Winter Holidays and General Fun

Thought I would throw out a few short recaps of some of the fun that has been going on over the last couple of weeks.

I know Lu has mentioned her friend Molly getting married. The event happened the weekend before Christmas and it was loads of fun. It was my first time seeing a Jewish ceremony. It was very interesting to learn about the customs (thanks to Molly who so thoughtfully included descriptions of what was going on and the meanings behind them in the programs) Below you will see a picture I snapped before the wedding, the Temple is gorgeous. really ornate and really pretty. We had a great time and are very happy for Molly and Matt.

For those who didn't see this already, I had to go to work on Christmas Eve Eve (that's the 23rd) but my day started out so great because I go this image as a reminder of our Amazing Father Creator. It was such a beautiful sunrise, and I was blessed to have the time to watch it for a little while and spend time with God admiring His greatness.

While we were hanging with Lu's family for Christmas, we got to see several awesome movies.

First off, we saw Avatar in 3D and all I am going to tell you is I thought it was well worth it seeing it in 3D. I don't want to sit here and rave about it and give away the story this that and the other, but it was really fun. Here is Lu cheesin' it up and having fun with the oh so stylish 3D glasses that we were sporting.

Also we saw Blindside. The movie was really well done and entertaining. A great true story if you didn't know it. For those who are thinking oh it is just a football movie and weren't going to see it because of that, you should reconsider, there isn't nearly as much football involved as one would think. Sandra Bullock was cast perfectly and she played her role really well. There were tons of great and funny lines in the movie too. It was really a great movie I enjoyed it.

Finally as if we weren't already moviedout (i know that isn't a word) we also got the chance to see Sherlock Holmes on Sunday. This one was fun because it was a date, and I really enjoy those with my wife, she is the best. The movie was very entertaining, a lot of action and I was very happy that it wasn't all that predictable. I would recommend this one as well to anyone looking for movies to watch.

Now I am looking forward to time with my family, which I get to see today, so I am excited. They called yesterday and already told us they have seen at least 10 deer walking around the cabin at different times. It is going to be a fun time. I hope everyone has safe travels and enjoys the rest of their holidays and I pray that you all have a safe, fun and happy new year.

Christmas #1 (yep there will be a #2)

We spend the beginning of this Christmas with my family (Lindsey), and it's been great. My mom made some awesome food and it's been fun just seeing my family. My mom and dad got a wii and Wii Fit, and we've been playing with that all morning. I found out I have kind of bad balance and the Wii thinks I'm 31 yrs old! ACK! So I've got to work out on the Wii and redo my body test. :) My mom was really upset because it told her she was really old (she wouldn't let me tell y'all...). My sister was only 1 year off her actual age, and the funny thing was my dad and Brian were 30! We think the age estimate was mostly to do with your balance. Obviously me and my mom have bad balance.
It's still fun. My brother, the triathalete, had already left, or it would've been fun to see where he came in at. We figured his balance would be really good.

Well just a quick update for now. Merry Christmas!!

Busy Weekend

Hey! Long time, no-post, I know. :)

Well this weekend was a whirl-wind adventure! Not really, just busy. It started Friday night with an ornament exchange with some ladies from church. It was really fun to have a girls' night and just hang out and have some great desserts, and I got a cute little Noel ornament. :) Then Saturday I had to come into work because we have an Addendum to one of our projects going out today at 9am. I was planning on working just in the morning, until about 12-noon, but thankfully I got most stuff done earlier than 12. Also our office smelled like diesel fuel or exhaust and it was nasty. I found out from the security guard that it was because the building was running their back-up generators this weekend. Gross and smelly, but I guess it's good to know they work. Then we went down south of town to see Chrissy and Chad's new house! It's so pretty and it was great to see them and the Moffit's. We do an ornament exchange at Christmas too, which is really fun. :)

After that, we ventured back to Atlanta, so I could change and get ready for my friend Molly's bachlorette party! I (with help from a fellow bridesmaid, Meghan) planned the event and of course I was a little nervous about it. It all went smoothly though! We had a great dinner (at a great price) and Molly got some exciting presents (I'll leave it at that) and she wore a veiled tiara and a "Bride to be" sash. Then she wanted to meet up with the guys from the bachelor party, so we met them at Fado in Buckhead, which is a pretty cool place. It was packed and I might have been the only person in the entire bar not drinking, but it was fun and most importantly Molly had fun!

