Flowers & Butterflies

The Lantana that we planted behind our house is a magnet for butterflies. I was able to get a picture of this one after a few tries!

Watching the Birds

Sandy & Roxy love to watch the birds at the feeder outside our front window. Here is Sandy completely enthralled by the birds!

July 2009 Birthday Dinner

We always get together with my family for birthdays - July is my brother Fielding and Chad's birthdays and September is me and my Dad's birthdays. My Dad came up from Wilmington for the July birthday dinner and we ate at Outback! Here are some pictures from the July birthday dinner.

Chad's Birthday

Chad's birthday was July 24th and we had a very relaxing weekend celebrating his birthday! Here is a picture of his gifts from me:

A close-up of the cake.

Here's Chad displaying his gifts from me - a Handyman Life is Good t-shirt

and Seasons 2 & 3 of Survivorman.

Chad's Birthday Dinner

For Chad's birthday we went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with our friends Dave & Melanie. They surprised both of us by paying for our dinner too, which was VERY nice of them! Here's a picture of me & Chad outside Cheesecake Factory.

Here's Dave & Melanie.

And here are the four of us!

4th of July weekend

We had a very relaxing and fun 4th of July weekend this year.  It was so nice that it fell so that we had a 3 day weekend!  On Friday we celebrated our friend Paul's birthday a little early with a small party and their house.  On Saturday (the 4th) we went to the Harrisburg parade where we met up with Paul & Kelly and Becca.  It's really nice that we live close enough to walk from our house to the parade route!  Later that evening our friends Melanie & Dave and Adam came over for a cookout and then we went to the Harrisburg park for food, music and fireworks.  I am so impressed with Harrisburg's fireworks - for such a small town they really go all out!  I've created a slide show of all the pictures from this weekend!

No Doubt Concert!!!

This year for our anniversary I asked Chad for tickets to go see No Doubt for my gift. I have always like No Doubt and this is the 3rd time I've seen them and the 2nd with Chad. When we were on our honeymoon in Prince Edward Island we bought their newest CD at the time Return of Saturn and listened to it all the time. Then that same year we saw them on their Return of Saturn tour too. So, No Doubt has kind of been part of our marriage and I was very excited that they were touring again. I've added some pictures that I borrowed from Flickr - as you can see this person had MUCH better seats than us!

Here's a picture of Gwen Stefani - still in awesome shape at 40 years old!

Here's a picture of the whole band at the end of the show.

Chad's family reunion in Blairsville, GA

Garden update

This is our first year doing a vegetable garden. So far we've only gotten 2 squash and 1 zucchini and some of our plants are starting to look rough. I'm not sure what we're doing wrong, but our tomato plants look really good and have lots of tomatoes that we're just waiting for them to ripen. Hopefully we'll get some more veggies from it this summer and we're already working on planning out next year's garden!

Here are the flowers we planted at our house - we planted 2 yellow and 2 purple Lantana, but for some reason on the yellow ones are blooming right now.

A different kind of mail

Every year we have birds build their nest in our paperbox. This year we've had 2 nests of baby birds so far! I'm pretty sure it's bluebirds because this year I've seen the parents more. Here's a picture of the babies in their nest.

May 09 Cat pictures

Here are Roxy and Sandy being sweet and cuddling together.

Here are both cats laying on Chad!

The Shiele Museum

I wanted to do something fun the weekend before my surgery to keep my mind off it. We originally wanted to go to the NC Zoo in Asheboro, but it rained off and on the whole weekend, so we didn't want to take that chance. In the end we decided to go to the Shiele Museum since they have both outdoor and indoor exhibits. Here are some of the animals in the reproduction of an 18th Century Farmhouse.

The sheep had recently been shorn - they do it as a live exhibit the old fashioned way with shears, but obviously we missed that.

Chad & Jessica at the Shiele Museum

Here is Chad in front of the replica of an 18th Century Farmhouse.

Here is Jessica on the nature trail.

Here is a picture of both of us on the nature trail.

Wild Animals at the Shiele Museum

While we walked the nature trail at the Shiele Museum we saw a bunch of turtles at the pond.

We also saw lots of squirrels running around in the trees.

Inside the Shiele Museum

The Shiele Museum is a museum of natural history, so they have a lot of recreations of historical things and events. When you first walk inside there is a replica of a T-Rex skeleton.

