some exciting news

If you're reading this, it's indeed probably not "news" to you by now but we're so excited about a recent engagement...

As a disclaimer I did not take this picture - it's from the camera of Robby who happened to be in the area to take several awesome pictures of Miriam and Michael on the actual engagement. But she looks so beautiful [and he so handsome as well:)] that I just couldn't help but want to post it...

we can hardly wait...

...until wednesday!

(sheen nee-en)

A couple of weeks ago I was invited over to celebrate the Chinese New Year with some friends from work - thus the title of this post is how I would spell what "Happy New Year" in Chinese sounds like to me. That of course might be more than a little off:) It actually brought back memories of my first Chinese New Year celebration experience a couple of years ago when we were back in Jackson. Not surprisingly, as you might can tell from the pictures below, it's celebrated a lot like our "American" holidays in that you spend the time with family, friends, and food!

sort of catching up

it's probably mostly a reflection of what can seem a bit of a "mundane" schedule right now around our house - and a demanding schedule at work for claude - but there's not been a whole lot of blogging material and thus not much blogging activity over the last couple of months. however here's an attempt to get a little caught up on the past six or so months...

we went to savannah for their jazz festival in september. we also saw flannery oconnor's childhood home, got plenty of exercise walking around downtown to and from the festival in forsythe park, and had our first experience with booking a hotel on priceline and then being placed in what must be the hotel's priceline closet! the jazz festival was the main reason we made the trip and it was really a lot of fun. claude is probably a much bigger fan of jazz music (as in he can typically name the artist if he hears a song whereas i definitely have no idea) but i enjoyed it so much i hope we can go back next year. and of course before packing up and starting the drive back i found claude with 2 of his favorite "off" morning companions - a cup of starbucks and his ent textbook:)

we also celebrated our 2nd anniversary in september. for our 1st anniversary (alongside serving as a dual late summer vacation) we went back to seaside for a week. we weren't able to make an anniversary trip there this year so instead we treated ourselves to a piece of cake from boll weevil - the place here which is widely recognized as having the best cakes in town. these cakes are not only delish but also massive. in the end i think i ate more than my fair share of this piece... [and claude took good notes - for my birthday a couple of months later he got me a whole birthday cake from the same place in a different flavor. it's taken him two years to learn how i really appreciate excellent birthday cake but he's finally getting the idea:)]

in october i flew for the weekend to new orleans for my cousin sara's wedding. those pictures are on a different camera though so i'll post a couple later. along with my advice for flying out of the augusta airport:)

for halloween some friends invited us over for supper and to watch cape fear - the older gregory peck version. halloween is nowhere near my favorite holiday but we had a good time dressing up and watching an old "scary" movie. as far as costumes go, we went all out and dressed as a nerd and firefighter. while it may be hard to believe we really didn't have to do too much searching to throw these costumes together. a quick trip to the quite interesting "everything's a dollar" store down the street yielded my glasses, claude's tshirt w fireman logo, and fireman hat.

unfortunately claude had to work several call shifts during both thanksgiving and christmas. so on thanksgiving we went to eat thanksgiving lunch at cracker barrel with amy, michael, will, julie, and taylor. we enjoyed the company but missed food prepared by our favorite cooks - our moms and grandmothers!!! then for christmas i actually trekked back to ms for a couple of days that i had off since claude had to work in essence every day between being on call and post call. i headed first to jackson where the crazy christmas sweaters made their second - (in what will become an annual tradition?) - appearance. i didn't pull the camera out until the awake crowd had dwindled down to just laura, breck, and me but this picture of laura gives you an idea. of the sweaters..

while there we had a delicious meal, opened presents, played cards, and watched emily put up a valiant attempt at the cinnamon challenge. also i think laura took several pictures with her new awesome camera so if she ends up blogging some of those of everyone i'll link to them from here. since we didn't really have enough to play any more card games at this point and since laura and i have the same camera now so we spent some time trying to figure out how to work some of the settings: hence the pictures of breck and the flying cards. i think she's learned a lot more than me since then so i'm excited about getting some tips next time we're together next week!

the next morning i got to visit with a friend and then eat sushi for lunch with claude's mom before picking up mirm and then heading on to philly where mirm and i drove into town just in time to pick up pappaw for the candlelight service. to be honest it was a bittersweet christmas in that it was the first one without mammaw there. we did go to the candlelight service and then back out to the country for supper and the christmas punch which pappaw made himself. even though it was a different christmas eve compared to most of the other years of my life thus far it was so good to be with my family who i miss so much. in the morning we had a big "country" breakfast at the dining room table and even got to experience a white christmas - which is kind of the exception rather than the rule in the south. while together we also watched funny videos on youtube, opened gifts, and had a really sweet time.