Needless to say I crashed around 1am after getting home from that. Brian and I then got up for church as usual, I was working with the hospitality team and he was working with the Media team. After church we got to go meet up with his grandma for a Christmas lunch at her place. She's so sweet and we had a great lunch. We weren't going to see her over the holidays so we met up with her this weekend.

After lunch, we drove back to Atlanta for my company Christmas party at our office. I totally meant to take a camera to post pictures, but alas, I forgot. It was actually really fun! It was a little weird to come to the office on Sunday, but it was all decorated and Santa and Mrs. Claus were there for the party too! There was some great food, but I only partook of the desserts since I was still full from lunch. The Newcomers (a band of guys from our office) played and it was fun. It's neat to see people with their families and kids.

So after getting the addendum out this morning, I'll be playing catch-up on all the work I haven't finished because of this project. However, I think I'll get to work only 8 hr days for the rest of the week after today, which sounds awesome!

I'm very much looking forward to Christmas and a break.

Next weekend will be fun-filled as well. It's Molly and Matt's wedding, which I can't believe is here, but I'm excited.

Well have a great week! I'll try and post some Christmas pictures sometime (and maybe those house pics we mentioned a long time ago).

Thanksgiving Holidays Recap.

Thanksgiving is a great holiday, and this year I had a great time with family and friends. Due to the scheduling of football, it makes scheduling the holidays pretty easy, we spend Thanksgiving day and some of Black friday with Lu's side of the family, then Saturday (game day) with mine.

I will go ahead and get this out of the way, the game was disappointing because we lost, but it is only football and spending time with my family was way more important.

So back to thursday, we went down to Lake Sinclair since a large portion of the extended family lives down there, and everyone was over at Lu's cousin's house. We has sooo much food. it was fun seeing everyone and meeting a few new people, some that are soon to me related as some of the cousins are engaged. We had lots of fun watching people play corn hole, it was quite entertaining. Then after a while of just fellowshipping, we headed back home. Lu's mom and sister stayed the night with us that night as the ladies were going out to brave the crowds and do some shopping. Happily I can report that there were no injuries and almost complete success at finishing the Christmas shopping list that day, Lu was on FIRE!

I was out shopping as well, but for a slightly more important reason, my Christmas present! We decided to buy a TV, so I needed to go check out the deals and play with the sets in person and make sure the skewing that they do for displaying in the store isn't making the TV look better than it is. I also picked up a few stocking stuffers.

Friday afternoon, we, we being Lu, her sister, my dad and I, went to the Georgia Tech Basketball game. We played Mercer and won, and although it was a double digit win, it still wasn't as convincing as I would have liked. I think this season might be another rough one for my Yellow Jackets. The game was a lot of fun though and we really enjoyed that. Then we all went and grabbed some Tin Drum for dinner. It was a great day.

Saturday morning, after taking sister-in-law to the airport for her to head back to Albuquerque, we drove on up to my parents house for brunch. Mom didn't hold back and laid out an awesome spread for brunch, which was a good thing cause we got there and were pretty hungry. Then it was decorating the house, watching football and hanging out time. It was just a fun day. We missed my big sis, who is working out in Kansas City, MO, but we get to see her in a couple of weeks so that is ok. My job for the day was to put up lights on mom's roof, she really likes the lights. I ended up having to climb up on the roof to hang them all, but again thankfully no injuries to report. Dad made some yummy korean steaks and we kept hanging out through the game. Then Lu and I headed home since we had church the next morning.

After church we volunteered at the Free Gift Wrapping booth our church sponsors through the holidays, and it was a lot of fun. I only had one box to wrap, but of course, Lu and Amy let me wrap the octagonal box. that was quite fun, but the lady was pleased with the job I did, and I guess I impressed the other two worker bees.

Then we went home, and after Lu took a nap, I set to work on helping decorate our house. Thanks to my dad who bought Lu this house warming gift:

A better close up of the front porch all lit up.

All in all we had a very awesome holiday. I am excited that Christmas is right around the corner and that I get to spend more time with the wonderful friends and family in my life.

I am very Thankful.

B-E-A-U-tiful Morning!

