Livin' The Wood Life

New Stuff

2011-11-11T22:00:00.000-05:00

Hey heyyyy!

So, a quick update on Joyce really quick. She FINALLY made it through the CDIF infection (thanks to so much help from Ginny...and a miracle on God's part) and started feeling better, getting stronger, and having a more normal appetite. But right before her appointment with the oncologist, she started to get sick again and couldn't keep any food down. So, they told her that chemo wasn't an option unless she got better. She DID get better after another week or so and decided on her own to go ahead and do the chemo. So she went in last Monday to have the port installed into her chest and then started her first chemo treatment last Wednesday. So far, she's had some symptoms, but it could be a lot worse, so we are hoping and praying for the best over the next six months. She will go in for chemo every other week for six months. We appreciate all of your prayers!

In other life updates, I just started a new job this week! And so far, I LOOOVE IT! Definitely a good change for me. I enjoyed the position I had at Roam before this but realized that it was not such a great fit for my personality or skills and it became a very frustrating position for me. Around the time I decided I needed to move in a different direction, Ryan and I had decided to make Perimeter Church our home church (Praise the Lord for a place to finally plug in and get connected!!), and soon after that, saw a posting on their website for a Ministry Associate position with the Global Outreach team. I had not considered it seriously until I was talking to a friend who is on staff at Perimeter and mentioned I had seen the posting and she talked about how awesome the Global Outreach team was. So, because it had been a while since I had first seen the posting, I went to see if it was still even posted and when it was, applied immediately. I interviewed two days later I believe, was offered the job the morning after my interview (on a Friday), and committed to the position the following Monday. I walked out of the interview SO excited about the opportunity because I just felt like it would be such a great fit and really loved the whole group of people that I interviewed with and especially their mission and vision for Global Outreach around the world.

I took off most of last week to have a little bit of time to myself before starting my new position. AWESOME WEEK by the way. Got to spend a day with Joyce (had not seen her in a month and a half, since her surgery since she had been so weak and contagious with the CDIF following surgery!), took a gorgeous fall drive to the mountains of Blairsville to have a baking day with Laura, her mom, sister, and niece (need to get that coconut macaroon recipe by the way, LG!), and ended up spending the night, watching New Moon to prepare ourselves for the next Twilight movie that's about to come out (YAY!), and spent a couple HGTV-style days at Matt's new fixer-upper priming walls, painting the ceilings and trim and helping him pick out counter-tops, floors, and cabinet paint so he can rent out his first house (Pride Property Group, LLC!).

And then on Monday, I started my new job at Perimeter! Walked into a CRAZY week - the team I am working with conducts clinics in partner cities around the world, but twice a year, they host a clinic at Perimeter where partners from around the U.S. and some of our international partner cities come here. Well, the clinic started on Thursday, so I pretty much came in and hit the ground running. Will get a real orientation next week, but this week I just jumped in and started on the clinic and have learned a lot fast! Enough to know I'm going to love it here. The girl that I am replacing is leaving to teach, so I'll be able to work WITH her for the next month...and although I know my position would not have even been available to me if it weren't for her leaving, I'm sad to see her leave! She's awesome and I honestly think we'd make a good team working together, but it's great that I'll have time to really learn the ins and outs of the Global Outreach department ...and the rest of Perimeter...from her. One of the things I love most is the event planning component. That is one of the things I miss most from working for the Falcons and in the Duke Athletic Department - planning the events. I LOVED both of my jobs at the Falcons and at Duke, but when we moved back to GA, I wanted something with more normal hours (less nights and weekends), and I wanted something where I felt like I was investing in people and a purpose I believed in. Which is why this seems to be such a great fit (so far!), in addition to the fact that the more I'm around the GO team, the more I love the fact that I get to be a part of such an awesome team of people and the more meetings I am a part of, the more I believe in the work they are doing and am so excited to be a part of it. There is some event planning, but not on a crazy busy weekly basis. Just periodically. Perfect! Because while I like my nights and weekends, I LOVE the creativity and hectic craziness of putting on events! So it's the best of both worlds. :)

The theme for this fall clinic is "carnival/fair", which was all pre-planned by Ashley of course, and since I just stepped in on Monday, am just helping her put it all on. But so far, yesterday and today went very well and we just have tomorrow to go! Today, for their afternoon snack break, we made caramel apples, corndogs, and had a popcorn station and a dippin' dots stand. Everyone loved it! And if my card-reader on the computer would work, I'd include some pictures, but it's not for some reason and my I.T. man (aka Ryan) isn't here to fix it for me, so sorry. :) Ashley is GREAT at her job (it's obvious everyone is going to miss her tons!) and is definitely leaving big shoes to fill, but the more I'm around her, the more I find that we are so much alike, so I hope I can do the position justice when she leaves! ;)

Ryan is still very much enjoying being at JLL - can't believe he's been there for almost a year now!

We're looking forward to a West Virginia Thanksgiving in a couple weeks with the entire Pridemore Family. That was our one holiday tradition growing up that was the same every year of my life, but Matt and TJ haven't been since they entered high school because Buford was always in the playoffs over Thanksgiving (those high school years, the WV fam came to us in GA and went to the Buford game) and then they both just had their last college season last year. So this is the first year we'll all be able to go...since '01 I think! And my married cousins that have moved away will be there too, so we're excited about Mamaw's cooking, riding four-wheelers in the mountains, card games, and being with the entire family!! :)

Hope y'all are enjoying this time of year - it's pretty out but I'm constantly FREEZING already! brrr....

Joycie

2011-09-20T21:48:00.000-04:00

Many people have been emailing, facebooking, calling, and texting to ask about my grandmother Joyce, who is trying to recover from a major surgery and infection due to the recent and sudden news that she has colon cancer. As many emails/calls/texts as I've received, multiply that by at least ten for the amount my mom and my aunt Elaine have received. We feel so extremely blessed to be surrounded by so many people who love us and are praying for Joyce (and our family, esp. Mom and Elaine), so thank you ALL for the ways you have been loving on our family. And while it's much easier to post one big response to give everyone the scoop on Joyce and an update on how she is doing, I will continue to try and respond to all of your emails, facebook messages, calls, and text messages individually.

Mom, Joyce, & Elaine

Right now, Joyce is doing a little bit better than she was mid to late last week, although her condition seems to go up and down from day to day. She improves a little, then takes a step back. The doctors were hopeful that she might be able to come home today (today is the 18th day that she has been in the hospital), but when I talked to my mom a little while ago, she said the doctor had not come in yet and that Joyce was feeling a little bit worse and in more pain than she has been the last few days, so I'm not sure if they will approve for her to go home or not.

The whole fam: Mom, Dad, Me & Ryan, Matt, TJ, & Jamie to the right of Joyce. Elaine & Steve, Andrea & husband Jimmy, kids Alicia & AJ; Tina & husband Wes; & Eric to Joyce's left.

To give the whole background...

Joyce was fine as far as we knew last month - she had less energy than normal and had not been feeling great, but had not been able to figure out exactly what it was. Two Fridays back, she was at home, getting ready to color her hair and had plans to go to dinner and a movie with a friend later that night when her doctor called and told her she needed to go to the hospital due to the results from her blood work a few days prior. Her hemoglobin was at a 6 (normal should be 11 or 12), so she had less than half the amount of blood pumping through her body than normal, hence the major sluggishness and lack of energy. Because her blood level was so dangerously low, they told her not to drive herself, so my mom went to pick her up and take her. When they got there, they admitted her, gave her two units of blood, and proceeded to run tests on her for the next four days. A CT Scan revealed something irregular on her abdomen and then a colonoscopy a few days later revealed that the irregularity was a cancerous tumor in her colon. They scheduled her for surgery that Friday to remove the tumor and take some lymph nodes to see if the cancer was contained or if it had begun to spread.

Joycie with her two daughters and her two sons-in-law

They successfully removed the tumor and about a 6-inch section of her colon last Friday (as in 11 days ago, not this past Friday) along with her gallbladder (decision they made once they had her opened up) and removed 18 lymph nodes to biopsy and did not see any other visible traces of cancer. And I'm not kidding, half the waiting room was people there for Joyce's 2-3 hour surgery :) The surgeon came out after surgery and said "I heard there was a whole crowd out here for Joyce". Anyways, when we met with the doctor after her surgery, he said it went as well as it could go, so we were very excited and just waiting on the pathology report on the lymph nodes to come back to let us know if she was cancer free or if it had started to spread.

Mom & Joyce at the cabin

After a couple days, Joyce was supposed to be walking around and starting to introduce solid food gradually back into her diet, but instead started feeling worse and was in a lot of pain. Her condition deteriorated rapidly to the point that she could not get out of bed, hold her eyes open, or even talk. They finally realized that she had gotten a very contagious intestinal (of all places) infection called CDIF that is very dangerous for a person of her age and who has just had trauma to her currently not-functioning-properly colon. It was very serious and at one point on Wednesday, my mom told me that she thought Joyce was not going to make it. According to Mom, Joyce didn't seem to think she was going to make it through that day either and started saying her goodbyes and making final preparations - that was a rough day for all of us.

The worst part about it all is that once they found out about the infection, they put her in isolation and no one could see her other than my mom and my aunt Elaine who had already been around her every day (we had not gone to the hospital to see her the previous couple of days because she was feeling so weak that she was not up for visitors). This has been really hard for both my mom and Elaine as they have watched Joyce deteriorate before their eyes. It has been emotionally and physically draining for them - for my mom because before this weekend, she had been at the hospital for 14 days straight and had only been home twice (she would go to Elaine's house to sleep when she didn't stay in Joyce's room because they live much closer to the hospital than my parents do) and with Elaine working full time and being sick (elementary school teacher at the start of a school year), Mom has spent most of the last two weeks up there going through this time of uncertainty alone, writing everything the doctors were saying in a notebook just so she could keep up. And then for Elaine, in addition to going through all of this herself, she is working full time and has been sick...so it has just been exhausting for both of them, and hard for all of the rest of us to not be able to visit Joyce or be there for Mom and Elaine.

Last week, we also found out that of the 18 lymph nodes that they removed, 16 were clean but 2 had traces of the cancer. They brought an oncologist on, who established that she has Stage 3 Colon Cancer, and has said that chemo would be an option, but only if Joyce is well and gets her strength back, so right now there has not been much talk or thinking about that decision at all yet...she still has a long way to go to get to the point of being able to make that decision. There are a lot of risks with chemo, so there will likely be some tough decisions ahead.

Through it all though, God has used so many of you to remind us of His goodness, His love, and that His will and His plan are for His glory and His good. The power of prayer is so amazing, and though Joyce's situation has not improved significantly and there remains so much uncertainty yet ahead, I have so many times felt God's peace that surpasses ALL understanding that I know has been prayed over us. It is a comfort to know that our God is not only Joyce's Creator, but also her Great Physician. And this weekend, God blessed us beyond what we could have even thought to pray for. Mom says He sent us an angel...and He really did.

Mom and Elaine have been so anxious about what they will do when Joyce is released to go home. Mom has said so many times that many times it takes two or three nurses to help Joyce do things that she has to do in order to get better and she doesn't know what they'll do when they take her home. Well, last Wednesday night, after talking to my mom on the phone and her telling me that she didn't think Joyce was going to make it through this infection, I put a post on facebook about Joyce's situation asking for prayer. One of my mom's best friends who lives in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) is a nurse and saw my post (they had just gotten internet and it was her first time online in several weeks), and messaged me asking all the medically detailed questions about Joyce. I got the message during the night and since I couldn't sleep, I got up and went ahead and responded with all of the details. The next morning, Ginny messaged me back saying that she had thought and prayed about a way to help and that she had booked a (15-hr) flight (!!) to fly across the world from Dubai to Atlanta to come take care of Joyce and relieve my mom and Elaine in a way that none of the rest of us could. Ginny wanted to surprise my mom, so my dad and I went down to the airport to pick Ginny up early Saturday morning and brought her back home (mom came home Friday night to spend the weekend while Elaine stayed with Joyce since she is no longer sick). Saying that Mom was shocked to see Ginny is an understatement. She burst into tears and they hugged and cried for the next half hour.

Joycie has sat through her share of football games. TJ introduced her to "the swamp".

I think having Ginny here for the weekend, while Mom caught up (some) on rest and Ginny recovered from jet lag was good therapy for my mom - we hung around the house in comfy clothes, we got pedicures, and just sat around sipping coffee and talking. Mom cried when she called both Joyce and Elaine to tell them. What a relief and an incredible blessing, not only for Joyce, for Mom and Elaine, but for ALL of us in our family who have felt so helpless to do anything to help any of the three of them. A relief to know that Joyce is being cared for properly by someone who treats her like her own family member. And a relief to know that now when she is sent home, Ginny will be there to help during the transition (she is here for two weeks). And such a relief to know that Ginny is there with my mom and Elaine when all the rest of us can't be. What an act of love from an amazing friend!

At another football game - Duke @ Clemson

I'll try to give updates as I hear things. Meanwhile, thank you so much for praying for our family - we have been so encouraged by so many of you.

Macedonia Team Meeting & Moving

2011-06-30T00:03:00.002-04:00

Ryan, Matt, Summer, Wes, and I all crammed into my little Honda Accord a couple of weekends ago and road-tripped our way to Durham for our second and last Macedonia team meeting. Our entire team was there this time and we were able to Skype with Brian, the missionary from The Summit who lives in Macedonia that we will be working with.

Our meeting really got us excited about going!! As it turns out, the football camp that had started out as an afterthought since we just happened to have three former football players on the team has turned into one of the main parts of the trip. It's awesome to see how God has gifted Ryan, Matt and Wes with their football abilities not only to provide them with a college scholarship, their education, and a platform to be a Christian example among their teammates, but also how they are able to now use that God-given ability to minister to people in a huge way across the world! Just when they thought that football chapter of their lives had come to an end... :)

Initially we were supposed to work on a project with the Red Cross in the mornings and then do the football camp and English classes in the afternoons. But once Brian started talking with the Red Cross Director, who has lifeguards stationed at all of the beaches in Ohrid, about us coming, the director actually recommended having the Red Cross lifeguards block off their main beach so that we could conduct the football camp all day! Brian mentioned that one of the biggest ways mission teams can help their ministry is to do things that bring in lots of people, so we hope this will do that. So exciting!!

It sounds like there may be a bigger turn-out for the football camp than we initially thought, so since we may be doing it all day, some of us girls may even help some and then we will probably utilize the opportunity of having so many people in one place to conduct informal mini-English sessions every couple of hours on the side, encouraging the people we meet to meet up with us later in the evening at the coffee shop for more formal English classes.

The Red Cross does have a project that we can still work on, so we may have a couple people go and work on that for a couple hours at a time. It sounds like there will be a lot for us to do! In addition to the football camp, English classes, and Red Cross project, we hope to be able to minister to and encourage Brian and Mandy and their family as well. They have two little kids, so maybe Summer and I can babysit one night so they can have a date night or something. :)

While our whole team was together, we were able to get a group picture! Please continue to pray for us as we prepare to leave for Macedonia in 23 days!

On another note, we are finally moving! We found an awesome condo in Dunwoody, right between Ryan's office in Buckhead and mine in Alpharetta (we'll both have about 15 minute commutes) and moving day is set for Saturday! woohooo!!!! We found it a couple months ago, but it was not available until July, so we have just been waiting until we were able to move in. We will definitely miss Buford and being close to family and close friends, but it will be nice to gain two more hours back in our day and have more time together, be able to actually cook dinner every night again... ahh, can't wait! God is good - it amazes me how He constantly provides all of our needs! :)

Going to Охрид, Македонија

2011-06-09T21:18:00.009-04:00

...or in English, that's Ohrid, Macedonia.

Ryan and I will be heading there on July 22nd on a mission trip with a team of ten people from our church, The Summit Church, in Durham. We are SO excited to be a part of this team!

While Ryan and I from early in our marriage have tried to make it a priority to constantly recognize and serve in the mission field that God has placed us in (our friends and family, our work places, our community, etc...), we have also prepared ourselves for a time when God might open the door to an opportunity for us to serve Him and share God's love and His word with others someplace away from home. As Americans, we have been so blessed with so many freedoms and luxuries in life that we take for granted every day. It is easy to forget that there are people groups around the world that do not have "churches on every street corner" or people who have a relationship with Christ and can share God's love and His hope and truth with them or small groups to meet with to study God's word and gain encouragement from.

So, when this opportunity came up for us to travel to the town of Ohrid, Macedonia to work with a family that lives and serves there as permanent missionaries, we spent a couple weeks praying and seeking God's direction on this opportunity and ultimately felt that He was opening the door for us to go.

We hesitated at first to go on a mission trip through the Summit, only because having just moved back to the Atlanta area, we thought maybe we should wait until we found a church here before going on a mission trip. But we LOVED our church in Durham - it's heart for missions and taking the gospel around the country and around the world is contagious. It seemed that every few weeks we as a congregation were praying over families who were leaving jobs and families to uproot and move their young families overseas into full-time mission work to plant churches. The Summit has a goal to plant 1,000 churches in 40 years around the world in areas where the church is needed most. Our church has sent many missionaries to closed countries, to U.S. cities...all over. And while they are very focused on "sending", they are just as focused, if not more, on serving the Raleigh/Durham community. We just felt so blessed to be a part of that church and our small group for the past two and a half years, so although we no longer live there, we are extremely excited to be going with The Summit.

Secondly, we were hesitant because we didn't want to serve on a mission team with people we would never see or keep in touch with afterward since we just moved away from RDU. However, my brother Matt, his roommate Wes (both attended the Summit with us), and a friend Summer (from Buford) are all a part of our team going to Macedonia, so we're also super excited about serving alongside each of them. On a side note...during our time in Durham, I had spent months praying for Matt to recognize his need for God's guidance in his life as it was his nature to always be in control and have total dependence on himself rather than be able to depend and trust God with his life. And after months and months of praying and feeling discouraged that God was not doing anything, Matt shared with Ryan and I that God had been working in his life over the past few months (those same months I had been praying!), had been humbling him and showing him his need for total dependence on the Lord to take and direct his life (exactly what I had been praying for!). Over the past year, it has been amazing to see the way that Matt's life and heart have changed as he completely seeks after the Lord's will for his life. Together, Matt and Wes, along with their friend and teammate Adam, pursued their walks with the Lord and spent time in Bible study with Ryan on a weekly basis until we moved. After we moved back to Georgia, Matt is actually the one who found out about this mission opportunity to Macedonia, pursued more information on it, signed up for it, and then asked us if we would be interested in going.

Another kinda cool story...one day right before the application deadline when Ryan and I were praying and seeking whether or not God had us going as part of this team to Macedonia or not, we were reading through Acts together and came across this passage:

"...During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.' After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them". Acts 16:9-10

Crazy, huh? We didn't take this as a "sign" or base our decision off of just this passage, but it was pretty cool reading this as we were trying to make a decision.

So now that I've given you the "how" and "why" of us going, let me give you a little background on where we're going, who we'll be working with, and what we'll be doing there...

