul and his specially tailored stainglass window for US!

Look closely at the design...can you tell what it is? Any oboe nerds out there?

They are oboe reeds!

Check out the dark cork, the verigated thread, and the "cane-like" appearance of the glass in the tip.

(And for any quilting nerds, I stole the idea of the "piano key" border from my Mom's quilts.)

Paul (pictured above between the reeds) is the father of my former oboe student, Ariel. As a gift, he wanted to make this window for us. You would probably guess that either myself or Ariel came up with the design for the window, but that is not the case. It was Greg. That's right, Greg thought of and designed this window of oboe reeds for the transom above the music room! What a brilliant reedmaking husband of mine (and yes, Greg really can make a good oboe reed)!

We love it! Thank you Paul!

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Before Greg and I ever got married, his mother gave him a Christmas tree. I thought it was terrific that not only did my new husband come with bedroom furniture, but also a Christmas tree!

But after 4 years, I felt like maybe it was time to move past our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.

Greg was very attached, and it took a lot of convincing.

I don't think I really had him convinced until I bought THIS pre-lit 8 ft. tree for $30 off Craig's List.

You have got to love Craig's List!

There, isn't that much better? Now we finally feel like grown-ups.

Halloween in Peachtree City

Truth be told, I've tried to get Greg in this Scarecrow costume for THREE YEARS NOW! Yes, I bought it three years ago, and this was the first year we actually were able to go to the ward Trunk-or-Treat party.

Although I thought my costume was pretty cool, everybody loved Greg's the most. They kept asking me if I made it. That is seriously like the funniest thing I have ever been asked. I'm still laughing!

Obviously my costume wasn't that original....




The Rennicks came for the celebration too. I forced them to dress up, so Elizabeth is wearing my Pocahontas costume (which she insisted was Sacajawea) and Jacob wore Greg's Mustard costume. Aloysia brought her own duck costume of course!

Some more Wizard of Oz gang - Yes, there's even Toto!

And instead of making cupcakes, we decided to start a new annual Halloween tradition and make dinner in a pumpkin. Good thing Elizabeth is a good cook, and made some New Orleans-type-rice to put inside!

It turned out awesome, and the pumpkin was really good too! I can't believe all those recipe books that say pumpkins aren't any good to eat - all lies!

The Marshes came to our neighborhood (Ardenlee) to trick-or-treat.

And I think we got more Trick-or-Treaters willing to trek up our steep driveway because we had this cool pumpkin on our doorstep, compliments of Elizabeth. Of course, since she was already gone, I claimed all the credit!

I wish you could see what Ardenlee was like on Halloween. It's totally awesome! Can you see the line of golfcarts parading down the street?

Dollywood, Cupcakes, Air Show, Savannah...

My title pretty much sums up the month of October. Except for the fact that my camera battery and charger somehow made its way to Kentucky for the last two months and we haven't had a camera. So all of these pictures are compliments of Greg's phone. And no, I'm not super conceited, it's just that Greg took all of these pictures of ME because it's HIS phone!!!

WEEKEND IN TN AT DOLLYWOOD First stop in October was a trip to Tennessee for Greg's nephew Ty's baptism. And we celebrated the momentous occasion by going with the boys to Dollywood. I've been begging Greg to take me to Dollywood since we started dating. Since he spent much of his childhood there he was not interested in going back. Thank you Ty for providing a great reason for me to go!

A picture of Greg! (And incidentally, he loved Dollywood--it was even better than he remembered it!)

This was the a really cool Adventure Course. Everyone's hooked in by a harness to a system ot tracks above, and then you can choose your own level of difficulty of the rope course.

Greg was like a mountain goat scaling these ropes. Greg liked taking pictures of me being a scaredy-cat.

Does it look like I'm smiling? It's all an act.

WEEKEND OF CUPCAKES...LITERALLY

Elizabeth came and visited for another weekend and wanted to make cupcakes. In this picture we are featuring our banana pudding cupcakes, not to be confused with the strawberry or oreo cupcakes we also made. Funny thing is, we had never even made cupcakes before, and neither of us really likes cupcakes. We thought maybe people would view us as more domesticated if we could make cupcakes, and it seems to have worked so far!

THE AIR SHOW WITH BEN, JENNY AND TYLER

You can't see any planes in the sky, but trust me, the airshow in Marietta was amazing! We saw the best of the best. Unfortunately, no camera, no pics of actual people you may know. But we had a blast Ben and Jenny! Thanks for coming down from Nashville!

And while taking a golf cart ride with Ben, Jenny and Tyler on Sunday, we ran across a recently put out fire...of a golfcart. It was still smoldering and the fire engine was still nearby. I hope this never happens to Obama!


WEEKEND IN SAVANNAH WITH MY MOM

My mom came to visit a few weeks ago, and as she had never been to Savannah we decided to all go for the day. This was a cool clipper ship but with a really weird crew.

One of our best stops on our trolley tour. We ate lunch at the Pirates House. It was awesome!

This is the room where Blackbeard died? Something like that. Why I am standing so strangely, I have no idea. I guess I'm preparing for my modeling career...

The explanation of the secret tunnel in the Pirate's House

Looking down into the bottom of the beginning of the tunnel. Glad I wasn't a pirate back then! They said men used to pass out from drunkenness at the Pirate House, and upon waking up in the morning would find themselves on a strange ship traveling to a strange destination. They had been smuggled through the tunnels and out to the boats in their drunken stupor, and suddenly found themselves in a new vocation!

My mom and I also did a bunch of other things, like go to the Country Living Fair in Stone Mountain, go to the World of Coca-Cola Museum, CNN Tour, and of course visited quilt shops. We had a great time!

Soon to come, Dorothy and the Scarecrow...