January...

...in bullet form. Did you expect anything else?

• Early January, we woke up to a record breaking snow for our area. Roads, schools, and businesses shut down for several days. We took advantage of the down time and entered into our church's snowman building contest. I have to give all of the credit to the 3 boys -- the rest of us just watched. :)

• We're always looking for new things to do in town, and someone discovered a coupon for a local arcade that promised "as many tokens as you can hold in your hand" for free. We took full advantage and spent a few hours playing every game in the place...and then spent 20 minutes trying to decide what to spend our tickets on.

• Our Birmingham friends are still nice enough to invite us to Birthday celebrations, and we shared in celebrating the big 3-0 with Jonathan at Jim n' Nicks BBQ.

 

p.s. clicking on the pictures will make them bigger

Surprised to see me at the top of your blog list? I'm Updating!

Most of you did a double take when you saw my neglected blog at the top of your reader list again. After several months away, I'm back. I certainly don't promise to blog frequently, but for posterity's sake I find it important to document the life events of the past few months. To keep this as painless as possible, I'm using bullets. That's right. Bullets and unedited, straight from my camera photos.

Let's rewind back to......December.

• We drove South to welcome the newest addition to our Birmingham crew, Ms. Mackinley Kate. She's such a snuggle bug (I know this because I steal her away every time we visit.)

•  We also met miss Sadie Kate and visited with proud parents Brian 'catfish' and Sally.

• We celebrated Chase's birthday here in Huntsville and broke our tradition of sitting in the Golden Ticket Seats for the Rick and Bubba radio show.

• We spent Christmas Eve at my parents house this year and rallied together to play Rock Band. I will not embarrass my family with the video we recorded, but let's just say that Mom won't be asked to sing Shania Twain again anytime soon.

• Christmas morning we woke up to a liiiiittle snow. This was my view when looking out the front windows. I was so grateful that we were able to experience the snow at my parents house because it just felt as if it went on for miles, perfectly untouched.

• After we had spent sufficient time looking at the snow, a rare thing in Alabama, we opened gifts and went to the kitchen to begin preparing our traditional Christmas Morning breakfast extravaganza. And that, my friends, is when the power went out because of all the snow and ice. My mom, a stickler for tradition, was beside herself with no way to cook breakfast. The rest of us laughed and ate cereal.

• On New Year's Eve we were able to spend some much needed time with our sweet friends Bethany and Stephen. They just relocated from Colorado to Mobile for Bethany to attend Medical School. (imagine the climate adjustment that occurred). We were able to enjoy a meal at one of our favorite spots during undergrad, and then went to a small party where we rung in the new year.

•  I also can't leave out that my absolutely adorable friend Ashley got engaged on New Years Eve and we happened to bump into the couple not long after the proposal had taken place. She and Brett are just about the cutest thing I've ever seen. And I totally stole this photo from their wedding website. (credit to the person who took this photo by hiding in the bushes)

Proud

Local news report featuring Chase's practice...

Local Clinic Offers Free Dental Care for the Holidays

Cue the Christmas Music

As I was just about to share some of the new Christmas music I'm really loving this year (courtesy of Summit's worship team) I stumbled on a recent post from "Stuff Christians Like". If you're a Christian and you've never read the blog before, please approach it with a sense of humility. It's painfully truthful and almost always entertaining.

Read the Post

Having said that, I really like several of the songs on the new Chris Tomlin Christmas CD. Unfortunately for itunes, I would much rather buy the version our worship band plays than the Tomlin album cut. Kudos to our ridiculously talented worship band who lead us into worship each week. What a blessing. And can someone get me a recorded copy from one of the services? Thank.you.very.much.

And if you're like me and ready to pull your hair out if you hear one more version of "Christmas Shoes", check these out......

Chris Tomlin's "My Soul Magnifies the Lord" from the album Glory in the Highest
Chris Tomlin's "Glory in the Highest"
Relient K "I Celebrate the Day" 
Chris Tomlin's "Light of the World"

Go Ahead and Say It......

This post is dedicated to my mother, who I am officially giving permission to say a big fat, "I TOLD YOU SO".

It's not that I didn't believe her. It's just the thought of the process sounded too weird to me.

The commercials made me uncomfortable to watch.

And then, in a moment of desperation, I caved.

I used a Neti-pot.

And let me tell ya'll, that thing worked.