Wrap Up #2

Daniel and I celebrated our first anniversary on December 20, 2009! It truly has been an amazing first year together and it is so hard to believe that a year has already gone by! It seems like just yesterday we were enjoying our big day!
We had high hopes of going somewhere amazing for our first anniversary together. However, our church decided to have its Christmas event(The Living Christmas Tree) on December 19,20, and 21 of this year. It usually is around the first weekend of December but this year there was a scheduling conflict and we had to move it to a later date. The Living Christmas Tree is an amazing witnessing opportunity for our church. If you are in the Knoxville area you should come next year. You can check it out here. Daniel is in the choir and I am in the orchestra and so we decided that we would not miss being a part of "the Tree" even though it fell on our anniversary. We celebrated the weekend before by renting a cabin in Gatlinburg just to get away for a couple of nights. So, with no further adieu...welcome to the land of tacky stores and funnel cake dreams...

We stayed in the cutest little cabin called Got Moose:


It was decorated for Christmas inside (which you know made me happy):










We had great views from our 2 balconies:


When we were looking for a place to stay, the description we read about this cabin said to enjoy amazing barbecuing outside on their grill. There was only one problem, we searched high and low for a gas grill and it was no where to be seen. Then we found the amazing grill by the front door...

Needless to say, we didn't do any barbecuing.

On Saturday we hit the town. After looking for the bar-b-que grill for so long we decided that bar-b-que sounded good for lunch:

We ordered a yummy appetizer of onion rings...my favorite:

After lunch we went to The Christmas place since Christmas is my favorite thing ever (even besides onion rings-and that's saying a lot):

(Do you see Santa's reindeer rounding the corner above?)After The Christmas Place Daniel let me play a game of SkiBall...I don't know where this attraction came from but I LOVE SkiBall!


Daniel played Frogger
And that was enough Arcading for me.

We found a store with some great masks. We considered buying them for next year's Halloween but my mask was $26 and Daniel's was $40. Maybe the Phantom of the Opera pays that much for a mask but not this ol' girl!
They were pretty fun though:

For those of you who know my husband you know that he HATES spiders. So you can imagine his reaction when he turned around and saw this:

After some window shopping we ended the evening by eating at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.


And a trip to Gatlinburg is not complete without one of these:

On our actual anniversary we didn't get home from our performance until around midnight. We were so tired, but we cut our top layer of wedding cake and took time to remember our wonderful day together one year ago.

Looking forward to year #2!

End of the Year Wrap Up #1

I realize that I failed to cover a large part of the end of this past year. As third year Au.D. students you come to quickly realize that Comprehensive Exams are right around the corner. This past semester was a pure killer for me. However, I just PASSED all of my exams and am well on my way to more free time! With that being said, I have a lot of catching up to do! Over the next few days/weeks I am going to be giving you some of the highlights that I missed giving you starting with last summer. So, grab a warm cup of cocoa and settle in-there are A LOT of pictures to show and sweet stories to tell. Wrap Up #1 is from this past summer's Florida vacation:

On August the 8th my family and Daniel and I set out for Fort Walton Beach. If you know anything about my family you know that we left for the beach at 3 a.m. Yes, that's right, 3 a.m. Joellen and Matt were not able to go with us because they were on a mission trip outside of the country. We missed them terribly, but we are so glad that they had a great time! About halfway through the trip down we met up with Lynne and James and the kids.
This is one of the places that we stopped to eat at on the way down.........I AM TOTALLY KIDDING! I just thought the name was funny so I made mom and Daniel strike for a pose. Chitlins and a long car ride don't seem to mix for some reason.

We finally made it to our rental house and Crockett and Holly immediately wanted to swim in the pool. I could seriously eat these little kiddos up. They are just too cute.

Holly had her first experience on the beach:

And her first Chicken Bone:


Daniel and I had never been on a double date with Lynne and James, so one night the four of us went to a restaurant called The Fisherman's Wharf to have dinner. Mom, Dad, and Mimi stayed at home with the kids so we could have a date night together. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Dad bought us all tickets onto the fishing pier for several different days. We all had high hopes of catching "the big one" but it just wasn't meant to be. A couple of years ago Dad took Daniel and I fishing off of this same pier and it was like nature's bounty of fish. We caught the most amazing fish with beautiful colors-and a lot of teeth! Dad tried to get a hook out of one's mouth and it turned out that the fish had 5 different rows of teeth! I caught a huge pompano that year, and as soon as I caught it a little Korean lady came and asked me for it. She chucked the poor fish into a cooler and strolled it away. It actually made me really sad because I realized that she was going to eat him. Poor little guy. Sometimes I have a bit of a naive spirit. Anyways, this year did not produce such a harvest of fish. I couldn't wait to see what we were going to catch this year! After many bait fish, James caught our only fish over the size of 5". Can you guess what it was?!?



A Catfish...... Out of all of the amazing fish to catch in the ocean, we caught.... a catfish.
Oh well, we had a great time anyways:





It was really H.O.T. HOT, can you tell???

