Here in Georgia

Faith and Infertility

2011-04-15T08:51:00.001-04:00

I have finally started taking advantage of my time commuting. I burned the 2011 April Ensign on CD and started listening this morning. As I was listen the article Faith and Infertility came on. It is a touching account of 4 couples and their experiences with infertility.
I suggest that everyone check it out, those that are struggling with infertility but also those that are not but perhaps have friends that are.
Also, here is a link to our story of trying to conceive. I think that there is a lot to learn from other people's experiences. Even if you are not struggling to conceive, or have never had issues conceiving, reading the Ensign article can perhaps give you some new insight into other's struggles and their perspectives. Perhaps it might also enhance your relationship with your spouse and children.

Pregnant!

2011-03-25T09:28:00.001-04:00

The word is out! So I might as well put it on my blog! We are just about 16 weeks pregnant and couldn't be happier.

I am going to start posting to our Simple Parents blog now too. I'll be posting more details on what it took to get pregnant and what we are doing and planning now that we are pregnant. I'll link to the posts, but feel free to check it out directly!

Chattanooga Anniversary - Incline Railway & Point Park

2011-01-17T15:55:00.000-05:00

After Rock City we drove over to the Incline Railway. We decided that we would start at the top, but would just do a round trip adventure. It was super crowded and we had to wait forever to get on the train. Then when we were at the bottom, the line was even longer! We decided to eat some lunch and check out a second hand clothing store. We even bought some items, but unfortunately left them on the train. Had the ride on the railway not included the huge amount of waiting time it would have been a lot better.
Here is the view:

Waving to the other train!

Here’s the view from the bottom and then on the way back up. We got to stand where the “conductor” stands. The guy felt bad for us, and let us on even though the train was packed. It made for some awesome shots and a little video.

Here’s the nice guy that hooked us up.
After the sweet ride on the railway we drove down the street to Point Park, which is also the Lookout Mountain Battlefield.

Chattanooga Anniversary 2010 - Rock City

2011-01-17T12:52:00.000-05:00

We decided for our anniversary, April 10th, we would go up to Chattanooga, TN to see some new things. Specifically we planned to see the Lookout Mountain attractions. We started with Rock City, which was very interesting. Basically it’s a bunch of rocks that you walk through. There are some cool parts, where you are slinking your way through two huge boulders, but there are also some super strange things like Fairyland Caverns and Mother Goose Village; it’s a good thing they save the super strange things until the end.

There was this crazy guy chainsaw carving these huge trees. I think he made some furniture and things.

Sweet Bog Garden!
There were lots of pretty flowers

Then there are a few things that aren’t so pretty:

Here is Fat Man Squeeze:

I took tons of pictures in Fairyland Caverns because it was totally bizarre. Check it out in my Picasa album:

Fairyland

You can also see more pictures of Mother Goose Village, which was also very bizarre.

Overall Rock City was worth seeing, once. Walking through the rocks and seeing the scenery was nice, but there were plenty of weirdo things involved that made it not awesome. They had plenty of “unnatural” plantings around on the rocks, the waterfall was also man made, and they had a track of ambient woodland sounds playing when you initially walk through the rock garden. It’s very touristy. We experienced the difference between a National or State run park/attraction and a privately owned one, including Ruby Falls, which you’ll see soon.

Muse!

2011-01-10T15:53:00.000-05:00

On February 27th we saw Muse at the Gwinnett Arena. It was totally awesome! We went with Bill & Emily and Aaron & Jenny, here’s a terrible shot:

Muse always puts on a good show. We first saw them right after we were married. Our friend bought us tickets to their concert at In The Venue for $5! That concert was awesome and every time we’ve seen them since they have been awesome.
Here are some highlights:

Here are some videos! You can view all of them on my YouTube channel:

Piedmont Park

2011-01-10T10:13:00.000-05:00

On one of the first warm days of the year we decided to go explore Piedmont Park in Atlanta. You could think of Piedmont Park like New York's Central Park. It's a really great area, right in the middle of Atlanta; and it's just a couple blocks from my work!

My building is the one with the two thin points, I heard someone describe it as “the building with Batman ears”, I guess that works.

Kickball leagues were happening. It looked fun.

These awesome stairs lead up into the Botanical Gardens. I bet the park and gardens were totally awesome when they were all opened to each other.

They had this great area for dogs to be off the leash, they had a big and small dog section even. It was totally fun to watch all the dogs interact.

Here are some great views of what the park offers. Plenty of open lawn space, lots of paved walking paths, a couple lakes, and views of the city.

There was even this fun modern park for the little kids play in. I really liked the slide.
We were going to also go to the Botanical Gardens, but they closed early and we spent a lot more time wandering Piedmont Park than we thought. So it’s still on our list.

Young Women New Beginnings

2010-12-26T17:28:00.000-05:00

When I was part of the Young Women Presidency in our ward we planned New Beginnings for our Young Women. It’s an annual event where we teach the the young women and their parents about the Young Women organization and Personal Progress. This year we had used boot camp theme, and it turned out pretty cute.

I designed the layout of the vinyl, and it was hard! Designing doesn’t not come naturally to me. Jann and Kristi painted the boards. When they were dry Kim, Joe, and I had a marathon of putting all the vinyl on. The whole project took forever, but we loved the finished product!

This was the mutual theme for 2010: Joshua 1:9, shortened to Be Strong and of a Good Courage.

Monica and Jann took care of handling much of the program. Then some of the Laurels introduced the new beehives that would be coming into Young Women in 2010 when they turned 12. It was fun because most of the new beehives actually had sisters that could introduce them!

After the introductions all of the Young Women came up by age group (Laurel, Mia Maid, Beehive) to get their dog tags.

Joe helped untangle some of the dog tags, and wore them so they wouldn’t get re-tangled. He looks good.

The cute new beehives for 2010!

