Our new home

Here's our first look at our new home on the faculty drive!

Take these as a before - and I'll post an after in a month or so.

We have a deck, a dog door, and a nice birdhouse and birdbath (on the right of this picture)

Our backyard looks out onto a cow pasture and is complete with a built in tree platform

Living room

Dining room and kitchen
(laundry room and garage are back through the kitchen, living room to the right)

Main bathroom

Master bedroom

Our house has three bedrooms! We're looking forward to having all that space!

Here's our first home purchase - a new larger table. It will seat up to 8 people when all four sides are up so that the table is round. We think its pretty neat!

Sides down - they fold under and stay - no leaves to store!

All opened up

We are headin' for AR

The evening of graduation our plans changed drastically - we jumped in the car Thursday morning and headed home to Charlotte in time to fly out to Northwest Arkansas for an interview at Ozark Academy in Gentry, AR. We loved the school, the people, the church, and to make a long story short - we're moving to Arkansas in mid-January. So here's a look at our new surroundings!

We were greeted with a beautiful sunset behind the church

Inside the church on Sabbath morning

Boys dorm lobby
We were very impressed with this dorm - the Christmas tree is on top of the monitors desk and all of the floors branch off of the center like wheel spokes. This makes it easy to monitor the halls because they can all be seen from one spot!

Guest room in the boys dorm where we stayed

RE Callicott Administration Building

The campus is decorated beautifully for Christmas - Girls dorm with cafe to the right

Center campus in the day time - girls dorm on the left, cafe on the right
The boys dorm is to the right of this picture, Ad building behind me, gym to the right.

Inside of the cafe - its beautiful!

Ozark is the home of the Skyhawks - Ryan will be the Coach of the girls varsity basketball team and the athletic director.



Gym

Ryan's office on the gym stage

The field

Pomp and Graduation

The speaker was the president of one of the African SDA unions

Unfortunately, this was as close a graduation picture as I could get

Ryan with his adviser and teacher Dr. Bob Benge

The whole clan

We bow to Professor Knight

Little bigger Christmas tree

Our tree is a little bigger this year! And I'm especially proud of the Christmas blocks I found at Kirklands. Aren't they neat! I can't wait to have a mantle or something to put them on. And you know there always have to be penguins at my house - see them singing?

Weekend with the Heilmans

My camera has been staying in its case a lot these days. It seems like whenever I get away I just feel like sitting and not snapping. So here follow the only pictures I took on my camera all weekend.

Stephanie and I took a weekend getaway to Ryan and Carrie's. It was great to just relax and enjoy their beautiful "spacious" home. As my mother said when she called us over the weekend, who would have thought when I met Ryan 20 years ago that I'd be visiting him and his wife who also happens to be my best friend! I think what I enjoyed most was Sunday morning just sitting around talking and watching TV and enjoying the waffles Ryan made us. I get a Sunday completely off so rarely lately.


Take #2 - Stephanie and I smile nicely while the goofs behind us... well... lets just say, Ryan and Carrie are NOT as bashful as they used to be...

We all wished that my Ryan could have been there too but alas, that will have to wait for another time. BUT - Ryan will be home FOR GOOD in a little more than 48 hours!

Photoshoot with Tanya Musgrave

Thanks given

For full(er) coverage of this year's Thanksgiving see Stephanie's blog. Here are a few pics stolen from her blog, ones Dad took, since I didn't pull out my camera the entire time I was there! It was SO nice to have Ryan home for an entire week and nice to see both of our families thanks to their close proximity to each other.

2nd Florida pilgrimage

I enjoyed being with Ryan, Papaw, and Gramma for another long weekend. On Thursday while Ryan was in classes I took a walk at Uptown Altamonte with the grandparents and fed some ibis.


They were pretty competitive. It seems strange to be somewhere that these birds are so common you can feed them bread in a park!

The big gnarly trees with Spanish moss reminded me of when we used to live in South Carolina.

I spent Friday with Ryan at the school watching his classes and going to chapel. We also had some time to sneak away and go shopping for a few hours.

On Friday night we enjoyed supper at Uncle Andy and Aunt Vicki's along with a picture show from Zach's recent trip to the Congo. Then we got to see the shuttle launch, my first and last. We watched it blast off on the TV and then ran out to watch it come out above the trees. We watched it level off and speed out towards the horizon until the boosters dropped off. Its amazing to me that you can see the bright burning rockets even though they are many miles away! This launch was scheduled to be the last ever night shuttle launch since the shuttle program is set to end in a few years.

This is the backyard at Papaw and Gramma's. On Sabbath afternoon Papaw spotted a big bird down on the dock (you can barely see it in this picture) but it was odd because its legs weren't long enough for a heron. We got out the binoculars and realized it was a heron but it was sitting down on its "elbows" so-to-speak with his legs laid out in front of it. None of us had ever seen a big shore bird rest like this. While I was watching it through the binoculars, I noticed a head peek over the edge of the dock - it was an otter! It climbed on the dock and started rolling around playing. It was so fun to watch. Sadly by the time I ran back to get my camera a pontoon boat had come along and scared it away.

So I got to see some really neat FIRSTS this weekend: a shuttle launch and a wild otter!

PS: I wished I'd had some shorts like Ryan - it was 86 one of the days I was there! Now I'm back to TN in the mid 40's and it feels strangely wonderful! 86 just didn't feel like fall or almost Thanksgiving.

A walk in the Alabama woods

Sabbath afternoon trip to Little River Canyon National Preserve

Northern Alabama is so beautiful - I think I could stand to live there!