Vacation!

Wow! We had SUCH A GREAT TIME on vacation! Universal Studios was a blast and we had more fun there than we could have even imagined. Harry Potter land was absolutely incredible. We are in the process of getting all of the pictures uploaded and put together in a photo album. We took a ton of pictures. Our weather was perfect. We hit about 75 degrees each day we were there and the weather in Tampa was perfect too. Those of you who live in GA know what we came home to though. Check out these two pictures:

This is us on Friday:



This is us on Saturday:



We drove home in a crazy GA snow storm. This is the first time that Atlanta has had a white Christmas in something like 200 years!!! In Blue Ridge we got SEVEN INCHES of snow!! Of course, it still hasn't melted. We had a good time playing in the snow!

More pictures to follow.

Success!!!!

Woo hooo!!! Yesterday marked a huge milestone for me. I graduated from my MSN program back in 2003 and FINALLY decided that I really needed to get around to taking my licensing exam back in like January or something like that. So, I studied like crazy over the past several months and finally took my exam yesterday. AND I PASSED!!! YAY!!!! As soon as I found out I immediately started crying at the poor girl's desk that told me. Man, what a stress reliever! I am now, officially, a board certified Family Nurse Practitioner! I guess that means that I am smarter today than I was yesterday - haha!!

I was trying to do everything "by the book" the day before the exam. I didn't study too much, no new information - review only, I ate light meals, drank plenty of water, no alcohol, had a relaxing evening, went to bed at a decent hour, took a melatonin so I would get a good night's sleep, etc. BUT...........................ah, the joys of living in an apartment with a bunch of college kids.

Apparently Wednesday night was a BIG party night. Yeah. There were a bunch of kids partying in the building right across from ours and in the parking lot right in front of our window (oh how I wish we didn't have an apartment that faced the parking lot). They were up making all kinds of noise (screaming, yelling, hooting, hollering, blowing ridiculous horns) until 3AM!!!! We called the police, we called the resource officer at the apartment and Wayne went out there and used some "choice words" to try and shut them up. Needless to say, I didn't get one wink of sleep until after 3AM. I was NOT a happy camper.

I woke up feeling all shaky and had a headache from not sleeping but Wayne helped me with some relaxation and we went for a walk in the rain before we left so that helped. The roads were so bad in Atlanta the night before (really bad ice and over 1000 accidents on Wednesday night!!) that 285 was still packed with people at 11AM! Ah......gotta love 285.

But, despite all of that, I PASSED and we came back to Blue Ridge and I had a very nice restful and quiet sleep last night. AND I didn't have to get up at 6AM to study like I have been doing every morning for the past month or so. Yay!! Only the coyotes woke us up at 3AM with their "singing". But that's OK. It was short lived! :)

Have a great weekend and holiday everyone!!!! We leave on Sunday for our Florida vacation so you probably won't hear from me until we get back. I'm not even taking the laptop with me!!!

Please don't forget that TODAY is the last day you can buy bowls for them to go out before we leave. Also, in a couple of days, Only Ewe and Cotton Too is going to have a bunch of new Knit Witch yarn so watch for that! I want to try and put up some pictures of it so that you can call and order it if you like but I'm not sure I'll get around to all the pictures before we leave. We'll see.

Karma

So, we have this guy at the apartment that is annoying us. EVERY. SINGLE. FRIGGIN. MORNING. The guy's car alarm goes off. EVERY. MORNING. (Did I mention that part?). We can pretty much count on being woken up around 2:30AM. This is really annoying when you have to get up at 4:30 AM (or even when you don't). I can't imagine that we are the only people in the whole complex that this is annoying.

Wayne sees him one day and the following conversation ensures:

Wayne - Hey, is that your car alarm that goes off every night?

Annoying Car Dude - Yeah.

W - Uh, could you maybe turn it off so that it isn't going off every night?

ACD - No.

W - Well, you know it gets pretty annoying getting woken up every morning by your car alarm.

ACD - Well people keep tryin' to touch it and stuff.

W - Touch your car? I don't think anyone is touching your car every morning at 2:30.

ACD - Well they are.

W - So you can't turn it off?

ACD - Well I CAN but I WON'T.

Nice. So, we go to the office to file a complaint. They office people are concerned about this (we have a strict "no noise" policy after 10PM).

Fast forward 3 weeks later. The darn thing is STILL going off every morning. Of course, we are only there once a week so it was a little while before we got back to the office to complain again. We go back to the office and the following conversation ensues.

Us - Remember that car alarm guy we were telling you about?

Office Folks - YES! You mean that thing is STILL going off? We sent the resource officer out there to talk to him.

U - Well, it went off again this morning and yesterday morning.

OF - Wow. OK - let me get the property manager. We know who it is and we will cite him again.

