Happy New Year

2011 in review:

January:
- We celebrated the new year in Asheville with friends at our apartment (Joey and Erin came up to visit).
- After celebrating an awesome snow day in Asheville with our friends, we watched as Auburn became National Champions!
February:
- A bunch of us celebrated a friend's birthday by shooting skeet at Fowler Farms.
- Saw Yann Tiersen in concert.
- Harrison's family visited us in Asheville.
- Celebrated the baptism of my niece, Paige.
March: 
- Saw Devotchka in concert (one of my top three concert performances of all time).
- Gave up meat for Lent.
- We went to Charleston, SC for a mini-getaway/medical conference.
April:
- Our family endured a tough month after receiving news that Paige (just 5 months old) was diagnosed with Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy.
- Josh and Heather visited us in Asheville. We canoed on the French Broad River and saw Widespread Panic in concert.
May:
- Harrison finished his master's degree in history.
- I had to break the news to my wonderful coworkers at Biltmore Family Medicine that I would be resigning to move to AL (even though we had no job prospects at the time).
- After stabilizing, Paige was released from the hospital after over a month long stay.
- We enjoyed a nice vacation with Harrison's family in Kauai, Hawaii.
- We had a family reunion (with my mom's side of the family) in Fripp Island, SC and celebrated my cousin, Erin's wedding.
- America breathed a sigh of relief in the news of Osama Bin Laden's death.
June:
- We attended Harrison's ten year high school reunion.
- We BOTH got jobs!
- We spent the month soaking up every aspect of life in Asheville, enjoying all it had to offer.
- We spent a wonderful weekend camping with all of our amazing Asheville friends.
July:
- For the 4th, we had a 'float party' down the French Broad River with all of our friends.
- We took a great beach trip to the Outer Banks of NC.
- Nate and Kellye told us they were pregnant! The next day they called back telling me they'd found out they're expecting TWINS!
- For our third wedding anniversary, we spent the day on Max Patch (where he proposed) with a fantastic picnic. We soaked in the 360 degree views of the Smokies and Blue Ridge Mountains that surrounded us.
- We packed up our apartment and had one last 'throw down' with our Asheville buddies at our 'No Furniture Party.' The next morning I cried bittersweet tears as I drove away with Asheville in the rear view and Auburn ahead of me.
August:
- As returning Alabama residents, we started our new jobs.
- I had a blast reuniting with my college sorority sisters at Jenna's bachelorette party and wedding.
September:
- Football season!
- Paige was readmitted back into the hospital, as her heart condition began to worsen.
- We (along with Harrison's parents) adopted a stray Brittany Spaniel that we named Piper. We're 'co-parenting' her.
- We celebrated the life of my Grandpop, who went to be with the Lord.
- Dad turned 60!
- After just 16 days on the heart transplant list, we were blessed with a donor for Paige. She successfully underwent a heart transplant on 9/30/11 and we've been singing praises ever since!
October:
- Harrison and I returned to Asheville for a friend's wedding and to reconnect with our friends.
- My brothers, sister, and parents met up in Atlanta for a weekend of fun to celebrate my Dad's 60th.
- I turned 28 and celebrated with Harrison at a nice restaurant and with Auburn home game win.
- For Halloween I dressed up as Princess Kate and Harrison as Magnum P.I.
November:
- We celebrated Paige's first birthday.
- Our entire family met at the hospital to hear Andrew announce that Aileen gave birth to a GIRL, Hailey!
- We spent Thanksgiving at my parents house, although only my parents, David, and Harrison could be in attendance.
December:
- We went back to Asheville for another visit and to see Beirut in concert.
- Harrison and I spent a lot of time with our families over Christmas and had a wonderful time together.
- For our New Year's festivities, I'll go into detail below:

This year, we decided to spend New Year's in Atlanta with our friends Erin and Joey. Harrison and Joey have been together on New Years more times than I've been with Harrison on New Years! On Friday night, we went to a great restaurant called JCT. We had a little 'cocktail hour' before our reservations, so we sipped on drinks outside in teak patio chairs, underneath heat lamps (although unnecessary for the 60 degree weather), as we listened to acoustic guitar and enjoyed the city view in the distance. I highly recommend this place! 

At dinner we had the most amazing deviled egg appetizer I've ever put in my mouth. I'm still thinking about those eggs!

