Monday, January 23, 2012

Nascar?

This past Monday Holiday, MLK Day, we joined the White's to go see the Richard Childress Nascar Museum. I've never been a fan of Nascar, but here in North Carolina-it's in their blood. Just a few minutes south of us is the Childress Museum, aka RCR. It's where Dale Earnhart and Richard Childress had their homes for their cars and shops.

Part of the current team- in case you didn't know, 29 is my number




Karen, Lance, Addi

He took forever to get through the exhibits

These are the actual size seats that fit in the cars

You really have to have skinny hips to fit in them.

I think this was like 1/3 to scale and cost a ton of money

Their work shop.


Their only "classic" car. It was my favorite.

The trucks that they load the cars in for races
The museum is actually where the original work shop was. Their current shop is in another building a few hundred yards away. We came during their lunch break.
The work shop.
Addilyn eating from her new contraption.
I love it. She can eat frozen peaches, strawberries, whatever. She loves it too. It really helps since she's started teething. Along with this, she's gnawing on cold celery to help her gums. We haven't seen anything yet, but "they" say that babies can show signs of teething for a while before anything shows up. She's got the clear snot and even her eyes are goobing up. Poor thing. But through it all, she seems to still be able to have fun! Even though half of these photos are blurry, they are still cute to me! There was a night where I stayed up with her until 4am. Not fun! But she makes up for it.
Love. Pure love.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Pilot Mountain

The drive up, only about 30 minutes from our house.
This past Saturday was PERFECT hiking weather! Scott, me, Addi, and Alex and Nyk Travis ventured out to Pilot Mountain to do only one thing...concur! It was just beautiful. The temperature was just right- we couldn't ask for anything better.

Out east it's called Pilot Mountin. However, we westerners would look at it and say, "You mean hill?" It's 1,400 feet above the valley floor, and we hiked 7.5 miles to the base of that dome. No one's allowed on top of it anymore due to it's habitat for birds. However there are plenty of other places to rock climb along the hike, which you'll see those pics in this post.
Our view of the Piedmont Valley for lunch at the top

The other side of our lunch spot

The dome from our lunch spot

Addi ate lunch on the ground. We had to protect her food from Cabo


At one of the look outs

Alex and her brother Nyk

Heading down the trail to loop the dome

I thought these steps were way cool.

"Warning: Injury or death can happen on this trail" hahaha At least that's what I pretended it said when we were on it, but only if you go off the trail. It was rated as strenuous.




There's no pictures of him, but there was another fearless hiker with us on this trail. And his name is CABO!!! He was a beast. He's an awesome trail dog because we can take him off his leash and he'll stay on the trail and stay with us. When people go by, he'd join them for a few steps and then back off to come back with us. He's a trooper!
On the strenuous trail, Addi just woke up before this shot.

On our hike down we saw a ton of rock climbers. We also decided for sure that we will not go hiking again unless we have a hiking bag for Addi. She was too heavy on the front side especially when going down hill. Scott and Nyk traded her off during our hike- but Scott had her 80% of the time. At the end of the day we were all hurting in all different places. After dinner and showers, we reconvened and watched Cowboys and Aliens and ate ice cream.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

2012

In following the tradition of my last New Year post (here) I'm not going to do a review of 2011. Instead, a looking ahead for the year 2012. However, I do want to mention that 2011 was a huge (HUGE) year for us- graduating college, having a baby, and moving across the country type of huge. I don't know how 2012 will beat 2011 as it was the best year of my life so far. But it surely can try!

For the year 2012, we plan/hope/wish....for:

-buying a mini van, technically the first car that we will have bought married. Our first and only car was bought when we were engaged.

-Addilyn turning 1 years old.

-camping on the beach.

-My first time swimming in the Atlantic ocean

-Our 1st anniversary of being North Carolina residents

-Our 4th wedding anniversary (oh wow...)

-redesigning/building our pantry and all closets in our house

-doing our first legit garden

I'm sure there are so many things I could add to this list of things that we plan/hope/wish for 2012. But for now, it is what it is. We have our own personal goals that we are still working on. So we'll see how things pan out.

Also, keeping with the tradition of giving themes to the upcoming year, 2012 will be titled: "Expanding and experimenting" 
(The expanding is not for our waist bands...hehe)

Past years:
2008- "A New Life"
2009- "Getting to Know You"
2010- "New Adventures"
2011- "The Year of the Unknown"

We hope everyone has had a great turn of the year and has made resolutions that they are actually going to keep! We love having a fan base reading our blog and being apart of our life. 