Here are the cute ladies I was able to serve with, unfortunately they made me wear that ridiculous hat.
It was a really great program and I think that the young women really enjoyed it. Hopefully it got them and their parents pumped up to do Personal Progress!

Snow Day!

2010-12-26T16:52:00.002-05:00

On February 12th, it started snowing in Georgia. The next morning we decided to wake up and see what it looked like, because we knew it would be melted by the afternoon.
It was quite pretty, and very icy still.

We loved all of the snowmen that the families built in our neighborhood. In Georgia you make due with what you get.

Birmingham, Alabama Youth Temple Trip

2010-12-26T16:30:00.000-05:00

In February we helped take some youth to do baptisms for the dead at the Birmingham Temple , because the Atlanta Temple is currently being renovated. It was our first youth temple trip, and it went pretty well! We had to do the baptisms in two sessions because we have such a large youth group, and the Birmingham Temple is a small temple. It went great though, and the youth seemed to really enjoy the experience.

Deer in our back yard!

2010-12-26T16:20:00.001-05:00

Early in January 2010 we had a few visitors. We were getting ready to get in the shower when we looked out the big picture window in the bathroom and saw 5 deer hanging out.

They started to figure out someone was watching them, and started stomping their hooves, I guess as some sort of intimidation tactic.

It was totally awesome to watch them for awhile. They eventually got bored and took off.

New Year’s Eve 2009

2010-12-26T16:04:00.000-05:00

New Year’s Eve is always a tough holiday for me. Mostly because I never know of a good way to celebrate it, or maybe it’s just that nothing I do to celebrate it ever feel monumental enough. But I know I do enjoy hanging out with friends, so that’s a good way to start the year! This year we had the Nicolich clan, MacPherson bunch, and both boy and girl Chad Poole. We of course played Rock Band and did fireworks. Chad Poole is a maniac with the bottle rockets and the MacPherson’s like to do silly string.

Joe is such a rock star and Emily is super background dancer!

This picture is awesome because Emily is always this excited about everything, I love it!

Time to prepare for fireworks!

This is the moon behind smoke from the fireworks!

Emily is such a good sport!

Joe lights the fountains for me, I like those the best.

The silly string aftermath!

And then of course another round of Rock Band!

Christmas in Utah (the aftermath) 2009

2010-12-26T15:19:00.000-05:00

On the 26th Joe and I went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple with Mom & Dad and Uncle Gary. It was wonderful and a really great way to start the morning after Christmas.

Here’s the view from the Temple across the valley to the East. In Utah we call that nice smoggy stuff an inversion; it’s when all the gross gunk gets trapped with the cold air below the warm air all between the mountains on the East and West, called the basin.

The Oquirrh Mountain Temple
After our visit at the Temple, we decided to meet up with the Grover family at the bowling alley. They were there to celebrate Abby’s birthday, which is the 26th.

All dressed up for bowling!

Abby with Rachael and Andy.

Abby bowling

Rachael bowling

Miles got some pep talk from his dad before bowling

Ryan and Andy bowling

Cute Rachael and Andy
Since it was out last night in Utah, I wanted to have one last get together with my family, so we invited whoever wanted to join us at Crown Burger for a little burger dinner, they have the best fry sauce!

Christmas time in Utah with the family was fantastic. We love all the time we get to spend with them.
On the unfortunate side of things, a nasty 24 hour flu was running through the Grigg family. Joe had it Christmas Eve and I ended up getting it the night of the 26th. We were supposed to leave early the 27th, but that wasn’t going to happen. Joe was able to move our flight back to the afternoon and get on a direct flight. Luckily the Meads live near by and have good drugs, so LeAnn hooked us up, and I pretty much slept through the flight. It’s too bad things ended that way, but over all the trip was wonderful!

Christmas Morning in Utah! 2009

2010-12-26T14:39:00.000-05:00

Since Christmas Eve is the Johnson tradition, Christmas morning is the Grigg tradition.

Nate, Libby, Dottie

Every couple gets a stocking!

Annie got a sweet snuggie

Joe got LOL Cats and an iTunes gift card

For Steve and Sharon we decided they needed Rock Band Beatles Edition. Joe and I also were on a quest to find them another guitar. We thought we could just pick it up in Utah when we got there, but it was not an easy task! We went out during a snow storm and ended up driving to several Best Buys before we were able to find one of the last guitars in the valley! What?!

Steve surprised Sharon with a new Mac Book, it was very exciting

Ian, Tykena, Olivia
We always have croissants and treats for breakfast together.

Steve and Sharon took a minute to dance to some Christmas music
Sam and Kaite made it over with their kids, Robbie and Audrey. So another round of gift exchange needed to happen. Nate and Libby got some Dough Girl cookies.
We gave Katie and Sam the Family Yahtzee we made, they seemed to like it.
Katie gave Sharon a super cute calendar. She does these beautifully scrapped calendars with pictures of the kids and family for each month.

And then it was time to play with some toys. Robbie got a sweet Cars car set.
And Sharon needed to play with her new Beatles Rockband!
It was definitely a magical Christmas and we loved spending it with both sides of the family. We love our families!

Christmas Eve in Utah 2009

2010-12-26T13:52:00.004-05:00

Every Christmas Eve we get together at mom and dad’s house for some Johnson Family festivities. It usually starts with some dinner, typically ham and funeral potatoes.
Here’s everyone gathering and acting crazy:

After dinner, we head downstairs to start the big Christmas stuff. We start out with watching Luke II, it’s a great movie.

Then each of the grandkids get to open their jammies from Grandma and Grandpa. After they open them, they all put them on so we can take a group picture. It’s madness now that there are 14 of them!

Once we take a million pictures of the kids we then read a Christmas story that one of us picks out, we rotate each year.

After all that the kids get another (!) present from Grandma and Grandpa, this time it’s a little more fun than just jammies.