After dinner, we went to a cool speakeasy/bar called Ormsby's. It was huge inside and people were playing fun games everywhere.

On Saturday, we ate breakfast in Decatur at a great little spot called Sweet Melissa's.

Afterward, we got a sneak peak at Erin's newly purchased townhouse (adorable) and went for a walk around her cute neighborhood. I took pictures of homes I thought were pretty cute:

After going back to Erin's apartment and resting up a few hours for the night ahead, we got ready and met up with our friends Jameson and Katie. We went to the Bucket Shop Cafe (an Auburn hot spot) to watch our bowl game.

I noticed that our waitress looked familiar, so I asked her where she worked previously. She had been our waitress before in Asheville at the place where we used to watch Auburn games (Pack's Tavern). I thought that was pretty neat. Auburn looked AWESOME! It was great to see our season end so strongly. I can't wait until September 2012!

The game ended pretty late, around 10:45, so we had to figure out quickly where we wanted to be to ring in the New Year. One place popped into my head: JCT's deck! We knew it would be perfect outside with the unseasonably warm weather. We jumped into our cars and arrived at about 11:30. That gave us time to grab a glass of champagne (Prosecco for Erin and I), have a few photo opps, listen to the acoustic music, and enjoy the city view from the walking bridge (over the train tracks) that connected to JCT. At midnight we could see the fireworks going off in downtown.

 Erin and Joey

 Katie and Jameson

It wasn't a good idea for us to have a group picture under the heat lamp.

One of the servers gave Katie a massive amount of leftover balloons. She looks like she's going to float away: 

 Harrison thought it would be fun to pop all of Katie's balloons with his pocket knife. In this photo, he's chasing Katie across the bridge as he pops all of her balloons!

 The aftermath:

On Sunday morning, we all grabbed brunch/lunch at a Taco Mac in Decatur and met up with David and Katie there. They had a fun night at the bowl game with Nate.

I wonder what we'll be doing next year for New Year's? What did you do?

Merry Christmas!

We had an action-packed Christmas weekend! On Friday, Harrison and I went to his parents home and hung out with his sister, who was in town from Tampa, and their parents. After finishing all of the wrapping on Saturday morning, Christmas Eve, we went back to Beauregard where we shot skeet behind The Williams' home. This is becoming a Christmas tradition for us, which I like very much! Harrison's cousin, Katie was in town also, and we took some pretty great photos around the Christmas tree with our guns. I'm waiting on Mr. Williams to send me those photos so that I can post them here. For now, I'll post the photos of our brown paper packages tied up in string and stamped with our 'W' wax seal:

We went to our first Christmas Eve Mass at St. Michael's and it was beautiful. We arrived 30 minutes early and still had to sit in the 'extra' seats at the back! They only have two Christmas Eve Masses and the other one was 10pm, so this one was the more popular service. Here's a picture of our new church:

After Mass, we went back to Harrison's parents for Christmas dinner and to exchange gifts. Because Harrison rarely ever lets me take pictures of him/us, I convinced him to take a few since we were spiffy from Mass. I thought it turned out okay, other than the doll on his parents mantle being in the background. By the way, I'm wearing a skirt, not pants (as a friend had originally thought)!

The beautiful Williams' family tree:

Beth playing her role of 'Santa,' Nana sipping on her coffee, and Esther taking it all in.

The coolest cat ever, The Senator:

On Sunday/Christmas, Harrison and I woke up in our own bed at our own home. This is the first time that neither of us have been with our families on Christmas. I guess we're grown-ups now. We went over to The Williams' for the traditional Christmas breakfast (frozen summer fruit cocktail/slushy, sausage balls, banana bread, coffee) and the opening of stockings from Santa.

Afterward, we hopped in the car and headed to meet my side of the family at The Swartz's home in Newnan, GA. We met up with my parents, Aileen, Andrew, Ryan, Blake, Hailey, Nate, Kellye, Paige, David, and my Uncle Dave (in from Raleigh, NC). The house was packed with family and laughter and we had a great time together. Aren't these kiddos adorable:

I love how Ryan is wearing his Spider man muscles costume and Blake has Baby Sue's legs wrapped around his neck.

Here's a classic photo of Harrison at the dinner table:

Aileen and I with my newest niece, Hailey:

The Cunningham kids with the newest addition to the family:

Paige unwrapping Elmo. She loves him and the color red!