Christmas and New Year

We had a great Christmas break! Scott got work off all week long, it was so nice. On Christmas Eve, the missionaries came over for lunch. Elder Carter had tasted some of Scott's egg nog around Thanksgiving and was dying to have some more. Scott showed him how to make it. Scott and I had our own ham dinner on Christmas Eve. It was so nice just having it be the three of us. After Addilyn went to sleep, Scott and I went through one of his boxes that had been in his parent's basement that we got back over the summer. We looked through pictures, his Eagle awards and scouting things, and even his high school year book was in there. It was fun going through it.
One of her new fancy outfits, John Deere and unicorn shoes
Christmas morning we had church at 9:30. Since my calling at church is the music chair(wo)man I was in charge of the Christmas program. It was AWESOME. We had the choir do a couple numbers, a cello play O Holy Night, a flute and congregation number, the primary (with a 4 year old boy solo who melted everyone's heart), and a violin trio to close. I'm so relieved it's over!

After church we opened our lovely presents and watched Addilyn play with wrapping paper and tags. For dinner, we went to the Travis's. We had a great dinner prepared by Joe and ate yummy ice cream that Scott and I made in our new ice cream machine the day before.

Tuesday morning we left for Atlanta, Georgia to stay with the Westerns. It was a nice drive there, Addilyn and Cabo snoozed half the time.
Addi driving us to Georgia!
Georgia peach? I think not! This was in South Carolina!
While in Georgia, Scott got to work on doing Mr. Fix-it things that he has gotten a reputation of doing when we visit people. I don't really remember what I did, it's mostly a blur. Somewhere in the mix I helped fix up the ceiling fans, did some regular household chores, shopped, defended Addilyn from her cousins (she's not exactly used to so many faces inches away from hers all day), and played. Cabo was toted around by Olivia, is mini-mom.

Near the Kennesaw Mountain
Shirley said this was the 2nd most visited (historical) National Park, first is Gettysburg
Uncle Scott and Afton
One of the days we went on a hike up the Kennesaw mountain. It was super foggy and even threatened to rain, but it was the perfect hiking temperature. I carried Addi, Scott had Afton, Shirley had Eila, and Olivia had Cabo. We were all sore from cranking it up the hills. Shirley said that we made it up in record time. Hoo-raw!
Resting at the top
Making our way down, Olivia climbed a rock

The spot where Addi's mouth was was soaking in the end
Cabo conked out after our hike
New Years Eve, Eve...so the 30th, we went to a stake New Years party. We got a baby-sitter and danced the night away. It was a blast. There was great food and great music.
Me, Scott, Erik, Shirley!! 2012!
Every kid's dream
One of the nights I babysat, yes- dinner was on a cooler on the floor
I am the cool aunt :)

On New Years Eve, Scott and I went north to meet half way with....the SEELY's!!! Yes, it was a LONG over due reunion to see Jared, Rebekah, and meet Annelise. We met at the Cracker Barrel. It was so great to meet their little girl. If you can remember, Bekah and I were pregnant together, due 6 weeks apart. When we left Rexburg in May, she hadn't had their daughter until June 6th. They had met Addilyn, but we didn't meet their daughter. It was so much fun putting the girls together. The waitresses and people walking by would ask if they were twins! At one point Rebekah said, "No they are not, and no, we're not related" (pointing to her and I) In the past people have asked if she and I were sisters. So go figure our daughters look so much a like! Jared and Rebekah have more pictures on their camera, so once they post them on their blog, I'll just link them!

That night I made Ciopino (chee-oh-pee-no) for dinner. Scott and I were going all over the place trying to get all the seafood we needed. It ended up having: clams, shrimp, scallops, oysters, and crab. I loved it, but everyone else- let's just say they couldn't handle the slime of clams and oysters. But it was fun watching all of them squirm to try it. The Western's didn't have any kind of nut crackers to break the crab with so Scott got out his wrench. I was in the splash zone of the water park and got sprayed in the face a few times from the crab juices. Afterward Eric said, "Well that was a good experiment!" The Western's have more pictures on their camera, but this was what I had on my phone.

A common scene if Addilyn and Afton were left alone
We left New Year's day right after sacrament so we could make it back home in time for Joe Travis's baptism. Scott spoke about baptism and then Joe was dunked! That night we had an impromptu dinner for them at our house. It was such a great day!

Addilyn looking all cute

Joe, Elder Carter, Elder Lee
Joe and Scott- two peas in a pod

Joe, Lori, Alexandria, Nyk