then we headed off to laurel to have dinner with my mom's family. this is definitely a big and ever growing group and it was nice that most everyone was there at the same time - and those who couldn't be there that day were there later in the week.

then came sunday morning and the time to drive i20 back to ga. i was definitely thankful for safe travel on the way back as a good portion of the drive included roads with snow along the way... and i don't have much experience at all with those conditions. upon finally arriving back home and after getting the car unpacked claude and i opened a couple of gifts. we have the most thoughtful families who are so generous and sweet in their giving. even though it's not the getting of gifts that makes christmas special, we treasure what we receive as those things are such sweet reminders of the ones we love:)

into the new year...claude actually got that whole weekend off! we had a nice dinner at a nice restaurant downtown and the next morning we set out to see all the huntsville crew. we enjoyed every minute of our somewhat whirlwind trip (there saturday, back sunday) - especially hearing of mammy's latest escapades in the war of pranks that seems to never end in that town. also while we were there and still dressed up harper was kind enough to take a picture or two of us. i realized this past year while doing christmas cards that we have very pictures of the two of us looking "nice enough" to send on a card with both of our eyes open. claude told me it's probably the last year i can get away with using an engagement picture on our card:) and then of course we couldn't leave without getting a picture of claude with hobbie and granddad.

that gets us posted up through the american new year at least. up next just might be a peek into the chinese new year...

what's a girl to do?

First of all let me start off by saying - I've had an awesome Monday! I woke up (like probably anybody who would be reading this) to a blanket of snow covering everything outside. And a phone call that campus...translation for me - work...was closed for the day. Wahoo for me! Don't get me wrong - I do actually enjoy work but it was nice to have a day to stay inside a warm house, watch movies all day (though I had to settle to watch movies I've already seen several times because I was scared to get out and risk it driving), and catch up on loads of laundry and dishes that I didn't get around to this weekend. I just can't believe the day's already over.
So now to my dilemma. Even before the unexpected holiday from work I was looking forward to watching the big game tonight. Growing up I have always loved watching college - and more specifically SEC - football. And since my collegiate alma mater is not a Division I school I don't have one particularly strong loyalty - in general I root for MS teams and then after that any other SEC team that happens to be playing. Within the past couple of years (i.e. since meeting Claude and in extension his devoted Auburn family) I have come to enjoy rooting for Auburn as well. And they play tonight...for the national championship...on ESPN...which is not one of the ten channels we get:( I had already thought about that a bit since we didn't pick up numerous bowls in the past couple of weeks but felt sure that THE college football game of the year would be on one of the major networks we get, right? Wrong. I think I can buy the game off of ITunes but am not quite sure if it will be worth it to watch on my aging laptop with some audio issues of its own:) Either way I'm sure I can call someone up to get updates on the score! And relish the fact that as of now there is still a delayed start time for work to start tomorrow.

thirteen hundred miles

Claude recently took his 1st vacation week of his 2nd year and I took the week off as well so I could make the trip home with him:) Over the course of the week we drove at least 1300 miles and hit Jackson, Laurel, Philadelphia, and Huntsville and saw all of our immediate family (minus Thomas who's in Oxford currently - which was too far away for us to squeeze in this time) and a couple of friends who happened to be around while we were in town. We also managed to eat really well, played some spades and bridge (Claude already knew how but I had beginner lessons), found a couple of geocaches, and did some bargain hunting along the way. As usual, it took me a while to get around to pulling the camera out so we're missing pics from the first couple of days but I'll share the ones we have:)

Laurel visit...funny aside on the second one - as Grandaddy was sitting down and Claude was clicking away on the camera Granddaddy remarked about the girl who sat down in a chair which proceeded to fall to the floor in pieces at Hudson's the day before - and I'm laughing because that girl happened to be me:)

We stopped by to see Emily and David and then got to see Niping (and Miriam who stopped by on her way home from work) for a bit at the apartments where Claude lived all through med school and where we lived the better half of our first year of marriage. As we were pulling out of the drive that night we talked about how it seemed like just yesterday that we would pull in and out of that drive daily. And even though we love our home now, I think we both miss Cups being right down the street just a little bit - Claude for the coffee and me for those blueberry scones!

In Philly out in the country.

We were so happy to make it to Hobbie and Granddad's just in time to eat supper with a table full of the Huntsville H's on Friday night. Even though our time there was short it was packed full - we were able to visit Mammy at her new place and watching Auburn win the SEC West on Saturday afternoon. We additionally were lucky enough to have pimento cheese and caramel and marble cake sent home with us as we left after supper on Saturday night - they did make it back to Augusta but didn't last long after that!

twebb

Happy birthday Thomas!

Hope you like this picture. I it was the best "solo" shot I could find already loaded on my computer:) Hope you had a great day!