Bottles for the both of 'em:

Look at those thighs and rosy cheeks! Isn't she the most adorable kid ever?

Uncle Dave is known as the family trickster. Here he is with his newest 'creature.' He's got the boys convinced that it's a pet and they're a little hesitant about it.

This year, we all played Dirty Santa or White Elephant. Nate's gift was this Big AL whose shirt read 'I love Bama.' Luckily, it came with a noose!

Pops, Aileen, and Hailey

Gigi with Hailey

After making it back to Auburn on Monday morning, I needed some time to decompress from the adventurous weekend. I took a long nap while Harrison's family went to see a movie. Afterward I met up with them at a new restaurant in Opelika, Ma Fia's. They've only been open for a couple of months and business is booming for them, so the service was a bit delayed. I can't say enough great things about the food though. All the ingredients are fresh and prepared via scratch at the restaurant. The red sangria is outstanding...the salmon pizza is fantastic... I'm still dreaming about the lobster ravioli... and the smores pizza is a great dessert (as well as their Tiramisu). They also have three choices of Sangiovese, which is rare to find and is my favorite red wine. I can't wait to go back.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Our (current) home for the holidays

Currently, we're living in a townhouse that my in-laws own. Renting in a college town typically means that you are stuck in a 1 year lease, and we wanted flexibility in case we find a home that we want to buy during that time. It's enough space for our current needs, but it isn't all that big, so we decided to forgo the Christmas tree this year. I've found other ways (courtesy of Pinterest) to Christmas-up the place and I've found that we're not even really missing the tree.

I gathered up a bunch of discarded fir limbs at a local Christmas tree sale lot and arranged them in my urns with silver spray-painted pinecones, faux holly berries, and some twigs from Hobby Lobby. I tied glittery bows from Big Lots to the bottoms of the urns for a nice touch.

For the wreathy thing, I just laid out several branches on top of each other and covered up the ends of the branches with more branches facing the other direction. In the middle, I tied all of the branches together using jute string. Then I banded three silver glittery ornaments together and tied those to the branches. I stuck some faux holly in and added and red bow and I was done. What do you think?

For our living room, I purchased two $10 decorated garlands from Big Lots, strung my own lights on them, and placed them on top of the bookcases. I made a cute garland from an idea I saw on Pinterest. See below for details.

I purchased 14 gold-ish ornaments from Mike's Merchandise for a total of $4, 2 packs of glittery sticker letters from Hobby Lobby ($3 per pack but I used a 40% coupon), and two small rolls of red shimmery fabric ribbon from Hobby Lobby ($2 each). I threaded the ribbon through the ornaments, hung the garland up with sewing pins, and then stuck on the letters. It was so easy and I'm very pleased with the outcome!

Because we have no tree, I decorated my pussy willow branches in small silver ornaments. The glass Hurricane container holds peppermints and candy canes. I might consider tying a lovely red bow around the glass to add a little more color.

This year we did an E-card because we procrastinated and didn't get Christmas cards out in the mail in time. Oops! I'll make sure to get a head start next year. This is a photo of us taken in May '11 in Kauai, Hawaii.

Long weekend in Asheville

I've been a bit of a slacker on my blog posts lately, so I'm going to give a quick little update of our awesome long weekend trip in Asheville (first December weekend). One of our favorite bands, Beirut, was going to be playing in Asheville on Monday, December 5th, so Harrison and I chose to take a couple of days off work and have a mini-vacation is Asheville. We had so much fun going back to all of our favorite establishments and seeing all of our friends again. Since we've moved in late July, we've already been back to visit twice! It's only a 5 hour drive, so maybe we can keep this up (visiting about every 3 months or so).

Here are some photos we took while hiking around the grounds of the Biltmore Estate:

My friend, Renee and I in front of the lovely bridge on the Estate (it was featured in Last of the Mohican's).

We had High Tea (3:30pm) at Chelsea's tea room...a favorite spot of mine in Biltmore Village. The Earl Grey tea that I mix with a bit of Splenda and a 'spot' of milk is so good!

I always make sure to order the tea plate of super tasty desserts:

Finally, on Monday night we got to see the show that we've been waiting years to see. Beirut...live!

He is an extremely talented young musician and he and the band put on a great show! They played all of our favorites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjzVbXeD_8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWSz_PAfgNc
Several of our Asheville buddies joined us for the concert:

Isn't he adorable? I want to squeeze those cheeks!