Church shopping

I've been feeling a little more at ease lately, as if I haven't super over-committed myself. I'm sure that will come back, although I hope not. This at ease, extra time, feeling has contributed to my three blog posts within one week ;-) We'll see if the trend continues.

I wanted to post about our church shopping experience. Matt and I attend a large church in Buckhead that has a lot of good things going for it. We love the people, love the young adult group, and Matt gets paid to sing their in their awesome choir. However, there are a lot of things we don't really like which I don't want to mention here and offend anyone. So for the past year or so, we have been on and off attending two churches. We began our church shopping by visiting another church in Buckhead which we had heard good things about. We fell in love with the pastor and didn't try any other churches out (until today). The big thing is that I want to hear an incredible sermon that moves me and I desperately want to find a small group to plug into. I feel like we are not doing enough spiritually, I want more.

So we found the awesome sermon in that church but still didn't plug into a small group. Today we tried a new church in the Marietta square. It had a lot of things going for it (including the potential for small groups around where we live) but Matt didn't like the music and I didn't care for the sermon. Going to that church convinced me of how much I like the other one we had been attending. So, we will go back to that other one with the amazing sermons and get plugged into a small group. There are three that are semi-close to where we live (they divide them by parts of the city) so we will be trying out one soon I hope!!

Today will be a good day, consisting of seeing lots of friends and four babies :) Just need to stay warm!

Happy Saturday!

Hope everyone is enjoying their Saturdays. They say it is (or was this morning) in the teens but I feel like it's warmer today than it has been in a while with all the sunshine and no wind. The wind is what kills me.

Matt is having his first band practice in the basement right now! Success! He is practicing with some new guy to play in that guy's gig at Smith's in a few weeks.. they sound pretty good down there. I'm baking some sugar cookies.. had a craving. Already got my grocery shopping done for the week and halfway done sealing the tile and grout in our shower. So far a good day :)

Also wanted to say a bit of thanks and congrats for my coworker Alice who had her twin boys this week! They were born on January 7th and mom and babies are doing great - Andrew and Lucian. I can't wait to meet them!! We should be headed to the hospital tomorrow to see them. Their pictures look like a spitting image of mom and dad, beautiful baby boys.

Tonight is my company party. We don't have a Christmas party, but every year in the beginning of January we have an Anniversary party. Gas South just turned 4 years old! It should be a lot of fun, good food and good conversation with coworkers and spouses.

I think I mentioned a while ago that Matt and I signed up for Netflix. We have been loving it. Saw a movie last week I think worth mentioning. It's called The Answer Man with Lauren Graham and Jeff Daniels. I thought it was fantastic!! You should check it out.

Also, in the biggest news ever (haha), we dropped Comcast finally!!!! We have Clear internet and so far I love it. We pay $15 less per month for the same speed, except we are actually getting two times the speed we are supposed to get, so that's awesome. So long, evil Comcast.

Back to enjoying my Saturday...

Oops.. it's been over a month..

Time flies when you're not posting ;-) The holidays have come and gone and I'll give you a little summary of our Christmas holidays. I was off of work from Friday the 18th and returned to work on Wednesday the 30th, yes it was awesome. On the 18th Matt and I drove to Ann Arbor, Michigan in order to be there for my brother's graduation. We passed the 11 hour drive by listening to Harry Potter 7 on audio CD! Charlie graduated with his masters in Industrial Engineering with no less than an A in any class - way to go, Charlie!! My whole family went up for the event. Ann Arbor was a very cool city. Here are some pictures:

Charlie and I in front of one of his class buildings

Mom and sister

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Me and dad

Charlie, Matt and I

Ok I know you can't really tell from this picture, but Jeff Daniels was the commencement speaker which was really cool

Graduated!

So after the graduation on Sunday evening, Matt and I drove to Chicago (it's only 4 hours from Ann Arbor so why not!). We enjoyed two full days in the city seeing the sites and also visiting with my friend Jeff who is pretty much the only person I keep up with from high school. Jeff and I have known each other since kindergarten (I think) so it's really cool to keep up with him and he showed us around Chicago.

Matt and I in Chicago! (in front of Navy Pier)

Matt and Jeff in front of the yummy pizza place we ate at

Somewhere in Chicago

Snow!

Me in front of the "Cloud Gate" bean sculpture (notice the cute boots I had to buy because I didn't bring any waterproof shoes for the snow). Also, you can see a little bit of the snow in the top of the picture, the top of the sculpture was covered in snow and looked really neat.

