Happy New Year!!!

Yeah, I know - a little late - but better late than never, right?

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. We did even though it was very busy.

Christmas morning the kids were of course surprised by their presents from Santa - he brought Rock Band for the Wii (still trying to get the hang of that one!), a new tennis racquet for Patrick and a North Face jacket for Hannah. They were more surprised by their big gift from Owen and I - a trampoline. Shame it's been so cold out these past two weeks - they haven't had a chance to really play on it. Although it's pretty cool to watch Hannah doing back flip after back flip on the tramp!

Christmas week was a bit relaxing - spent most of the week cleaning out closets and cabinets in the bedrooms and kitchen. Can't tell you how many bags and boxes of clothes, etc., I carted to Goodwill this week. But it was ALOT!

New Year's Eve we spent a quiet evening with friends - good food, good wine and good friends - what more can you ask for? New Year's Day we got up and headed to Savannah to celebrate Christmas with my family. We were going to have an oyster roast Saturday night but decided it would be way tooo cold to stand outside and eat oysters - if I remember correctly the low that night (in Savannah) was 23 degrees!

On Saturday Owen loaded up his Mom's belongings into a rental truck and on Sunday we left Savannah and headed to Spartanburg, SC (about an hour away from us) and moved her (and his niece Whitney) into their new home - a wonderful little 2br/1ba house right across the street from his sister Melinda. It will be nice having "Mema" closer to us - don't have to worry about her driving so far from Savannah to the upstate!

This week we've spent getting back into our routine (thank goodness!). The kids had a great first week back at school. I was supposed to play tennis Monday and Tuesday morning but with the temps in the teens that was cancelled! We were supposed to get some snow from that system that moved through late Thursday but our air was so dry here (humidity is about 20%) the snow evaporated before it hit the ground :(

Today is another cold one - it was 15 degrees at 8:30 with the high only forecast right around freezing. Tonight's low is about the same with Sunday night's low forecast to be 13 (brrr.....). Guess I won't be playing tennis Monday morning! After that it looks like we'll head back to our normal temps for this time of the year - right around 30 for lows and 50's during the day. Lovin' the cold weather though....but maybe not as cold as it's been, LOL!

Here's some of my favorite pictures taken over the last few months. Enjoy!


1. Hannah's Gym had a "Demonstration Day" on December 17th. Here's a picture of Hannah coming out of a handstand she did on the balance beam. Our season for competitive gymnastics starts next weekend with a meet in Greenwood, SC. She'll be competing in meets in Greenwood, Easley, Spartanburg, Clemson, Athens (yeah, we'll be hanging with the Big Dawgs!), and Columbia or Florence - not sure where the State meet will be this year. I've been doing some research to try and figure out how to make gym pics come out better - basically everything I've read says if you don't have the expensive equipment you just have to get lucky - gymnastics pictures are some of the hardest to capture because of the notoriously bad lighting in most gymnasiums. Even some of the pro websites I've looked at say it's very hard.

2. Picture of the den on Christmas morning before the kids got a hold of everything!

3. Balloons Over Anderson - our hot air balloon festival from early November. We went at dusk to check out the "Balloon Glow" - really cool to see these awesome balloons lit up at night!

4. Thanks to the two maple trees in our front yard we get TONS of leaves for the kids to play in and for Owen to rake up! Although thanks to the awesome Christmas present I gave him (A Stihl backpack blower) he'll be able to get these leaves up much faster than before!

5. Hannah in the leaves.

6. From our trip to New York City in November - this is a picture of Hannah and I in Grand Central Station.

7. On our first touring day in NYC (after spending 15 hours overnight on a bus) we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge - pretty awesome!!!


8. While we were in NYC Patrick got to sleep on my side of the bed since I wasn't there. I'm sure he was quite happy he got to do it 4 nights in a row! Owen sent me this picture from his cell phone one night while we were gone - how sweet!

9. Owen and Patrick on the 4-wheeler. As you may or may not know Owen is leasing 275+acres in Abbeville County for the hunting rights. He's put up wildlife cameras around the property in hopes of catching a glimpse of "the big one". This particular camera caught them riding by :)

10. Hannah's field trip to New York City was centered around their unit of learning on Immigration. Once we returned to school they had an actual "Immigration Day" where they learned acted out the process new immigrants to the US took when the arrived at Ellis Island or any of the other places immigrants accessed the US in the early 1900's. Hannah decided to dress as an ancestor from my side of the family instead of Owen's - a lot of the kids had ancestors from Ireland and Britain where a portion of Owen's side of the family is from - but very few had ancestors who came from Austria-Hungary and Czechloslavakia (where a portion of my family is from) - so that's what she chose. A great big thanks to my Mom and Dad for helping Hannah out with our family tree.

11. On our trip to NYC we went by "Ground Zero" where the twin towers used to be. Very somber, awesome site!

12. Of course no trip to NYC would be complete without seeing the Statue of Liberty - hard to imagine the emotions of the immigrants as their boat entered NY Harbor with the Lady standing there to greet them. It's very hard to get a perspective of how big this Statue really is until you're right up next to it. Because we were spending so much time on Ellis Island we didn't get off here where the Statue of Liberty was - but just seeing the people on the ground around the base of the statue gave you an idea of how big it is and how little we are!

13. This picture was taken right before we got on the bus for out 15 hour ride home. This is Hannah and I at the top of Rockefeller Center - we were about 70 stories high! AWESOME views of NYC! And if you can't tell it - it was FREEZING!

14. Picture outside of FAO Schwartz. After leaving Grand Central Station we had a few hours to walk the lengt of 5th Avenue from the Station all the way to Central Park - not sure how many blocks it is exactly, but it was long. And we passed (and actually shopped) in some of the most famous stores - Cartier, American Girl, Saks and FAO Schwartz. The doorman at FAO was from Savannah! Tiffany (the store us moms really wanted to go into!) was right next door to FAO Schwartz. We were running short of time by then so of course the kids won out over us. I figured when I experience Tiffany's on 5th Avenue it's gonna be without kids bugging me to leave, LOL!



15. Loved being able to walk through St. Patrick's Cathedral which has to be one of the most famous churches in the US. None of the pictures I took inside can do this place justice. Just awesome to be in such a stately place!

Guess that's enough pictures for now....hope everyone has a great weekend!