A parking lot Christmas

Ryan H and I met Carrie in Asheville on Tuesday night and continued on to Carrie's parents house in Winston Salem. Wednesday morning we walked with the dogs in the woods behind their house.

Carrie throws a stick for Maggie. Oreo was too fast to get any pictures, just imagine a black and white blur.

The stars aligned perfectly for Lindsey, Carrie, and I to meet in a parking lot in Greensboro for an early Christmas! This has to be our most unusual Christmas yet!

Recipe for a parking lot Christmas: 3 white cars, an empty parking space, 3 girls, some photographers, and presents!

Lindsey has a snowman fetish. Here's her new cookie jar! (and she's about to fall over so I had to snap it quickly)

Tara, we miss you!

Nature walk

Instead of braving the alumni crowds, Ryan and I took a Sabbath trip to Lula Lake. The colors are changing and the weather was perfect!

Lula lake down below; can we all say evidence of a flood?

Lula Falls from above

Down below


Fun climbing rocks in the most likely drier than normal river bed










View from the bluff

Here Ryan, my Alabama shirt wearing for all to see...

Crossing the creek

And then there were six!

By the way... Jonathan Carlson and Kelli Barton, some other friends of ours frequently seen on this blog, got engaged on Friday! Looks like this is going to be the summer of weddings. We're so excited for them!

Shop, shoot, sort

Ryan and I headed home Wednesday night to spend a few days with Mom and Dad. This is probably one of the last times I'll get to go home before my parents move so it was nice to be there one last time while things are still semi-all-together. Mom and I spent a lot of time looking for bridesmaid's dress options. We are both convinced that designers are completely taking advantage of people, in style, in colors (who looks good in shiny orange taffeta?), and price! It's a worse racket than Christmas! While we were shopping (at least the first day) Ryan and Dad took a trip to a shooting range. Suffice it to say, you may not want to meet them in a dark alley with a loaded weapon... (After looking at bridal paraphernalia all day, I might have enjoyed doing this too.)

Saturday night during Game 6 (GO REDSOX!), I sorted through a bunch of boxes of old stuff from childhood. I found lots of letters from my friends in gradeschool, some of them written in with decoder markers, some of them on stationary we made for each other. There were lots of letters from my grandma which will be heartwarming to read now and then. I really loved looking through my childhood books. I found several of them that looked like this inside the front cover:

This is from Ryan Heilman (Carrie's Ryan) when we were 9, living in Canada. He gave me the neatest presents; discarded books from the libary! This one is a story called Great Heart about a thoroughbread.

This is from a book I made in kindergarten, see how big my hand has grown?

Engagement fun starts

A few pictures from our Sabbath afternoon photoshoot

Next the four of us went to Kelli's house for games, so I thought. Apparently, they had been planning an engagement party all along. We had food, friends, and fun with a little Thump Thump.

We really have some great friends!

Ready to THUMP! You can see the tenseness... how many should I guess???

And then there were four!

Carrie's here for her fall break and Ryan H is on his break too! There was just too much fun to be had yesterday so I laid off the homework and the 4 of us went to a driving range to hit some golfballs around. Don't we look relaxed and happy???

My golf swing is SOOOOO rusty... Ryan's knee surgery impeded my learning curve, or at least that's my excuse.





While Ryan and Carrie were out canoodling downtown, Ryan and I were getting some culture at the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra. It had to be the BEST concert I've ever been to with Variations on America, The Grand Canyon Suite, and an African American pianist who played with the orchestra for Duke Ellington's New World A'Comin and Rhapsody in Blue. My heart was very full... especially knowing what Carrie and Ryan were up to. When we got out we went to the Heilmans house. I could tell MJ was taking pictures of them by the mantle, the place for pictures at all big family events so I KNEW! Carrie and Ryan are engaged. I took off running and met Carrie at the door. Sadly, these may be the last pictures ever in the old Crestmont house!

I think one of the most fun things about getting engaged is getting to hear all the fun reactions. In this picture they are on the phone with Ryan's Aunt Ruthie.
(It was SOOO wonderful to hear from each of you last week when we told you we were engaged.)

There's lot of talking to do... we started off last night by talking til 1 AM