After we get the kids somewhat occupied with gifts we then hand out our sibling gifts and take turns opening them. This year Chris got the Family Yahtzee game from us. They seemed to like it!

Usually we’re nice enough to get mom and dad some gifts. Mom is holding a framed picture of all her kids that we took at the sibling party, and the one not framed is from the sibling party I wasn’t able to attend, but Joe photoshoped my head in there under Ben’s arm; it’s fantastic.

Becky also compiled an album of all group pictures of the grandkids throughout the years, and of course there’s plenty of space for all the Christmases to come!

The sisters!

When mom and dad went to Israel & Egypt they bought these pictures painted on parchment paper. Mom surprised dad by having them framed.

Christmas in Utah Part 5

2010-12-26T13:28:00.000-05:00

Wednesday afternoon Joe and I took some time to visit my friends at Goldman Sachs. I had been talking with my old manager since I left, and he had been filling me in on all the changes with the office. I had to see what was happening there, but it turned out to be strange! The office is now huge, so many more new people and so much movement between teams. It was fun to see a few familiar faces though, I totally miss my friends there! Steven, his wife, and Joe and I hit up Training Table for lunch (it was on our list). It was fun to catch up with Steven and Jan, and of course, the cheese fries and special sauce totally hit the spot!
That evening Joe and I went to our friend Adam Morgan’s house for some dinner and games. We were lucky enough to coordinate and have Josh and Crystal Souter come too! Melissa was so sweet to make us all a fantastic dinner.

Me and Crystal are hanging out

Adam

Kids!
So whenever Joe gets together with Adam and Josh, craziness always ensues. If you remember last year when we stopped by Adam’s house, this is what Joe did to say hello:
This year Adam had to show us his birthday presents, a pogo stick and a unicycle. Joe was in heaven. It was pretty scary, but they had a fun time trying it out. I wasn’t terribly adventurous though.

I tried, barely, it was super scary!
Adam has a ridiculous collection of strategy games. Joe would like to one day own this many games!

Adam is also lucky enough to have a little climbing wall in his garage! One day we’ll have a party house too!

It was way fun to hang out with the Morgan’s and Souter’s!

Christmas in Utah Part 4

2010-08-09T20:36:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday the 22nd we showed up in the evening to the Grigg Compound and participated in the annual Scrooge event. It’s a gathering of family and friends to watch the old movie Scrooge. It always turns crazy with everyone singing along, but it’s fun.

Here’s Joe interacting with Audrey, she doesn’t seem too into it.

Steve Fulmer, Sam, Katie, and Katie’s sister Lizzie

Joe and Libby are making Audrey and Dottie fight!

This is the first Christmas for all three! Olivia (November), Audrey (June), Dottie (February)

And here are the 4 grandchildren! Crazy how quickly the family grows.

Joe’s mom has kept all sorts of old ornaments, even the awesome ones that the kids made in elementary school. Here’s cute young Joe :)

Audrey and I were hanging out.

This is how well Joe interacts with kids.

Oh, and the movie was happening too.

Joe and his mom often get silly together. Here they decided to dance to one of the songs in the movie.

Dottie needed her outfit changed, and Libby was nice enough to put on the onesie I made for her.

It was fun to see it in action. Dottie’s not sure what all the fuss is about.

Something interesting was happening over here.

And Joe knows how to finish out the evening, he definitely has the touch with Olivia.
The evening was wonderful. It’s always fun to have time to interact with family and to finally have met all the new grandbabies.

Christmas in Utah Part 3.99

2010-07-14T20:54:00.000-04:00

To end the day Joe and I met my brothers and their families at Rock Creek Pizza (it was on our list of places to eat while in Utah). Unfortunately they don't have the dough croûtons any more, it was definitely a disappointment! But being with family made up for it! It was also the first time I was able to see Joclynn since being in Utah.

Nathan, Elizabeth, Jessie, Jacob

Jessie & Jacob (hyper)

Nathan & Elizabeth (also hyper)

Ben & Katti (parents of Elizabeth & Jacob)

Joclynn & Nathanael (Hode) (parents of Nathan & Jessie)

Of course hanging out chatting and eating was lots of fun, so we continued the fun at Hode's house and played a ridiculous game called MadGab, it was hilarious, and of course everything is even more funny at midnight.

Jessie and Nathan are showing off their tree for me

After several rounds I think we went down and played some Mario Bros. on the Wii. If that really happened I think it's the same night I totally fell sleep playing. But it was a great way to end the day!

Christmas in Utah Part 3.5

2010-07-14T20:32:00.000-04:00

After the Temple visit we rode with Joe's parents up to Layton to visit Joe's Grandma (Sharon's mother). She's currently living in an assisted living center, and those are always so hard for me. I feel bad for everyone in there, and I immediately feel the need to cry. But Grandma seemed to be doing all right. She was watching some shows and kicking back in her La-Z-boy.

I'm glad we went, especially so Joe could see his Grandma, it's been awhile.

Christmas in Utah Part 3

2010-07-14T20:25:00.000-04:00

On December 21st Ian and Tykena were sealed together along with baby Olivia for time and all eternity in the Salt Lake City Temple. It was beautiful!
Their sealing was going to be in the afternoon so Joe and I decided it would work out great to do a session before, along with my parents. It was the first time Joe had been to a session at the SLC Temple, it was my second time, and it was great. I really enjoy being there. After the session we had a little time for some Temple cafeteria food :) It was fine, we tried cracked wheat (totally an old person food), and Dad bought it so it all worked out.
We made it up to the sealing room and hung out with the family while we waited for everyone to get there. This was our first live sealing we attended, since being sealed ourselves in 2007, so I was definitely excited. I was especially excited to see Ian and Tykena be sealed to their beautiful baby Olivia. They arrived and looked lovely kneeling across from each other (even if they also looked a little nervous). Then little Olivia was brought in in a cute old fashioned buggy. She was all dressed in white and looked so cute! When they were sealed as a family it was amazing! It's such a precious and special experience that I'm so blessed to have been a part of it. And now they are in our family forever!
After the sealing we waited for them to come out so that we could congratulate them and take some pictures!

