The Happiest Place on Earth...

Cinderella's Castle. Isn't the sky incredibly blue?

Marg doesn't like this picture, but, I think we both look great.

Playing on the Barrel Bridge on Tom Sawyer's Island, one of Matt's favorite parts of the park. It's absolutely gorgeous. We're very happy to be there if you can't tell. :-)

Matt is trying to find our way out of Injun Joe's cave.

Having a blast on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. My hubby is a pretty awesome photographer.

I've got to get me some of these ears. Seriously, I'd probably wear them around the house like houseshoes for my head.

Matt and I on the Disney railroad and the entrance to Magic Kingdom.

Ok, I admit it. I have a Disney problem. Matt and I probably seem weird to people who don't understand. It's just hard not to love a place that makes us both so happy. He and I always have the best times when we go, and we always find something new we've never done before. We've actually got a lot of Disney planned for this spring. We're going back in late March for my birthday and again in May with a friend. We got a special deal on Florida resident tickets so it's not as expensive as it sounds. We had an awesome time with Margaret. She flattered us and said she'd never go back to Disney without us. Matt and I have a well developed system that allows you to do just about everything in one day. We skip some of the younger rides (carousel, winnie the pooh, small world) because the lines are so long. Don't get me wrong we love those rides too... but we work in what time allows and we never usually wait longer than 20 minutes at each ride. Most times less than that. Maybe we should write a Disney guidebook. I'd say we know a lot of secrets and tricks...maybe writing the book would help us discover MORE secrets and tricks. I can't imagine getting paid to visit Disney and have fun~! haha.

Stay tuned for another blog soon. Matt shaved his beard yesterday (during his lunch hour) and I have some awesome beard shots. His facial hair made for some great laughs.

Gatlinburg

Laurel Falls in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Matt and the Pickle (Wil) brave the rapids of the waters flowing past the Chimney's picnic area.

I climbed over the rocks to make it to these trees in the middle of the stream.

Cades Cove 2008

The Great Smoky Mountains

We had a WONDERFUL time in the mountains. It was truly relaxing. Gatlinburg was gorgeous. The weather was chilly, but sunny. It was perfect mountain weather. We went to Disney World this past weekend with Margaret. We got some great pictures in front of the castle. It was a perfectly beautiful day. The sky was as blue as the blue tiles on Cinderella's castle roof. I'll post more pictures later this week. Matt and I have been so busy, we're looking forward to having a quiet week and weekend.

Gatlinburg

We had a great trip to Gatlinburg. It was very relaxing. The mountains were beautiful. I'll post some pictures up later today. We played and hiked in the park. We went ice skating. We shopped and at delicious pancakes. It was a really fun time. I told Matt I would rather have a house in the mountains than on the beach.

Heather is still doing ok, but definitely needs prayers.

Follow-up

Thanks for your prayers. Heather is at home now and is doing fine. She and several other girls took shelter in a bathtub in her dorm. She was the last to get in the tub and her legs got caught. She's pretty banged up and bruised, but she's walking and is home safe. God was truly watching over that campus.

Prayers!

Please keep Matt's cousin, Heather, in your prayers. She attends Union University in Jackson, TN. The campus was leveled last night with tornados moving through the area. Her dorm was damaged and, from what I have been told, she was trapped in the rubble in the aftermath. I do not know the extent of her injuries. All I really know is that no one had any life threatening injuries. Please keep her and her family in your prayers. Thank you!

"Antique" Pictures

I finally got our old pictures off of the old computer and saved on a thumb drive. Now we have them all backed up. Here are some oldies...but goodies of course.
This is us at the Disney Studios on our honeymoon. It was so much fun.

Here is Steve when she was a tiny puppy. She had just barked at me for the first time. I don't think she liked the camera.

Here we are on our first day as a married couple. Our friends stopped by Tuscaloosa on their drive back to New Orleans and came by for a visit.

It was fun to see all these pictures again. We're super excited about Gatlinburg this weekend. I hope I'll have fun pictures of snow next week!

This week is an exciting one. We are heading to Gatlinburg on Friday afternoon for a weekend trip! Matt suprised me with this trip for Valentine's day. We've both been talking about seeing the mountains for a while now. He even arranged for a hotel that accepts pets so Steve and Wil could come! We're planning on hiking in Cade's Cove, shopping at the outlets, ice skating at Ober Gatlinburg and having delicious pancakes with maple syrup. We hope we'll see some snow. Matt wants to take something to use as a sled because a person he works with went up a few weeks ago and told him about an area where people were playing and sledding in the snow. I'm really excited.

Today is a beautiful day so we'll probably take the dogs to the park or for a long walk. I think they'll like that. We dont' have any plans this weekend. We're just taking it easy since we'll be gone next weekend. Margaret is coming down the weekend after Valentine's day and we're super excited about that. Matt is making plans for her arrival already.

I'm working on getting our old pictures from Matt's law school laptop saved onto a thumb drive so we'll have them in case the laptop breaks down. I'll post some of the good ones on here. I haven't seen those pictures in a while but there should be ones of our first apartment, Steve when we brought her home, our wedding and our honeymoon. They should be fun to see. There are even pictures from our first time we went to Gatlinburg on our 2nd anniversary. I remember thinking I had this marriage thing down then...and I really had NO clue ....I suppose I'll just keep learning more and more every year. :-)

Have a wonderful week everyone! Happy Groundhog Day...our groundhog saw his shadow....6 more weeks of winter! ugh! (right?)