Macedonia is a small country north of Greece, surrounded by Albania, Kosovo, and Bulgaria on it's other sides. It's part of the former Yugoslavia and has only been independent from a 500-year Turkish rule since 1991. Ohrid, the town we're going to is in the southwest corner of Macedonia, near Albania and is made up mostly of Macedonians, but also many Albanians. At one point centuries ago, Ohrid was actually known for its many churches (Paul traveled through this area on two of his missionary journeys when the early church was established...how cool is that??). A family from The Summit has been living in Ohrid as full time missionaries through the IMB (International Mission Board) for the last several years trying to build relationships with the people there and have been preparing to plant a church there. They have established a coffee shop where they talk with people and provide Christian reading materials in the Macedonian language. Several have become believers in Christ and have been meeting with Brian and Mandy and their team for Bible Study and from what we understand, they are in a position to launch the church very soon.

As the Macedonian people are very interested in and curious about American culture, our team will be spending the mornings working on a project (project specifics TBD) with the Red Cross and will spend our afternoons teaching English workshops while Ryan, Matt, and Wes head up an American football camp with our team leader Doug and Brian, the missionary who is making all the arrangements and plans for our team.

I can't say enough how excited we are to be going to Macedonia!!! As we plan, pack, and prepare for this trip, we would so appreciate your prayers! Please be praying for Brian and Mandy and the group of believers that they have been meeting with and for the church that is soon to be planted in Ohrid. Please pray for our team - we will be traveling to Durham and Wes will be flying in from Texas this weekend to meet with the rest of our team and talk with Brian over Skype. Please also pray that God would prepare our hearts to be His servants during the week of July 22-31 and that God would do awesome things in Macedonia through our team.

Introducing "Duke"

2011-05-21T14:18:00.000-04:00

We want a dog. Like real bad. But the timing just isn't right...we're living in a basement, we're gone all day, we're going to be in a rental living situation for the next year with no yard...

So instead of getting a puppy, we satisfied our puppy fix by going in with TJ and Jamie to get a puppy for Matt for graduation.

Meet "Duke".

We have all grown quite attached and Matt has become quite the proud parent.

Ryan and I found out about the puppy from a friend whose aunt and uncle had a litter...in Florida. Since we couldn't have a dog, I mentioned it to TJ since the farm was not far from Gainesville (FL). Now isn't the best time for him to have a dog either (with a full time summer job and then another semester left of school), so we talked about maybe getting it for Matt for graduation. TJ went to see the dog, of course couldn't turn down his little puppy eyes, so with a week left of school, he took him home with him. In that week TJ got pretty attached and wanted to keep him, but in reality, he knew Matt would have more time to spend with him, so he decided to give up the pup so we could all give him to Matt as a graduation gift.

He brought him home that weekend, handed him off to me and Ryan, and we drove him up to Durham to Matt.

TJ saying bye to Duke.

That baby just laid on my lap or at my feet the entire 5 hour drive. He is sooo sweet and has such a good personality! We drove straight to Matt's track meet and the little guy sat through the rain and watched Matt run before getting to meet his new "dad".

check out the cow-lick on his tail!

He cheered Matt on in his race

Matt got to meet "Duke" after he ran his prelims

On Saturday, Duke sat through another day at the track meet. Instead of rain, we got heat...he tried staying cool by sleeping under the shade of the bleacher.

Isn't he cute?? I want a puppy!

Matt started working with him right away on sitting, staying, fetching, going outside to pee...

I think he likes his graduation gift. He was just lucky that we were needing a puppy fix ourselves, but couldn't have one of our own. ;)

A blog post...what?

2011-05-02T23:23:00.000-04:00

Well heeeey there! It's been a while...

We're clearly not "all about our North Carolina life" anymore. It's clearly no longer football season. And I've clearly abandoned our blog...which is clearly in dire need of a makeover!

But I just thought I'd pop in and give a lil' Georgia update and maybe catch up a tad.

In short...life is good. We've gotten settled into our "terrace level suite" as we like to refer to our basement lodgings at the in-laws house. We are soo so thankful that they have let us stay with them so long while we sold our house and have tried to find a place to live in Atlanta. Thankfully the selling the house part was easier than deciding on a place to live here...imagine that (and Praise God)! We have at least narrowed our choices down to a couple of options and should hopefully be getting moved into something soon.

Ryan is liking his job at JLL, but he stays really busy and gone a lot, partly due to his outrageous commute everyday. I started working recently for a company called Roam Atlanta (you can check that out at www.roamatlanta.com ) in Alpharetta and also have about a 50 minute commute each way. So we are definitely anxious to move closer. I am really liking my new job a lot though! It has given me a great opportunity to meet all kinds of interesting people...mostly entrepreneurs and small business owners. Every day is interesting and I love all of the people I work with and get to talk to every day.

Other than the major updates (living and job situations), we have stayed busy lately with weddings of a couple of our good friends... Ryan's roommate from college got married in Pittsburgh, so we had a miniature Duke reunion with a lot of friends up there, and then one of my best friends from high school and college, Breanne, got married a couple of weekends later. Between bachelor/bachelorette parties, showers, rehearsals, rehearsal dinners, and actual weddings, we got to spend a lot of time with friends and had a lot of fun reconnecting and catching up with people we've missed over the last couple of years.

As for other things going on...TJ is home for the summer, getting to experience an actual summer break for the first time in years. The same goes for Matt now that football is over too. He is still at Duke finishing up his one and only track season, then he'll be joining TJ on his first ever true summer break as well. Jamie is finishing up her freshman year at UGA and will also be heading home after finals. It's crazy that all four of us will be home this summer!

Ryan and I made it to Duke last weekend to watch Matt run in the ACC Track Championships that were hosted by Duke. It was so fun to see Matt run! The last track meet he ran in was his senior year of high school. He won state in the 200m and was 1st runner up in the 100m his senior year and I was on a plane headed to New Zealand for my study abroad and missed it! Now that his football career is over, this was his first spring free of football workouts and spring practices, so for fun, he decided to squeeze in a track season after four years of not running just to see how he would do. He was hindered for most of the season by a pulled hamstring, but he still did well in the ACC Championships and Duke was really excited to have him on their sprint team this spring.

Day 1 of prelims was nasty and rainy out, but he won his heat in the 400m and got 2nd place overall.

Matt ran in the finals on Saturday and placed 7th in the ACC in the 400m.

We stayed with our good friends, the Densmores, for the weekend and got to celebrate Easter weekend with them. I helped Marnie put together the Easter baskets after Caden (4) and Asher (13 mos.) went to bed and didn't realize until the next morning that one of them had been for us. Ha, Marnie and her slyness! We did enjoy that basket of candy on the ride home though!

It was so fun getting to spend some time with their sweet kids too. Caden and Asher are seriously two of the cutest and funniest kids I've ever been around.

Just look at Asher. Those eyes! And couldn't you just eat his cheeks??

And that Caden...he holds a special place in our hearts. He can be really shy around people and take a while to warm up. But he became comfortable around us early on in our friendship with the Densmores and rarely gets shy around us. Even after months of living in Georgia, he was still excited to see us and acted just like we had never left. Marnie said that when we were driving up, he was asking when we were going to get there. :) I just love him! He's so funny too...the second I pull my camera out, he gets camera-shy and tries to hide from the camera. So I try to catch him when he doesn't realize I'm trying to take a picture of him.

And on a side note...this kid is a trooper. He sat through two days of the track meet, including Friday in the rain... and apparently runs around his house with a baton and hurdles these days. ;)

But once this weekend, just out of the blue, he turned around and said, "hey, take a picture of me running" and then just took off running down the sidewalk. haha!

After Marnie explained that if he would let me take his picture, he could see them on the computer later, he finally warmed up to the camera. For the first time ever! His big ole' personality completely came out of his camera-shy shell and gave me some goofball Caden poses. :)

Ha, Charlie told him to do a "hang ten", but he got stuck on the "hook 'em horns"...

but then he got it! :)

and a "real ten"

Cute, cute, cute! We miss you guys...and all of our other Durham friends!!!

Welcome to the Peach State!

2010-12-07T15:55:00.000-05:00

Well, we're here!

And as usual, it takes me a while to get around to updating the blog, but we've been back in Buford, GA for a full week now. And I will finally say it. "It feels good to be 'home'". Maybe it's because it's Christmas time. Maybe it's because we haven't been away from Durham for too long yet. Maybe it's because it's only been a week since we've seen all of our Durham friends, co-workers, and been to the Summit church, but so far, it does feel good to be here.

I know I alluded to it being hard to leave even though we were moving "home", but it was actually really hard for me. Close to awful, actually. That last week in Durham was just sad. It was sad because it was such a great week filled with all of our favorite things that it made it just that much harder to leave. The last day we were there was Sunday and I literally was on the verge of tears the entire day. It started with the first song at the beginning of the church service and I finally did burst out in tears when we bumped into some of our friends from our small group on the way out. We stopped by our friends' Adam and Melissa's house for a little bit that afternoon, then had Matt, Wes and Adam over for a steak dinner Sunday night - "the last supper" we called it. boo. hoo.

Anyways, even though we were headed home, I just dreaded it. Surprising, isn't it? I always thought I wanted to live back in Georgia eventually, so why was it so hard to move back? I think because God blessed us tremendously during our two and a half years in Durham with amazing friends who became our family while we were there, with an incredible church that is serving that community in awesome ways, and just surrounded us by great people that were SO hard to leave. Not only did He provide for us in so many ways, but He also taught us so much while we were there. If we stay in Georgia for the rest of our lives, I'll always be thankful for the two and a half years we had in Durham. I think being away from home was the best thing for us and for the start of our marriage. We really learned so much these last couple of years and have learned to depend on each other and fully rely on God for everything. And those lessons have been priceless.

We got a late start headed south last Monday, and didn't get here until that night. But ever since our arrival, it has just been nice to be home. We unpacked and visited with Ryan's parents on Tuesday and ran some errands at the mall for things Ryan needed to start his job. He started working on Wednesday, so I've been on my own. I thought having the days to myself, being alone and without a job to keep me busy right away, would be the worst thing since I was away from everything I had just left behind, but I have actually stayed really busy and friends have just so warmly welcomed us back. Some things that have kept me busy and also helped the transition tremendously over the past week have been:

Going to lunch on Wednesday (Ryan's first day of work) with two of my best friends from childhood, Erin and Julie.
Taking an afternoon on Thursday to visit the old college campus and have lunch with Jamie in Athens...and check out her dorm, buy a new "UGA Alumni" car decal for my car, and get frozen yogurt with her and Jennica.
Christmas errands and Cheesecake Factory with my mom and her best friend, Lisa.
Making it to a Friday night Buford football game. They're still good - playing in the state championship on Friday!
Going to my good friend Susan's baby shower for the twins that we have prayed for and waited for with Susan and Chris for years.
Watching the SEC Championship game with good friends (and Auburn grads), Julie and Rob. {Ryan has had his heart set on a German Shepherd for two years now from being around their dog, Bo. Being with them Saturday only made it worse!}
Decorating the Wood's Christmas tree by the fire...ahh, love it!
Going to church at Blackshear Place and seeing so many family friends
Decorating my parents' Christmas tree and hanging the stockings on the fireplace
and of course, some Christmas shopping at the good ole' Mall of Georgia!

And this weekend, we have - well, just on Friday alone, we have the Buford State Championship game at the Georgia Dome, then Ryan's company Christmas party (any advice on what I should wear for the "South Beach Chick" attire??), followed by a tacky Christmas sweater party with some friends in Atlanta we haven't seen in a long time. Then on Saturday, we have an engagement party for one of my best friends, Breanne and her fiance Knox. ...so a lot going on!

Lots of fun stuff to welcome us back and make it feel like we never left. Lots of friendships that have picked right back up where we left off two and a half years ago.

Still to be determined though... a job for me, where to live in Atlanta, and what church to get plugged into. Anyone hiring? :)

The way to travel...

2010-11-20T23:51:00.000-05:00

It's 10:25 pm (well, it was when I started this post - I got a little sidetracked between then and now though...) and we've been home from Georgia Tech for two hours already. Team travel is the way to go. Seriously. If I could travel everywhere like we traveled this weekend, it'd be amazing and I'd be fat.

We had planned to drive to Atlanta for the Georgia Tech game, but when I mentioned our plans to Stan, one of the guys I work for, he made arrangements for us to be a part of the travel party and travel with the team to Georgia Tech. Talk about the way to travel - it's like VIP treatment! Stan hooked us up since he knew it would be way more convenient for us than driving, but also as a fun last hoorah before I leave.

Apparently guys are a little less detail oriented than us girls because none of them...not Ryan, not Matt, not TJ...has ever mentioned the treatment they get on away trips before.

It all started before we even departed from the airport. We parked at general aviation, never even stepped foot in a terminal, just went through a single line of security set up specifically for our travel party. Then we walked straight up to the airplane and boarded via the stairs. It reminded me of the President boarding Air Force One...on a smaller, less important scale of course. :) Before boarding the plane, we grabbed a food bag and chose between the sandwich, philly cheese steak and chicken fingers. When I opened my bag of food on the plane, it was never-ending!

Then, when we arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson in ATL, one of the busiest airports in the world, we got off at a separate area - not a gate- where the charter buses had pulled right up next to the plane. We had a police escort to the hotel and this may have been the craziest part of the whole thing. We got on 285 during the middle of 6 lanes of stand-still traffic and the police just stopped the cars in all lanes and we made a beeline for the HOV. Once there, I was like well that was cool, but what now...no one in front of us can go anywhere and it might as well be a parking lot. Cars weren't moving. Well, with that police escort, cars pulled over out of the HOV lane and we went right on ahead. When we reached our exit, the police blocked off the lanes again so all four buses could just dart over to the exit. It was like the parting of the sea lol. The cars in all lanes just stopped on the middle of the highway for us to cross.

When we got to the Westin Peachtree Plaza, we got our room key and to the horror of my elevator phobia, our room was on the 36th floor. Juuust wonderful! Actually, these elevators weren't too bad and the view wasn't at all bad, so it was fun. Seriously though, my second thought after Stan made arrangements for us to travel was "oh crap, the Westin is one TALL building - I sure hope we're not on a high floor". And I was legitimately concerned about it until we got there. Crazy and stupid, I know. :)

view from our room to the left - downtown Atlanta

...and view to the right - my beloved Georgia Dome, where the Falcons play! :) ...and CNN Center, Centennial Olympic Park, etc.

Several of the parents greeted the team (my parents and Wes' parents who were staying at my parents' house included), so Matt and Wes came down and we all hung out for a couple hours before dinner time. For dinner, Ryan and I went with a large group of athletics and campus administrators to Ray's in the City - delicious! Then we hung out in the Sun Dial room afterwards until we headed to bed.

At Ray's in the City with Stan and Ramona

After a Starbucks breakfast in the hotel, we once again loaded the charter buses and headed to the stadium with our police escort. We hit a couple of tailgates - one with some football alum guys and one with the player's families. Then Ryan and I headed up to the AD's box for the first half of the game, which included...of course...more food! We moved down to the stands for the second half to sit with my parents, Jamie and a couple of her friends.

Ryan and I in the visiting AD's suite

Duke Athletics ladies I'm going to MISS!!! Cindy, Nina, and Ramona! ...and "Bubba King" in Nina's belly! :)

Matt and Banks' high five ritual before kickoff

and Egboh making a play!

After visiting with the players after the game, we loaded up and headed back to the airport.

Mom, Dad, me, Ryan, Matt and Jamie + Summer and Jamie's friends Alysha and Elizabeth

Banks and Matt showing off their 'staches for no shave November. Wes really has the best mustache going on, but he was already on the bus.

This picture is majorly lacking TJ!!

Again, we walked straight onto the plane after grabbing yet another heaping bag of food, which was followed by Dove ice cream bars that the flight attendants handed out once we were in the air. And by 8:15 pm, we were back in our car, headed home! And with our days in Durham dwindling, we gained a much-needed free full day by being in Durham all day tomorrow instead of spending our day driving back.

It was so fun to experience traveling with the team - to see what it's like from the player's perspective. With Ryan, Matt, and TJ doing this on a regular basis, it's fun to see what game weekends are like to them!

The Move (and all the details!)

2010-11-11T16:50:00.000-05:00

Well - it's official. Official because it's now been posted to facebook...and everything becomes official at that point right? So, for anyone who missed it on facebook...

We're moving to Atlanta!!!

In two and a half weeks!

And I am just a mess of all kinds of emotions. So excited yet SO sad! We're going to be close to both of our families, and the parts of our families that are not in Atlanta (TJ in Gainesville, FL, and Norrises in Tuscaloosa, AL will be 5 hours closer than they are now. TJ 5 hours away instead of 10 and Norrises 3 hours away instead of 8. But Matt will go from being a couple minutes down the road to 5 hours away...until he graduates in May anyways. At which point, he better move to Atlanta too because I've become quite attached to having him close-by.

Ok, so here's the scoop.... So, first of all, we bought a house a couple months back, that I've mentioned in passing on here, but not given the details of yet. How's that for crazy timing?? We've lived in it and become quite attached to our "first home" over the last couple of months, fully unpacked and decorated it and made it home. And let me mention that I am NOT A FAN OF MOVING! yuck! It was my first ever big move in my entire life and it was not fun, so you can imagine my excitement at having to do it again in such a short amount of time! (any volunteers??? haha...i'm kidding. kinda :))

So, we buy this house, then out of the blue...Ryan gets an email from a commercial real estate company in Atlanta saying that they are hiring for a position and had his resume on file and that they'd like to interview him. First question we had was "where did they even get his resume?" He did have a couple of contacts in that company, so looking back, we remembered that before he graduated and secured his job here, he had set up some meetings over Christmas break two years ago with some people in Atlanta just to network and one of the meetings that never worked out had asked for his resume to keep on file, so we assume that is where it came from. So they still had it and I guess it got put in the stack of resumes when they started the hiring process for this position. Both being from the Atlanta area and with that being where our families are, we had hoped to end up back there sometime down the road...although the longer we've been here in Durham, the more we were getting settled here. So we weren't sure how serious we were about the position initially, but how do you turn down an interview like that, in our hometown and everything? So, if for no other reason than networking for future opportunities, he went down to interview. Long story short...three trips to Atlanta, and lots of prayer later, we felt that it was a really good opportunity for him and the direction we should go.

So.............
the house goes on the market and it's time to pack up everything I've just finished unpacking!
(can't you just feel my excitement??) ;p

And since everyone is asking what comes next for us, here is the plan for now...

Ryan starts his new job, working as an Industrial Broker for Jones Lang LaSalle in Atlanta, on December 1st. We are both going to work until theWednesday before Thanksgiving, then we'll be here through that Saturday for the Duke/UNC football game - Matt's last college football game! - and then we'll move the next day on Sunday, he'll start work that Wednesday. We're planning to live in Ryan's parents' basement right away to give us a little time to sell our house and scope out the areas that we could live. The debate is between living in the city (and if so, what area...Buckhead, Vinings, Virginia Highlands have been recommended) or living outside the city in a suburb of Atlanta (Alpharetta, Marietta, Smyrna...??), but not as far out as our families because that would probably be way too much of a commute when you factor in rush hour traffic.

I don't have a job lined up yet and have not quite started searching yet. Between having a ton to wrap up here at work and feeling like I'm running out of time to finish it all and then not having any idea what area of Atlanta we'll be living yet and since the move is only a couple weeks away, I'm going to wait til we get there and see where we think we'll be living before starting to job search.

