Last Post Of 2008

Well as James and I get ready to set off on our journey to Florida I thought I would put up one last post for the year.  We leave for Ft. Lauderdale tomorrow morning and will take two days to drive down there and then we depart on our cruise on Wednesday afternoon!  Over Christmas break James has revealed to me all the places we will be going by giving me several different travel books that have information on the places we will be going.  It turns out we are going some places that I never imagined I would ever make it to which are: Cozumel, Costa Maya, Belize, and Roatan.  After looking through all the books I am totally excited to get to explore these places and I'm also pretty pumped to see what is going to be on our boat, The Miracle from Carnival Cruise lines!  Like I said we depart this Wednesday the 31st and we will be gone for 8 days and 7 nights so we are expecting to be back in NC by the 9th or 10th of January.  

On another note it seems kinda crazy to be writing the last post for the year.  If I think back on all of the major things that have happened in my life this past year it really is amazing.  James and I got married, we spent our first full year as home owners, we got certified to scuba dive, James finished up his Master's degree, and we also found a great church this year where we both got baptised back in August.  I truly feel like this has been one of the best years of my life so far even though it seemed to fly by.  I am really looking forward to what 2009 will bring and even though it seems that the state of our country is not at its best right now I am optimistic that we have some great things to look forward to this year!

James and I wish everyone a safe and fabulous New Year and even though we won't be able to call anyone to say "Happy New Year", we will be thinking of you all while we are on the boat at midnight on the 31st!  See you next year!

Christmas Fun!

Well James and I had a great last couple days celebrating with our families here in Tennessee.  We were lucky enough to be able to spend quality time with both of our families.  Christmas eve we went to my cousin Natalie's house for dinner and to just hang out together.  Then we went to James's house to stay and we woke up Christmas morning to the Brown traditional banging on the iron skillet!  No one is allowed to get out of bed until Dad bangs on the skillet to let everyone know that breakfast is ready and it's time to get up!  It was fun to be able to learn more about his families traditions.  

We then went to my Aunt Eileen's house for Christmas dinner and to do gifts with that side of the family.  It was great to get to see everyone, my cousin Greg even came to town who we haven't seen in about two years.  The only ones who unfortunately didn't make it were Eric who was up in Michigan celebrating with his girlfriend and her family and also Mom was unfortunately not there because she has a stomach bug.  She seems to be getting better though so hopefully she will be back to her old self soon!  Here are a few pictures from the last few days...


James and I taking a "self portrait" at Aunt Eileen's house...I am getting pretty good at these if I do say so myself!

James's Aunt Carol Dean brought a reindeer costume that she thought would look cute on AJ...what do you think??  He is such a good sport!

James and Brennan sporting some bows from their packages

Greg was lucky enough to get the traditional gag gift of the family...the fart machine!  Yes we are quite the special family, always love a good laugh!

We hope that everyone else has had a wonderful Christmas with their family.  James and I are truly thankful for all of our wonderful friends and family that we have been blessed to be with this year and we look forward to seeing what's to come in 2009!

Busy As Can Be...

Winter Wonderland!

Here is a cool picture that James took somewhere along our travels up north.  The first night we were in Michigan for Eric's graduation we got six inches of snow and also got six inches two nights later...so yep we saw quite a bit of snow!  When we left Michigan and took the train to Chicago we were lucky enough to feel what a -30 degree wind chill felt like which needless to say we didn't like.  We went in a few stores while we were there and then hopped in the cab to catch our train to Grandpa's house.

Visiting With Friends In Michigan!

James and I got to stop and spend some time with Kelly and Justin while we were in Michigan also.  It was great to get to spend some time with them since we haven't seen them since the wedding.  It was Kelly's birthday this weekend also so we celebrated that with a few drinks which was fun!  With all the snow coming through the departure from there place was a little rough but after having to drive through a snow storm and stop at several different train stations we finally made it out of town and on our way to Chicago.

"Cheers" Happy 27th birthday to Kelly!

A quick shot of James and I at the bar celebrating

Kelly & Justin

James hanging out with Gracie, Kelly & Justin's sweet little Boston Terrier

Scuba Diving Galore!

Last but definitely not least James and I finished up our scuba diving certification a few weeks ago while we were in Gainsville and I haven't been able to add any pictures yet so I thought I would do that as well!  Even though it was an exhausting weekend when we went to Florida, we had a great time and really learned a lot.  We are officially certified to dive now and are excited to get to do some diving on our cruise!