Here is Olivia, Dotty, and Audrey, the 3 girl grandbabies

Ian & Joe are brothers :)

A beautiful eternal family!

It was super cold! But everyone survived, and I don't think we had too many melt downs.

Joe and I needed a picture together!

Here is everyone else hanging out:

Annie with Jeremy relaxing

Libby and Dottie!

Sam, Katie, Joe (running in place to keep warm with Robbie)

Dotti, Audrey, Robbie

Joe's making sure everything is OK

Of course after being at the Temple all day everyone is starving! So we went to the Cheesecake factory.

After I got this look from Ian, I started photo stalking him:

A final picture with almost everyone :)

I had a wonderful day with the family, especially since we were able to share the day at the Temple. It's always so special doing Temple work as a family. I love Ian, Tykena, and Olivia, and I love that they are now sealed!

Christmas in Utah Part 2

2010-07-07T21:37:00.000-04:00

On Sunday night the Grigg's were nice enough to invite my parents (and us) over for dinner. Ian and Tykena also joined us because they were living in the house at the time, and we needed to meet little Olivia! It was a nice, quiet evening together.

Sharon set a cute Christmas table for us. Sharon and mom must be chatting about it in the kitchen :)
And here's Olivia!

After dinner we did some major chatting and catching up.

Olivia likes it when you blow on her wild hair :)

Tykena, Ian, and Olivia

We like each other.

And this was totally cute!

Christmas in Utah (the crafting part)

2010-07-07T21:23:00.000-04:00

Joe and I had my brother Chris and his family and Katie and her family for Christmas. I really wanted to do something crafty, but something that the kids might be interested in too. So I found this in my blog prowl: Family Yahtzee! It's so cute! Even if the kids aren't into it, at least it looks cute :)
It actually took a really long time to make, well longer than I anticipated anyway. We originally were going to have Home Depot/Lowes cut up a piece of wood for us, but they didn't have exactly the size we were after, but we thought we would try a smaller piece just to see. Well that was a terrible idea. The guy that was trying to help us out started using the huge electric saw thing they have, and it was scary! The saw kept kicking around the piece of wood. So eventually the guy decided he would manually cut us some squares, well all of the saws they have out for people to cut their wood with are not sharp and really are meant just to cut once or something. Anyway, it was painful watching him struggle to cut us squares, so I told Joe to tell him that he had cut enough for us and we would cut the rest! In the end we just bought the blocks at Michaels, but I had to go to several Michaels to find enough blocks! It was like the world was against me, or everyone was doing Family Yahtzee as their Christmas gift :)
Joe and I made these together which was awesome. We set up a card table in our living room and had various movies playing in the background while we painted, mod podged, and created our gifts.

It was totally worth all the hard work, I'm really proud of our accomplishment. It was fun to create these with Joe, he's really good at helping me, but it was especially fun to have him be involved from start to finish with this one. He was of course the biggest help with the images, but he's a great cutter too, which I'm terrible at. We used plain chipboard boxes from Michaels as well as the two inch blocks. We then painted it all the same off white color. Once that dried we put the colored paper on with mod podge, then the picture over that with mod podge. The pictures smeared a little, and now I know you need to spray pictures with a setting spray before you try to brush them with mod podge. We did the same for the boxes, we put the paper on with mod podge, and basically just covered the whole box with mod podge to help seal it all up. We printed the "Family Yahtzee" logo just from our print directly on the scrapbook paper. We even printed out copies of the score cards and instructions!
Now we need to figure out what to do for our 2010 gifts!

Christmas in Utah Part 1

2010-07-06T15:59:00.001-04:00

We were able to go back home for Christmas in 2009 which was awesome! We even made it back in time for the Sibling party! We flew in December 19th in the morning and had the sibling party that night at Rachael's. It was so much fun! I love my family, everyone is so awesome! Rachael made us a great dinner and we had a nice time chatting and catching up. Becky and I even got our picture together since we missed it in Disney World!

We of course had to take some posed pictures!

Oldest to youngest: Chris, Becky, Rachael, Ben, Nathanel, and me!

I'm not quite sure what is so funny, but we are a hilarious family for sure!

And then all the sisters & sisters-in-law (minus Joclynn, which was totally sad, she was taking care of a sick kid) left to right: Katti, Emily, Rachael, Becky, Angela
Rachael had this game planned. I don't remember the name of the game, but we played where you had to follow a rhythm of clapping your hands and your legs and saying your number and then another person's number, then the receiving person would do the same thing, their number and another person's number. We inserted Santa "number" for festivities sake...If you messed up the rhythm you had to open a present from the middle and put it on! We were all a bit hesitant to play, because honestly, it sounded a bit more silly than we are used to. It turned into hilarity!

After the craziness we played our little white elephant game. We passed around the gifts and swapped and settled on one to open. And it was awesome. Joe and I were quite proud of part of our gift.

it's this ridiculous alligator claw on a stick! It's real and disgusting! We saw a whole bunch of alligator parts at a gas station on our way back from Florida. It was perfect!

Ben always makes something totally funny. This year it was a mock on "The Giving Tree" along with a card from the Sham-Wow guy. The image he's "holding" is of that ballet that was passed around the internet. It's funny because our mom made Ben and Hode watch it as if it were the most amazing thing ever.

To see more of the gifts check out the Picasa album:

Sibling Party

The evening of course was not complete without a little Guitar Hero (even though we prefer Rock Band at our house)

The evening was fantastic! Being together with my family is the best thing. I definitely miss hanging out with them, and when we visit, I try to get as much of them as I can. The yearly sibling party is fantastic, and I hope it lives on forever!

