North Georgia Fun

I'm a bit behind, as usual, on the posting here but I'll try to catch up this week since we don't have much planned and I can breathe a little. :)

On Oct 15th, we had a wonderful time up in the North GA Mountains. It was a gorgeous fall day and we hit Bert's Pumpkin Patch and R and A Orchards.

Grace had a blast and enjoyed playing with all the pumpkins, HUGE and tiny alike, at Bert's.  The Dreher's met us up there and we had a good time goofing off, as usual, and took a usual load of pictures.  The last time we went (in 2008) there was hardly anyone there...this year it was PACKED out.  It was hard to get good pictures because of the sheer volume of people. Anyway, we did end up with a few decent shots and we're planning to hit another farm, (hopefully a smaller one where the line for a hayride isn't over an hour!) and we'll get more pictures and our pumpkin there.  I couldn't decide which pictures to post, so I decided since this is my blog I'll post all the pictures I want and not think twice about it.  Enjoy!

Love, Love, LOVE this one!  That grin is just too precious!

There was this beautiful tree and wildflowers by our car so I wanted to take a picture of Daddy & his girl. She kept trying to show him the leaves so until he looked up, we didn't get a good picture. She is so funny. :)

I just love this picture.

Our next stop was R and A Orchards. We've been there before and they have the BEST caramel apples. It's not like you think. They actually let you pick an apple, they slice it, put it in a bowl, then POUR caramel over the top until the bowl is half full. It's dreamy. I don't even want to think about the calorie count, but once a year, it's all good. :)

We opted not to pick apples this year since the options for picking weren't apples we were interested in, so we just bought a bushel of Fuji apples (yummo!) and then headed into the orchard for some photos.  Bethany actually got a pretty good shot of all of us looking at the camera...a near miracle with an almost one year old.  :)

Grace was very excited about the tractors at Bert's, but there were lines to do everything there. This tractor outside the store at R and A was the perfect size for her. She loved getting up on the seat and then standing up to reach the wheel. 

With Baby Dreher due in just over a month, we took the opportunity to take a few maternity pictures. We got a few good ones...

Ally wanted to get in on the action, so she stuffed a pumpkin under her shirt and we took a few silly shots. :)

Love this one...

A pretty good picture of all of us

We are certainly blessed to have such good friends!

Botanical Gardens

Last year Paul & Bethany invited us to go with them to the Botanical Gardens for their Fest-of-Ale. While we didn't get any Beer, we had a great time walking around the gardens at night and generally goofing off together. We decided to head down again this year on 10/22 and the weather was PERFECT! It was a bit more crowded, but that didn't keep us from having fun. Here are a few pictures from our evening.

Beautiful Yellow OrchidsI love these plants - too cool!David & Paul being sillyBethany & IPaul & BethanyDavid, baby & I

Dad's Back Yard

Dad & Linda live in Elkins, WV. Their home is at the end of a street next to a creek and backs up to a farm. During the summer the farmer has cattle and I couldn't resist taking some pictures of them. It is so relaxing to sit in their living room and look out the slider at the beautiful scenery. The cattle roaming and the mountains in the background are just so peaceful. Here are a few of my favorite shots.

Some of the herdThis little guy was so friendly, he came right up to the fence line to get a closer look at me and posed for this photo. LOLWading through the creek

Floral Beauty

David and I worked really hard getting our flower beds beautiful last year. Since we did all the work during the summer, most things we planted died as soon as we got them in the ground. I kept all the receipts, but have been thrilled that everything has come up and the flowers are gorgeous. I love driving down our street and pulling up to our house to see all the pretty flowers in the beds. Here are a few shots of the various types of flowers we have out in full bloom this summer. I'm seriously considering selling some of my nature photography. Nearly all the art in our home is art we have created and we have alot of our nature shots blown up and displayed throughout the house. There are lots of logistics to figure out, but I may give it a chance, we'll see. ;) For now, I hope you enjoy the pictures of the lovely floral beauty from our yard.

Job Stuff & Free Time

Last week I finally found (and applied for) a job that I was interested in - woohoo! It was like the job description was written for me and I know I'd enjoy what I would be doing there. It had only been posted since Monday so hopefully I got in the door early enough - I sent in my resume Friday, so we'll see what happens. FYI - I have applied for other jobs, more out of duty to fulfill my unemployment requirements than because I was excited about them, but have so far have heard nothing. I'm ok with that though. I'm sure the Lord has a plan and He's providing for all of our needs so I'm grateful!