There are a ton of unknowns at this point - not having a clue where we'll live...not even what town, not having a job lined up is kinda scary, and then of course... finding a church, making new friends, finding a new "community". While it sounds like we're just "moving home", we will actually likely be 45 minutes or more, depending on where we land, from our Gainesville/Buford community, where all our family and friends are, so while we'll be much much closer to them than we're used to being, we'll still be far enough away that we can't just stop in and visit on the way home from work or do dinner on last minute notice. So, we'll definitely be starting over in the sense that we'll be finding a new church and new "community" of friends closer to Atlanta, wherever we end up living. That's the part I'm most sad about leaving here - we've found such awesome community and close-knit friends here that live right around us and moving there all of our friends will end up being a good distance away. It'll be such a tease to live in Buford for a little bit so close to everyone just to move farthur away soon after. But we know that the Lord has guided and directed our steps our whole lives and throughout our marriage so far and we know he will continue to guide and direct us in this situation as well. So, we're moving to Atlanta and just trusting Him to provide all of our needs and enjoying the peace of knowing that He is in control and He has a plan (Jeremiah 29:11...one of my all-time favorites!).

In light of moving away, I thought I'd do a series of posts on things that I love most about Durham. For those of you who have never been here, it'll be an introduction to all our favorite spots, people, things we'll miss, etc... but for me and Ryan, it'll be a good way to record and remember all of our favorite things about Durham that we can look back on. I'm holding myself to actually blogging about this one, so y'all hold me to it too! :)

And for all of you who have been asking "when are you going to put pics of the new house on the blog?", they're coming! The house is one of the things we'll miss about Durham, so there will be a post about it.

Also, to all of our friends in Gainesville/Buford - we're excited about seeing you in December! And to our friends in Atlanta - we're excited about hanging out and having y'all show us around! :)

Tuscaloosa Trip

2010-11-10T13:11:00.001-05:00

Well, as usual, we've been busy! So busy that I can't even hardly get my pictures loaded onto the computer, much less into a blog post. So I apologize for the lack of updates. But blog posts are not as fun without pictures, so when I'm not caught up on pictures, then I just don't blog. A quick recap: lots of traveling, lots of football, lots of house projects, lots of big decisions (more on that later) and lots of work! That pretty much sums it up!

A quick recap of our football weekends lately...

We went to Tuscaloosa for the Florida/Bama game a few weeks back and stayed with Ryan's sister Rachel and her family and had a lot of fun with them. I hate to brag, but I'm pretty sure our nephew and nieces are the cutest kids in existence. I mean, just look at them...

ADORABLE!

And seeing Ryan with those sweet little girls just melts my heart. It has me convinced that he's going to be a really good dad one day (not that I ever doubted that). And I thought it was so cute - but surprising - when Jeff (bro-in-law) asked if we want a girl first or a boy first whenever we have kids (Jeff always asks us random life questions like this lol) and without hesitation, Ryan said "a girl". [I had no idea that he even had a preference]. Needless to say, I think those cute little nieces have won over his heart. :)

They just love him! Samuel loves Ryan too, but in more of a play with me outside, rough and tumble, guy-to-guy kind of way. The girls though, they just love on him and snuggle up with him. Ellie Kate in the picture above (top right) kept fighting falling asleep but finally just conked out laying on him.

We had lunch with Samuel at school and played lots of legos throughout the weekend!

The girls had a dance party after they got all dressed up in their gameday attire. So cute - check out all of Abigail's moves and facial expressions lol!

But then when she realizes she's the center of attention, her classic "shy face" comes out...

Precious!!!

When game time finally rolled around, we headed over to campus and had dinner at the Alpha Chi house (Rachel's sorority) beside the stadium. I love that tradition and wish UGA did the same thing! Sorority row at Alabama lines the stadium and on game day, each house hosts a catered meal for all the current girls and their families and guests as well as all of the alumni and their family and guests. So it's a good way to bump into all kinds of people you went to school with that you might not normally keep in touch with and gives you an excuse to reconnect with all kinds of people. They just all bump into each other on game days and keep in so much better touch that way. We saw a lot of the Woods' family friends at the sorority house - I didn't realize they/we had so many Alabama Alpha Chi ties, but being the outsider, I actually knew a lot of people at the house. Ryan's pastor's wife was one and they were there, a friend of Ryan's and my family from high school is a current one so we saw her there, Jeff's sister was one, so his parents were there, Rachel and Ryan's cousin is a freshman Alpha Chi, so she and Ryan's aunt and uncle were there. It was so much fun!

After eating at the house, we went our separate ways. Us Florida folks over to catch the team getting off the bus and the Bama ones continued visiting at the house. I was so excited to see TJ - for the first time since he came to Durham for Matt's birthday in July - but goodness gracious, I had to shove like 5 girls off of him to just hug his neck. As soon as he got off the bus, he spotted us and headed our way. When he got over to us, this girl standing in front of us thought he was coming for her, so she grabbed him as soon as he was in reaching distance and gave him a big hug...and then I think she realized "oh wait...mom and sister...that's probably who he was reaching out for" haha. Then another girl was like "TJ, can I have a kiss?" and when he was reaching over the first girl to hug mom, she just jumps in there and plants one on his cheek. {Really people? I'm amazed at how girls are these days....right in front of the kids parents...WHILE he's in the middle of hugging his mother, she asks for a kiss?} As soon as TJ walked away, he texted me and said "who were those girls y'all let in front of you?" LOL. I know he's cute, but the protective big sister in me came to the surface and I just wanted to be like "back off!"

Another awesome thing about the sorority house is that it is RIGHT. BESIDE. the stadium and Alpha Chi happens to be right by the player family gate for the opposing team too. So when we were in line, a security lady told me I couldn't bring my zoom lens in. To say I was annoyed was an understatement - I mean people were taking shuttles to campus from their cars parked miles away...what would I do with the thing if we were parked really far away? Anyways...beside the point... so I ran over to the Alpha Chi house where Ryan's family was still hanging out and was going to leave it there, but ended up just shoving it down in the bottom of Martha's bag underneath her sweater to sneak it in. Rebellious I know - but no other stadium has had a problem with it and I really wanted my pictures. Anyways, I ran it to her and got back in line before we had even reached the ticket table.

The BAD thing about Alabama though is that they stick their opposing team's family in their newest nosebleed addition of the stadium where you can't even make out the numbers on the players jerseys. I'm not even kidding either - literally could not tell what their numbers were. So even with the zoom lens zoomed in all the way, and when the team was at the closest end of the football field, this was as good as the pictures got.

TJ's #45 in at full back on the right with Trey Burton in at QB.

Clearing the way for Trey...

I can't remember since this was a few weeks ago, but I don't think the ref called it a TD. :(

Gotta include a pic of TJ lined up behind John (Brantley) too. Now if they'd just put Sam (Robey) in at Center instead of Pouncey, then all three roommates would be lined up behind each other. Sam at Center, John at QB, TJ at FB.

Every time I see this picture (taken by Tim Casey), I think it would be such a cool shot if they were all three in at the same time. It would be the roomie line-up.

Since our trip to Tuscaloosa, we've also been to GA/FL two weekends ago, which was a crazy trip. We went from Durham to Ponte Vedra, FL to see TJ at the hotel on Friday night, then we went to Jacksonville for the night, then we went to Gainesville after the game to spend Sunday morning with him and get to see his, John's, and Sam's house that we haven't seen in the last year they've lived there, and then BACK to Durham. All in 48 hours. Then this past Saturday was a fun Duke win against UVA followed by a shrimp boil with the Banks...and no driving!! All of which I "plan" to blog about, but am behind on pictures with, so we'll see if it really happens or not :)

And as someone signed their email to me today...

"Happy Hump Day" everyone!

We have a winner!

2010-10-25T19:31:00.000-04:00

Congratulations Debbie from The Adventures of Three Little Byrds! With your 3rd comment out of 30, you have won the $60 CSN Stores gift card!

Thanks to all of you who commented and joined in the giveaway!!

Extended to Monday

2010-10-22T16:32:00.001-04:00

Running out the door with no internet access all weekend and I'm late (no way, not me!), so I'm going to extend the giveaway until Monday!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Does it ever slow down?

2010-10-20T16:56:00.000-04:00

Sorry for two posts in a row with no pictures - I know that's no fun! But so many times the pictures are what keep me from posting because I don't have them all on the computer yet...and I always think I'll get to them, but never do...so here goes anyways, just so you know what we've been up to.

So, life has been BUSY lately. I keep wondering when I'm going to be able to stop and catch up, but things just continue on full speed ahead. Ryan was out of town Sunday through last night so I had three evenings to myself and I was actually kind of excited. (Sorry babe! I missed you ALOT though!) I had all kinds of "catching up" plans. I was going to finish sorting through all 400+ pictures from Tina's wedding, finish editing them and put them on flash drives for my aunt and cousins. I had full intentions of FINALLY tackling the "office" and unloading all of the boxes in there - it basically looks like a storage room right now...still, a month after moving in. I intended to find some pillows for the couch. AND I thought I would have so much time to myself that AFTER all of that, I envisioned myself sipping coffee and reading a book at the end of the day!

Who was I kidding???

The ONLY thing that got done on that list was that I did find some pillows from Target (on my lunch break!), haha. No editing/sorting pictures. No cleaning up the office...although I think I did shove one or two...or five...more piles of things in there. And NO (frown face) sipping coffee and reading a book.

I did actually START to edit pictures, but as soon as I got on the computer to do that, Matt called to tell me about the candy that he and Wes got on their Target run and upon realizing that I was staying by myself, he and the rooms drove 20 minutes at 9:30 at night to come stay at the house so I didn't have to stay in our big, dark house by myself. I love brothers - I think everyone should have one :) (I got lucky with two...Matt AND TJ!) They act all big and tough on the outside, but really they have a soft, protective spot for their sisters on the inside - even their big sisters. Funny how it wasn't like that when we were kids, ha!

So, I watched like 45 minutes of "Hitch" on tv and ate candy with Matt and Wes instead, then we all went to bed. And I have yet to return to the pictures.

They ditched me the next night though because of a 6 AM practice the next morning and not wanting to be 25 minutes from campus. Can't blame them. So I did have to man up and kill a giant spider in the garage by myself...Ryan didn't believe me when I told him about that. :)

I knew going into these evenings by myself that we were hosting our small group on Thursday night, but the house was for the most part already clean. But then, on Monday, my friend who was hosting a baby shower on Tuesday night got sick, so I volunteered to have it at our house instead. AND, I am having a jewelry party for the same friend (she's selling jewelry) next Tuesday and I was going to have it at work, right after work. Well, I ended up changing my mind about having it at work and decided to have it at home instead. So, I went from only hosting small group Thursday night and making a pan of brownies to having a baby shower the next day with lots of munchies, small group on Thursday night with a pan of brownies, AND having a jewelry party at our house next Tuesday night with munchies to prepare (and we're out of town this weekend, so nothing will get done then!). So instead, my evenings turned into grocery store/home goods store/BabiesRUs runs to get snack foods, baby gift (because I'm a procrastinator like that) and speed up my pillow selection process so that the couches would have pillows.

Needless to say, I shut the office door...to remain that way for a while! :)

{Don't forget to add a comment (or four!) to my last post to enter the drawing for the $60 gift card!}

Up for grabs: $60 gift card!

2010-10-18T13:45:00.000-04:00

~ who wants it?? ~

So, a couple months ago, I got an email from someone at CSN Stores asking if I wanted to host a giveaway or do a product review on my blog. Not gonna lie, I was skeptical and didn't respond for a while at first.

For like a month...

Well, that and I've become a little bit of a personal email slacker lately. As in like 300 emails in my inbox currently...

But then, I happened to come across a couple other blogs who had CSN stores giveaways, and it turned out to be legit. I started looking around on some of their websites and realized that they carry a TON of stuff/brands...and I even signed up to win on someone else's giveaway, so I dug up the old email and wrote back, hoping it wasn't too late.

It wasn't. (Yay!) Turns out, I have the option of reviewing an item for myself or having a giveaway.

Hmmm...what shall I do?

While the idea of using the gift card for myself just to review an item was pretty tempting, I thought I would share instead. Besides, sometimes I jump on my little tracker thing at the bottom of the page and see where people visit my blog from and it's all over the place. And curious person that I am, I'm always like "well, who could that be in Texas/Arizona/California...even Africa? I don't know anyone there!" And I always wonder how people in those places find me...what brought them to little ole "Livin' the Wood Life", my teeny tiny corner of the world wide web.

Or there have even been times that someone will tell me "oh, so and so told me about such and such...they saw it on your blog" and I'm like how the heck did "so and so" know that I even had a blog. I know I put links on facebook after posting, but half the time "so and so" isn't even on facebook.

Sooooo....I decided that I will give YOU the gift card in exchange for satisfying my curiousity and knowing who is visiting and keeping up with us as we live the "Wood life".

What can a CSN stores gift card get you, you may ask? Well, just about anything you want or need. Having just bought a house, I'm in "furnishing" mode, so one of the first things I looked at was bed sets for our guest room, then bathroom faucets. If that's not what excites you though, then you can buy shoes, clothes, school supplies, cookware, toys, pet supplies, housewares, appliances, tools...you name it, they have it, and probably in the brand you're looking for. You can check out all the brands that they carry here on the CSN Stores site.

The $60 gift card is good for anything on their site, but does not include shipping, and the giveaway is limited to U.S. and Canada residents only

I'll pick the winner randomly from the number of comments left on this post so that everyone has a fair chance. And you can enter up to four times to increase your chance of winning.

"So, get to the point Erin...how can I WIN??"

I hear ya. Here's how:

1. FIRST: Become a follower - and then be sure to leave a comment letting me know that you're already a follower or you've just become a follower (because the comment is what counts!). For those of you non-bloggers, "following" just lets me know you read "Livin' the Wood Life" - all you have to do is click "follow" under the followers section on the left sidebar.

Then, for bonus entries...after your first comment, you can leave three additional comments:

2. Leave a comment saying how you found my blog...on facebook, from someone else's blog, etc...

3. Tell me where you're from.

4. Since it's football season and lots of my posts this time of year are about which football game we're at each weekend, leave a comment with a shoutout to the team that you cheer for.

I'll pick a winner on Friday at 5 PM EST (to ring in the weekend!), so you have until then to enter.

{Be sure and leave your name and an email address on your comments so I can contact you if you win!}

HAPPY MONDAY!!

Army Game

2010-10-01T10:18:00.000-04:00

Well, we're in T-town!! We flew into Atlanta last night, where Martha and Dexter picked us up and we all drove to Rachel and Jeff's beautiful home in Tuscaloosa, AL. It's crazy that they have lived here for nearly three (I think?) years and this is the first time we've seen their home in AL.

After waking up to three of the most precious kids you have ever seen in your life, it makes me wish they lived 5 minutes away like they did in Athens when I was in college at UGA so this Aunt Erin could see them all the time. Samuel and Ellie Kate were so cute this morning when I came downstairs. They were so excited to see us and wanted to go jump on Ryan in bed to wake him up. When they found him already awake, they were so excited and ran and pounced on him.

Now, Samuel's at school and the girls are at Mother's morning out, so we're going to go explore this town! Rachel has a whole itinerary set for us, complete with seeing the campus, seeing the cute shops around here, Bryant museum, and Ryan and I are going to go eat lunch with Samuel at school.

It's so fun for me to see this town that they live in and the town that Ryan grew up coming to so much throughout his childhood for games and to visit his sister when she was in college at U of A.

Anyways, while I'm on this whole catching up kick, let's just go ahead and get on

to this past weekend too before it gets overlooked...

One of my very best friends from home came up to visit - this was like her 7th trip to Durham since I've lived here, so if coming all the way to Durham to see me is any indication of how much my friends love me, then Britney loves me the most! :) Another unnamed friend did not end up making it this weekend. Something about a 5k that she planned way back when or something and the Britney trip was a last minute one that came together....clearly, she doesn't love me. 5 notches down the friend list she goes. I won't name any names though...Laura might get upset with me! ;) I'm kidding..Laura has made the 5 hour drive more than once by herself to visit.

But she did miss out on some good Cheesecake Factory cheesecake that we had to celebrate Britney's birthday with... mmm!

My parents also ended up coming up at the last minute so two weekends in a row we had a full house, which we love!

First time I've ever caught the three amigos walking together in the Devil's Walk before...and Mom getting a hug from Banks.

My parents at the Devil's walk... ha, check out Mom's "Duke #10" bag. She flips it around when she goes to Florida games and the other side says "Florida #45" in orange with TJ's button on it.

Is she a ~~soccer mom~~ football mom or what? :)

BBB-ritney! Everything is more fun with Britney...I'm still trying to talk her into MOVING to Durham! There's lots of medical opportunities here for a Nurse Practitioner I'm sure! (that's my argument anyways)

We played Army for our homecoming game, so it was also Military Appreciation Day. There was a flyover and parachuters brought in the NC flag and the game ball.

Ryan and Dad waiting for the team to come out of the tunnel.

Here they come...and there's our number #10!

Here comes the team, led by our Matt Pridemore carrying the American Flag! I was so excited about this because Matt is one of the most patriotic people I know and he was chosen by Coach Cutcliffe to carry the American flag on Homecoming/Military Appreciation Day against Army!

Here he comes!

At the end of the game, our team went over to stand with Army during the playing of their fight song.

It was a really cool game atmosphere and a really fun weekend with Britney.

Now I'm off to explore this town!

Duke / Alabama

2010-09-30T16:56:00.000-04:00

Now on to Alabama! (In the blog post sense and in the pack-my-bags-and-fly-to-Alabama sense!) :)

Duke/Bama was a weekend with Rachel and Jeff and Martha and Dexter, if I can even call it that. It was a weekend for Ryan and more like a fun 12 hours for me, since I spent the first half of the weekend at home for Tina's wedding, but the time we did have all together was fun!

And Crazy...

And Exhausting...

And the game ended with a big fat ugly "L"...

But it was still lots of fun.

Let's back up a bit so I can explain why it was so exhausting...

So first, I flew into Atlanta on Wednesday night, got to my grandmother's house around 9:30 PM, met up with a good friend around 10 PM...one of my college roommates who lives in the same suburb of Atlanta as my grandmother/cousins that I hadn't seen in way too long and had lots to catch up on...and turned out the light at 3:30 AM. Night 1 of less than 5 hours of sleep...

Then, I had to get up at 7 AM on Thursday to run some errands and get to the Bridesmaid's luncheon. Then ran errands with Tina all afternoon...picked up her dress from getting altered, booked their massage for their honeymoon while she tanned, etc...ran with Tina and Wes to Belk on the way to the rehearsal to have the sensor removed from her dress (emergency crisis!)...then rehearsal/rehearsal dinner (Jamie arrived from Athens, woohoo!), got back to Joyce's around midnight only to stay up until the wee hours of the morning hearing all about lil sis's college life only to have to get up again at 7 AM. Night 2 of less than 5 hours of sleep.