We had some wonderful meals at the beach. One night I made enchiladas...one of Daniel's favorites:
Happy Husband:
For our last night at the beach Mom and Dad treated us all to one of our favorite restaurants in Destin called The Lighthouse. My family has eaten at this restaurant for years. The kiddos were not in the best mood during our dinner so the pictures didn't turn out as we had wished:

(Don't be fooled...Mom WAS at the restaurant with us, she is just somewhere behind Dad and James in the picture-again, not the best time for pictures)


After our dinner we decided to go to Henderson Beach State Park in Destin. You have to pay when entering the State Park. For this reason the beachfront is practically empty! Lynne and James wanted to get some nice pictures of the kids in their little white frocks on the beach. Here are some of Holly:


And here is what we got when we added Mr. Crockett into the equation:




Priceless.

It truly was a beautiful part of the beach. I felt as if I was on a private beach just for our family because no one else was there.







After we left the beach, Mimi treated us all to ice cream at Bruster's to wrap up our last night in Florida:
It truly was a great trip! I hadn't been on a week long vacation in such a long time and it was so great to get some much needed R&R and family time. Have a great day everyone! Are you excited for Wrap Up #2?

I Found This in My Files...It Made Me Laugh

Walking In A Winter Wonderland.....Literally

I'm disappointed that I am blogging before I have the picture that I've been waiting to post since October, but I can't go without writing about our adventure tonight. We've had some wonderful things happen in our little family of 2, and I can't wait to tell you about them. I'm planning on doing an "End of the Year Wrap Up" but you will have to wait a few more days for that. Back to our adventure....

Since the beginning of the week, the weathermen have been calling for "a light accumulation" of snow for Thursday here in Knoxville. I even recall WBIR's Mike Witcher saying, "it should just be a light dusting." The snow started today in knoxville around 1:00. It really was just little flakes of snow. Nothing to be worried about. Daniel and I both had to work today. I was working in Alcoa and Daniel was in Straw Plains. We ended up leaving each of our workplaces around 4 p.m. (It usually takes me around 20 minutes to get home from work). To make a very long story short, we didn't arrive at our house until 7:45!

The interstate was fine. However, the back roads of Knoxville were pure ice. Daniel ended up being about a 1/2 mile in front of me on our way home. This was seriously the Lord taking care of us...you will find out why. I received a call from Daniel telling me that "Robinson" (The road we live about 2 miles off of) was completely ice. No cars were moving. He even saw one man completely abandon his car, with briefcase in tow, and start walking to his home. It seemed quite disturbing at the time, and a little humorous that he was just leaving everything and walking home. Little did I know that I would soon be following suit. About 45 minutes later I received another call from Daniel. "I am completely out of gas, I have to park and walk." I couldn't believe it, but agreed it was all he could do. As I finally made it onto Robinson I soon realized just how icy it truly was. I slid my car into the first neighborhood and parked. Daniel turned around from his long trek and came to meet me. I am so thankful that the Lord placed us near one another on the way home. I would have been terrified to walk by myself in the dark. Once Daniel met me, I grabbed 2 fleece coats from my car and we began the 2 mile hike in the snow....

This picture was taken at the beginning of our walk. It isn't great because I didn't realize that I had my camera with me and had to settle for my cell phone. You can see the line of cars just at a stand still. People literally left their cars parked in the middle of the road and just started walking.


Poor Daniel was in a windbreaker and his business suit. As I was walking, I was thinking that it was a bad day to choose to wear ballerina flats with naked feet....

We are about an hour into our hike now and we're both still feeling pretty good. It's getting colder, but we are still hanging in there. Everything was slowing down because the cars became stranded and no one could drive any farther. A look back in the opposite direction shows how we were walking into "no man's land."




Still feeling pretty good....






Ok. It's been an hour and a half now and the wind is really starting to pick up. The snow is falling faster. Not doing so great now...

REALLY NOT DOING SO GOOD NOW (I can't believe I'm posting this picture)...



Let's take a moment to recognize how many steps I (5'4") have to take to keep up with my 6'4" handsome husbandOh, to have a long stride.
At this point I decided to start a conversation to keep our minds off of the terribly cold wind and the numbness that was settling in.

Beth: So, what life lessons have we learned from this little adventure?
Daniel: Leave work early if you need to.
Beth: Fill your car up with gas at the first sign of snow.
Daniel: Be willing to walk a little.
Beth: Don't wear ballerina flats in cold weather. My mother is seriously going to kill me when she finds out I'm not wearing winter shoes.
Daniel: Always keep a Gatorade bottle in your car.
Beth: Wait... What?
Daniel: I had to go to the bathroom really really bad!
Beth: HA HA HA!

At this point I heard a noise....SHHHH, SHHHHH, SHHHHH, SHHHHHH. What is that? I turned around and saw a little man in his business suit and dress shoes literally "shoe" ice skating around us. I tried not to laugh out loud. Next thing I know Daniel is trying it too. While trying to keep up with Daniel's ice skating I saw the best thing my little snowflake covered lashes had seen all evening....our subdivision sign! We made it home after walking an hour and forty five minutes in the snow. We survived a once in a lifetime adventure with plenty of life lessons learned. Who needs Mt. Everest? We conquered Robinson!

Happy Christmas!

I'm coming back....I promise! There is a very important picture that I need before I can blog again....coming soon.