Kaitlyn's Going Away Party

My best friend Nicole's youngest sister Kaitlyn has been offered a modeling contract!  So, her family threw her a going away party at a bar in midtown.  Here is a picture of me & Nicole.

Here's a picture of me & Chad.

Here's Kaitlyn-the-model & Nicole.

Here's a view of downtown Charlotte.

Going to the Pumpkin Patch

We always get our Halloween pumpkins at Hodges Farm.  This year we only got one pumpkin to carve because we would be in Wilmington on Halloween.  Here are some pictures of our visit to the pumpkin patch.

Favorite Sleeping Spots

Roxy is always looking for a new spot to sleep and she also loves sleeping on blankets, so the perfect combo is our blanket basket.  Here she is in her new spot!

Sandy's favorite spot to sleep is on a cushion underneath our church pew.  Here she is curled up in her favorite spot!

U2 concert!!!

The next weekend after we got back from Hawaii was the U2 concert in Raleigh, NC. I don't know if we'll ever have the opportunity to see U2 in concert again and it was such an incredible show. We normally don't buy t-shirts at big concerts like this because they are so expensive and you've already paid for the tickets and parking, etc., but for U2 we did! And I can honestly say it was worth every penny we spent on tickets, parking ($20!!!) and the t-shirts because they are such an iconic band. We had a great time and thankfully because of our new camera we were actually able to take some pictures of the band too!

Meeting Roy Williams!!!

On the way home from Hawaii we had a layover in San Francisco, CA. When we got to our terminal there was nowhere to sit, so we're looking for somewhere to put our bags and sit until we board. When we put our bags down Chad saw Roy Williams standing a few feet away! At first he didn't want to draw attention to him so he just went over and said hello and got his autograph. But then we saw other people asking for pictures, so we decided to ask for a picture too! He was so nice and gracious about it - and thankfully I was wearing my Carolina sweatshirt too! That made the trip even better.

Hawaiian Vacation

This year for my 30th birthday we were fortunate enough to be able to celebrate it with my Mom and her husband Mike in Hawaii. What better way to ring in such a milestone birthday! Thankfully we were able to stay with my Mom & Mike for the majority of our trip and that helped us save lots of money (THANKS!!!), plus Mike knows so much about the islands that he was an amazing tour guide for us! We spent the first few days on the island of Oahu then the majority of our trip on the Big Island. We were able to drive around the entire Big Island and see all the various scenery that Hawaii has to offer.

My absolute favorite part of the trip was snorkeling! It was so amazing to see so many fish and sea turtles just swimming around and the water was so clear and beautiful. We also had the opportunity to try stand-up paddle boarding for the first time and both Chad & I never fell in once! It was an amazing trip and thankfully we had our new camera to capture all that we experienced there. The next few posts are some slideshows of our pictures from our trip.

Hawaii pics part I

We spent the first 2 days of our Hawaii vacation in Waikiki Beach on Oahu. We rented a car and drove up to the North Shore area to see some of the famous surf breaks like Pipeline and Waimea Bay. We also stopped at the Pearl Harbor memorial and ate lunch at Hard Rock Cafe in Honolulu. We were also able to walk to the Waikiki Aquarium from our hotel. We crammed as much as we could into that one full day!

Hawaii pics part II

The majority of our time in Hawaii was spent in Hilo on the Big Island where my Mom & Mike live. Our first stop was Rainbow falls, then we went to the volcano on my birthday, lava fields and visited some libraries. We were fortunate to be able to drive around the whole Big Island. On our way to Kona we saw sea turtles at Puna lu'u black sand beach and saw Southpoint the southernmost point in the US. Hawaii has such varied geography and it was very interesting to get to see the whole island.

Hawaii pics part III

I really enjoyed the Kona side of the Big Island. We were able to stay with some friends of my Mom & Mike's - Ed & Mariko. We went to the City of Refuge, the best snorkeling at Kahalu'u beach park, exploring downtown Kona and of course stopping by the Kona library. On the way back to Hilo we completed our drive around the Big Island and stopped at a Hilton hotel to see their animal exhibits, we saw the huge Parker cattle ranch, Waipio Valley, Laupahoehoe Point where the 1946 tsunami wiped out a school and Akaka Falls.

Hawaii pics part IV

Our last few days we spent in Hilo - we visited some more libraries, went to the Hilo Zoo and downtown Hilo. We also did more snorkeling, stand up paddle boarding and kayaking too. Then we flew back to Honolulu and spent one last night in Waikiki Beach before flying back home. We had such a great time and got to experience so many cool things! Here is our last batch of pictures.

Cat close-ups

We got a new camera for our upcoming Hawaii vacation and so I had to test it out on the cats.

Here's Sandy

Roxy's close up

Roxy's full shot

Labor Day Weekend

My Dad came up over Labor Day weekend to celebrate our birthdays. Chad & I are going to Hawaii for my birthday this year, so this was the only weekend in September that we could celebrate with my Dad - we actually fly out on my Dad's birthday. We went to the Matthews Alive festival (or Stumptown festival as I knew it growing up) on Sunday and then went to dinner at Outback to celebrate our September birthdays.

Here's a slideshow of pictures from the weekend.

Braden's First Birthday!

Our friends Becca & Jason's son Braden turned 1 in July. I just can't believe how quickly that year went by! Here's a picture of Braden's Firetruck cake that their neighbor made & decorated.

Here is Becca & Braden about to start opening gifts.

Here is Becca, Jason & Braden opening gifts.

More pics from Braden's First Birthday

Here are our friends Paul, Kelly & Jackson.

Here is Chad & Jessica at the party.

Braden's bear cake

Here's a close-up of Braden's little bear cakes (their neighbor made these for them!) - this is what all the kids got to eat at the party.

Here is Braden with his own bear cake and #1 candle.

Here is Braden thoroughly enjoying his bear cake!

Other animals at our house

We recently put up a hummingbird feeder on our front porch and I was lucky enough to capture this picture of one coming to eat! It's not the best picture, but those guys are so fast it's hard to get a picture fast enough. Hopefully I'll be able to get some better pictures in the future.


This is a garden spider that's got it's web at the front of our neighborhood. It's funny because I was just telling Chad how long it had been since I'd seen one of these spiders and then a few days later when I was out walking I saw this one. And Chad said that he's seen one at his parent's house too. When Hurricane Hugo came through Charlotte my family was living in Matthews and there was a lot of damage in our neighborhood, but we had a garden spider in our yard that survived the hurricane, so I always think these spiders are really cool.

Lounge cats

Here's a picture of Sandy & Roxy lounging in the living room. Right after I took this picture I was petting Roxy and she sat up, looked straight at me, then turned her head and looked right at the cabinet where we keep the treats. And she did this like 3 times in a row as if to say, "I would like some treats please"! So, of course because I am a well-trained cat person I got up and got her some treats!

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!