Up early Friday morning, wedding day. Wedding/Reception, get to Joyce's after midnight. Shower, pack up, go to sleep at 1:30 AM. Get up at 5:30 AM to head to airport. Night 3 of less than 5 hours of sleep. And bless my poor grandmother's heart who also got up at 5:30 AM to drive me to the airport!

Land at RDU at 10 AM, get picked up, stop by the house briefly (have I mentioned we bought a house on here yet? oops, sorry! We bought a house! :) ), then head straight to campus for 90 degree game day...EXHAUSTED!

We did a little tailgating and watched the Georgia game, then headed toward the stadium to catch the Devil's Walk. Ryan and Jeff (bro-in-laws) are talking football in their opposing team colors. :)

Devil's Walk!

Wes, Matt, and Banks' eyes peeking over Hatcher's shoulder

Bama fans had to check out Cameron Indoor. We went in with Rachel and Jeff and there were a ton of Bama fans in there...they even started the Roll Tide chant...like 3 times.

Alumni players on the alumni deck! Fun to see some of the guys we don't see too often.

Where's Jeff?? I'll give you a hint. He's the one in the red shirt.

Still can't find him? He's the one waving...

Game time! Here comes the team....

Pridemore trying to pull off a mohawk lol. Can you see it?

Love this pic. Egboh taking down Mark Ingram! Go Egboh!!

I'm not sure if I mentioned that this was the first time that Rachel and Jeff have visited Durham since we've been married. Unfortunately, because it takes 10 hours in the car to get here and we didn't have enough tickets (or so we thought...ended up with extras at the last minute though), they didn't bring the kids with them.

So this weekend, we're returning the visit! We're headed to Tuscaloosa for the Florida/Alabama game and killing lots of birds with one stone! This will be our first trip to Tuscaloosa visiting Rachel and Jeff since they have lived there and we'll get to see the kids this time (yay!), we'll get to see Ryan's aunt and uncle and grandmother in Birmingham, hopefully get to see his cousins that are in school at Bama, and of course, get to finally see TJ and a Florida game...and a good SEC match-up at that!

Tina's Wedding...finally!

2010-09-29T22:55:00.000-04:00

Now after both those blog posts about Tina and the big Duke/Bama game, are you wondering where the pictures are? :)

Am I an inconsistent blogger or what?

Yes, I definintely am.

So, I thought I should get those things taken care of before moving on because this weekend, we are headed to Tuscaloosa Alabama for the Florida/Bama game and if I don't blog about Tina and Duke/Bama before we leave, then when I return, those things will be a thing of the past that I'll never end up revisiting, ha!

Just like how I never blogged about our family beach trip with Ryan's family (in May!) or our Maine trip (in June!) or our friends' summer weddings (in July and August!)! Maybe I'll circle back around to those eventually...

It's just hard to stay caught up on it when I spend all day at a computer at work and then come home and have to figure out dinner, clean up from dinner, spend as much time with Ryan as I can, and the last thing on my list is usually getting BACK on the computer. I do write blog posts in my head sometimes, if that counts...they just never make it to the actual computer screen.

But tonight, I'm getting my priorities in line! No packing for Alabama until I whip out some blog posts, complete with pictures. Dedication baby...

As for Tina's wedding, it was BEAUTIFUL and SO. MUCH. FUN!! On a perfect day for an outdoor wedding in one of the prettiest outdoor settings I've ever seen, she was possibly the most gorgeous, most excited bride I've ever seen. Knowing Tina, I had a feeling she would be nervous and stressed on the day of, but she was totally relaxed and even said to one of her friends/bridesmaids at one point right before the ceremony, "why are you nervous? I'm not even nervous!".

We kicked off the wedding weekend on Thursday morning with the Bridesmaid's luncheon that my mom hosted for Tina at a surprise location that turned out to be...the Swan Coach House in Buckhead!

Here is Tina with her bridal party... me, Andrea - her sister and Matron of Honor, Alicia - her niece and junior bridesmaid, Tina, Carlie, and Allison. Carlie and Allison are two of Tina's best friends from elementary school. It was a fun group!

Tina with her two moms! Her mom, my aunt Elaine on the left, and Mama Ellis (Wes' mom, Kathy) on the right. She inherited an awesome mother-in-law like I did! :)

Then came the rehearsal dinner at the Old Mill in downtown Ackworth(?). Quite possibly the best dinner I've ever had!

Wes' parents put on the sweetest rehearsal dinner too, with a slideshow all about Tina being the answer to their prayers for their son and a video of all the grandparents giving marriage advice.

Andrea and Wes' brother/best man Daniel had to give speeches at the rehearsal dinner. Andrea was a little nervous about it beforehand, but did an awesome job!

Rehearsal dinner was the first time I got to see Jamiloo since my arrival to Georgia!! Stinking love that girl and the party was even more fun once she arrived on the scene! And then I didn't have to decide between the steak or the salmon. She got steak, I got salmon, and then we split them... :) Thank goodness for my other half!

Joycie and all four of her grandgirls!

Dun dun dun

and finally I give you...

...the couple of the hour!

Christina Baguley and Wesley Ellis.

And Tina with her parents, my uncle Steve and aunt Elaine

We were two goofy kids once who did everything together.

Occasionally, the kids in us still come out to play...

The next morning, the day of the wedding, Jamie, Alicia and I ran some last minute errands to pick up Tina's honeymoon dresses from the alteration shop. We jammed out/woke up to some Justin Beiber. Yeah! Lol

Be sure and pause the ipod on the left sidebar so you can hear it.

A little bit later after meeting back up with Tina, Andrea and Elaine, we arrived at the hotel near the ceremony site to get ready. Wes and his brother had stayed in the hotel room the night before to play golf the morning of the wedding, and this is how he left the room for Tina. A three page letter, a dozen roses, and a heart made of kisses...

Tina brought Carolyn in to do our hair, which was so fun! Carolyn did all the girls' hair for my wedding too and that was the last time I had seen her. Here Tina's discussing what she wants done to her hair.

Tina wouldn't read Wes' letter until after she had written her own.

Little Nelly Olson brat here! She gave me her best brat face to go with her Nelly Olson curls. :)

Bridesmaids getting ready!

Her daddy first saw her when we got to the wedding site - the Governor's House in Kingston, GA.

Garter - check! It's her something old and something blue in one!

Putting on the dress with the help of her mom and sister...

And the dress is STUNNING!

Andrea helped put her shoes on and Alicia stepped in to admire. On go the pearl earrings

- something borrowed! From me :) I wore them on my wedding day too.

Bridal party picture time!

AJ arrived and Alicia was so excited to show Andrea and Tina how "handsome" he looked all dressed up. It was the cutest thing ever! I don't know which was cuter...AJ or the fact that Alicia was so proud of him and wanted to show him off.

Mom and Dad arrived and Dad wore Bob's tie (Bob is our grandfather - Joyce's husband and Mom and Elaine's dad, who passed away when I was 3, Tina was 4) so Bob could be represented on Tina's special day.

Ceremony time! Christina Marie Baguley walked down the aisle to meet her groom who had

yet to see her or talk to her the entire day...

Christina Baguley Ellis came back up the aisle escorted by her husband!

First dance to Brad Paisley's "She's Everything to Me" song that Wes surprised Tina with.

Fetching the garter!

Bouquet Toss!

At the end of the reception, we ran upstairs to help her change into her getaway dress.

Snapped a quick picture of the last time I'll see her until Christmas probably!

Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Ellis!

The car got decorated while they were inside dancing.... :)

And they're off! Headed to the Ritz in Atlanta, then to fly to Jamaica the next morning for their honeymoon!

It was such a perfect day!

(And I took lots more pictures, which I'll post to facebook as soon as I finish sorting through them all!)

Whew, that was a lot of wedding coverage. I think the Bama game is going to need a separate post.

To be continued...

Bama comes to town

2010-09-16T23:26:00.000-04:00

Guest blogger again here. Erin is out of town for her cousin’s wedding as she previously posted so I thought it was a great opportunity to hijack her blog again. The last time I posted was almost a year ago so obviously I didn’t get the “blog bug” like a lot of people have. I was a bit philosophical in the last post so I think I will take a different approach this time with something a little lighter that we are excited about for this weekend!

Things have been pretty busy around here getting ready for this weekend. We have a pretty big weekend planned and have been looking forward to it for years. Yes, that’s right, I said YEARS! Ever since Duke and Alabama announced they would be playing a series back in 2004 or 2005 we have been really excited about them coming to Durham to play. The first game in the series was played on October 7, 2006 when the stadium was a mere 92,000 (now it’s over 100,000 with the new expansion). I was lucky enough to play in that game which was a big deal since I have grown up going to Alabama football games my whole life.

My dad played there from ‘69-‘72 when Bear Bryant was the coach. Since they just finished the expansions to the stadium and to celebrate the National Championship Alabama had all of the former football players come down on the field before the first game which was pretty cool.

The Alabama connection doesn’t stop there, however. My sister, Rachel, went to Alabama for college and met her husband, Jeff, while they were in school. The funny connection between Rachel and Jeff is that both of their/our dads played together at Alabama! Rachel and Jeff are currently on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ at Alabama and love living in Tuscaloosa. Another Alabama football connection is that my cousin, Charles (Dad’s side), played there a couple of years ago. We actually played against each other when Duke played Alabama in 2006. My other cousins, William and Julia, also currently go to school at Bama. So, as you can see there are plenty of Alabama connections in this family truly making it a divided household!

Since Duke traveled to Tuscaloosa in 2006, a return game was scheduled for 2010 in Durham. My parents, sister, and brother-in-law are all coming up for the game this weekend. We have a tailgate planned and will be having a good time before the game with all of the pre-game festivities. We’re hoping for a great game regardless of the fact that Duke is 24 point underdogs! The game starts at 3:30 and will be televised by ABC.

Some pictures from the 2006 game in Tuscaloosa:

The whole crew before the game (from left):
Dad, Mom, Aunt Lisa, Grandparents, William, Samuel, Jeff, Rachel, Jeff's Parents

Coin Toss before the game

Me and my cousin Charles

The crew coming up for Duke/Bama part 2!

-Ryan

Tina

2010-09-15T17:07:00.000-04:00

My cousin Tina is one of those "near and dear" to me in life. We're only 9 months apart in age and grew up around each other alot, so really she feels more like a second sister, one that was closer in age to me than Jamie.

This is Tina and me on my wedding day.

I have so many crazy childhood memories with her...

Birthday parties that involved dancing and singing to Spice Girls and pranking people who fell asleep...

Getting my first tooth fairy visit at her house...

Riding four-wheelers at my house all the time...it's all we ever wanted to do. Cops and Robbers in the field with the boys and Jamie and sometimes the Case kids.

Spending at least a week of every summer at her house, hanging out at her neighborhood pool with all her friends. I was such a tag-along, the grade below all of them...

Trick-or-treating in her neighborhood...

Getting mad at each other over stupid stuff and banning each other from sleeping in our room. She'd kick me out and tell me I'd have to go sleep somewhere else that night or vice versa if we were at my house... usually we got over it before night came though and didn't have to go find some other room to sleep in. Once, when she got mad, Andrea (her older sister) took me in and bought me ice cream off the ice cream truck (we didn't tell Tina) and taught me the macarena until Tina got over being mad at me.

Hiding in Andrea's closet and spying on her when she was on the phone talking to boys (well, A boy...Jimmy) in high school...she'd always find us and make Steve kick us out...

Getting booted to pallets on the bonus room floor when all the family was there, so we made a slide by sliding off the table on a pool raft...in the middle of the night, waking everyone in the house up...

Getting grounded together...

Staying awake way past our bed time, giggling and talking til Uncle Steve would come down to check on us and we'd always hear him coming and roll over, pull the covers up and pretend to be asleep when he opened the door...

Deciding to be pen pals and play tic-tac-toe through the mail. Every time it was our turn to write back, we'd get a turn...

Having such similar taste that one summer we ended up with the same bathing suit, after having the same kids bedspread we were shopping with our grandmother to redo our rooms and came around an aisle having both found a comforter that we loved to find that it was the same one, so we both had the same bedrooms in high school, then just a couple weeks ago I bought some bedding for our guest room and when Andrea and her kids stopped by to spend the night on the way home from DC, Alicia said "that's the same comforter that Tina just got!"...and we registered for the same dishes. haha!

We both always talked about living together after college (I got married and ruined that plan, sorry Tina!) and always said we'd have a red couch. I did end up with a red couch :)

Spent a night in the bathroom once in sleeping bags and played cards, and I can't remember why, lol.

Anyway...that same Tina that I share all those memories, and a thousand more with, caught the bouquet at my wedding...

...and now she is getting married Friday night!

And I am so excited for her and honored to be a part of her special day!

Cousins! Andrea and Tina with me and Jamie

Me and Tina at one of her showers

We love Wes, her fiance. He is great, perfect for her and fits perfectly into her family. Ryan and I both love hanging out with the two of them.

Us with Tina and Wes at their couples shower

I'm flying to Atlanta this afternoon so I can join in all of the wedding festivities over the next couple of days! Mom is doing her bridesmaid's luncheon tomorrow, then there's the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night and then the big day on Friday! Can't wait!

I love you Tina!!!

Almost had those Deacs...

2010-09-14T00:26:00.000-04:00

We had a fun weekend! Mom and Dad and Joyce (my grandmother) came up for the Duke/Wake Forest game and to pick Sadie up...because they couldn't take it any longer without her, ha!

Because the game was at noon and Wake is an hour and a half away, Joyce hung out at the house with Sadie and watched the game on tv from the comfort of the couch while we sat through the game in the drizzling rain.

It was a great game which made for a heartbreaker of a loss. We hung in there and put 48 points on the board, but ultimately they got us by 6 points. 6 points that may not have made it to the board had the refs called a very obvious block in the back...

Matt says he knew he had him too...

ahh, woulda coulda shoulda... It was still a great game - offense is looking awesome this year with two great QB's. Next week against Alabama will be interesting though! I try to stay positive and remind myself that when we played them in Tuscaloosa a few years back we led through the start of the 4th quarter...wishful thinking, I know.

Matt had another big play on Saturday. And wouldn't you know that just as soon as the rain had just become steady enough for me to put the camera up, Mom says "oh look Matt's out there" and I debated whether or not I even had time to pull the camera back out and switch to the zoom lens. Sure enough, as soon as I decided I didn't, I thought to myself, now that I decide not to, he'll make a play. And he did, one that happened right smack in front of us. ugh, so frustrating! Thankfully, someone got a picture of it though because it ended up on goduke.com. So don't know who to give credit to and hope it's ok that I'm using it, but here's his tackle from goduke.com.

But wait, it gets better...

Later, he assisted on a tackle, and this is what I got...

...the lady 's arm in front of me who started cheering right when I snapped the picture.

Bad picture-takin' luck!

celebrating...

high five from Hatcher and about to get one from Egboh...

and celebrating with Robo (who had an amazing interception that game)...

huddle

Then we came home and grilled out steaks and watched the Bama/Penn St. game!

It was one of those weeks where Duke and Florida played at the same time (and Georgia/South Carolina!...tv stations, you're screwing up my Saturdays!) AND Florida/South Florida wasn't on tv so we couldn't record it to go back and watch later either. TJ played against another high school teammate this week...Demetrius Murray, who had a heck of a game apparently. But, several people called and texted saying that TJ got a lot of playing time/tv time and had a good game. I miss that kid! Can't wait to make it to Florida to see him soon. On a side note, he emailed me today at work responding to a forward I had sent him and said "thanks for emailing me sissy" and signed it "yo boy". :) Sweet TJ...

GAMEDAY!!

2010-09-04T11:47:00.000-04:00

We are so excited about the start of football season - my favorite time of year! Fall weather, tailgates, great games, two brothers playing...we just love it! And with way too many teams to cheer for (refer to right sidebar if you don't believe me!), Saturdays in this household are spent on pretty much nothing other than football. Most Saturdays, we're either at the Duke game or traveling for a Florida game. The weekends that get crazy are the ones where Duke and Florida play at the same time. Then you'll find us sitting in the stands of one game with satellite radio in our ear listening to the other game (or the Georgia, Bama, West Virginia game). We wake up to ESPN and it goes about all day.

Today, Duke has Elon for their season opener at 7 PM. With a high of 83, an evening game, and 4 different tailgates to attend, it'll be a beautiful game day at Duke! GO BLUE DEVILS!

Florida takes on Miami of Ohio at noon and TJ will match up against his high school buddy, Jaytee Swanson. My parents are there this week to cheer TJ on while we cover Matt at Duke. We're thankful it's on ESPN, so we can watch our #45 from a 550 mile distance. GO GATORS!

And Jamie's experiencing her first ever game day as a freshman in Sanford Stadium. GO DAWGS! Sic 'em!

Happy Football Season everyone!

Sisters x2!

2010-08-18T01:08:00.001-04:00

Jamie Leigh's a PHI MU!!!!!!!

She's now my sister...AND my "sister". :)

Her bid card matches mine from six years ago!


One of my best friends, Laura, and I met during rush week - she went Zeta and I went Phi Mu. Jamie and her friend Mallory from rush week ended up in Phi Mu together... and they got ladybug name tags on bid day just like ours from six years ago...

When Jamie first found out she had been accepted to UGA, she called me at work right away to announce her news and I was soooo excited! When she started rush week, I didn't care what sorority she ended up in. But now that she's a Phi Mu, I'm way more excited than I ever thought I would be about it. Jamie and I are as close as any sisters are, so it makes it that much more fun that we share the same college campus, and now the same sorority house! I think I'm so excited because I know how many fun things she has to look forward to over the next four years...

Things like...

meeting new friends during rush week...(check!)

Big Sis/Lil Sis - Alice Callahan...miss her!

Christmas Formals...

Themed Socials! (Rock Stars and Groupies...)

P is for...

School Girls...

followed by Graham's birthday on North Campus...

Georgia/Florida weekends of course...

The whole gang that stayed at Mia's beach house...

Meredith's birthday celebration on the beach...

and the BIG GAME...

Semi-formals...

...and the picture proofs that you'll save to your computer, "PROOF" stamp and all, because they're like $3 each to buy...

DANCE MARATHON!!!!!! And raising lots of money for Phi Mu's philanthropy...For The Kids (FTK!!)

Living in the Phi Mu "castle" on Milledge with all your friends...

Room 6!!

and impromptu dance parties with our Room 5 neighbors...

She always knew Phi Mu was where it's at, even back when she was 12 and Melissa May was my ladybug...

Oh good times! And good walk down memory lane...

You have so much to look forward to my dear little Phi...

ServeRDU

2010-07-20T20:05:00.000-04:00

On our honeymoon 2 years and one month ago (2 years...what?!?!), Ryan informed me that he had signed us up for a service project through his church, The Summit. So, in my first week of living in Durham, during the unloading boxes and getting settled in phase of new married life, we went and worked alongside others from The Summit on a house with Habitat for Humanity for the "Week of Hope" (now called "ServeRDU").

It didn't take long to realize that The Summit Church is serious about taking care of the needs of its local community (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) and I've never seen or been a part of a church that has such a heart for serving others all the time. We are supposed to serve others just like Christ did, but we don't always do that. The Summit is constantly seeking out needs in the community and advertising opportunities for members to serve and gives lots of money to organizations that lack funding for their needs. God has really blessed Ryan and I and taught us so much through this church in the two years we've been here (six for Ryan - it's the same church he went to during college).