DisneyWorld in December with the Sturgis Family!

2010-07-05T13:04:00.000-04:00

It had been in the works for a while, but the Sturgis family (Becky and Rod + kids) were planning to be in Orlando in December and that's the closest that Becky had traveled to me, so Joe and I had to go meet them there. And I just have to say, it was amazing to see them in the Magic Kingdom! I love Becky and I love her family and it was so fun hanging out with them! It was their last day in the parks, so it was the perfect time to meet up with them to keep their excitement alive.

We were also able to stay with Tyler and Destiny, which worked out perfectly! They even hung out with us for a little while in the Kingdom.

Destiny sporting a YearOne sweatshirt, and cute Tyce!

I love how Disney decorates for the holidays, it always gets me excited! We got to the park before Becky and her family so we were just taking it in waiting for them. When Becky sent me a text to say that she was in the park I got super excited and could hardly wait to see her. We waited by the entrance to Frontier Land and then they turned the corner and they were there! I was so excited I couldn't help but cry a little :) Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the awesomeness, but hopefully we can find a little video that Joe took....

But after we were all together, there was only one thing to do....go on rides! Since we were in Frontier Land we started out with Pirates, and it of course was great.

When Becky said they didn't have many family shots, I had to help out!

Beautiful girls! I love you!

Conner, Samantha, Tyler, Carley, Becky, and Rod...such a cute family!

After we had our fill at the Magic Kingdom we traveled over to Hollywood Studios. Destiny had to take Tyce home for a name, but Tyler stuck it out with us!

We of course had to hit up Toy Story because Becky said they hadn't been on it yet because the line was always so long. Joe and I told them that it was worth the wait and they couldn't leave without going on it once! It was a long wait for sure, but it was tons of fun when we finally got there!

While we were in line Becky got this awesome text from mom, she forwarded it to me so I could take a picture! Mom is the best at texting!

We decided to try and brave the weather and watch Fantasmic! We got some decent seats, but there was a reason no one was sitting in the first few rows. Turns out, that when it's cold and rainy, and the show starts to project on the huge fountains and the wind blows all of the water in your face, Fantasmic is not that awesome...We persevered and survived, but it was too bad the weather didn't cooperate better because it could have been an awesome show.

We all enjoyed the fire, even though that was the "bad side" :)

Victory!

After the soaking we decided it was definitely time for some Tower of Terror & Rockin' Roller Coaster!

Tyler is sitting between me and Joe

Of course you have to buy stuff while you are at DisneyWorld. Becky and Rod had a great rule where they said the kids could get something, but they had to be at the park the whole week before they settled on the item that they wanted. The boys decided they for sure needed Light Sabers!

After the boys had a little fun sparing, we went toward the city streets to see the amazing Christmas lights show and display. It is insane how many lights they have! Apparently they were all donated by a family in Arkansas.

Joe is photobombing! Tyler is just hanging out.

Tyler Loves his Light Saber!

had to rent the sweet van!

and to finish out the crazy day we had to eat!

We were all exhausted, but it was an awesome day! So much fun and totally worth the tiredness. I loved hanging out with the Sturgis family! It's totally fun to see the excitement of the kids in Disney. I'm so glad that we were able to spend the day with Becky, I love her! The saddest thing of it all though is that in the craziness we totally forgot to get a picture together! Duh!

The next morning Joe and I went to the Orlando Temple, and it was great. It was a good way to end our visit to Orlando that month.

If you want to see all of the craziness check out the Picasa album

Disney World December 2009

Thanksgiving (8 months late!)

2010-06-27T19:38:00.000-04:00

Being in Georgia means that we don't get to be around our family a lot during holidays. So far we've only been home for Christmas. Luckily we have wonderful friends here, and we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with one of the families that we definitely love. Even though Thanksgiving isn't totally their holiday :) The Bassett's moved to Georgia from South Africa a year ago (at the time) and it was great to share the Thanksgiving meal with them. Jann cooked a ton of awesome food, including a fantastic turkey and the traditional string beans and crispy onions. It was fun to be with friends for sure! Joe and I provided a few items, like sparkling cider and vanilla sodas (Joe's specialty). We also brought some pre-feast snacks of pull apart bread! Unfortunately, I didn't get any shots of all of stuffing our faces!

that's bacon that has been cooking on the turkey!

Later that night Joe and I thought it would be fun to have a pie social. We invited our friends over to eat some of our pies. Unfortunately, we didn't factor in the fact that most people would be spending the day with their families :) Luckily, Bill and Emily came over with their cute girls, and even brought Bill's dad and step-mom. It was fun to take it easy, eat some treats, and check out the Black Friday ads. Alice totally got into it!

apple, pumpkin, pecan, and little pumpkin pies!

inspired by: http://www.bakerella.com/pumpkin-pie-bites/

It was a great holiday, full of fun and friends and good food!

Playing Catch Up

2010-05-11T12:45:00.000-04:00

All right, so I'm officially the worst blogger ever! I have so much to post and I just haven't made time for it! It's quite terrible. I'm going to get to it, I promise! I have lots of trips to post about with tons of pictures.

Here's a little list of what's to come:
Thanksgiving
Disneyworld with Becky in December
Going home for Christmas!
New Year's

Crazy GA snow

MUSE & TMBG concerts

Birthdays
Disneyworld with Grigg Family
6th Anniversary in Chattanooga
Shakespearan Festival :)
Making strawberry jam
Crafts
Asheville, NC/Biltmore trip
........and whatever else happens between now and when I get around to blogging it all!

I'll just let you know that Joe and I doing great. We do a lot of hanging out, and we even hang out with friends sometimes! It continues to be fun living in Georgia, even though we miss our families a lot!
Joe is down to 3 more teaching days for Seminary this year! Seminary graduation is on the 16th and Joe has two kids graduating this year. Although he's excited to have the extra time back from planning, preparing, and giving his lessons, he is sad to see the school year end. He has really enjoyed spending the time with the kids and learning more about the scriptures. We're waiting to see if he remains the Seminary teacher for next year, he's hoping that he'll be able to do it again.