Good morning! I feel great this morning! The project went out, and I feel like a nice weight is off my shoulders. I still have a lot of work to do, but most of it is going to wait until Monday. :) Brian and I have kind of a decent to do list for this weekend, but it's not bad, and we'll be able to actually spend some time with each other! I've pretty much seen him for like 8 hrs this week (not counting sleep time), so a full 48 hr together sounds great!!

I was in charge of our church's Operation Christmas Child drive this year, so one of the things I still need to do is take all the boxes to a drop off location. It was exciting because we doubled the number of boxes our church made from last year! It's fun to see our church is growing. :)

I'm also excited because i plan on leaving work at 4pm today! That seems so early! It'll still be light outside! Awesome. :)

I just wanted to post real quick! I hope y'all have a great day!

It's 8:22pm on Thursday night and I'm at work

Yep, it's true. We had a pretty big project going out of the office today, and now I'm waiting on the drawings to upload to the website. I always stay and watch to make sure they get fully uploaded. It only takes about 5-10 minutes to upload because it's just PDFs. For our other project with this university, the drawings are in a 3D modeling program called Revit. Those files are enormous and take about 30 minutes to 45 minutes to upload. Good times.

I thought I'd take advantage of the down time and post a blog! So an update - I'm tired, but that's typical for it being late. I'm missing Bible study (the last one of the semester), which is sad, but there will be more. I'm very happy because I don't think I have to work this weekend. I'm also excited because I'm going to be a part of a fashion show on Saturday! Our church was asked if anyone would want to help out and be in a fashion show and I said yes. It'll be fun - Brian's going to take pictures, so we'll post them.

We do have house pictures...which we need to get off the camera and upload...one day. :)

Other things in life...hmmm...my sister is coming in town for Thankgiving - always fun. Well I guess really my whole family is coming in town for Thanskgiving since they all moved out of Georgia. I usually only get to see my sister at holidays and it's been the same with my brother since he moved out of state for grad school. It makes the holidays even better, getting to see family that I don't get to see much.

...about 5 minutes have pasted and the files are 55% uploaded...

What else is going on...hmm. Well Brian is awesome as usual. He's still very sweet and thoughtful about how he can help out or making sure I get dinner and things like that.

about 8 minutes...we're at 82%...

I keep thinking tomorrow's Saturday, because it's been a long week, but alas, it's not. Tomorrow should be interesting (in a different way, not in a cool way) because we have a 4 hr long seminar on steam design. It'll be very helpful and hopefully informative, but also has the potential to be very boring. I'm sure some of y'all are snoozing already just at the sound of that.

Oh! 100% time to go! Adios!

Illness!

So I was sick the beginning of this week, fever, congestion, throwing up, the works really... It was not a fun monday. The worst part about it was I was all alone, Lu was on a trip with work to WVU. I did get a lot of rest, drank a lot of fluids and just in general tried to get the fever down and not die. It wasn't fun, and I am still not back to 100%, I have a cough and some lingering congestion but all of that will soon go away (i hope). And Lu is back and taking care me which is definitely nice, I miss that wonderful woman when she is gone.

Have a lot going on in the next few days so should have some stories to tell and things to post about and hopefully Lu and I will have time to put together the House Tour post that we should finally have, we had a really fun housewarming over the past weekend, so maybe more on that later too.

Hope everyone out there in the blogosphere is feeling better than I am.

weird days at work...

So for yesterday and today, the rest of my team, all two of them, are off visiting a store. I have scheduled mine yet and we couldn't all leave because that would leave no one to actually run the reports. So I have had a somewhat lonely day yesterday and so far this morning. It is a bit strange that I am running reports that I thought I had successfully passed on to someone else to run. Oh well, I am not really annoyed or depressed/sad or anything like that, it is just a bit weird to be the only one here.

Being the 1 man team wonder that I am is great and all, but it makes it tough to focus, I mean there are plenty of others around, but I am not currently working on anything with them so it is just me and the gentle soothing hum of my two computers.

Does anyone out there in the blogland have any great ideas on how to remain focused at work?



Totally different note, I am pumped at how awesome my Yellow Jackets have been playing, 8-1 is great! And we should be able to beat all the teams left on the schedule, at least that is what the media keeps telling me. I think that the team has put itself in a great position, we control our post season future so just keep winning and we are headed to a BCS bowl.
What a great year to be a ramblin' gamblin' helluva engineer!