Then on Wednesday Matt and I made the 11 hour drive back to Atlanta to spend the evening with some of his family for Christmas. Thursday we were up early again for the drive to Augusta! We spent Thursday and Friday in Augusta for Christmas with my family. We had our usual tradition of going over to our neighbor's house for Christmas Eve and then my aunt's house for Christmas lunch. And we got to spend a lot of time on Christmas with Emili too :)

Playing Beatles Rock Band at the neighbor's house

Christmas at my Mom's house

Cousin picture L to R - Charlie (brother), Zack (cousin), Erin (Zack's wife), Erin (sister), Kristen (cousin), me, Matt

Emili and me.. and Molly. Molly's first Christmas! Look how happy she is ;-)

Saturday morning we woke up and drove to Estill Springs, TN - 5 hour drive (one of the very exits we had passed on Wednesday)! We spent Saturday and Sunday in Estill Springs for Christmas with Matt's immediate and extended family. Sunday we drove back to Atlanta, home sweet home, after about 36 hours on the road (all worth it).

Christmas in TN - all of those gifts were opened in about 6 minutes, it was hilarious!

I spent Monday and Tuesday off of work at home recovering from our trip. I had a chance to clean, relax, and take down the Christmas decorations (always sad). And this past weekend, with having Friday off for New Year's, Matt and I worked on the house a little. He has been working on the basement and has done a phenomenal job preparing the basement for his music stuff and band practice. I did a little tiling in the bathroom to finally finish off the tile work that is in there. I also plan on sealing the tile in our shower this week so for now we are showering in our guest bathroom.

This is what Matt and I gave each other for Christmas - our first piece of furniture for our empty front room. I will also be getting a pillow or two for the top.

Tiles before being finished (and before painting and medicine cabinet too)

My handy tile work after (the top pieces)

One side of the bathroom

Basement "before" picture.. even before we took out the walls and floor

Basement "after" - the man-cave Matt has been working on for months and months

I'm sure there are many things I am leaving out since it has been so long. Let's see.. Biggest Loser starts tomorrow! I finally started running again! I have gone twice in the past week and that was the first time in 2 months since the marathon. My knees are not happy about it but I will press on. And yes I went running on Sunday when it was about 30 degrees out. Andy and Crystal are getting married in about 3 months!! We are very excited for them and can't wait to partake in all the wedding fun :) I have watched Julie and Julia about 4 times in the last week - MUST SEE. Seriously, I love it. We saw Avatar this weekend which is also a must-see. We opted to see it in 2D and I'm glad we did even though I'm sure 3D would be awesome as well. And here's to hoping I post again soon. Happy 2010!

Vampires, babies and ice cream

This has been a good weekend. Pretty lazy, and good. Friday night I was so lazy and didn't do anything on my to-do list. I fell asleep on the couch at 9:45. Nice. Woke up Saturday at 9am (in bed.. had climbed in bed at 12:30am) andddddd proceeded to sit on the couch again :) Lazy-d around most of Saturday except I did wash a mountain of dishes. Then Chrissy and I saw the new Twilight movie, New Moon, on Saturday evening. Oh my gosh it was good!! Much better than the first. And the funniest thing was listening to the tween girls freaking out over seeing the guys without their shirts on and stuff. Then Chrissy came over to our house and we had some bbq for dinner and hung out. So good to see her! (Sorry we missed you in the afternoon Lindsey!!).

Last night I successfully fell asleep on the couch again probably around 10:30 and then climbed in bed about an hour later. This morning Matt and I helped out the young adults at church and we served and sold some coffee. We are doing this Land of 1000 Hills coffee at church, Fair Trade coffee, that benefits victims of genocide in Rwanda. It's pretty cool, you can read about it here.

This afternoon we drove around Atlanta visiting two new babies! John Tate Holvey and Will Vasell. John Tate lives in Douglasville with his lovely parents Jaime and Joe. Jaime and I worked together at Bluelinx and formed a close relationship over going shopping every day during "lunch." It was mostly just looking - not buying, but we definitely went to Target and Cost Plus World Market a lot! Matt and I drove back from Douglasville and headed over to Buckhead where Will lives with his parents Peter and Angel who are our friends from church. We met them probably a year ago and have really enjoyed getting to know them over the past year! John Tate is 6 weeks old and somewhere around 11.5 pounds and Will is 3 weeks old and somewhere around 10 pounds. Both very beautiful boys!! I had not been around a boy baby in soo long. We were very happy to see all the babies and parents today. No pictures though :(

And on the way home we stopped at the [interesting] Food Depot to get some mint chocolate chip ice cream which I just ate for "dinner." Yum :) (We had Shane's for lunch and have been overly stuffed and I had a craving for ice cream so I can call that dinner, right?)