Cheesy as it sounds, Ryan and I made a list of goals one time soon after we were married on the drive back from GA (too many 5 hour drives up I-85...what else is there to do, ha!). It was a list of things we wanted to do over the span of three years and included fun stuff, serious stuff, etc. Like go to Italy...11 months left to make that happen...doubtful! :) Anyways, one of our goals was to participate in ServeRDU every year that we live in Durham, as well as other serve opportunities throughout the year. While The Summit is constantly providing ways to serve in the community, ServeRDU is a full week of service projects that a ton of people from the church participate in every year in July. So, our first year, we did the Habitat project that I mentioned above. Then last year, we along with our small group worked in a local park that was pretty run down - we painted the bathroom house, trash cans, playground, picnic tables, benches, grills; picked up trash; pruned the grounds etc.

This year, our small group was working on different projects instead of one together, so Ryan and I were trying to decide which one to do. One of the things The Summit did this year was partner with all of the local schools: elementary, middle, and high, and provided volunteers to meet whatever needs the school had in an effort to establish a relationship with each school in the community. One of the projects that Ryan discovered was working on one of the local high school's football facilities that needed some work, but didn't have the funding for it. He mentioned it to Matt, Wes, and Banks who got excited about it and Matt even announced it to the football leadership group which brought Patrick Egboh on board.

So, on Friday afternoon, Ryan and I took off work and we all headed over to Riverside High School to join about 15 other Summit members to paint lockers, repair broken locks, and clean paint off the floor with turpentine. The Head Football Coach, who was out cutting the football field grass himself in 90 degree weather when we arrived, had been wanting to hang some shelves in his equipment room/storage closet that he had not been able to get around to, so Ryan, Matt, Wes, Banks, and Egboh took on the project while I swept the mounds of dirt, trash, spiders and crickets that were hidden behind all the equipment we moved out of the way to make room for the shelves.

It was an outdoor storage room with no AC and it was HOT! We were all drenched with sweat and dirt after 10 minutes, but these guys were workers!

And managed to have some fun despite the heat... (Patrick Egboh...aka Egboh)

I mean, how could they not have fun when they had power tools to play with? (Adam Banks...aka Banksy)

The Head Football Coach came in to meet the guys and thank them. He seemed to really appreciate their help. In high school football around here, it's a one-man show for the football coach apparently. He cuts the field grass himself, keeps up the facilities on his own, does the laundry, manages the equipment...all of it himself. So clearly, these much-needed shelves and the locker room repairs had gotten bumped down his to-do list with so much else to take care of. Made Matt and Ryan realize how special of a high school football program Buford is, where they have facilities as nice as Division 1 colleges athletics' facilities!

I don't think these guys would have even taken a break to sit had it not been for needing a tool and having to wait for someone to run to Home Depot.

I think it really meant a lot to the coach that these college football players that he watches play in the fall came out to volunteer their Friday afternoon to work on his high school's football facilities.

And it was cool to see that these guys were so enthusiastically glad to do it. After grabbing water during the Home Depot run, they went inside and asked what they could be doing while they waited, so they got on hands and knees and scrubbed paint off the floors. Then they stayed an hour after the project was over to finish up and put everything back together that they had moved out of the equipment room.

All in all, when the week of ServeRDU was over, there had been 20 project locations, over 1,500 volunteers, 6,566 hours of service, and tens of thousands of dollars donated to the local community.

There were lots of projects at schools, charter schools, boarding schools, free medical/dental/eye clinics, cribs were built and baby showers were thrown for women at Pregnancy Support services, there was a Red Cross blood drive, and lots more...

Here's a brief video summary that was shown at church Sunday morning of this year's ServeRDU last week.

ServeRDU from The Summit Church on Vimeo.

It was a great week of The Summit serving and building relationships all around this community and I'm so glad we were able to be a part of it!

Surprise!

2010-07-15T13:46:00.001-04:00

If you know me, you know that I LOVE surprises. And I'm always scheming up a good one. So, a few weeks ago when I was able to get ahold of some Toby Keith concert tickets that happened to fall on the first weekend Matt was back in Durham after spending the first half of the summer at home AND his birthday weekend, I started scheming... :)

TJ has been talking about wanting to make it up to Durham for a long time since he hasn't been up here in over two and a half years - he hasn't seen where Ryan and I have lived since we've been married or visited since Matt first started school here. So, when we were all home a few weeks ago, I mentioned to TJ that if I could get Toby Keith tickets, he should fly up for the weekend and go to the concert with us and we could surprise Matt. Mom and Dad were standing right there and said they'd "sponsor" the trip with some skymiles, so we booked his flight and managed to keep Matt in the dark for the next couple of weeks.

Matt came back to Durham last Monday and brought Jamie with him to stay for the week. She had a flight back to ATL on Friday, so I planned to drop her off at the airport and pick TJ up in one trip and there I had my alibi. :) Matt and Jamie got to hang out while I was at work every day, then we'd all meet for lunch and Jamie and I got to hang out in the evenings, even got pedicures one night (Mom's treat - thanks Mom!), my first since right before our wedding - so good to have some sister time with her!

So, Friday rolled around and it seemed like the week had gone by too quickly and Jamie didn't want to miss out on all of the fun with TJ coming, so she decided to just stay until Saturday night instead. We didn't tell Matt though. :) I played things cool and even asked Matt if he wanted to ride with us to the airport to drop Jamie off with us, but quickly threw in that I had to run be fitted for a bridesmaid's dress on the way (not really though, just to make him not want to come), so he quickly opted out. So, Jamie and I headed to the airport. Ironically, Ryan was headed to Alabama for his grandfather's funeral and his flight was 30 minutes after TJ landed, so he joked about maybe seeing TJ in passing at the airport since he wasn't going to be around for the weekend anymore. As it turned out though, Ryan's flight left from the same gate that TJ's flight came into and Ryan boarded the same plane that TJ had just gotten off of! So, when we got to the airport, we had to circle a few times waiting on TJ because he got to catch up with Ryan for a few.

Now, for the surprise - here's how we pulled it off... :)

Matt wanted Kurama's, a Japanese steak-house for dinner, so he and a few friends were there and he was expecting me to join them for dinner since I had just "dropped Jamie off". On the way, TJ called Matt and Matt told TJ he was just getting ready to head to dinner with some friends for his birthday and asked what TJ was up to. TJ told him he and Sam (his roommate) were just getting ready to head downtown (Gainesville, Florida) to go find somewhere to eat for dinner too, ha! We had a few extra minutes to stop and grab a card and of all things, Jamie found one that sang a Toby Keith song when you opened it, so Jamie made imitation concert tickets to stick inside the card with each person's name that was going. Then the last one had TJ's name on it. So I was going to walk up to the table alone, as expected, and give Matt the card....

Here's Matt's cheesin' it face after opening the card and seeing the concert tickets, which he thought was the big surprise, not knowing that there was more...

I told him to take a closer look at the them...

(beware of the poor quality...still a really fun video though!)

Be sure and press pause on the ipod on the left sidebar first though!

The next morning, all the guys got up and left at 5:30 AM for a bass fishing tournament, so Jamie and I just hung out by the pool until the guys got back around lunchtime. We then made some last-minute plans to meet up with Andrea, Jimmy, Alicia and AJ for dinner on the way to dropping Jamie off at the airport, probably our last chance to see them before they move to DC :( It's been so fun having them only a little over an hour away the entire time we've lived here, but that means we'll definitely be taking more DC trips in the near future! Amazingly, between Jimmy being deployed (Air Force) so much and TJ never being in NC, and having such short Christmas breaks due to bowl games, we realized that Jimmy and TJ hadn't even seen each other in six years! Jimmy hadn't seen TJ since he was a little ole' eighth grader!

In our concert attire, we headed out to meet Andrea, Jimmy, & Co., drop Jamie off at the airport (SAD!), then head to the Toby Keith/Trace Adkins concert. Where's your shirt, Matt?

yet again, family divided!

Had to get a pic of the rare reunion!

Take 2...

We pretended we were headed to the concert, no stopping at the airport on the way...we were in denial that she was leaving really.

COME BACK. I MISS YOU!

But alas, we had to drop James at the airport before going to the concert. Lo and behold, she flew out the same gate as Ryan AND TJ. Poor Jamie, headed back home to be an only child again with all of her sibs five hours away in different directions. She'd had Matt there for the first half of the summer which was so fun for both of them while he was living at home during his internship in Atlanta for our Lt. Governor, Casey Cagle, a good family friend of ours. Bet she misses him already!

Why did I get so many "goodbye" pictures and not more concert pictures?

I don't know, but here we are at the airport again (third trip in a weekend!), seeing TJ off on Sunday evening. Ryan got in late Saturday night from Alabama right after we got back from the concert, so we got up and went to church on Sunday morning, then had lunch at Tyler's, one of our favorite after-church lunch spots. It's a Durham place, so we had to take TJ there. Besides, it's his name-sake (TJ=Tyler James). :)

HAPPY 23rd BIRTHDAY MATTY! :)

We will miss Pa...

2010-07-12T12:59:00.000-04:00

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Gentleness. Self-control. If there was ever anyone who lived out the fruit of the Spirit (Galations 5:22-23), it would be Ryan's grandfather, Pa. Pa was one of the most loving, gentle, kind, peaceful people I have ever been around and thankfully, he instilled these qualities into his son Dexter (Ryan's father) who also passed these characteristics along to Ryan. As far as men go, these three generations of Woods are some of the most patient, kind men I have ever known. And as far as leaving a legacy goes, Pa left his through instilling these qualities into my husband and my father-in-law.

While I am so thankful for the legacy that Pa left behind and for the character traits of Pa's that are so evident in my own husband and in my father-in-law, I am so sad that we lost such an amazing man when Pa went home to be with the Lord last Wednesday morning.

When Ryan recieved a phone call from his dad when we were getting ready for work telling him that Pa had passed away during the night, Ryan and I both sat on the bed and mourned the loss of his grandfather together. My heart broke for my husband who just lost his grandfather, for Ma, his grandmother who just lost her spouse of over sixty years, for my father-in-law who lost his father, for Ryan's aunt Lisa who lost her father and for all of the Wood family, but it also broke because I lost someone who was special to me. In the nine years that I have known Ryan, I have grown to love his grandparents. They have always been so good to me and make me feel like one of their own grandchildren. They have so many first-hand stories of times they have lived through that I have only read about in history books. Every time I am around them, I wish I had an extended amount of time to spend with them because they have such valuable things I would just love to learn from them. They garden and can and cook and appreciate time spent with family without the distractions of cell phones, tv, video games. It's like a breath of fresh air to spend time with them and learn from these sweet people who have taught Ryan so many of life's lessons throughout his childhood.

The thing that makes me the most sad is that my (future) kids will not be able to grow up around Pa, learning life lessons from him that Ryan and Dexter were able to. That is why I am so thankful for the strong legacy he left behind in Ryan and Dexter so that my kids will know Pa through their own father and grandfather who are so much like him in so many ways.

I'm thankful for the time we recently were able to spend with Pa and Ma in Alabama when we stopped in for visits on our way to and from the beach just a month and a half ago.

And here's a picture from a little over two years ago on our way home from the beach right before our wedding.

While I did not make it down to Alabama for the funeral, I'm so glad that Ryan was able to be there with his family to celebrate Pa's life. TJ and I had made plans a while back for him to fly to Durham to surprise Matt on his birthday for the Toby Keith concert and to spend the weekend. Jamie was also able to be here for the weekend so while I absolutely hated to not be in Alabama with Ryan and his family, I stayed behind to be with my siblings since this was TJ's first trip to Durham in the last two and a half years.

Weekend Whirlwind!

2010-05-19T14:24:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned a couple posts back, we have been all over the place lately on the weekends - five weekends in a row of road trips I believe. A couple weekends ago though, we truly had a whirlwind weekend. We went to Augusta, GA (4.5 hours from Durham), then to the cabin in Hancock Co.(1.5 hours past Augusta), to Athens for dinner (an hour away from cabin), back to the cabin to spend the night, and finally back to Durham (6.5 hrs from Hancock)...all in a 72 hour weekend! Whew..makes me tired (and car claustrophobic!) just thinking about it! :)

But...as always, we had so much fun! And as crazy as it was...would do it again if we could. :)

One of my best friends, Laura, is in med school at MCG (Medical College of Georgia) in Augusta, GA and has visited Ryan and I in Durham twice since we've lived here. She's one of the friends I never have the chance to see when we go home because she's not from my hometown, so I had been wanting to visit her in Augusta for a while. So, she and I picked a weekend...months in advance due to both of our busy schedules, marked it on our calendars, and decided to have a girl's weekend in Augusta! As it turns out though, my parents' cabin is only about an hour and a half past Augusta and TJ and a couple of his buddies were coming up from Florida for the weekend, so Ryan decided to join me for the road trip part, drop me off in Augusta on Friday night and then head to the cabin to hang out with guys for the weekend. Well, that's how this whole thing started, but when it was all said an done, a few other "opportunities" came up that we just couldn't turn down. :)

So 5 o'clock on Friday rolls around and we hit the road for Augusta. Ryan dropped me off at Laura's, then headed to the cabin. First "opportunity" that presented itself was me and Laura going to the cabin too. She'd never been there and we thought it would be fun to see everyone, so after a late night of chatting the hours away in Augusta, getting up before 8 AM for a 4 mile walk/run at the Canal in the rain, and baking a cheesecake, we too headed for Hancock on Saturday morning.

Once there, Ryan and Dad had to meet us at the gate to let us in because I couldn't figure out all 5 locks on the gate...

Before Dad headed back home, we celebrated his birthday with his favorite...cheesecake! (mine too!).

(Mom was in Atlanta for the Beth Moore conference, so we didn't even get to see her during the entire weekend in Georgia!) :(

We had so much fun hanging out with TJ, his roommate John, his friend Justin, and two of my favorite Georgia girls, TJ's girlfriend Jennica, and her friend Kelly, who we met and hung out with in Jacksonville, FL last year for the GA/FL game.

When we first got there, the guys weren't around, but a few minutes later, Dad got a call that TJ, John, and Justin were stuck in the mud in John's Tahoe, so Laura and I rode along with Dad and Ryan to go pull them out with Dad's truck. Wish I had a picture...it was so muddy from all the rain and their wheels were just spinning...but at that point, I didn't know John and Justin that well and they probably would have thought I was weird for taking a picture of them helplessly stuck in the mud, having to get towed out lol.

Second "opportunity" that came up was a trip to Athens for dinner. Being only about an hour away, we couldn't pass up an opportunity to meet up with some friends...and as it turned out, Jamie and her friend Jessica too, for dinner. We were all the way in Georgia, might as well drive another hour to get to see some more friends, right?! :) Besides, between Duke and Florida games last season, I hadn't made it to Athens in a while (over a year!)...and truth be told, I miss that place! Turns out, TJ & Co. had Athens plans for Saturday night too, to go to a sorority event with Jennica - she had even arranged dates for John and Justin - but that got rained out, so we ended up all going to dinner together at one of my favorite Athens restaurants, DePalmas - yum!

My Georgia girls!! Breanne, Laura, and me at DePalmas, where we celebrated birthdays in college and where Bre got me hooked on their spinach cheese bread sticks...mmmmm! (Can we go back already?? With Britney and Carrie next time and all will be right in the world!)

TJ & his buds...TJ, Kelly, John, Jennica, Jenn's friend (Janine?), and Justin.

Thought it was ironic...on a couple of levels...that while we were eating, Matthew Stafford and his girlfriend sat at a table near us. Here, we've got Florida football players, including their starting quarterback, that are not only hanging out in Athens, GA, (incognito of course, lol!) but then Georgia's former quarterback/last year's #1 draft pick sits down beside us...as the draft is going on. I jokingly told John we should get a pic of him with Stafford to document that both GA's and FL's quarterbacks were eating at the same restaurant, but he said "ah, he doesn't even know who I am". Umm...pretty sure that you being Florida's starting quarterback, who's replacing Tim Tebow...and has gotten his fair share of ESPN coverage during spring football...and the fact that Stafford is the quarterback of your arch rival team...pretttttty sure he more than likely knows who you are. But, refreshing to see a college kid who's not full of himself! Thought it was also funny hearing the stories the next day of the people who recognized them as Florida players and them pretending they were not...I mean people had to have wondered what in the heck Florida football players were doing hanging out in downtown Athens, GA...in enemy territory. Ha!

Gotta get the sib pics...because I miss these two! Jamie didn't even know that TJ was going to dinner with us since that all happened last minute, so she got a bonus when she got to have dinner with two of her three out-of-town sibs! It's so fun being all together :). Too bad Matt was up to his ears in papers and studying for finals back in Durham, so he wasn't able to join on this trip...such is life I've learned - we're always missing someone!

And the latest big news...this little girl in pink is.....

GOING TO BE A GEORGIA BULLDOG!!!

WOOHOO!!! I'm so excited for my little Jamieloo! Can't wait for her to experience all the fun things and places...and even study spots that I did during my 4 years in Athens, GA!

So, after a fun night in Athens with friends and the sibs and my favorite food, we headed back to the cabin to sleep like babies through thunderstorms and a downpour under the tin roof. Pure heaven on earth for me!

On Sunday, we fished...

Martha & Dexter came down for the afternoon to hang out...it really was a weekend of squeezing so much in and getting to see so many of our favorite people!

...and hung out like country bumpkins, complete with dip cans, spit cups, and straw-chewing story telling...

Kelly & Jennica

...and because they are just two of the cutest girls to ever walk UGA's campus, I felt the need to include more versions of this already adorable picture... ;)

and while most of you know them as football players...

did you know these boys are also the billboard faces of "Ducks Unlimited"'s most recent marketing campaign?

kidding...gotta love Photoshop. :) Just couldn't resist playing with such a great picture...southern boys, muddy truck with the duck logo sticker, blue jeans shoved into cowboy boots, camo hat, all by a pond in the woods on hunting land...love it!

It was one of those perfect days you don't ever want to end...serene setting with people you love being with...

But after hanging out for as long as we could that afternoon before our long drives, we all got in our cars and went our different ways...Martha & Dexter back to Buford, GA; Justin back to Gainesville, GA; TJ & John back to Gainesville, FL; Laura back to Augusta, GA; and us back to Durham, NC.

Our Hillbilly Easter

2010-05-17T18:08:00.002-04:00

In an effort to catch up on the things we've been up to and our crazy weekend trips, here is a post about our Easter this year, complete with lots of pictures...and I do mean lots! The other weekends are still to come...

Though Easter this year (4.4.2010) was very nontraditional, we still managed to keep all of the important Easter traditions. By nontraditional, I mean that minus TJ and my cousin, Jimmy, my mom's entire side of the family spent the weekend at the cabin: Joyce, the Baguleys (plus Wes), my cousin Andrea and her kids Alicia & AJ, and Mom, Dad, Matt, and Jamie.