Earlier this summer - FREE Chickfila!

A while back, there was an awesome give-a-way at Chickfila. If you dressed up like a cow you got free food. So me being the chickfila lover that I am, convinced my husband to do this with me. :) When I took pictures off our camera from halloween, I discovered a lot of pictures we hadn't taken off the camera yet. So for your laughter and enjoyment:

And my sweet husband "dressed up" too, to get free food. :)

These were definitely taken a while ago, because they were taken in our old apartment. My spots kept falling off, but it was fun. We definitely got our food to go, so we didn't have to stay cows while we ate. :)

October

It's November already! I can't believe it! Where did October go?? We had a fun end-of- October though. Here at the end we bought some pumpkins (2 pumpkins and a gourd to be exact). We wanted to carve the gourd because it was so huge, but we didn't have time. So they just sat and looked pretty on the front porch.

This Halloween was our first one with trick-or-treaters. We were very prepared with candy, since we live next to an elementary school and had seen lots of kids that lived in our neighborhood. However, probably thanks to the misty rain and super coldness we only had a handful of door bell rings and maybe about 10-15 kids. Therefore we have LOTS of leftover candy.

I keep a candy box at my desk at work, so my coworkers will be very excited about all this left over! Now that Halloween is over, I can whip out my Thanksgiving decorations! I don't really have much - really all I have are these Mickey & Minnie salt and pepper shakers! :)

Aren't they cute? :)

Kaboom!

So one of the awesome things that I get to do with my job is give back to the community. Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity of doing a playground build with Kaboom .

I was on the mulch team, below are some pictures of our hard work:

Three truck loads of mulch:


The beginnings of the Playground:


Me dumping mulch near the swingsets so we can fill in once they are set in concrete:


Getting closer, still have to fill in around the structures:


Basically all done:


The whole group and some of the children:

New Toy!

So for those of you that aren't all up to speed on all things google, the newest latest greatest toy that they have put out and is in beta testing is Google Wave. What is that you might ask? Well you could watch their "loooooong" video on here but basically it spawned from the idea of what would email look like if it was developed today instead of 30 years ago.

The end result, well the beta testing result, is part email part instant messenger part sharing website with all kinds of really interesting features. So far there are some really neat things about it, I like being able to go into a wave and edit or reply to any part. Basically it has allowed better flow for conversation. the most useful feature thus far has been the playback feature. so when you get added late to a wave, you can go to the playback button and start at the beginning and see how the conversation progressed until you were added. Makes it so much easier to follow what is going on.

I will update you all more later but so far today, I have had a bunch of fun playing with a new toy.

Love that we have readers!

So sorry that the blog hasn't been updated in a while. I found out this weekend that several of you were dissappointed that the blog hasn't had any new and juicy details about the goings on in the life of the Foxes. Fear not! I have heard your cries and present for your reading pleasure a recap of the last several weeks from my vantage point. (Lu will have to provide her own).

So let me take you back, back to a time when it was still in the 70's in GA, ok, now that you are back at Tuesday of last week, lets go back a little further. The month of October has been an interesting one thus far. It started on a Thursday, which I like a lot because Thursdays are men's group. I have really enjoyed building relationships and breaking down the Word with these men. Getting to know them better as we learn more about Paul has been a lot of fun. Each week I feel like I learn something new or get a fresh perspective on a situation. Great support and encouragement and just have really enjoyed becoming closer to these guys. I have taken the role of coordinating socials for the group, which in turn I quickly renamed myself as the Social Tsar, so far the peoples haven't revolted, and so far we haven't actually had a social, but we are working towards that goal and that is always fun.

October also brought with it more time behind the Mac running the media at church. I had a few weeks off but I am back at it again. Soon though I will have some more time off. Randy and Jacob are great and have really stepped up to the plate and give excellence in what we do on Sunday mornings. I still need to work on getting some fresh content and backgrounds and other stuff for the services, but so far so good. Hopefully we will get some more people plugged in the media team as well so that we can get a good rotation going.

Also the beginning of this month I had the opportunity to participate in our church's mini extreme home makeover. We had a blast working on the house for the family in our church. It was tons of fun, Dave did a great job organizing our crew and everyone worked so hard. The end result (well, where is was last i saw it) we got most of it done and the house just looked so great. everything was fresh and new and clean looking. All that work kind of inspired me to work on our house too.

