Baseball Laces & Southern Graces

Happy new year everyone, I am finally back. After spending about a week and a half at the cabin for Christmas (or vacation, as I much rather call it) I am back in the swing of things at work and home. Don't expect to many exciting posts from me anytime soon, because these crazy cold temps aren't exactly encouraging me to do anything work documenting besides flying through all 5 seasons of Friday Night Lights.

Here is a quick photo recap of my Christmas end of the year vacation..

I helped Billy and his baseball team with their annual Christmas tree fundraiser. It is always great getting to meet the players, parents, and people in the community that stop by to help support the team.

We kicked off Christmas vacation with the Christmas sermon at our church, North Point

We spent Christmas Adam (Adam comes before eve.. yes I'm proud of that pun) with my parents, and Christmas Eve at my grandparents with all of my extended family. My parents got me a new TV for my bedroom, which I am oh so thrilled about, because now I can actually read what channel I am on. Yes, my old one was THAT small.

Late Christmas Eve, we left and headed North for the rest of the year. Every year on the trip up, Billy and I stop at the same spot and take a picture together with the self timer... unfortunately it was dark and our picture looks like crap, so i doubt we'll be be framing it anytime soon.

Christmas Day was spent with Billy's family--is mom, brother, aunt, uncle, their two kids, and his grandpa. I was finally able to give him the boots he has been gawking over since I've known him--a pair of black caiman belly boots. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of them. He got me a couple of little things like a leather jacket, new makeup brushes, the new peach state pride shirt, and these gorgeous leopard print Nikes! He says I have one more present coming that's back ordered, so the anticipation continues.

For Billy's family's Christmas present from me, I hired a photographer to come and take family portraits of all of them. I really don't think they have had any made since the boys were squirts, at least not any they would use any more. It was also an easy way to knock out the whole family's Christmas in one swift hour. I let the surprise out early.. around thanksgiving. So on Black Friday, instead of hitting up all the sales, our photographer, Spring, came to the cabin and took these on the property. I am so excited how they turned out, and so is his family. Go me! These are some of the pictures Billiam and I took together.

Check out that puppy smile! What a ham.

The rest of the end of the year vacation was very low key. We rarely left the house, except for groceries. Billy was engulfed his the college bowl games. I was just too cold to move. One afternoon, while walking our dogs, someone stopped and asked us if we knew of anyone missing a dog and told us about a puppy that was abandoned near a walking trail and waterfall not far from the house. Of course, being the suckers that we are, we went and rescued the little guy thinking he wandered off a hunt, we could check his chip, and take him back to his owners.. We were stuck with this gorgeous German Shorthair Pointer pup for a few days and finally found a new owner for him as he didn't exactly get along with the other pups (not to mention there were more dog legs than people legs in the cabin at one time).

We did venture out on New Years Eve day. Billy's mom and aunt had a "surprise adventure" planned for us. They only told us to wear warm clothes that we could easily move in and nothing more. ooooooookay. So we all crawled into the expedition and headed for the undisclosed location. Just prior to our arrival, they told us what we would be doing--snow tubing. okay, cool!

We get to the place, but there is absolutely NO snow. Zilch. Zero. Nada!

uhhh?

The "snow" was actually white AstroTurf which covered this 200 ft ramp down a hill. They would wet the "snow" with sprinklers and then you could actually just "tube" down. It was actually a lot more fun than we expected, even though it looked like some ridiculous redneck engineering.