There was no Easter Sunday church service and there were no Easter dresses, but we did have our own Easter celebration, complete with worship led by Wes on the guitar, reading the Easter story from the Bible, share time, and communion - compliments of Joyce (she made communion crackers and brought grape juice!). It actually made for one of my favorite and most memorable Easters ever - to be able to celebrate Jesus' resurrection in such an intimate setting surrounded by those closest to us, knowing that we were not only family, but a family unified in Christ. In other Easter traditions, we also had an Easter egg hunt for the kids and the Easter Bunny even managed to find Alicia and AJ all the way out in the middle of Country Bumpkin, USA!

Here we are...on the road again! We pretty much know I-85 with our eyes closed.

Sadie greeted us when we arrived - she was so excited, she kept jumping on both of us, running from door to door.

There she is..."The Roost"...heaven on earth for the Pridemore family men...

Dad's done a lot with the place, especially since it started out as a "pole barn"...it looks awesome. It serves as the family gathering place these days. The last two times we've been to Georgia, we've been to the cabin and haven't even made it home.

An awesome place to relax and just sit in rocking chairs on the front porch in the middle of the woods...

Ryan and I may have both grown up in the outskirts of Atlanta, but with my dad being from the mountains of West Virginia and Ryan's dad being from lower Alabama, there's definitely a little country bumpkin in both of us and this place will soothe the country soul. It's nice to get away here where you don't see a car all weekend other than the ones parked in the yard, you can put your phone down and not pick it up all weekend and you don't have anywhere to go, so you might as well just relax and hang out.

Before everyone got there, Alicia and AJ got bored and resorted to reading their (identical) books and picking flowers for their mom, but once everyone got there, they wore themselves out trying to do everything.

We rode 4-wheelers...

I let Alicia drive the whole way back from the pond, several miles away.

...while Mom and Joyce rocked and corralled the dogs....

...and Sadie ruled "the Roost"...

She's a spoiled "only dog" and didn't get along well with Carolina and Brody...and was bitter that we left her behind on the 4-wheeler outing...

This one of Mom and Joyce cracks me up. Mom's laughing at something and Joyce is startled by something Brody did...

The boys...Dad, Ryan, and Matt...went hunting, of course. Ryan shot his first turkey (that I posted about here) and Alicia and AJ learned all about hunting safety, ethics, and cleaning turkeys.

AJ kept some feathers as a souvenir. He and Alicia tried to carry the turkey to weigh it and clean it, but at almost 20 lbs., Dad had to take over...

This next picture isn't for the weak-stomached, but Alicia and AJ watched Dad and Ryan clean the turkey like champs. They kept inching closer and were fascinated with all of it's parts...the gizzard, the stomach, etc...

Matt was determined to get a turkey at this point. The weekend before had been opening weekend for turkey season and Dad and TJ had gotten turkeys and now Ryan...he was the only one left. Unfortunately, he came back empty handed after a hunt by himself, so Alicia and I went to pick him up. Little Annie Oakley she is!

But the next morning...he got his turkey!

We spent some time at the pond fishing...

...and watching from the Rhino...

And this one cracks me up. Tina, me, and Andrea just taking a girl cousin pic...while Ryan naps on the four-wheeler in the background! Took me a while to even notice him back there.

And just because I think he's so cute... ;)

A few of us snuck back to the cabin to stuff Easter eggs for the egg hunt before Alicia and AJ came back from the pond.

I took this when he was driving the four-wheeler and wasn't looking...

We left Matt in our dust...

Mean Aunt Tina made "gag eggs" and filled hers with grass, rocks, and cereal...

Poor Alicia found all of Tina's eggs while AJ got the good ones. Here's AJ finding a camo egg...those had money in them.

It was so fun spending Easter with the Baguleys. I remember one Easter as a kid when Tina and I had stayed up so late (like we always did) that we heard the Easter Bunny in the kitchen. We were giggling too loud (like we always did), so Joyce came and peeked in on us (like someone always did...usually it was my uncle Steve though) and we pretended to be asleep (like we always did!). Ahh, good memories... :)

Then Alicia and AJ also got a lesson in gutting fish from my Uncle Steve, their "Pop"...

And we got some target practice in...

And that was our nontraditional Easter!

Only thing that made it short of perfect was the lack of TJ & Jimmy!

Hello Durham...

2010-05-10T20:44:00.002-04:00

Well, it's been quiet over here on "Livin' the Wood Life" for a while. We've been all over the place lately...every weekend there has been something we've wanted to do, so we've been on the go. Our eventful weekends have been jam-packed with fun stuff that has taken us from Fayetteville, NC to Savannah, GA, to the cabin at Hancock (twice), Augusta, GA and even a quick trip to Athens for dinner! What a whirlwind! Throw a National Championship in the mix and I'm wayyy behind on pictures and updates on what we've been up to lately!

After five weekends in a row (I think!...too much to even keep them all straight) of traveling on the weekends, Ryan and I decided (or our gas budget decided for us!) that we needed to just hang out in Durham for a while. And while we missed being home for Mother's Day, my good friend Kalli's baby shower, and seeing TJ while he was home, these last two weekends in Durham have been so fun and relaxing...and it's been nice to not start a Friday afternoon with hours in the car for once. And while being parked here, you'd think I'd have gotten around to some blog/picture updates, we've instead filled our time with washing our cars, hanging out by the pool with friends from our apartment complex, going to a baseball game at the Durham Bulls park, having a cookout with our small group, going to dinner downtown with friends, watching movies, and just enjoying spending time with each other.

We've made some great friends in Durham and have had a lot of fun with them over the past couple of weekends. Last weekend, we had a cookout with our small group. Last summer as part of "Hope for RDU" with our church, our small group cleaned up a local park. We were going to have our cookout at a different park, but when we got there, there was a family reunion going on, so we relocated to the park we cleaned up last year...how perfect! :)

Ryan, Holt, and Adam manning the grill...

JD and Asher found a frog that kept them entertained for a while and baby Anna tried to stay cool in her stroller. It was 90 degrees out last Saturday!

We're so thankful for this group of friends from our church, The Summit. Tameka, a friend of mine that I worked with at the Falcons, introduced us to her college friends Adam and Melissa when she visited not too long after I had moved up here. They happened to go to the same church as us and invited us to their small group, so that's how we got connected to this group of friends.

Then, this past weekend we hung out downtown, which we haven't done too much of before and it might be our new favorite place! On Friday after work, Duke Athletics had a department-wide employee get together at the brand new Tobacco Road Sports Cafe with a patio overlooking the outfield of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, so we went there after work...the food = AMAZING, the weather = GORGEOUS. We had fun hanging out with friends from work while watching our baseball team take on UVA.

The ball park is right downtown right next to the American Tobacco, which is old tobacco warehouses that have been turned into restaurants, offices, and cute little places. And for those of you back home who haven't made it up to visit us in Durham yet, here's a little introduction to our town. Almost 2 years late, but here it is none-the-less. :)

The Durham Bulls are our minor league baseball team (ever seen the movie Bull Durham with Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon?? that's the Durham Bulls!), hence the bull bike rack.

So Saturday night, we tried another new restaurant...well, semi-new, but new for us...called Cuban Revolution. We'd heard it was good and our friends Charlie and Marnie suggested it (they hadn't tried it either), so we tried it out with them. Despite the menu being slightly anti-American, the food was really good. And by slightly, I mean it basically bashed America...not sure how my patriotic self feels about that, but anyways...

The weather was gorgeous, so we sat outside at the tables with umbrellas (below) so that Caden, their little boy could walk around. And it was great for people-watching too, with so many people out on a pretty Saturday evening.

Here's Caden smelling some flowers along the way...

Charlie and Marnie are really special friends to us. Not only do we always have so much fun with them, but they were the first friends that we met after I moved up here. They had moved here just a couple months before me, and Charlie and Ryan had met, so when we were still unpacking my stuff and getting me all moved in, they had us over for dinner. We've had fun with them ever since and are thankful to have such great friends up here, between them and the couples from our small group. Ironically, none of our friends are from this area or have family close by, so we've definitely had to play that family role for each other. Between throwing baby showers, taking meals to each other, and just checking in on each other during the crazy work weeks, I'm so thankful to have these friends here!

And in light of Monday night being "Dancing with the Stars" night...let's go Erin and Maks!

...a picture from a post that I still haven't gotten around to! (Duke/UNC game standing beside Erin Andrews and DWTS partner Maks)

My husband, the Provider

2010-04-10T21:48:00.002-04:00

My husband's a keeper for sure. I've known that since 10th grade though.:) Not only is he dead sexy and fun to spend a Saturday with, but he also takes good care of me...always. He puts our food on the table. Literally. Tonight for dinner, we had fried turkey. Not store bought turkey, but the turkey that he shot last weekend during our trip to the cabin in Hancock for Easter weekend. Now I know that as long as I have him around, we will never go hungry.

Ryan and his first turkey!

Shot on 4.3.2010 while hunting with my dad, turkey weighed in at 17.2 lbs and had a double beard.

He got his first deer this past deer season too while hunting in Hancock with my brothers, Matt & TJ.

Now he's officially part of the Pridemore hunting club! :)

Way to go, baby! I'm so proud of you... ;)

Creepy Crawlers

2010-04-09T19:24:00.002-04:00

I hate bugs.

HATE.

BUGS.

As in, one of the things I hate most in life. For those of you that know me well, it's up there with my fear of elevators. And I really should be more careful with admitting things like my worst fears because I do have two brothers. Thankfully in light of this confession, I don't live with those two boys anymore and the boy I DO live with is nice to me and kills all the bugs for me. Although, I think my dislike for bugs is serious enough that even my brothers know better than to go too far with their pranks. Make me sleep beside their snake, Magnus - I'm fine with that...been there, done that even. But bugs...I shudder at the thought of them.

My intense fear might have come from the time that I had a tick crawling up my leg and my dad, trying to break me of my fear, refused to get it off of me and instructed me to pick it off myself. And as much as I was terrified at the thought of it crawling on me, I couldn't bring myself to touch it in order to get it off of me. When I was nearly in hysterics, my dad finally rolled his eyes and picked it off of me. Or the times I'd find a bug in my room and would yell for a boy in the house and they'd just have the best time making me squirm while refusing to get it for me as it crawled closer to safety (a dark crevice or somewhere we couldn't get to). And then when they would finally get it, they'd have to gang up and pin me down and threaten to stick it on me before finally flushing it or squishing it or whatever. So maybe there is a reason I'm truly terrified of bugs crawling on me...I was tortured as a child.

When I was young, around 6 or 7...ok, fine, I was like12, we had a centipede problem in our basement one summer. These little centipedes were everywhere and the day I first saw one upstairs, I freaked out. Especially because they would crawl on the ceilings and I was terrified that they would drop off the ceiling...like on top of my bed or something. So you can imagine my terror when I SAW one of those nasty creepy crawlers drop off the ceiling onto my sister's bed one afternoon. I was so horrified that I wouldn't go to bed that night and after putting up a long fight, my mom finally took me to sleep at a neighbor's house. That's embarrassing to admit, but I'm admitting it because if you know how much I shudder at the thought of a bug on me, you can fully appreciate the story I'm about to tell you that happened to me today.

So, at work today, I was just sitting at my desk working on the computer when I suddenly heard something land right beside me on my desk and saw it out of the corner of my eye. It startled me in the kind of way it would have if I was in my zone and someone had thrown a paper ball at me and it had landed on my desk, except no one else was in the room. I glanced over and then out of the corner of my eye saw something fall from my desk to the ground and scamper away really quickly.

It was one of these...

A thousand-legger as my friend and office-mate, Jocelyn, calls them. I'd never seen a "thousand legger" before working in Cameron, but we see these guys every now and then and both Jocelyn and I HATE them. I can't bring myself to kill them. Don't get me wrong...it's not because I have pity on them whatsoever. It's simply because even with a shoe between me and a critter, I still can't physically bring myself to do it. It's a mental thing I guess. So Jocelyn always does, the brave soul that she is.

But Jocelyn was out of the office today and no one was around to kill it so as it quickly scampered away and was just about to disappear beneath a piece of furniture, I had to make a decision. Kill it myself or spend the rest of the day knowing that it's roaming around the room somewhere freely. So as much as it grosses me out to squish a bug, I stomped on that sucker. And it's guts were all over the floor and on my shoe (it had lots of guts!) and some of it's legs fell off. Ugh...I almost gag at the thought of it now. Especially the thought of then having to clean it up with a paper towel. Nausea. Shuddering. Sweaty Hands. I literally lost my appetite and didn't eat lunch until 3:30. You think I'm exaggerating? Well, my mother and my brothers and those who know me best will read this and know that it's true.

So, after the whole killing episode, I sat back down in my chair thinking "where the heck did that thing come from?!?" as I remembered it landing on my desk out of nowhere. And to make matters worse, when I looked down at my desk to the spot where it had landed, I saw that it left behind it's ghost to haunt me...

How disgusting is that?!???

Want a closer look?

At first I was baffled. But then I looked up. And right above me is a large square vent. So doing the math, I figure that the thing fell out of the vent and when it landed with a thud on my desk, it left behind a dusty imprint before jumping off my desk and fleeing for its life.

Imagine my pleasure at having to sit under that vent for the rest of the day.

And knowing that I have to go back and sit in that ~~desk~~ torture chamber on Monday...

Goin' for a run. Surprising...I know.

2010-03-18T16:42:00.000-04:00

Yep, it's true. Jocelyn (my friend from work) and I are going for a run on the trail through the Duke Forest after work today. And I am NOT a runner, so we'll see how that goes. And by not a runner, I mean knees and ankles hurt afterwards (too much gymnastics in a former life) and I dread the thought of even running. But... it is GORGEOUS outside today, so for once, I'm actually pretty excited about it!

Besides, I did stuff myself on corned beef and cabbage last night, so I could surely use a good long run! :) Some friends that live in our apartment complex invited us over last night to eat with a group of people and I went by myself because Ryan is out of town for work. I'm not going to lie - I wasn't quite sure about "corned beef and cabbage". Not only have I never had it before, but I didn't even know what it was and "corned" beef just sounds kinda scary, like something out of a can or something. Anyways, Jen, the one who made the meal quickly changed my mind on the stuff because it was DELICIOUS! First of all, it definitely did not come out of a can and it tasted like beef brisket or something yummy. And she didn't just make it with cabbage either, but with carrots, potatoes, onions, and turnips too. Add a little mustard, recommendation of Jen's boyfriend, Ben, and the stuff is making my mouth water as I think of it now. And I stuffed myself to the point of not being able to eat dessert - not even a bite. And those of you that know me well, know that this girl never reaches a point of not being able to squeeze in a little dessert.

So, anyways, I'm thinking this whole corned beef and cabbage thing is going to have to become a tradition for St. Patricks Day that I'm going to have to pick up from Jen. And if I can get her to teach me how to make it, I might even make it a meal that happens more than once a year! :)

Oh, and has anybody filled out brackets for March Madness? Because mine's not doing so well so far... :(

Ok, wish me luck...here goes this run!

I've converted...the darkness has won me over.

2010-03-11T18:45:00.000-05:00

Creepy title huh?

Before I go any further, please let me apologize for my "bloody bunny" picture to anyone who might have thought, "ewww, GROOOSSS!". Apparently, I've become very desensitized to the sight of dead animals since I have grown up with hunters (dad, granddad, uncles, and my brothers) all my life. I wanted to find a picture of the boys at the cabin in Hancock to make my point about them spending as much time there over spring break as they can because it's where they spend all their time when they come home and when I looked through the "Hancock" picture folder to quickly just add a picture to make my point, they were all group pictures with my brothers AND all of their friends in them, so when I came across this one I thought "Perfect! One of just Matt and TJ...that'll do" and posted it before I even thought twice about the fact that they are holding bloody game in their hands. I mean it could have at least been a deer or something not as cute as a bunny I do realize. So sorry bout that! If it makes you feel better, my family really does love bunnies and we have a pet bunny rabbit named Bella who runs the house (seriously - Sadie our Lab even shares her water bowl with Bella - the bunny really does run the house), but that's another story for another day.

Back to my post. So apparently you all want the update on what happened to my hair. And appaaarrrrently, we forgot to take pictures of it other than the video from my sister's camera, which is really funny because you can hear Jamie's nervous laughter and my mom's nervousness and see the blonde ~~streaks~~ chunks. However, it only shows my hair wet, so no finished product. But for your viewing pleasure....

Enjoy! (you'll have to pause the iPod on the left sidebar to be able to hear the video)

And here's what my hair looked like after we finished washing it and combing it out. Because it was a highlight "touch up", they only covered my roots and didn't cover all of my hair to the end of the strands, hence the bright blond on top and dark blond on the bottom - and no, none of it is a shadow. Notice the hint of tension in their voices??

So, after wearing my skunk stripe hair for two days to church and to work, I went to a stylist last Tuesday to have my hair mess fixed. Melissa had to do three, I repeat...three(!) color treatments to my hair. First step was to put some wash on it that my then porous hair (from all the bleach) would absorb so that my hair would be able to hold any color and/or highlights she added to it after that. This process would initially make my hair darker as it absorbed, but then she could make me back blond again by doing a base of my natural color, which has actually gotten pretty dark and then going back in and adding the highlights.

I snuck a picture of my hair during this "wash" process when she walked away and thought "hmm...so this is what my hair would look like dark brown."

And because I've always been curious what my hair would look like dark brown, on a whim, I told Melissa to make it dark brown! I went through my pros and cons with her and it turns out that the process to go darker would be less damaging to my hair than the process to go back to my normal shade of blond because that would have required more bleach in addition to the intense bleaching it had already gone through. The pro that made my decision final was when she told me that it would always be easier to go back to blond from the brown, but harder to go to the brown from the blond. So I said "let's do it Melissa!"

And here's what we got:

The new "me"!

Dun dun dun...

Which do you like better? The blond me or brunette me? Don't worry, I promise your honesty won't hurt my feelings! Lots of people at work actually told me they LIKED my hair when it was in it's blond striped crazy state, and even AFTER I told them "no, no, no, this was a mistake and I'm getting it fixed", they'd still say, "oh well I really like it!". That's when you know people are lying and only tell you what they think you want to hear, haha! Gerald was the only person at work to give me his honest opinion and he told me right before my hair appointment that he didn't care what I did to my hair, just as long as I didn't do "that" and he pointed to my head! And I appreciated his honesty. :) And when I returned with dark hair, he also told me that he liked my hair better blond, ha!

Ryan does like it though - he says it brings out my eyes. But there's a slight chance he could be blinded by love. ;)

That's why I need your opinion...so you can help me with my decision. I like it both ways, so I'm glad to have it this way at least for a while and just for a change. But do I stay a brunette? Or come summertime, do I add back the highlights and go back to my typical blond? Decision, decisions - I hate decisions! HELP!

Where to even start???

2010-03-10T20:59:00.002-05:00

Oh bloggy world, how I neglect you on a regular basis with my so sporadic posting...I'm such a bad "blogger".

Anyways, lots happening...LOTS.HAPPENING and no time to write home about it. So, where shall I start....

1) the update on my fried hair...with pictures....?? (if you don't know what I'm talking about, see my last post here)

2) the weekend update of getting into Duke/UNC with Ryan and Britney...AND standing courtside...beside Erin Andrews and her Dancing with the Stars Partner (hottie Max!)...oh and meeting Nicholas Sparks at that game too...(with pictures)???