A picture of James and I after our first dive

Here is a picture of what it looked like walking into Devil's Den, the second place that we dove.  We had to walk down rocky steps into an underground cavern which was a little scary but it was awesome to be able to see the underground lake!  This place was a little bit harder to be able to see but we got to swim with a few catfish and a cool turtle so we enjoyed ourselves of course!

Here we our with our instructor, Hal who we really enjoyed learning from and has been absolutely great to work with.

My first underwater picture...giving what we quickly learned was the "I need to go up" signal, not the "I'm OK" signal!

My great dive buddy!

Official scuba divers...taken after our last dive of the trip!

Here We Go...

James and I are getting ready this morning for our first official scuba diving adventure. We are leaving to go to Gainsville, FL to do our checkout dives for our certification. We will be visiting two places this weekend to make four seperate dives. We are both a little nervous about it but totally excited at the same time! I thought I would post the sites so you all could see some of the cool things we will be seeing...hopefully! On Saturday we are going to a place called Blue Gratto (http://www.sfdj.com/springs_issue/bgrotto.htm) and we will be doing three dives there and then on Sunday we will be getting up and doing one last dive at a place called Devil's Den (www.devilsden.com). We hope that everyone has a great weekend this weekend and we will DEFINITELY be posting some new pictures when we get back!

A little gift for Molly...

We took a little time tonight and went over to Brian & Melissa's house for dinner and also to give Molly her Christmas present that we got her because we aren't going to be around much for the next few weeks...needless to say from the first picture you can tell how happy she was to see us when we arrived!

Lucky for us Molly calmed down a little after getting a bit scared of James's camera. After dinner James and Brian gave Molly a bath while Melissa and I planned for Tara's going away party tomorrow. I have to say it was pretty sweet hearing James talk to Molly during her bath!Look at the sweet baby getting oh so fresh and so clean!

Oh my...too much going on in this tub!

All finished with the bath and gazing up at Daddy with loving eyes!

Yup...gotta love soft cuddly animals when you get out of the tub!

OK now this brings us to present time...after a little convincing Molly was ready to start tearing into her gift!

Tearing into it little by little...ohhh gotta love wrapping paper!
What did we find inside you ask? Good ole TEDDY RUXPIN!!! Yes that's right we found one of our childhood favorite's in the store the other day and knew it would be perfect for Ms. Molly for Christmas. At first I wasn't sure if Mom or Molly was more excited!

Molly got aquainted with Teddy real fast and gave him a kiss before we could even get him out of the box!

Hey guys...how do we get him out of here?

WOW! There he is...and he talks!

Molly definitely seemed to love Teddy very much and she was fascinated with the way that his mouth would move when he talks. She wasn't very interested in the book that went with the story right now but the proud Daddy said it would only be a matter of months before she would be reading it! Way to go Molly!

Well after a long day we had one tired baby on our hands...what a sweet girl!

Christmas Fun has Begun!

James and I kicked off our official holiday season this week when we decorated our mantle with my family's nativity set. It was really exciting to see that set in our home and to be able to set it up with James and tell him stories of when we used to set it up when we were kids!

We also had our Christmas party with our small group from Elevation yesterday and we had a great time. Scott cooked some fabulous vegetarian chili and we also had taco dip, corn bread, and apple pie for dessert of course, yum! James and I have had a really great time getting to know everyone from our small group over the past few months. It has really helped us feel like we belong more with the church and we have met some really wonderful people! Jeremy and Judy gave us all some fun gifts that I had never seen before...you pull of the ends and the gift pops out...not to mention the crowns and corny jokes that were inside...we all had lots of laughs!


James and I with our crowns on and our gifts!

Scott and April...one of the set of expectant parents in our group!

Judy & Jeremy...our fearless leaders and the other set of expectant parents!

Eric & Carrianne all dressed up for the Florida game...we were all thinking of Carrianne last night while watching the game and i'm glad that she will be able to breathe now!

Our group shot...it only took us about 5 attemps with the timer on the camera but we finally got it! What a good looking group!

Scott & April's dog Doozer...he entertains us all each week!

And you know if we put up another dog we have to add AJ as well...this is probably what he was doing while we were at the party!