I'm still in young women's and it's great! We are gearing up for Girl's Camp next month!! It always takes so much time preparing and organizing but it all pays off when we see the girls having such a wonderful time. Luckily we have a fantastic Camp Director, she's been amazing and getting everything arranged!

If you ever check the blog and are disappointed I haven't updated :) you can always email or call me! But I'll be updating soon!

Here we are hanging out with Mickey and Minnie during Epcot's Flower Festival in March

John Hodgman = Punch in the Face

2010-03-01T21:19:00.001-05:00

So Joe decided he needed to see John Hodgman and there just happened to be a book signing in North Carolina in November over a weekend, it seemed like perfect timing. Which it actually was. We drove up to Winston-Salem, NC Friday the 13th to see Mr. Hodgman at the Salem College for women.

We got to the college a little early and it turned out good because the college campus was actually really interesting. This college is the oldest educational institution for women in the United States, so there are some awesome old buildings around the campus that were fun to check out while we waited for the reception to start.

There was also this neat graveyard. It dates back to 1771 and is for the Moravian church.

We decided to pay a little extra for a reception so that we could actually meet and chat with him a bit. The extra price included hors’doeuvres; a paperback copy of More Information than You Require; a booksigning; and reserved seating at the Conversation event! It actually was totally worth the money.
We were hanging around the hors d’oeuvres waiting for Mr. Hodgman to show up, which when he did the mood changed, everyone got excited for him to start coming around greeting people. The people that were hosting the reception from Bookmarks came around to make sure we knew Mr. Hodgman would take the time to talk to everyone. So we waited around and watched him talk to a few people. There were some people that definitely wanted to occupy his time, and we soon realized that we would need to approach him to get any introduction. We walked over to the circle that had formed around him and stood around the outside, until he noticed us and said “Hey look everybody: It’s the Griggs!” [we were wearing name tags!]It was totally awesome. He then shook our hands and introduced himself as John and we introduced ourselves. Joe really wanted a picture with him, so we asked if that was OK, and he of course said yes. We went out into the hall (the mood lighting in the cocktail room was too dim) and John asked how they should pose, and Joe said “Well I have a picture of John Cleese punching me in the face, we could do that” and John made a witty remark and then consented to the odd photo-op. It was pretty awesome.

As you can see John likes to punch downward, and he made some jokes about that. It was all very funny and very Hodgman. After a few other photos (as you can see Mr. Hodgman also enjoys Saucony shoes) it was time to set up for the book signing.

We thought we would be able to tell him what we wanted signed, but instead he came up with his own jokes :)

After we got our books signed we walked over to the auditorium to sit in our reserved seats. We took the front row! The “conversation” with John was moderated by Justin Catanoso, who has done work with NPR, among other things.

The conversation was fun and there were some way funny parts, but there were some also very political moments which I didn't care for and I actually found it ditracted from the lighthearted nature of the conversation. Periodically the moderator would read questions that were submitted before the program began, and Joe's question was actually read! It was something about "now that you are a minor internet celebrity, is there anyone from high school that you'd like to give and 'in your face' to?" John's response was pretty funny, he was nonchelant about it, saying that no one really harrassed him with his long hair and total nerdiness playing dungeons and dragons, etc, and then said "no, I don't think I need to give an in your face to anyone......except John Smith (he said a different name but I can't remember what it was)" It was fun.

After all the fun we got on the road to Asheville, NC. We decided that since we were going to be in North Carolina we should take the opportunity to vist The Biltmore!

The house was built by George Vanderbilt and was completed in 1895, it remains America's largest privately owned home. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the experience of visiting Biltmore, but I was pleasently surprised. The family still owns about 8,000 acres of land which surrounds the home so it makes for quite the feeling of seclusion. When you arrive at the gate to the Biltmore property you feel like you are entering something special! Driving throughout the property is actually really awesome, the grounds were design by Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Central Park, so there are a lot of neat things happening.
We didn't get to the estate early enough to get into the house first thing, so while we waited for our time we toured some of the gardens and looked over the exterior of the house, which is very interesting. The area was so pretty we decided we would definitely have to visit the estate again. Hopefully we'll be going in May. The green house was actually a lot of fun to look through. Since there weren't many flowers outside it was nice to see beatiful blooms.

Of course you can't take pictures inside the home, but it was beautiful! It took us about 2 hours to get through the house and we listened to just about everything on the self guided tour audio guide. It was the version they put out for Christmas, so there were lots of stories about the Vanderbilts throughing Christmas parties at the house for all of the staff, and how they would purchase gifts for all of the staff's children. The most impressive Christmas decoration was the 35-foot fully decorated tree they put in the dining "room" which has 70-foot ceilings. It was amazing! I think the most exciting thing about the house was the "technology" involved in building it. There are 43 bathrooms in the place, just about every guest room has an attached bathroom! The house was build from 1889-1895 when having indoor plumbing was such a luxury. Not only did they have tons of bathrooms they had a huge! indoor pool in the basement. It even had underwater lights. Other awesome technologies of the home: refigeration rooms, washing machine, laundry drying racks, electric dumbwaiter and elevator, servents call system, and internal telephone. Anyway, it was amazing.
There are more things to see on the grounds of the estate like the Winery and the farm area, but we were so burnt out with walking through the gardens and house that we settled on just eating at the winery. That was actually the low light of the visit. We ate at the Arbor Grill, which was supposed to be closed, but happend to be open that day. I'm guessing that the food they offered was not their normal fare because it was terrible! The sandwiches were all pre-made and squished, and the soda that was $2 was a little 6 oz. class bottle! Ridiculously expensive and way upsetting. Hopefully they work that out for next year, because it totally made them look bad. After the bad food we decided to just make the loop around the property and head out, especially since we planned to visit again in the spring.
It's only about 2 hours from us, so it will be fun to spend another weekend there. I'm also looking forward to visiting more of Asheville and seeing what fun artsy things they have to offer. I also want to do some touring around the Blue Ridge mountains, they were beautiful.

