30 Hour Trip To Knoxville

This weekend I went to Knoxville to visit old friends from college! Evan & Marta hosted us Hokies for a fun weekend of catching up and eating good food! I stole this picture from her blog because it turned out so great!

In the picture... Marta, Evan, Elizabeth (with my new faux niece Caroline!), Missy, me (with Flat Becky B), Julie, Sharon & Drew. Kate, Evan & Marta's little girl, was asleep when we took the picture.

I had the idea to make a Flat Becky B since Becky Brittain couldn't make it. Marta, the PhotoShop wiz, made it and it was GREAT!!! We got some fun pictures of "Becky" hanging out with us!

This is Caroline (& Flat Becky B)! I stole this picture from her mom's Facebook page! Apparently I've gotten really bad about taking pictures. I think I took two while I was there!

How We Spent $$ This Christmas!

This year we decided to try and buy gifts in which the money would be put back into something worthy. I thought we'd share in case you needed some ideas for gifts this year!

We bought many of the ladies in our family products from Thistle Farms. Located here in Nashville, they take women who are living on the streets and teach them job skills through the making of all natural beauty and household products. Money from these products go back into the nonprofit.

For a few of the men in the family that like to cook, we purchased some soup and spice mixes from the Women's Bean Project in Denver, Colorado. They have all kinds of soup mixes, spice and chili mixes, cookie mixes, etc. As with Thistle Farms, participants in the program make the products and the money goes back into the nonprofit.

Our niece Abby got a "magazine" subscription for toddlers from the National Wildlife Federation! A new Wild Animal Babies board book comes about once a month.

And finally for my grandparents, we "purchased" one month of tutoring for an inner city child through World Vision.

Don't get me wrong... Walmart and Macy's still got a lot of our money, but it was a fun challenge to see if we could go a little nontraditional on the gift giving this year!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

We hope all of our favorite blog readers had a great Christmas. We spent ours in Maryland with the Foys this year. We really didn't do much of anything but get some very much needed rest and relaxation! Unfortunately, a death in the family made things a bit heavy, but it was nice to spend time with everyone.

Here's a picture of Jeff and I at my office. I had to work an event one Saturday night and used some Mexican food to bribe him into going with me.

As for New Year's, its been pretty quiet here. I'm on day 12 of some sort of cold/sinus infection thing that keeps me coughing. So New Year's Eve I was asleep by 9pm thanks to some TheraFlu! We did wake up to some fireworks around 1am, but rolled over and went right back to sleep! Oh well! Maybe next year!