While I really haven't had any free time with the holidays, being sick, and the wedding, last week I was finally productive. I mean, we've had clean underwear and dishes, but until last week I haven't been able to do anything that wouldn't normally have gotten done. So my first projects were to unpack, get the house cleaned, take down all the Christmas decorations, and get my craft closet reorganized with all of the fun stuff I got for Christmas. I promise to actually do something in my craft closet, and just for Deborah I'll post pictures of it all messy. =)

Anyway, with all that done, I moved on to a few photography projects I want to get done. Since we had taken down most of the pictures in the house to decorate for Christmas, I figured I'd change the pictures - why not? We've had the same pictures up for over 4 years so I decided to go through all the pictures I have in frames around the house and decide which ones would stay and emptied the rest. Then I decided which frames I wanted to keep and which were going to good will, and this week I'll work on putting new pictures in the frames I kept. I also had a few pictures I took this fall printed as 8x10s that I matted and framed for our guest room - I'm pleased with them and may do some more!

I found a lovely album on Black Friday that I decided would be a perfect wedding album (and of course was a killer deal!). I had never made a dedicated album for our engagement & pre-wedding stuff or one for our wedding photos. If you know the drama associated with our photographs you know why this has taken me so long. So I'm working on making both albums and during this sorting phase I've decided to add a whole new series of scrapbook pages to our scrapbook from 2002. Now that my craft closet is all sorted, I'll add that to my scrapping list. =)

Thursday I met my friend Elizabeth for lunch and we ended up chatting for over 3 hours! It was so wonderful to get out of the house and enjoy time with good food (Chinese!) and good conversation. Being alone all day, I'm starting to understand what my friends Lacey & Jen keep saying about the need for adult conversation - somehow talking to the cats doesn't always "cut it".

This weekend we hung out with Paul & Bethany. They had a few house projects they wanted to get done, so David helped Paul install a new light/fan in their bathroom while B & I shopped, then we changed out the outlets on their main floor swapping them to white and putting new covers on before heading to IHOP for a late dinner together. Yesterday we all headed to IKEA where their super sale encouraged us to bite the bullet and buy the stuff we needed to redo our master closet. We've never even painted it (we've lived here 4 years!) but with the stuff almost 70% off, it was a smart move. So that's added to the project list and I'm sure we'll enlist Paul & Bethany's help in assembling everything. ;)

Needless to say, I have lots and lots of projects I am hoping to complete while I'm at home over the next however long. I'll keep you posted with pictures of my at home adventures!

A Weekend Apart

Every once in a while I head to Clarksville, TN to visit my dear friend Lacey and leave David for a weekend of bachelorhood. Last weekend I headed up to join Lacey and her girlfriends on a scrapbooking retreat. We had gone last fall and had such a blast - I was so excited to join her and be able to participate again. Her friends are so much fun and I got to meet Troy, one of her nearest and dearest, who also joined us for the weekend. Here are just a few pictures of all the fun:

Me scrapbooking

Lacey scrapbooking

Kelly has an auction at the end of Saturday where you get to bid on various Creative Memories items. Here's the entire group with our raffle money - before the auction

I won a digital CM program that I was very excited about, but Kathy wanted to put all her money into buying tickets for the raffle. With more then 3 times the number of tickets as anyone else - she was hopeful, but alas she lost. =(

This was the view just outside of our conference room where we spend far too many fun-filled belly-laughing hours scrapbooking!! These are Lacey's close girlfriends whom I've got to know over the last 2 retreats... Kathy, Kelly (the fabulous retreat organizer & host!), Me & Troy and in front Nicki & Lacey.

While I was gone, David rented a Harley for the weekend. He, Paul & 2 of Paul's friends took off on a Ride through North GA, Tennessee & North Carolina. It was the perfect weekend to go, the leaves are changing and they got some fantastic pictures. David said it was really, really cold when they left at 7am, but it warmed up by about 10 and they enjoyed the rest of their Ride. Here are a few of the highlights:

David rented this Harley Soft Tail from a local dealership

All 4 bikes at the State Line - David takes some great pictures. =)

Beautiful!!

David got home just before I did and had time to shower before we headed over on the Bike to Paul & Bethany's for dinner. It was the first time I'd been on a bike since our honeymoon and I forgot how scary it is when you get up to 50+ mph...it was great fun though. I'll have to get Paul to take me out for a ride now and then to keep me used to it. Anyway, Bethany had made some fantastic soup that warmed the boys up and made the perfect ending to a great weekend.