Check out the Picasa album for tons of pictures!

Shared North Carolina

Christmas Letter

2010-01-04T19:28:00.000-05:00

Hopefully you received our ~~advertisement~~ Christmas card. We decided to direct everyone to our blog since it shows more than just a card. Also, instead of printing out a Christmas letter we thought we would post it here!

This year marks our third Christmas while living in Georgia. We have enjoyed our time here so far and feel that we have been blessed in everything we've done.

Currently the Atlanta Temple is getting refurbished, which means it will be closed for about 18 months, so Joe and I were released as Temple workers in June. We have been sad to lose our two Saturdays a month there, it really was a wonderful experience, but we of course have managed to fill the time with other things.

Our stake was realigned this year and we are now going to a brand new church building that is a bit closer than the last one. We have also moved from being in the smallest ward in the stake to now being in one of the largest wards. It's a lot of fun and we've met some wonderful new friends. I was called to be the second counselor in the Young Women's organization again, and I love it. The women I work with are fantastic and we have a fun group of girls. Joe was called to be one of the Seminary teachers for the ward just before the new school year started in August. They are able to meet at the church and he teaches about 12 kids. He is still really excited about his calling and loves teaching the kids about the Book of Mormon. It's been a really great opportunity for us to study the scriptures together as he prepares his lessons.

We were pleased to welcome Joe's parents in March along with some friends (the Fulmers). They stopped by on their way up to Williamsburg, North Carolina for the week. We met Steve and Sharon later in the week in Williamsburg to finish out their trip and drive them back to the ATL airport. It was fun to see the Revolutionary history of the country and spend time with Steve and Sharon. Here's a little about our trip to Williamsburg.

In April Joe and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary in Savannah, Georgia. Savannah is a beautiful city and we'll definitely be visiting again. You can check out my post about it here: Savanniversary

We took a trip to Charleston, SC in June and it was a lot of fun. It's a fun city with interesting homes and history. Here's my post about our trip: Charleston

Annie finally made it out for a visit in September. She didn't have much in mind for her visit, so Joe and I planned what we wanted to do and drove Annie across the state - literally! We made some stops along the historic highway 441 visiting such exciting places as Athens, Watkinsville, Madison, and Eatonton where you can find Uncle Remus' Cabin. We also stopped by the Georgia Guidestones, I highly recommened it. As well as Tallulah Falls and Gorge. It was fun having Annie visit, and exciting to see some more of what Georgia has to offer. Check out some of my posts about our adventures with Annie

We also took a quick trip to Disney World in December. My sister Becky and her family were there for a week and we joined them on their last day in the parks. It was so much fun to spend the day with them in the Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. Our friends Destiny and Tyler were kind enough to let us stay at their house for the weekend, they were great hosts and it was fun to meet their new son Tyce. I'll do a post soon!

Joe and I still work at the same places, YearOne and Earnest Partners (respectively), and we still enjoy our work. We feel it's a blessing that we both are still employeed as we know the last year has been a rough one for many.

We are looking forward to what the new year will bring. We plan on going on more adventures which you can follow along here on our blog.

Georgia Mountains

2010-01-04T19:17:00.001-05:00

On our final day with Annie we decided to take her to the Georgia mountains. We had heard that Tallulah Gorge and Falls was pretty awesome. We didn’t go early enough to get tickets to actually hike in the gorge, they only let about 150 people per day down there, but we still saw plenty.

There was this slightly scary suspension bridge that you could use to cross the gorge.

At the bottom of about 300 metal steps there was the entrance to the gorge. If you didn’t have a pass you could mill around on a little wood porch they built a little over the river.

On the other side of the gorge there was this rock seat that we took a break on. It was nice and cool and we were super hot and exhausted from take about 1000 stairs down one side and up the other of the gorge.

Here is the dam.

Joe and Annie finished out the hike by doing a cartwheel, it was great.
There’s a little shop that you can stop by above the gorge that has a nice view. They also have some fun old photographs from early 1900’s.

Local Braselton Charm

2010-01-02T13:38:00.002-05:00

Like promised, Joe and I took a few pictures of some more run down homes and things. We even didn’t get it all, but we’ll slowly unveil the awesomeness that Georgia has to offer.
This house is amazing. It’s on the way to our friends the Nicolich’s. It’s hard to believe anyone lives there, but you know they do because when it’s warmer out there usually an old man out on the stairs hanging out. If you open the second picture larger you can see that there are a couple refrigerators on the porch. Sometimes the front door is open and you can peak inside while you drive by, it’s a little scary.

Here’s the gas station. I think the rusted out signs are totally awesome. If that junky house wasn’t connected to the awning I think it be a pretty awesome spot for some family photos or something.

There were several more houses I wanted to take pictures of, but we needed some more time (we were going to PF Chang’s for dinner) and we needed to actually get out of the car and walk to them to get good shots. These were 3 barns all next to each other.

The gas station and barns are again on Highway 124, just on the other side of the town center.

Fourth of July

2010-01-02T13:38:00.001-05:00

We didn’t do a whole lot on the fourth. We decided to watch the fire works that Publix and the Chateau put on, but we didn’t want to hang out in the Publix parking lot like all the other weirdoes. Instead we went to an empty neighborhood
I took this picture on a different day, I had to document how this neighborhood has sat like this for over 2 years. The original developer went bankrupt.
We saw some OK fireworks from our vantage point, but it wasn’t amazing.

We decided to create our own show. We invited Bill Nicolich (Emily was out of town) and the Poole’s to join us. Julie and I sat back while the boys got their fill of creating scary situations with things that explode.