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

One day I'll be a better blogger.. maybe

I think I am not such a good blogger! But if you are still reading I guess that's a good thing. Let's see.. latest house projects: I finally painted our front room which took me probably 15 hours. It looks so much better! Still no furniture in it but I think that Matt and I are buying a rug for in there for our Christmas presents to each other. I guess that will mean still no furniture but we'll have a rug! We also now have electricity in our basement!! One step closer to Matt being able to have band practice down there. Now he just needs a PA system. Props to Matt for wiring the whole basement and all we had to do was call the electrician to hook it up to the house power (we didn't want to risk the danger of doing it ourselves). Sad news though is that the electrician found some work that needs to be done due to the awful way the remodelers wired our house (surprise, surprise).

I have been busy busy with finishing up our Christmas shopping. I would say we are about 90% finished! This is a first for me. Now I just need motivation to finish the last 10%. And speaking of Christmas, I have already started to decorate our house. I know it's early but I bought all these decorations last year and am very excited about them. No lights or tree yet, just some fun things around the house. Tonight I will be watching Merry Madagascar at 8pm. I am very excited about it :) Oh man I just looked it up and it is only 30 minutes. I thought it might be an hour, oh well.

I want to mention these new workout videos I bought. I bought some new videos when I knew I wouldn't want to run for a while after my marathon. I got two videos by Jillian from the biggest loser. Oh My Gosh! If you are looking for a good workout, this is it! I got 30day Shred and something about trouble spots. The 30day Shred is really good and only 20 minute sections. The trouble spot one is 50 minutes and I totally stopped it about 30 minutes in. You can tell if you do it all, and often, you will look incredible. I just use them a few times a week though. So there's a little advertisement from me.

I think that's it for tonight.. I need to do some cleaning, having people over on Thursday night :) Hope you all are enjoying this Thanksgiving time! I am very thankful for my wonderful husband, puppy and house!!!

Finally some pictures!

Ready to run! The thing on my left shoe kept our time and the thing on my right was to eat :)

Emili and I before the race

Our names, so people can cheer us on!

Burt #4.. or 5? Our pumpkin this year

Crystal and I after we carved our pumpkins

Halloween - Matt was the Operation guy and I was Julia Child

Crystal, Andy & Thomas on Halloween

Molly got to borrow the angel wings :)

Finally spray painted those lamps. Nowhere to put them though! And I bought that lamp shade but it is way too small.. gotta return it.

The end to couponing?

My streak of erratic posting will continue for tonight. I do have some pictures to post but don't feel like hooking my camera up right now. So just some thoughts for tonight.

Firstly, I think I am going to stop couponing. Oddly enough, I seem to be spending more money now than I did before I began. I do realize that I am getting more for my money but I am just getting frustrated with it. I used to spend $60 a week on our groceries which included food and items like paper towels, toothpaste, etc. After couponing, I was spending probably $70 on everything plus buying a newspaper for $2 every Sunday plus I was doing the Grocery Game which was costing me $15 every 8 weeks. I know that's not a lot but it adds up. As does the time spent on the couponing. A few weeks ago I decided to ditch the Grocery Game in favor of Southern Savers. Still did not have a lot of luck and the time and frustration was wearing me down. I used to cook meals for us at least 3 times a week and have definitely not been doing that! So for now, I will quit couponing and go back to what I was doing before of buying things that are on sale. However, I will still probably check southern savers for any printout coupons I can still take advantage of (turns out a lot of the ones I used can be printed offline anyway). Maybe I was doing something wrong, I have no idea, but I'm going to give a trial run to my old ways and see if it makes life better.

Second, we joined Netflix! So far we have watched one movie and watched it in several 20 minute increments. (Adventureland - definitely recommend it! Coincidentally it was filmed at Kennywood which is where I rode my first roller coaster - The Jack Rabbit.) We put the movie in the mail yesterday morning and had another DVD back today. I have no idea how they do that. Maybe the mailman sends them a message saying it's on the way?? haha. Anyway I have disc 1 of season 3 of Curb Your Enthusiasm waiting for me - yey!

Third, babies. My friends' lives continue to be consumed by babies. Jonathan Knox Tate Holvey was born about 4 weeks ago, 10+ pounds! John William "Will" Vasell was born on Sunday at 9+ pounds. Also on Sunday I attended a baby shower for my friend Alice who is expecting twin boys in February (if she goes full term). So excited for everyone!!

Fourth, I am halfway done with my Christmas shopping! It's a good feeling. And I think I may have just found some good deals at one of my favorite stores so I hope that will help me cross a few more people off my list :) What do you want from me for Christmas??

Fifth, speaking of Christmas, I am dying to put up all of the items I bought after Christmas last year! Is it too soon?? Maybe as soon as we eat the rest of our Halloween candy then it will be time.

I will try to put up pictures soon. I have a few from the marathon and some from Halloween - including one of Molly wearing angel wings!