So we made some time to do just that and continue getting work done on the house. The guest bedroom got painted with some more Oops Paint from The Home Depot. (read $5 dollar gallon paint.) As long as you are patient to find what you want and not too picky on color it is a great way to save money. And sometimes you get lucky and find several gallons of the same color if you have a really big room. So that is now 6 gallons of paint bought at 5 dollars a pop, we saved over 140 dollars on paint so far. And we really like the results we have gotten so far. Still have a list of other things to get done, paint the foyer (probably professionals will be asked to do this), we want to add doors to the master bath, get a headboard for our bed, new chairs for the dining room, new furniture for the living room etc. We did get lots of things up on the walls in the living room and the beginnings of decorating more. We still have a ways to go, but we are really happy with the house so far and look forward to continuing to make improvements.

I have had to experience several weeks of not seeing Lu everyday. Not terrible, but definitely strange to not have by best friend coming home to see me everyday. This isn't the first time she has had business trips and won't be the last for sure, but for some reason the two weeks in a row that she was gone Monday nights were rough on me. I didn't go to sleep till late and slept small amounts. I am just blessed to have her in my life and as my wife. I definitely missed her while she was gone.

Changing gears, K-Life has been going well. Still struggling to get my 10th grade guys to meet with me at a specific time and actually get more than one in attendance, but on the flip side I have been blessed with some great 1 0n 1 time with a few of my guys and just getting to know them better, talk about deeper issues, and figure out where they are spiritually has just been awesome. I am truly excited about where God will be taking these relationships and I pray that I can continue to build on them and show these kids love. It has been a blessing to me.

Last thing I want to talk about for now is, Football. First, the US has qualified in 1st place in the Concacaf region for the World Cup 2010 in South Africa. There was a sad situation where Charlie Davies, a starter for the side was severely injured while riding as a passenger in a car the night before our final game against Costa Rica. The young man will likely have an 8 month or longer recovery and miss his first chance at playing in the world cup. The team seemed pretty shaken by this and came out sluggish against Costa Rica, but then fought back valiantly for a 2-2 tie to seal the #1 spot for the US. Also sad was another player, Onyewu was injured late in the game causing us to finish with only 10 men, he should recover from a torn patella tendon in time for the WC though.

On to College Football. My Yellow Jackets are 6-1 and now in at #12 in the BCS polls. Two great wins in the last two weeks, over FSU in Tallahassee (hadn't been done ever) and this past Saturday's (to use a popular interwebs word) EPIC win over then #4 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (aka Virginia Tech). Lu and I were at the game and it was one of the best games I have seen in person at Historic Grant Field in Bobby Dodd Stadium. First time in 17 tries that we beat a top 5 ranked team at home. Huge win. I am pumped for the rest of our season and loving that the Jackets are playing so well. Great win and on homecoming no less.

Well this hopefully has caught you up a little on what has been going on for the Mr. Fox. I might have some news to report soon, so keep me in your prayers, but until next time. I hope you enjoy the read.

Work Update

Work has taken over my life recently. I don't really like that fact, but it's true. I was asked to work overtime, and then told I wasn't working enough overtime. So now I have a goal of going up to or beyond 50 hrs a week. Working a lot isn't tons of fun because I come home eat, relax a little (or clean and do laundry), then go to bed and do it again. I have very little time to do anything else for myself. I'm doing good if I keep the laundry done and maybe one room in the house clean. There's no way I have time to say, exercise or play or read a book (except when I'm traveling for work and have flights I can't sleep through) or hang out with my husband.

However, I've been really trying to focus on the positive things and how God still is blessing me even when I'm tired and feel like I have no time. I'm glad I have a job and that I actually do enjoy. Some days are better than others, but for the most part I really like being kind of nerdy and doing calculations and designing HVAC systems. I like the people I work with and really don't mind spending time with them.

Also I'm blessed because most nights when I get home, Brian's cooked dinner or is finishing making dinner, which is awesome. He made a really good homemade tomato/wine sauce the other night with chicken and pasta. :)

Anyway, I know there are lots of other people out there that have to work a lot, so should just suck it up and be thankful I have a job. And ya know, it might mean that we save up a lot faster for new furniture or to replace our windows for energy efficient ones and stuff like that.