We did end up making a mess by putting a bunch of flashers into a pickle jar. Apparently the pickle jar couldn’t take the heat.

More Explorations

2010-01-02T13:35:00.001-05:00

After visiting the Guidestones we drove down to Athens. I always want more from Athens, but I never get much out of it. It’s a fun college town, it’s home to the University of Georgia. They have a cute shopping district and the campus is nice, but that’s about it. Maybe I’m missing something.
We ate at Five Guys because I wouldn’t let Joe take us to the Grill, which is a disgusting 24 our diner. It’s one of those places that people love, probably out of nostalgia, but I just feel dirty in there.

From Athens we made our way to Watkinsville. We were traveling on the route that was saved from burning when Sherman went on his rampage of burning Georgia.
In Watkinsville we stopped by Eagle Tavern which was “the center of social and political life in Watkinsville for more than a hundred years”

On our way out we drove by my cousin’s house. They live in a historical home and it looks like they are redoing the entrance to the estate.

We drove to the Elder Mill Covered Bridge which was built in 1897 and is “one of the few covered bridges in Georgia continuing to to carry traffic without underlying steel beams.”

From Watkinsville we stayed on the path and drove down to Madison in Morgan County. Apparently Madison’s claim to fame is that when Sherman came through he couldn’t burn Madison, he apparently said it was too pretty to burn. And really, it was very pretty. I would like to go back and tour some of the homes and spend more time looking around, but we didn’t stay long, we still had to continue the route towards Eatonton.

On our way down we saw a sign for Rock Eagle Mound. I originally didn’t want to go, but the entrance to place seemed so large, I decided we should stop by. Rock Eagle Mound is apparently of prehistoric origin. It is a mound of white quartz rocks in the shape of an Eagle. “Only two such configurations discovered East of the Mississippi River, both are in Putnam County.”

After this little diversion we finally arrived to our major destination of the day. Uncle Remus’ house! It was constructed from three slave cabins that the author of the Brer stories, Joel Chandler Harris would have heard the stories on the plantation.

Inside the museum there are various pictures from the book and creations of the Brer characters. There is one painting that Walt Disney presented to the museum of the man who played Uncle Remus and the little boy from The Song of the South. I’m sure you know, but Magic Mountain in Disneyland is based on the Brer characters. You can’t buy the movie in America, we got our copy on eBay from Japan. There were also some Civil War things in the museum, like some Confederate money bills and books. It was small, but there was some interesting stuff to look at.
Other than the Uncle Remus' Museum, Eatonton seemed boring.
We drove back home going through Social Circle which has the famous Blue Willow Inn restaurant and Monroe & sunny Winder. It was a thrilling day. Tons of driving, but we saw lots of awesome rural Georgia. I think it was worth it.

Charleston, SC – Final Day of Touring

2010-01-02T13:31:00.000-05:00

On Monday we stopped by the Dungeon and Provost. It was in the basement of this building which was where the Declaration of Independence was read aloud on those steps, and the site of the first Post Office in Charleston. When George Washington visited he apparently danced with over 200 women at a party in the upstairs ballroom.

In the basement:

In the stairwells there were tons of pictures and information.

Here is the order of Secession:

Here is the great hall where George Washington was entertained.

Here are some shots of old Post Office stuff:

Here are some clothes and furniture:
Moultrie’s Vest:

We were really there on the 13th, but you know….

Apparently this location has been found to be the Nation’s oldest Spirits Establishment in continuous operation.

Since it was out last day in the city I wanted to walk around and get the pictures of things that I felt like we hadn’t documented yet. There will just be lots of pictures to follow. You can always check out the Picasa album to see more.
Some cemeteries and churches.

Some more interesting locations:

While driving out of Charleston we went on the other side of King Street to see what was over there. We just happened to run into the old jail.

We also drove by The Citadel, which apparently is a military academy. It was very castle-like.

And that’s it! We will definitely go back, but we’ll actually go through some homes and check out a few streets that we missed. I would also like to spend a little more time on the different beaches. It was a fun trip and I’m glad we did it. It’s fun to get out an explore.

Charleston, SC – Church Street

2010-01-02T13:30:00.000-05:00

In our exploration of Charleston we decided to walk up Church Street and see what awesome homes we could see. There are so many homes with historical plaques that I couldn’t take a picture of them all, but I did get quite a few.

You can see the rest of the homes in the Picasa album.
Here were a few other things we saw on our walk.

Charleston, SC

2010-01-02T13:27:00.000-05:00

We went back to the hotel for a nap, we were tired from the heat and humidity, plus why stress ourselves, we are on vacation!
After the nap we went back into the city for dinner and do some more walking around in the nice evening. When we got off the freeway we passed some awesome dilapidated homes. The cat obviously likes this house.

Here are some more homes that we enjoyed.

Here is Battery Park

Here is a statue for William Moultrie

These homes were right across the street from the park, prime real estate really.

I’ll continue our tour of Church Street in another post.

Charleston, SC – Folly Beach & Fort Moultrie

2010-01-02T13:26:00.003-05:00

We went to Folly Beach to see if it was better than Tybee Island in Georgia. It definitely was. The sand was nicer and there were more people enjoying the sun. Unfortunately it was windy, but at least it was warm. There were lots of kite surfers and they were fun to watch. I didn’t take the camera, I didn’t want to deal with sand and water, but here are some cell phone pictures.
Once we were done with the beach we drove down the road to Fort Moultrie. You can see this fort from Fort Sumter. The fort was closed for the day, but we could walk the grounds.

From the Fort we walked towards the beach, here is the distance from the beach back to the fort:

Here is the view from the beach to Fort Sumter:

Here are some people that died at Fort Moultrie.

We didn’t make it over to the other beach islands, but when we go back we’ll for sure spend some more time at each one.