3)...this week of babies...2 showers, 1 birth...??

You tell me. I've discovered that the best part about having a blog is when you get a random email that notifies you that "so-and-so just left a comment on [Livin' the Wood Life]", soooo since I obviously can't write about all these things with pictures in one blog post (in less than a mile long of scrolling), comment away and you tell me which one you want to hear about first and I'll post about it tomorrow.

Oh, and one of the topics comes with a surprise twist... which one do you think it is? :)

And one last thing:

Both of my brothers have the same spring break and are both at home this week. Hangin out at hunting camp and such...

It's one of two times in the entire year they both make it home at the same time between their crazy football schedules. So, I'm 1 - slightly jealous that I'm missing out on all the fun while my whole family is together, and 2 - slightly depressed that my days of having a spring break are over. Welcome to adulthood. No more spring breaks...you have to work to make a living. fun stuff.

This picture sums up exactly what we're missing out on up here in NC. First of all, TJ! Do I ever mention that I MISS that kid who lives ten too many hours away??? I'm missing everyone sitting around the table, eating one of moms delicious meals, and laughing til our stomachs hurt. This picture is so typical of the dinner table scene. Here you have talented Matt who knows how to carry on a conversation while never looking up from his plate as he's shoveling it in. Literally, he has an eating stance and it's scrunched over his plate til the rim of the plate meets his mouth. Here you also see not Jamie, but Jamie's phone in the bottom right corner as she carries on two conversations at once - one at the dinner table AND one on Blackberry messenger. Let me tell you, it takes talent and she never leaves her phone behind when she sits at the table. And TJ is laughing...and TJ's face lights up when he laughs and I miss that lit up face!

Which means not only are we missing out by not being there, but we are also enduring a week of a very quiet apartment with no visitors...

I love when Matt and his buddies come and hang out. It's like I have a bunch of little brothers, but this place is like a ghost town this week while they're all gone.

But I know my mom is happy to have them home for one of the two times in the year she gets them. And lucky her, spring break for both of them has fallen on her birthday two years in a row now. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM - YOU HAVE YOUR BOYS HOME!

"You know I like my chicken fried"

2010-02-28T22:32:00.000-05:00

I am a southern girl - therefore, I like anything fried.

My mom and sister made an impromptu trip to Durham this weekend. They decided on Thursday night to come up and we had a lot of fun. We ate all kinds of junk food, watched the Olympics, and just had lots of girl time...and Ryan got to catch up on video games with the boys at Matt & Wes'. That made two weekends in a row that we got to enjoy family in town, lots of junk food, Olympics, etc... because Ryan's parents came up last weekend and we had a lot of fun with them here as well.

Anyways, back to my love for all things fried. Mmmm...we even made home-made french fries on Saturday night. I do love anything fried.

What I don't love, however, is my hair fried. And that is also something that happened this weekend...

I wish I had a picture for you, but all of the pictures...and videos...are on my sister's camera (and she left this afternoon) and my camera battery is currently dead, so those pics will just have to wait, but...

back to my hair.

So, this whole newlywed thing has put Ryan and I on a tight budget and it's just painful to shell out $150 for a cut and color, so I let my mom put her cosmetology license to good use last summer and foil and cut my hair. Granted, she had gotten her cosmetology license 25 years ago and never did hair other than cutting ours as kids, but oh well. She talked to our hair lady, Carolyn, (who's awesome by the way...she did my hair for my wedding) who gave her all the info on what exact color she uses on my hair and how she divides up the sections and foils at certain angles, etc, basically the run down so mom could do it herself. So upon arriving home to GA late on a Friday night last May (yes, May...that was the last time my hair has been touched by color or scissors...horrible, I know!), my mom and I stayed up til the wee hours of the morning with her slowly and carefully foiling my hair. And...it turned out awesome! Looked just as good as it does when I pay sweet Carolyn $150 to do it, so I was super excited to know that from now on, mom can just do my touch-ups and I can put that $150 towards groceries or something more "essential" than hair. She also cut it and layered it really well too.

So, here's how my hair turned out - this is a picture from the very next day, a random one, but the only one I have from that trip home with my fresh cut and color that shows my hair. My niece Abigail is the sweet baby girl I'm holding, who was quite miserable in this little mandatory life-vest by the way...

So, since it's now been 10 months since my last touch-up and my mom and sister came up for the weekend, I had them bring all the hair stuff so we could do my hair while they were here. My mom did it by herself last time, but my sister has been working at Carolyn's shop some lately trying to learn the ins-and-outs of hair and is planning to attend the Paul Mitchell school either this fall or after going to college first (major life decision still to be determined) to ultimately do hair. So she's observed Carolyn doing lots of foils lately, so this would be a fun little experiment.

So, they attacked my hair yesterday. I sat down in front of the movie "Into the Blue" and they went to foiling my head for the next two hours. Jamie finished up the last row of foils on the top left side of my head and then sent me under the "heater". So after about 5 minutes under the heater, the left side of my head started to burn. I don't know if it was that the foil got hot and was hurting me or if the chemicals had gotten on my head or what. Jamie came to check my hair when I started to yelp and looked slightly alarmed as she said "uhhh....i think it's blond enough. let's get these off". That's weird though because normally I'm under the heater for longer than that, but whatever they say. They seemed a little worried that it might be a little too blond. I was thinking oh well, at least spring is around the corner... lol.

So, mom takes a peek and confirms that we should get these foils off, that somehow my hair looks a little "too" blond. So we all go to town picking foil off my head into the sink and then starts Jamie's nervous laughter, followed by looks of panic on my mom's face. I couldn't see what they were seeing, but I knew something wasn't quite right.

As they rinsed the product from my hair, Jamie could hardly contain her nervous laughter...or hysterics by this point and my mom just put her head in her hands on the counter. All I could do was laugh with Jamie and wait to see what had happened.

It turns out my hair is now a bright shade of yellow/orange in some places, really blond in others, and still kinda dark with little blond streaks in yet other places.

Think Vienna from the Bachelor - that shade of bleach yellow blond. That's me now, except it's not all over my head, just concentrated in a very thick mohawk like stripe slightly off-centered to the left going down my head. Another thing...since they didn't color down the entire strands of hair, just covered the roots, the color is concentrated on the top half of my hair and maintained its natural blond looking on the bottom half. It's a mess.

My poor mother just looked sick. She just kept saying, "What will we do when Ryan comes back? What will he say when he sees what we've done to your hair?". My poor mother. Then ensued the "I think that was your section" banter back and forth between them, haha! Although I will say...I'm pretty sure it was Jamie's section. I think I'll wait until she actually GOES to Paul Mitchell school before I let her touch my hair again.

I went ahead and washed it and started to dry it to see if that helped. But that aforementioned yellow/orange section right in the front of my hair started to get all tangly and knotted under the heat. So I stopped and ran a brush through it...to find that my hair was breaking off in sizzled pieces. That's when I finally started to get a tad bit nervous. I'm ok with crazy colored hair for a day until I can get a professional to fix it, but FRIED HAIR??!?!?! I've always had healthy hair...my hair has never been DAMAGED! So I decided to let it air dry. (and I will say that after it dried, it smoothed out and I don't think that it is damaged at all.)

About that time, Ryan and Matt walked in...and their mouths fell slightly open and their eyes slightly bulged at the sight of me. And then they just referred to me as "the floozy from the street" for the rest of the weekend. Anyways...it was at that point that my poor mom's hand just went to her mouth and she had to walk out of the room. Bless her heart. It's just hair. It can be fixed. But you could just see the guilt on her face - I should have prefaced this whole story by telling you that Mom is not crazy about doing my hair because she doesn't do hair (the May experience had been her first ever attempt at coloring with foil) and is scared of being responsible if it ever turned out not how I wanted it, but I had talked her into doing it.

Anyways, lucky for me, salon's are closed on Sunday and Monday, so I did go to church with my hair lookin' like a floozy this morning and I will have to sit through my department meeting tomorrow before I can get my color, uh...."adjusted".

Also lucky for me though, my personal stylist happened to be on hand this morning. Jamie just manipulated my hair into a funky little style to hide the skunk-like stripe as much as she could and I'll just have to do my best to imitate the 'do for work tomorrow I guess.

I really think the whole thing is funny. I mean I was never the rebel that would put a bold yellow stripe in my hair, so we'll just call this my "rebel yellow streak" hair-dying phase. :) I'm just getting it out of my system. My poor mom feels so bad about the whole thing and she will read this, so Mom, just know that I wrote about this because of how funny the incident was and that I am not worried about my hair. It will look fine on Tuesday! :)

Where it all started for us...

2010-02-14T21:24:00.003-05:00

Valentine's Day will always be special for Ryan and I. This is our 8th together (where does time go?!) and every year on February 14th, we celebrate our first and favorite Valentine's day (V'Day 2002) - where it all started for us.

A lot of you know our story, but on Kelly's Korner, people were sharing favorite Valentine's Day memories and not only did I think it would be fun to join in with mine, but I also thought it would be a good excuse to write out "our story". It's a little long, but it's a fun one!

It all started in 10th grade...I was the "new" girl to Buford High School, having just transferred from a small Christian school along with my younger brother, Matt, who was in 8th grade at Buford Middle and Kyler Case, a close family friend who transferred at the same time as us. I'd never cheered before, but tried out with two other new girls in a make-up tryout and after making it, had to attend picture day for the football program along with the entire cheerleading squad and football team. Picture Day was a couple days before school started so I went not knowing anyone, but meeting everyone at once that day.

Afterwards, I waited on Kyler in the field house because his mom was picking both of us up. While I waited, Coach Wood, the Football Coach and Athletic Director (and my future father-in-law...little did I know) who had taken my parents, Matt, and me on our tour of Buford back in the spring, walked up and started talking to me, asking how I was liking it so far and if I had met a lot of people in my grade that day. I remembered he had told me he had a son on the football team that time we'd first met him, but thought he'd said his son was a Senior. As we were talking, his spitting image walked around the corner from the locker room and Coach Wood introduced me to his son, Ryan, who he said was a sophomore and might be in some of my classes. We talked just briefly before we left, but I left thinking he was really cute and really really nice.

The next day, I saw him again at open house and we talked for just a couple minutes as we found our lockers and then made our way to a covered dish dinner with the rest of the football players and cheerleaders. A lot of the football players were cute...and flirty...but something stood out to me about Ryan. He was very level-headed and mature and I could tell he was respected by the other guys on the team. I left that night excited about my first day at Buford the next day and on the ride home, I asked my parents... "You know who I could see myself liking?" And my mom turned around and looked at me with a smile and said "Ryan Wood".

Over the next couple of months, Ryan and I spent our mornings in the back hall sitting on the floor with the early crowd of kids because we got to school so early. He rode in with his dad to work and my dad dropped me off on his way to work, so we were always early and killed the time sitting on the floor talking. Meanwhile, my interest in him grew, but I couldn't tell how he felt. I didn't admit to liking him, but I guess some people started to pick up on the fact that we were getting to know each other and a couple girls told me not to waste my time on Ryan Wood. Several girls had been interested in him, but apparently he was too focused on football to notice or give a thought to being in a relationship at that time. So I purposefully didn't get my hopes up and meanwhile, almost went out instead with one of the two other guys that were more aggressive with their interests and a lot more flirty (both of which ended up being in our wedding). It came down though to me thinking I didn't want to date just anyone and I really liked Ryan...and even though I never would have been one to make the first move or call him or express interest in him, I guess I did have some kind of hope that even though he hadn't dated the other girls, MAYBE I'd be the lucky one.

After some time, people started to pick up on the idea of us dating...including his football coaches, and started the whole "will y'all just start dating already" stuff. Guys on the team would ask him about it in the locker room and he played it cool and never gave them answers to any of their questions. Meanwhile, those guys would come up to me and tell me "Oh, he's going to ask you out. I heard he's just waiting til you turn 16 to ask you". Then, my birthday came and went. Then it was "Well, really I think he's waiting til his birthday so it's not weird that you're 16 and he's still 15" (our birthdays are only 13 days apart). Then, nothing. At that point, I was thinking nothing was ever going to happen - he must not be interested and I kept talking myself into not getting my hopes up - even though I really liked him at that point. So when those guys kept trying to pry and find out what he was thinking with still no answers, they started saying "He must be waiting for Valentine's Day". Even a couple of the coaches started giving him a hard time saying "what are you waiting for - you two are perfect together"

So, the day before Valentines Day, after Ryan and I had gone through the lunch line and then gone our separate ways with our lunch trays like we did every day...he to the football player table, and me to the table with the rest of our class, I went back to grab a fork. When I did, Coach Simpson, one of the coaches who has known Ryan his whole life said, "Erin, I have a great idea. Tomorrow, you and Ryan are going to sit at this table right here all by yourselves and have Valentines lunch together!". I laughed and was like no way, that's not going to happen, but he kept convincing me it was a good idea and kept asking me if I'd do it if he set it up, finally saying, "well, if Ryan agrees to it, would you?". So I said, "fine, because I know Ryan would not agree to that anyways." Then I walked away laughing at Coach Simpson's tactics. Ha, even the coaches were trying to push things along now.

Sure enough though, just a few minutes later, I saw Coach Simpson and his buddy Coach Snell (another coach that had known Ryan since he was a kid) over at the football players table talking to Ryan. All the guys were laughing and some of them were looking my way and Coach Simpson made eye contact with me and just grinned and said "yep". And then I saw him go over and talk to the lunchroom lady, pointing to the table he had said we should eat at. Ryan looked over at me from the football player's table and just grinned.

After lunch when we met up out in the hall while waiting for the bell to ring before heading to our next classes, I asked him if he had agreed to Coach Simpson's idea and he put his arm around me and grinned and said "I sure did - he said you agreed first though!".

So, the next day on Valentine's Day, Ryan arrived in the back hall with a rose for me, which Mrs. Maltbie our math teacher gladly put in a vase and kept in her room all day for me. Then we went about our classes. I had somehow forgotten about Coach Simpson's plan or just didn't think it was going to actually happen...until I started hearing about it from people in all my different classes. In 2nd period, a couple guys were like, "Hope you're excited about your Valentine's lunch today because Coach Simpson sure had us making table decorations for it instead of lifting weights during his weight-training class this morning". A couple senior guys told me the same thing between classes. I was thinking, "oh no, what has this turned into?". Then again, in 5th period, the class right before lunch, a couple other football guys, Darius and Drew, started asking if I was ready for lunch with big ole' grins on their face. So as soon as the bell rang, I headed to lunch not knowing what to expect. As soon as I walked in, everyone was looking at me like they had been waiting for me to walk in. I walked by the senior's table and they were all watching me - it was like the whole school knew about mine and Ryan's "Valentine's lunch date". I looked over to the table Coach Simpson had suggested and it was decked out in Valentine's decor - a dozen red roses, heart confetti, stuffed bears, etc..., but no Ryan, who always beat me to lunch because his class was a lot closer than mine. I walked up and Coach Simpson pulled out the chair for me and told me he had sent Ryan through the lunch line to get our lunches, so I waited awkwardly at the table while everyone in the lunch line went grinning by me.

Finally, Ryan came through the lunch line and sat down at the table with a big smile. I guess his arrival was the cue because as soon as he sat down, all of the football guys and Coach Simpson and Coach Snell gathered around our table, linked arms, starting swaying and snapping and started singing "I've got sunshiiiiine on a cloudy day. When it's cold outside, I've got the month of May...". Ryan stood up and linked up arms with the guys behind him and joined in the snapping, swaying, and singing when they reached the chorus of "My Girl". He smiled down and sang to me as I turned bright red - my face matched the color of my shirt I was told afterwards. Some people in the lunchroom joined in singing and at the end, people clapped. It was so embarrassing, but does make for a great memory after the fact. I found out later that some teachers let kids who had been in 1st lunch out of class to come see the whole event.

(Thank you to Carrie (Creedle) Wolfe...childhood friend of Ryan's / my high school BFF / my college roommate / my bridesmaid...for snapping this picture to record the moment! This picture did hang in my locker for the rest of the year. And this was taken late at lunch when a lot of people had already cleared out, so there were a lot more in there when everything happened.)

After the singing ended, people went about their lunch. A couple people came over and snapped a picture of us, but after it died down, it was just he and I at the table. I don't think I was able to eat anything because I didn't know what he was going to do. After a couple minutes, one of the senior girls walked by and said "So, I guess it's time for the DTR talk then, huh? Ya know...Defining The Relationship."

Ryan took the prompt after she walked away and began by saying "Well, I wanted to do things on my own time so you didn't think it was because of prompting and prodding of other people, but since we're here with all of this, I guess I'll go ahead and ask you the question I've been wanting to ask you for a while now...". (ha, sounds like a 10th grade proposal, huh?). And that's when Ryan asked me to officially be his girlfriend.

Two high school years, four long-distance college years (me at Georgia, him at Duke on a football scholarship), a total of 6 years later and still together, he did ask me to marry him on Sunset Rock in Highlands, NC on December 23, 2007. And after a year and a half of awesome marriage to this amazing guy, today is our 8th Valentine's Day together!

On our wedding day, as part of my "something old", I carried down the aisle a "my girl" heart candy that someone gave me after lunch that day and I had kept all these years in my "Ryan" box.

Then at our wedding reception, all of the guys who were there that had been a part of the high school cafeteria scene on Valentine's Day 2002 once again serenaded us with a fun rendition.

Here, Joseph is telling the crowd the "background" behind the song, My Girl, that they are about to sing to us.

Joseph and the guys called Coach Simpson in from outside for the song. He's still pretty proud of his match-making skills. :)

The singing, swaying, and snapping begins...

"I've got sunshine on a cloudy day..."

It was so fun to relive the memory of how our relationship started with so many friends who had either been there in high school or knew the story...

Sing it, Zach!

And I'm so thankful for such an amazing husband and the fact that at age 24, we've already had 8 fun years together full of special memories.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Hope you've all enjoyed your day with someone special!

The Showdown

2010-02-07T14:21:00.007-05:00

So that "tomorrow post" I referred to in my last post was actually code for "next week". I'm sure you've all probably figured out by now that I'm not an every day kind of blogger. :)

Anyways, after our pretty drive around campus last Saturday morning, Ryan and I drove by an empty parking lot that NO ONE had driven on. It was a wide open expanse covered by untouched snow and it was beckoning to Ryan and his beloved SUV. So of course, as soon as Ryan saw it, he looked at me with a grin on his face and said "that parking lot looks way too clean" and turned in.

So we played around a bit and remedied that "clean snow" situation.

We did a few donuts and slid all across the lot...

...slightly left our mark.

Part of the 6-inch snow shelf dislodged itself in the process. Just goes to show how deep the snow really was...

It was so fun...too bad Matt missed out!

But then...just as we were turning out of the lot to head home, lo and behold, guess who just happened to drive by... The Three Amigos! And they said "Hey, what are you guys up to? That looks like fun".

...and into the parking lot they turned...

And the showdown between the SUV's began.

Introducing The "Hoe":

And Team F-150:

Gentleman, start your engines...

First up, the "Hoe" demonstrates a perfect donut...

Sliding to a stop, he shows the amateurs how it's done.

Up next, Team F-150 assesses the situation and strategizes their plan of entry for donut #1.