(Property Manager walks in)

OF - These people are here because that car alarm is STILL going off every morning! What is our next step?

PM - (Looks at us) - See those two US Marshalls out there?

U - Yes.

PM - Well there are here to evict him.

U - WOW! You guys work really fast!

Don't you love it when problems are resolved so satisfactorily? That's what I call swift justice. Turns out, not only was he "annoying car alarm" dude, but he was also "I haven't paid my rent in 5 months" dude and he was also "I work for UPS and I have been driving the truck home and taking packages into my apartment" dude. So - good riddance!

I couldn't resist the opportunity to take some photos for you all. Unfortunately, the US Marshall guys were Giants fans and they continuously reminded me of the beat down that they had given the Redskins on the previous Sunday. Ouch.

Gay men can sing!

Well, these gay men sure can anyway. On Saturday night we went to hear the Atlanta Gay Men's Choir perform their annual Christmas show at St. Philips Cathedral. It was amazing and they put on a great show!! The cathedral, of course, is stunning. I wish I could have gotten some pictures of the outside of the cathedral but it was too dark. I did get some pictures of the inside though!


The stained glass work was amazing. Seriously, we could probably end world hunger with all of the money that goes into building and maintaining churches.

Here's a picture of the choir.

The grinch even showed up! It was hilarious - he was stealing things from people in the audience. You can see that he took some poor guy's crutch!!


It was a fun night and I'm really glad we went. Wayne and I even managed to stay up until about 11PM for the show!! :)

SNOW!!!!

One of the joys (or annoyances depending on how you look at it) of living in the N. GA mountains is the occasional snow that usually just skips by Atlanta. We were in Atlanta yesterday and we were supposed to go to Jane's FABULOUS end of year knitter party. However, we heard that the weather was supposed to be getting really bad up here in Blue Ridge so we figured we better do the responsible thing and head home. We didn't want to be stuck having to drive home on icy roads. So, we came back. We HATE that we missed the party but I am glad that we came back. First of all, we feel better about being here when the weather is bad and second of all..............the snow is so pretty!!!

We did drop our gift off at Jane's first in hopes that someone would get to enjoy the contents. Guess who won it? That's right - Ms. Evil Science Chick herself who promptly sent me some pictures! It's a little blurry because I think it was taken with a cell phone, but you get the idea.

Anyway, on to the snow!!! It was actually snowing in Atlanta yesterday when we were leaving - a pretty unusual event. So, we knew we would be coming home to a bunch of white stuff! We kept passing cars that were heading south with a lot of snow on them. It snowed all afternoon yesterday and is still snowing this morning! I love it - as long as we don't have to go anywhere! We will have to head out again on Wednesday and we need to take a bunch of bowls out to be shipped tomorrow but, until then - we can just enjoy!

Our pond is frozen. It was not frozen at all when we got home yesterday so this happened overnight.


Here is Goose out enjoying the snow!


Here is how the other cats will be spending the day. That piece of paper on the floor was Nessie's toy this morning. Every morning she finds SOMETHING to play with to annoy us.

Missy thinks nothing of taking Petey's spot in front of the fireplace.

Just in time!!!

I just wanted to let everyone know that we have New Bowls up on the website!!! This will be our last update until 2011. Please don't forget that if you want your bowl to arrive before Christmas that Friday December 17th is the LAST DAY you can order them since we will be going out of town and won't be back until after Christmas.

ALSO..................check this out! An actual finished object!!! I just need to wash and block it and it is ready to be wrapped!


Woooo hooooo!!!!!

Update

Hey everyone! We will actually have one more batch of yarn bowls to put up on the site before Christmas. They have been going like hotcakes lately so we wanted to try and get another batch up. We won't be back from Atlanta until Thursday afternoon so the new bowls should be up on the site by Saturday December 11th. After that, you will have until Friday December 18th to order them so that they will go out before Christmas. We will send out an announcement on the blog and via email when they are available!!

Poor Wayne was outside all day yesterday freezing his butt off glazing bowls for you all! :) This morning it is 18 degrees and our pond is starting to freeze....................burr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stay warm ya'll.

21!!!

I've been meaning to post about this for a few days but just haven't ever gotten around to it! Last Wednesday Nathan officially turned 21! The good news is that we can now take him out for an occasional beer and the bad news is that we have lost our permanent designated driver! :)

We took Nathan out to the Brickstore in Decatur. Many of you who live in Atlanta know about this wonderful place. They have great food and great beer! A perfect choice for a 21st birthday. Nathan chose a St. Bernardis as his first (legal) beer. The kid has good taste, eh?


Here's Nathan and Tiana trying to decide what beers to have.



Afterwards, we went over to my mom's house to see her. No further alcohol was consumed since Nathan had to drive back out to Kennesaw after that. We had a good time though!!! I think he got some money to spend at Universal Studios when we go there in a few more days.