I'm DONE!!

After a very long two months of research, meetings, standing strong on issues, and plain old freaking out... today I submitted our grant proposal to United Way for their three year funding cycle! Printed, it comes out to 20 pages. This will, if awarded, provide funds for my afterschool program, the one at Martha O'Bryan Center and the Reading program.

This year, each question had a 2500 character limit on it. It has ruined my typing! I still have to stop after every period and make sure I put TWO spaces instead of the ONE I was using to save space! Looking at the paragraph above it seems I'm still not doing too well!

This is a picture of my computer while I was clicking "submit"!

The process isn't done... still have an interview round once we've made it that far. We'll know how much we get in MAY! The hard part is over though. I'm sleeping very late tomorrow!

It's Snowing!

I'd love to show you a picture of how pretty the snow was on our house this morning, but the camera is still toast. You'll just have to close your eyes and picture it!

Blogs aren't fun without pictures. Sorry.

Figures...

Just when I was starting to get better about posting more often, our digital camera dies! So much for that!

In the meantime, check out this cool website... www.freerice.com ! Its a website that tests your vocabulary and donates actual grains of rice through the United Nations for each definition you get right! Our kids at work are on it pretty regularly. It's pretty hard!

Christmas with the Taylors!

We just got back from spending Christmas with the Taylors in Birmingham. Here are some of the pictures.... of course almost all of them are of Abby! Looks like she enjoyed her first Christmas! The pictures are a little rough because the camera started to do something wierd part way through the holiday.

Our E-Christmas Letter

Dear Friends & Family,

Every time we open the mailbox and find someone's well-written Christmas letter, Becky feels guilty. We can't even sign a card and get that out to the mailbox! So Becky decided to use these wonderful technological advancements to quickly get one out!

The Taylors have had a busy year! In February, Becky celebrated her seventh anniversary at the community center. Hard to believe that it has been that long! She continues to enjoy serving the families in that neighborhood and the growing Somali and Sudanese population that are using the services of the center. Also in February, was Jeff's birthday!

March was probably one of the busiest months on record! On March 9th, we closed on our first home. We are LOVING it! It was new construction, so all we had to do when we got here was unpack. Becky's mom and dad joined us for the fun! Two days after we moved in Jeff was unexpectedly promoted to manager at his company... just in time for mortgage payments! He continues to work many hours dispatching carpet and ventilation cleaning technicians around the city, dealing with customer service calls, and making sure the day goes smoothly.


On April 1st, we celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a hiking trip to Fall Creek Falls State Park, about two hours from Nashville. We were also celebrating Becky's round-numbered birthday.


April 16th was a day that will stay on the minds of Hokies for a long time. The day was spent watching news coverage online as the horrible details unfolded. But in the middle of all of that tragedy the phone rang. Our niece Abby was born a week early! She is a cutie! We are looking forward to spending her first Christmas with her.

Abby at only a few weeks old

Abby at six months, playing with Uncle Jeff

Summer was a busy one! We did manage a trip to Gatlinburg with the Taylors. And in August, Becky spoke at a national conference in DC for the Department of Housing & Urban Development's Neighborhood Networks initiative. While there, she got to spend time with her parents, Becky B, and a few of the Garriotts! Poor Jeff was stuck home alone for a few days.

I'd like to speak about this fall, but I'm not sure where it has gone. Time is seriously flying! We did get to spend Thanksgiving in Pasadena with Becky's parents. It was a nice time to relax!

We are spending Christmas in Birmingham with Jeff's family this year. And are looking forward to seeing them all again.

We hope this letter finds you well! Merry Christmas!!
Jeff and Becky

Decorated for Christmas!

Since I've been told I need to post more often (thanks for actually checking the blog, Marta!), here are some pictures of our house all ready for Christmas. Not as much as we wanted to do this year with the new house, but time got away from us!

Our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree! Jeff and I are starting a new tradition where he and I just exchange ornaments for Christmas. Hopefully in a few years we'll need a bigger tree to hold all of them!

The beautiful wreath Jeff's mom and dad sent us for our door!

$500 Diet Coke

We noticed last night on our way to dinner that Coke fridge packs were 3 for $9 at Walgreens... according to their electronic sign out front... so we decided that after dinner we'd stop and stock up! In the five minutes we were in there, someone decided to ram into the back of my precious vehicle (named Cordell if you didn't know). Fortunately, someone who saw it was nice enough to wait until we came out to tell us what happened. I probably wouldn't have noticed for days! He gave us the best description he could of the "perp", but didn't catch a tag number.

So my diet coke addiction cost us $500 last night (that's our deductible)! Cordell goes in for repairs on Monday. =(