Itrain, Utrain

Tonight has been a wonderful night. It was a chilly, rainy day down here today, so we had some warm chili for supper and have enjoyed sitting by the fire. Matt's been reading a new book and I've been working on a paint by numbers picture I got at Michael's. It's a gorgeous picture of roses. I've never done a paint by number before that wasn't in a children's coloring book or something. So far it is going well. There is something therapeutic about painting in all the weird shaped blobs. I think it's going to look very nice when it all comes together.

Stevie and Wil have enjoyed us being home as well. We took them for a walk this afternoon so they are having a pretty good day. Steve gets so excited when I put my workout shoes on each afternoon now. She just KNOWS this is the day I'm going to take them on a walk outside. Even when we don't go for a walk she still stays excited and chases me around as I do weights. I accidentally stepped on her the other day so now she still "plays" with my feet as I move around but she's better to watch out for where I step.

My new year resolutions are still going well. I haven't learned any sort of foreign language yet, but, I have been able to stick to doing some sort of exercise everyday. Some days it's all I can do to just do a few sit ups and bicep curls and other days I can go for more than 20 minutes on the elliptical. I may not be consistent, but at least I'm getting something in there everyday. Every calorie burned helps right?

I've been using a workout system that has been really great for me. It's downloadble exercises for your MP3 player. I downloaded them off of www.itrain.com. It's a really awesome way to have a personal trainer without being glued to a video or DVD on your TV or going to the gym. The person on the track talks you through your exercises and music plays in the background. The music is very helpful to keep a fast beat when you're running or on the elliptical and the strength training is really helpful to building muscle. The downloads are around 5-6 dollars a piece and have really been helpful for me. It kind of gives me the extra push I need when I'm working out alone at my house.

Matt and I are both falling asleep in front of the fire. It's been a wonderfully lazy night. Me, Matt and his mustache bid you good night. (He loves growing a beard and he normally shaves his upper lip while growing the beard on the rest of his face, but lately he's let that grow as well and lo and behold! A mustache appeared! I'm trying to talk him into trimming it like chuck norris. If I suceed of course there will be pictures.)

Step into the freezer...

Not much to report lately. We've just been settling down after Christmas and working a lot. I finally got all the Christmas stuff put away this week. I left the Nativity set out the longest. I guess if you're going to leave some sort of Christmas decor out late it's better to leave your Nativity than the christmas lights on the porch, that IS a little tacky. :-)

We went to Destin and shopped on Saturday. It was fun to look around in all the shops and see what bargains we could find. I got a nice case for my new computer. I purchased a nice laptop from Sam's so I could have a portable way to work on my graphic design. Hopefully it will pay off in the long run.

We haven't seen any snow down here of course. The ladies I work with talked about the last time they remember snow in Tallahassee. It seems like it was about 15 years ago, maybe more than that. When we went to the Dicken's Christmas in Thomasville they had a "snow" play area where they had a snow machine make snow for kids to play in. The kids were having a blast. As I watched them, I realized that unless they travel around, this could be the only snow they have ever seen. Pretty wild. They were out there in short sleeves because the air was so warm that night. They have no idea what it feels like to play in a real snowfall. Especially for southerners because we don't own any snow clothes. We're stuck playing in layers of old clothes with socks pulled over our tennis shoes so our feet don't get wet as quickly.

Today is a beautiful day and a nice day to have a break from work. We're heading to the mall for some window shopping and lunch. Hope you all have a wonderful week.

Happy New Year~

We had a WONDERFUL time in New York. We were very fortunate to have no flight delays or any travel problems. We made our way around the city like true New Yorkers. In fact, next time we travel up there, we're just going to purchase a 7 day subway/bus pass. It's so easy to get around town that way.

We went to: The Natural History Museum, Rockefeller Center, The Top of the Rock, The Nintendo Store (for Matt), Serendipity (for me - I got the owner of the store to autograph a cookbook for me!), The Museum of Modern Art, Tiffany's, Bloomingdales, The Empire State Building, Macy's, Time's Square, Chinatown, The World Trade Center site, Battery Park, St. Patrick's Cathedral, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Central Park, Strawberry Fields, Carniege Hall and Harlem. We saw: Mary Poppins on Broadway (totally awesome), an Opera at Lincoln Center starring Placido Domingo, and Handel's Messiah at Carnegie Hall. We shopped and at hot dogs and pretzels from street vendors. It was very cold but we didn't care. It made if feel more like Christmas in the city.

We got home in the afternoon of Christmas Eve so we were just in time to start the Christmas festivities with the family. It was wonderful to spend time with all my aunts, uncles, and cousins who I don't get to see that often. We had a wonderul Christmas. My parents came down to Tallahassee the weekend after Christmas to give me a ride down since Matt had come down right after Christmas.

We watched Alabama play and Auburn play the next day. Our New Year's Eve was very relaxed, as was our New Year's day. We did have black-eyed peas so hopefully our year will go well. This year I resolve to: 1. Eat healthier and excersise more, and 2. Learn a new language (I can't decide whether to work on what little French I remember from college or just go straight to Spanish). We'll see how those go. I decided not to overdo the resolutions because the more I make, the harder they are to keep.

It's been chilly down here the past few days, but it's starting to warm up. Matt wants to go the beach one day this weekend. Winter beach is always fun. Lots of shells and a brisk wind.

Happy New Year to all of you!!! I wish you the best New Year with blessings abundant.