The newest member of my family

Here's the newest member of my family...my cousin Phillip and his wife Logan just had their first child, Cash, yesterday. So, Phillip is the first of all the cousins in my family to have a child. Hopefully Chad & I can go down to Florida to see them in person sometime this summer!

Athenaeum show

This past Saturday we saw Athenaeum play at the 15th anniversary of Amos' Southend. It was one of the best Athenaeum shows I've been to. They played for over 2 hours!! I wish I had brought my camera, but I totally didn't think of it beforehand. Anyway, I was lucky enough to find this picture of Mark, the totally hot lead singer, on Flickr. It was a great show - Amos' has expanded their venue since the last time I was there, so it was much less crowded.

Here is an older picture of Athenaeum that shows almost the whole band. I put this one up for Chad since his favorite person in the band is Mike (pictured on the far right here), who sings some lead, mostly backup, and plays guitar as well.

Sweet sisters

Here are Roxy & Sandy snuggling together on the couch.

They are very sweet sisters and love to be together.

Before & After

Here is our sunroom before...

...and here is the new paint & curtains!

Workin' hard...

Here I am taping off the window frames before we started painting.

Here's Chad touching up some spots.

Something new to explore

We decided to paint our sunroom last weekend - here are Sandy & Roxy checking out the ladder and the empty room. They love to explore anything new in the house. While we painted they had to be closed up in a bedroom upstairs or we would have blue cats!

We love the Tarheels!

Here's our new doormat.

Sandy shows her support for Carolina too.

Sleepyheads

Here are me and Roxy sleeping during some of the NFL playoff games. You can tell we're both big football fans!

Reading Re-cap for 2007

Most people who know me know that I read all the time. I read a variety of fiction, non-fiction and even young adult books too. For the past few years I've been keeping track of all the books that I read each year. So, last night I was adding up my total for 2007 and I read a grand total of 76 books! Here are my favorite 10 books that I read in 2007, these may not have been newly published in 2007, but they were my top 10 books for the year:

Fiction

Tolstoy Lied: a Love Story by Rachel Kadish
Mouse Guard Fall 1152 by David Peterson (this is a graphic novel, which usually I don't read, but this is incredible)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Still Summer by Jacqueline Mitchard
The Last Summer (of You & Me) by Ann Brashares

Non-Fiction

The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
If I Am Missing, or Dead by Janine Latus
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Ringing in 2008

Here's how I spent New Year's Eve - two cats on my lap! We actually had some friends over for New Year's, but we forgot to take any pictures. Chad took this picture when I was hanging out on the couch with the cats before our friends arrived. Happy New Year from Sandy & Roxy!

Me & Biltmore

Here's a picture Chad took of me in front of the Biltmore house - I thought he did a great job with this picture and if you look closely you can see the beautiful diamond star necklace I'm wearing that Chad surprised me with for my Christmas present.

More Biltmore pictures

Here are me & Chad in front of one of the lions at Biltmore's entrance.

Here are our friends Dave & Melanie who we went to Biltmore with.

Christmas at the Biltmore House

We went to see the Christmas decorations at the Biltmore House the weekend after Christmas. Of course it was beautiful, but you are no longer allowed to take pictures inside (when Chad and I went about 5 years ago you could).

Here's a view of the "backyard" of the Biltmore House.

Karissa's Critters

For her Christmas gift we gave Karissa a set of Calico Critters, which are very similar to some toys I had when I was a kid called Sylvanians. I loved those things and Karissa seems to love her Calico Critters just as much.

Our neices at Christmas

Here are our neices, Kathyrn & Karissa, with their mom Chad's sister Amy. Both of the girls got High School Musical blankets and new pajamas and robes for Christmas. So, this is them all piled up in some of their gifts.

Here is Kathryn & Karissa with uncle Chad.

Christmas dinner with Chad's family

Here is Chad's grandmother Ruby holding up the gift we gave her.

Here is Chad's mom Brenda holding up the gift we gave her - and one of our neices Kathryn is in the foreground.

More family pictures

Here are me & Chad on Christmas Day.

Here is my brother Fielding and his girlfriend Sky - Tom, a family friend, was also there for Christmas Day lunch with us, but he took all of these pictures so I don't have a picture of him to post!

Christmas with my family

Here is my Dad opening up his gift from me, Chad & Fielding.

Here is Chad, me, my Dad and my brother Fielding.

Christmas lunch

Here is our dining table all set for Christmas lunch with my family.

More of our Christmas decorations

Here are our Christmas stockings.

Here is our card tree and some other Christmas decorations.

Carolina Guy

Here is Chad, the ultimate Carolina Guy, in his new Panthers Jersey holding one of his Tarheels freezer mugs (both Christmas gifts from me).

Merry Christmas!

Here are Sandy and Roxy playing with one of their new Christmas toys.

Here is Sandy resting after playing with their new Christmas toys.

Future Christmas Card?

Here is a picture we took on Christmas Eve (thanks to a timer on our camera) of us and the cats in front of our Christmas tree. I was surprised at how easy it was to take this picture with both of the cats kindof looking toward the camera. This may be our Christmas card for next year - we always get the Christmas cards with pictures of our friends kids, but Sandy and Roxy are our "kids" so we want everyone to see them too!

Christmas cats

This picture is a little blurry for some reason, but I'm putting it up because it's the only picture I got of both the cats under the tree (Roxy is kindof behind the pole/trunk of the tree).

Here's a better picture of Roxy under the tree.

Roxy and the new bag

My friend Nicole gave me and Chad each a handmade bag for Christmas. Nicole has three cats and they were sitting on us and our gifts when we were at her house to exchange gifts. So, when I brought my bag home Roxy was almost inside it trying to check it out. Both of the cats have to meticulously check everything new that comes into the house, but I think Roxy was even more interested in these bags because she could smell Nicole's cats on it.

More pictures from the Christmas party

Here are our friends Becca & Jason.

Here are the hosts Paul & Kelly.

Pictures from the Christmas party

Here is me & Chad at the Christmas party.

Here is are our friends Melanie & Dave.

Jackson's first Christmas present

Chad & I got Jackson a Christmas gift and since he's only 9 months old he is not very familiar with opening gifts. It took him awhile and some help to get into his gift from us.

Here's Jackson checking out the gift.

Here is Jackson chewing on the wrapping paper while Kelly & I try to help him.

Here is Jackson finally playing with the opened toy aquarium!

Christmas party!

We've started a pretty cool Christmas tradition with some of our friends - we all get together at someone's house for a Christmas ornament exchange/party. This year it was at Paul & Kelly's house and we had breakfast food for our dinner. I think this ornament exchange is becoming one of my favorite ways to celebrate Christmas with our friends!

Here's the cake Kelly made and decorated for the party.

Here's Paul & Kelly's son Jackson with his Santa hat.

Semi-homemade gift

I really enjoy making homemade gifts for family and friends for Christmas, but I'm starting to get to the point where everyone has enough cross-stitched Christmas items and fleece blankets and scarves. So, for my grandmother I decided to go the semi-homemade route and paint a mug for her at a pottery painting place. I went with some friends to Pottery Place Studios near Concord Mills Mall and painted this mug. So, here are the pictures of the finished gift.

Sandy and the presents

Now that we have some presents under the tree Sandy isn't trying to get under the tree skirt anymore, but she still likes sitting under the tree with the presents.