On your mark, get set, go!

The driver of the F-150 enters his donut at a perfect angle.

narrowly missing a rock, he kicks up a spray of snow...

...and some mud.

and completes his donut with the skill of an expert.

but wait! he isn't stopping...

he keeps going...

and adds a figure 8 to the end of his run.

The competition is too close to call. And the lone judge (me) gives them each a perfect 10.

and after both vehicles left their marks and we all felt better about the snow not looking so clean anymore...we all drove to breakfast.

SNOW!!!! LOTS of snow!!!

2010-01-30T18:45:00.005-05:00

Be warned...this post contains LOTS of snowy pictures. ;)

Standing outside in the 65 degree weather on Thursday afternoon, it was really hard to believe the weatherman as he predicted 6-10 inches of snow accumulation on Friday night, starting around 9 PM. But we got it last night...a good 6 inches at least!

Ryan and I went to dinner with friends last night around 6, thinking the snow wouldn't start until around 9 as predicted. During dinner at one point, I looked out the window and noticed snow had already started to fall and by the time we got outside to the car, an inch had already covered the ground and my car! Driving home, the roads were already dangerous as unprepared drivers were still on the roads and got caught in the mess before they were prepared for it, so our friends had to leave right away to get back to Raleigh since they didn't have 4-wheel drive.

Ryan and I decided it would be a warm and cozy stay-in movie night, so we ventured out to Target in his Tahoe for some decaf coffee and candy to go along with the movie. Target was practically dead at that point except for the last few people trying to get their milk, bread, and eggs. Haha, they were all getting their essentials and we were after our decaf coffee and candy! :)

We woke up early to find snow everywhere and wanted to get out in it and see campus before the sleet started. So I got a pot of coffee going and tucked some piggies in their blankets and we put on our layers while they baked. I called Matt to see if he wanted to join us in our venturing out, but he declined because Wes and Banks were at his place and they would get out in it later. I shoulda known he would want to drive instead of be a passenger. Why even ask...men and their 4-wheel drives....

So after Ryan scraped the windshield, we headed out with our coffee and pigs...

First, we went to the Duke Gardens...

The only reason I took a picture of a trash can is because it shows how deep the snow is...

Mischievous Ryan tried to kick a little snow on me....

Our attempt at getting a picture of ourselves...

We were literally as excited as kids at Christmas I think. But the real fun was still yet to come...

Next, we hit up the Duke Chapel. Didn't get pictures of Duke's icon during the snow last year, so wanted to definitely get some this year!

I have to say, Duke's a pretty place to work :) Here's the chapel up close...

Ryan mastered the self-take on the second try.

And then came the real fun...BUT on second thought....I have a whole lot of pictures of "that fun" alone so I'll save it for tomorrow and give it it's own post...so stay tuned :)

After we left the chapel, we met up with Matt, Wes, and Banks...the three amigos...and went to breakfast.

...at none other than Waffle House. It was one of the only things open and it was delicious! :)

And Matt is totally reppin' the wrong school, haha! ;)

After breakfast Ryan and I did a little more driving. We drove through the Duke Forest...

...just look at that face...I think it's kinda cute, even though it is saying "I'm about to throw this snowball in your face!" ;)

And last stop, the good stuff...

West Campus and the athletic facilities... This picture of Cameron was taken especially for my friend Britney, the most die-hard Cameron Crazie I know!

And here's Wally Wade's north gate and the football building. I love this picture, maybe because it contains so many good memories...it's where the players' families enter for games. :)

Ryan and Wes inside the gates in front of the Yoh...

Such a fun day with all my boys!

And currently those boys (including my husband) are all over at Matt and Wes' playing video games, so I guess I'll walk on over and join the fun. Have I ever mentioned that I love that my little brother lives next door? ;) I'm glad he's in Durham with Ryan and I and I forgot how fun weekends of spring semester are when Matt & Co. are actually around on the weekends and not traveling for football!

My public apology

2010-01-28T22:33:00.005-05:00

It has been drawn to my attention that I need to clarify something that I wrote in my former post, "Girl's Weekend, here I come!". In order to accurately describe the massive amounts of food that our friend Patrick consumes, I had referred to him as a "garbage disposal".

Well, last night, his girlfriend Maggie posted on my facebook wall: "'GARBAGE DISPOSAL' -- I was cracking up!! Patrick got himself a new nickname from me haha!..."

And then I woke up to find an email with the subject "I've got a problem" from Patrick himself that read:

"Erin,
I have a problem with the words that you have used in your blog. The words "garbage disposal" do not articulate the situation appropriately and therefore should be taken off the blog. These said words don't accurately represent the food that was consumed. The food was delicious and very far from garbage. Therefore, you may say that I was either (a) a glutton, (b) a food black hole - which I'm thinking about naming a black hole after Maggie for her birthday, - or (c) a gourmet garbage disposal if you want to keep the garbage disposal part. I just wanted to ensure that words provided in your blog are true events experienced by real people in real time and that I enjoyed the delicious food.
Thanks,
Patrick Bailey"

So, I want to clarify to Patrick and Maggie and anyone else who may have misunderstood my use of the term, that "garbage disposal" is most definitely a term of endearment in my book and was intended that way the first time I wrote it. The term has now been changed in the original post (second to last paragraph), but since it was important to Patrick and since his email was so funny, I thought I would share the humor with you and clarify that I meant the term only in a positive way. As one who loves to cook, the biggest compliment to the cook is when someone eats lots of their food and seems to enjoy themself in the process, so "garbage disposal" was definitely a compliment, Pat! :)

h e i s a l w a y s e a t i n g . . .

P.S. I also want you all to know that I did not spoil any surprises for Maggie's birthday by including the black hole part of Pat's email. The black hole is a running joke between them.

So, in an effort to ensure that words provided in this blog are true events experienced by real people in real time, I just had to get that off my chest. Goodnight!

24...is getting old.

2010-01-27T21:45:00.001-05:00

No, no, no...I'm not talking about Jack Bauer. Don't get mad at me...yet. I'm referring to the new age that I have just reached. And now you're mad (all you that are older than me anyways).

I know you're thinking I'm crazy and want to say "shut up, young one, stop complaining about 24. That's not OLD!" And really it's not. But, for some reason 24 just feels like a whole new phase of life that feels OLD. I was talking to one of my best friends Laura about it on my birthday and she was so right in the way she put it. At 23, you could still be a fifth year senior in college, but at 24 you are PAST the college days, PAST your youth and getting good and settled into the start of your ADULT years...from here on out. YIKES!! Thanks for bringing THAT to my attention, Gowder! (She's one of my few readers, so I enjoy calling her out by name) ;). I think I'm going to have to pull a Joyce (referring to my grandmother's trick) and start repeating ages on my birthday. She's been 39 for yeeeeaaars. My mom is older than she is...how does that work? So maybe I'll just turn 24 again on my birthday next year!

Seriously though, according to the life plan that I created when I was about 14...and still abide by...(that I may not have shared with Ryan, and God just might have laughed at), I wanted to get married young (at 22, check) and have kids young, but not without having several years to spend with my husband first, traveling and doing all kinds of adventures that you can't do once kids come along...and of course get a house first, with a white picket fence, a yard and a dog (that was my senior class prediction in high school...it also included marrying Ryan, ha!). My theory here was that if I had kids young, then I would have tons of energy for them at every age and then when they were all grown and "out of the house", hubby and I would still be young enough and have lots of energy left over for traveling, being adventurous, and also have enough energy for grandkids. (I think of my mom's best friend who had kids young and at my mom's same age, has 3 grandkids with another on the way and has them all up to the lake house every weekend of the summer and takes one of them out to Jackson Hole, WY every winter and goes on mission trips to Nicaragua and trips to Europe and jetlag barely even phases them - oh, can I just get a little bit of that energy now. I'm already tired, just from going to work today). So back to my "plan"...24 was always my "ideal" age to start having kids in order to be finished having kids by 30. Buuuut, now that I'm 24, I'm not ready for that yet. We haven't been on a big trip yet (like Italy)...and we don't have a house yet...or even a dog...etc, etc, etc....

And I hear a quiet voice say "Erin, STOP PLANNING! ...and trust ME because MY plan is perfect". So I stop. And I realize that each day in life is numbered and I only have a certain number of days to live and instead of trying to live by my "plan", I need to enjoy each day and realize that each one has a purpose and that purpose is to ENJOY God and glorify Him forever, and I'm not glorifying Him very much when I'm just trying to rush through life checking things off my life plan's to-do list.

All that to say...I'm now 24...yay! And God has given me 24 years worth celebrating so far, filled with the best family and friends anyone could ask for, a lifetime full of GOOD memories, good health so far, and a husband who is perfect for me. We shall see what this 24th year has in store, but I sure hope that come good OR bad, I will glorify God with my life, my attitude and with praise and thanksgiving.

And a big thank you to everyone who made my birthday so great. It started with my sweet hubs getting up early and making a big breakfast, complete with biscuits, fried eggs, and grits, before I even woke up. Then when I got to work, my sweet friend Samantha who is the event planner for all the Duke Athletic events (and is amazing at what she does I might add...) put together a pretty bouquet of flowers for my desk. The third floor took me to lunch for sushi. Then later, Ryan took me to a favorite Durham restaurant (City Beverage) for dinner where a whole group of our friends and Matt and Banks surprised me. The next day Ryan, Matt and I made my annual birthday shrimp dinner and it was delicious. Oh and I can't forget the birthday cake my sweet friend Melissa from small group made me, ALL the birthday cards and the awesome gifts I received. Ryan got me a suh-weeeeet new GPS (no more getting lost in this confusing town...and that does happen alot even for this "good-sense-of-direction" girl) and the new purse my parents got me to replace my old worn ragged one and can't forget the Coach scarf from my brothers that my mom and sister definitely picked out without a doubt! (ha, when I called TJ to thank him he said, "what scarf?"). And I believe that was a run-on sentence. Unfortunately, the ONLY pictures I took the entire weekend were of Samantha giving me flowers. None from the lunch outing with the office, none from dinner with everyone, none even of Ryan and Matt making my birthday dinner. At least I got these though because the flowers were beautiful - and Gerber Daisies are my favorite, how'd she know?!

It was a great day and a great weekend!

Love,

Girl's Weekend, here I come!!!!!!!!!

2010-01-15T16:12:00.003-05:00

Come 5 o'clock this afternoon, I will be heading straight to the parking lot where my car is already loaded, and I'll be driving straight to Asheville, NC for GIRL'S WEEKEND!!!

These three girls are, of all my closest friends, the ones that I go the farthest back with. We've been friends since elementary school.

Asheville, NC is a fun little town that's perfect for a girl's weekend and it happened to be the perfect place to "meet in the middle". It's about 3 hours from me in Durham and about 3 hours from them at home in Gainesville.

It seems that we never have enough time to fully catch up the times we manage to all get together when I'm in town, so I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend full of lots of "catch up" time, food...because we all love food, lounging around in pajamas in our hotel room all day if we choose to, and...

...getting a camera tutorial! Erin C. (left) is a photographer (she did our engagement pictures!) and knows all the tricks to using a camera, other than just "auto" mode like me, so Susan and I who both recently acquired some fancy cameras are going to have her give us a tutorial! :)

My only hesitation about this whole weekend getaway was leaving poor Ryan behind all by himself all weekend (although Matt and Wes do live right behind us...) even though he insisted he was happy for me to go, but I do feel better now that the situation worked itself out and his former roommate/teammate Patrick ended up coming down last weekend from Pittsburgh and just decided to stay through this weekend since I was going to be gone.

So, I'm sure these two will have a fun weekend and find plenty to get into. Matt and Wes have already tried talking them into going to their frat party/crawfish boil tonight, ha! Ryan said he's too old for that since he's old, married, and graduated, even though he was their teammate just last year. Other than that, I'm sure between all four of them, they'll have plenty of Call of Duty playing to get under their belt before "she" gets home...since they can't play 24/7 when I'm there. 18/7 is ok, but 24/7 is a little much...

They'll just love it - these two normally join games together online with Pat playing from Pittsburgh and Ryan playing from here, talking over bluetooth... but this weekend, they can just get their fill of playing side by side, screaming "watch my back" right beside each other, live and in person. I'd really be surprised if they ever get off our red couch all weekend. :) Except that Patrick will have to eat periodically. (picture of Ryan and Pat is from our spring break cruise in '07)

The Pittsburgh Steeler's #55 linebacker can put away some food! I bought triple the amount of groceries that I normally buy and that normally lasts us a week and a half to two weeks and we have gone through ALL of that food just this week! I've been doubling recipes that I normally make for mine and Ryan's dinner that usually leave us with enough leftovers for both of us to take for lunch the next day, and we've been eating it ALL - just me, Ryan, and PATRICK! I pretty much gave up and instead of going to the grocery store again before I left, just left them leftovers in the fridge and decided they could go out to eat if they needed anything else. I mean, I come from a family of six hearty eaters with two of those being college football players who know how to put away some food, but this guy is a glutton...a food black hole...a GOURMET GARBAGE DISPOSAL, LOL! I must say though, he's made some food (homemade granola/candied pecans) during the day when Ryan and I are at work, and it's all been delicious. And it has sure been fun to have him around all week - wish we got to see him more often. Can't wait to visit him and Maggie in Pittsburgh and go see him play in his home stadium!

Well, everyone have a great weekend! And keep the poor people of Haiti in your prayers! We have some family friends who just returned from there last Friday following a medical mission trip. They have a close missionary friend who lives there and runs a school who has still yet to be found, so please pray they find her alive!

And...I'm off!!!

Ice Ice Baby, too cold, too cold!

2010-01-10T18:05:00.002-05:00

What a cold and icy past week and weekend we have had here in North Carolina! This southern girl has been out of her element - that's for sure. It's not like Georgia weather is all that different from the weather here in Durham, but this winter already seems much colder than last, especially so early in the winter!

My first "out of my element" experience was on Monday...and it was cold out. I mean a whopping 12 degrees cold out.

Anyways, I had to run by the parking office before work to renew my parking pass and to get to the parking office, you come to a roundabout (aka traffic circle..."roundabout" just sounds so "British" that it's a little more fun to say) with four entrances. As I approached the roundabout, I saw a poor girl standing in the freezing cold examining the smashed up front end of her car, just outside of the circle coming down the opposite side of the street that I was coming from to enter the roundabout. Police were already on the scene, but no other cars were involved, so I wondered how her car had ended up in the position it had - over the curb and with a smashed front end. As I was in a rush to get to work though, I continued on my way to the parking office without giving it too much thought.

After my not-so-quick errand at the parking office (it always works so that when you're in a rush, the line is longer than ever and the people behind the counter are moving slower than ever - and then proceeded to SKIP over me in line), I headed back towards the traffic circle/roundabout on my way to work. As I approached the circle, a man in some kind of uniform (security guard? I'm not sure) had some kind of firecracker looking device in his hand that was lit and he was trying to position on a stand in the road, right in my way of entering the circle. I wasn't sure what he was doing or if I should drive on around him or wait on him or what. In my state of confusion, he finally looked up at me and kinda glanced around the other directions of the circle and waved me on through. Little did I know that traffic had been stopped in all directions from entering the parking circle, so when the man waved me through, I proceeded to drive right onto the ice sheet that was covering the entire circle. I might as well have been a puppy on an ice pond the way I lost all control and just skated across the circle and, thank goodness, ended up on the other side right where I would have tried to go, HAD I had any kind of control of my steering wheel. When my car stop sliding, I realized I was right in the same spot the girl with the smashed up car had been (and thank goodness was no longer there or I would have probably just rear-ended her).

At the point my car came to a stop and I realized my eyes were bulging and my mouth was frozen in the "woah" position, I realized that there was a LOOOONG line of traffic approaching the circle from every direction except for the one I had come from where officers weren't letting anyone enter the circle, except for the one who had waved me on through. How nice of him... So I gave a "thank you, thank you very much" wave to all of the onlooking drivers (just kidding, I didn't really) and sheepishly went about my way. And while all of my co-workers are northerners and make fun of my southerness when it comes to the cold, I'll admit...Yes, I AM a southern driver...and where I come from school/work/everything shuts down when there is ice on the roads!

My second "this is TOO cold" experience was when our kitchen sink pipes froze on Friday night, after we had dripped the sink AND left the cabinet open. Lucky for us, we're seasoned veterans when it comes to frozen pipes. Those same pipes froze and burst in three places last year, spewing water EVERYWHERE when it thawed out, flooding our kitchen. Good thing the maintenance guy had been here when it happened (and you know when it happens...that's when you hear the "pop" followed by "shhhhhhhhhh" and water going everywhere) and he was able to cut the water off to our apartment - but more importantly, Ryan saw him shut off the water and this year knew how to cut off the water himself. Because this year when we woke up to frozen pipes and knew the inevitible thawing and spewing moment would come, Mr. Maintenance Man was nowhere to be found. After three calls to the front office, we still got LaTonya's "I could care less" monotone voice saying "sorry, I can't get ahold of Juan. I'll page him again and let you know if he calls". But it was Saturday and we had friends in town and so of course had nothing better to do that sit at home and play the waiting game with our kitchen sink pipes, just waiting on them to spew. So it was a good thing that Ryan was able to shut off the water when we did finally hear that "pop" followed by the "shhhhhh" (and water only filled up the under-the-sink cabinet rather than the entire kitchen this time) because Juan didn't show up til an hour later. That would have been a LOT of water in this place had it been spewing uncontrollably for an hour. So needless to say, we spent Saturday at home with the maintenance man tearing apart the kitchen and installing new pipes, for the second year in a row. Thankfully, this year he added insulation - last year he did not, even after we asked him to.

We had a fun weekend with Patrick and Maggie, which leads me to my third "too cold" experience. Patrick is Ryan's former college roommate (actually, our guest bedroom that I'm typing this post from right now used to be his bedroom) who now lives in Pittsburgh and plays for the Steelers and Maggie is his girlfriend that we got to meet for the first time this weekend. (She and I had a lot of fun together!) So after we dropped Maggie off at the airport today after church (she's headed to San Diego for a work training thing while Pat stays here for the rest of the week), Ryan, Pat and I headed to Moe's for lunch. As we were walking in, the water fountain outside was frozen. Frozen! This southern girl has NEVER seen a frozen body of water in her life! And for some reason, it amazed me. I felt like it was something that could only happen in Alaska or Canada or at least the very northern part of the states, but not here in the south. Then, after we left lunch, we drove a back way home through some farmland and a pond had sheets of ice around the edges. Crazy!

It is way too cold for my liking. As Ryan tells me, I could probably not survive north of the Mason Dixon line!

And since I took zero pictures this weekend, partially due to the fact that I left my camera at home over Christmas and won't have it until Tuesday when Matt comes back from his long college kid break, and also due to the fact that all this cold and ice has come with NO snow...here are some pictures of last year's snow. :)

My car.

His car. And of course we had to get her out for a drive to check out campus.

This is the pretty drive I take to work every day. I love this stretch of 751 because it changes drastically with each season.

President's house

Entrance to Chapel Drive (although I managed to not get a picture of the Duke chapel somehow??)

Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club entrance

Running Trail through the Duke Forest.

And there's your tour of campus too! :)