They also have a lot of animal dioramas that depict animals in their native habitat. Here is the American West Buffalo diorama.

Here is the American Southwest diorama with wild pigs.

Chad & I as sea creatures

The Shiele Museum was hosting an Ocean exhibit when we went, so of course Chad & I had to pose in the shark and octopus cut-outs!

Sea Horses at the Shiele Museum

Here are some really good pictures of the sea horses that were part of the Ocean exhibit at the Shiele Museum. The tank they were in was kind of small so I was able to get some good close pictures.

Sinus Surgery

I had sinus surgery (correct a deviated septum and remove a polyp) on May 26th. The surgery went really well and I've been doing great ever since. The doctor said that once everything is fully healed I should be able to tell a big improvement in my breathing. While I was recovering my family and Chad's family did a lot to help us out. My mom sent me a care package that was full of fun stuff for me and Chad to enjoy while I was recovering and my dad sent me the beautiful flowers that are pictured below! My brother and his girlfriend brought us some food one night and Chad's mom fixed some of our favorite dishes and brought them over after my surgery so Chad wouldn't have to cook that night. Also, my co-workers sent me a nice card with a gift card to Outback inside! I had lots of cards and gifts from friends and family and it really meant a lot to me while I was home recovering from surgery. So, thanks again everyone!

Vegetable Garden

This year Chad & I decided to try our hands at having a vegetable garden. Since we're in a townhouse and don't really have a yard, Chad's parents offered us the use of their yard. I hope it's successful - we planted tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, catalope and basil. Here's a picture of Chad getting ready to work on the garden space.

Here I am planting our veggies.

Here's Chad watering our new garden.

9 Year Anniversary!

April 29, 2009 marked me & Chad's 9 year anniversary! I can hardly believe we've been married that long. Each year just keeps getting better though! Here are the roses Chad got me for our anniversary.

Here's a picture of us on our front porch from the day we celebrated our anniversary with a late lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (thanks for the gift card Mom!).

Mountain Mini-Vacation

We decided to take a mini-vacation with our friends Melanie & Dave to the NC mountains. We ended up finding a great deal on this cabin in Saluda, NC (about 20 minutes away from Hendersonville). Our cabin was called Buzzard Roost - here's a picture of it.

This was the view from the cabin's front porch.

Here's the main bedroom.

Saluda, NC

Saluda has a great little downtown area with shops, cafes and other places to hang out. As a Librarian I like to find the library if I can and check it out. The Saluda library was pretty small, and here's a picture of me in front of the window/sign.

Here are me & Chad by a little garden area in downtown Saluda.

I got this awesome cat clock in a store in Saluda. We had already left the shop when I noticed it in the display window, so we went back in and asked about it. It meows on the hour too! We promptly hung it up as soon as we got home, but we did have to turn off the meowing feature because it was really freaking out the real cats at home!

Breakdown!

On our way back from the grocery store Melanie's car broke down. Fortunately we have AAA, but we still waited on the side of the interstate for an hour before they came. Even more fortunately Melanie's brother lives about 10 minutes away from where we were staying and we were able to cram into the cab of the tow truck and drop the brokendown car at his house and borrow an extra vehicle to get home in. It's never fun to break down, especially on the side of the interstate, but we were very fortunate in a lot of ways that it wasn't much, much worse.

Here's a picture of Melanie's brokendown car.

Here's a picture of our rescuer gettting ready to tow the car.

Here are the four of us crammed into the tow truck cab - and I do mean crammed!

We are gonna relax like crazy!

When we were all crammed in the tow truck cab Chad said that when we got back to the cabin "we are gonna relax like crazy!" We all thought that was hilarious, but when we did get back we basically colapsed for awhile, but then Chad started working on the fire pit so we could make s'mores. Here's a picture of Chad intently working on the fire - complete with head lamp to find small brush in the woods in the dark!

Pearson Waterfall

Right outside downtown Saluda there are the Pearson Waterfalls. It's a really neat area with lots of picnic areas along the trail toward the falls. If we go back there again we'll bring a picnic lunch, but here are some pictures we took along the way to the waterfall.

Here's Melanie & Dave along the trail.

Here's me & Chad at a bridge.

More Pearson Waterfall Pictures

Here are some more pictures from the Pearson Waterfall area. Here's me & Chad by a big rock at one of the picnic areas.

Here is the Pearson Waterfall.

Here's Chad standing on a big rock by the waterfall.