Merry Belated Christmas

Sam and I spent the days leading up to Christmas and after away from home.  We spent a few days in Charlotte with my family and unfortunately only about 22 hours in Southern Pines with Sam's family.  The snow fall over the Christmas holidays had us worried about road conditions, so we arrived in Southern Pines about 3 hours after we had hoped for and left about 3 hours earlier than we had expected.  It wasn't until last night that I finally snapped a picture of us in front of our Christmas tree.  If you are friends with me on Facebook, you can see the handmade tripod that Sam and I set-up to take the picture (I have lost my tripod over the past year during moving).  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed the holiday with their family!  Happy New Year's!

Mom and Keegan

I know I have posted about Keegan before; he is a special dog.  And by special, I mean not only is he loyal, lovable, playful, cute, and sweet, we think he may have some wires crossed in his brain as well ; )  For example, he likes to chase his tail like a cat and he eats any and everything.  So far we have discovered that he likes peppermint patties (and its wrapper), bird seed, tennis ball fuzz, shoe strings, pop tarts, and I know I'm leaving out some other fun items he has digested.  Everyone in the family tells him if he weren't so darn cute, he would be in a lot of trouble!  I guess that how it feels to be a grandparent - you think you're grandchildren are so darn cute it doesn't matter what parenting rules you break when you're with them - their cuteness will get them through life so the heck with following rules and being responsible : )  I got through kindergarten thru 3rd grade with a moon pie as my breakfast thanks to Nanny!  Nanny would have cooked me a hot breakfast of eggs, grits, and toast every morning if I asked, but noooo, I wanted a moon pie.  And a moon pie is what I got.  And believe or not, she would have given me 2 moon pies for breakfast if I was hungry enough.  I don't know how I digressed to talking about grandparents in a post about my mom's cute puppy.  So finally onto the picture....

Keegan and my mom

Happy 60th Birthday Father!

Okay so this post is two months late, but what counts is that we celebrated my Dad's 60th with a big bang! It was his best birthday party ever (it was his first birthday party ever!). 

We actually started the weekend on Thursday with some family gardening!  I called in the reinforcements (Mom and Dad) to help me pull out my azaleas (ugh, hate those) and replace them with prettier shrubs.  Don't worry, fellow eco-earth lovers, we replanted the azaleas in the back of house and they act as a barrier to the mud splashing against our house when it rains : ) Don't worry, I put my brother to work on his day off as well; he pulled the weeds and bermuda grass that were overtaking my monkey grass.  Thank you family for all of your help!  It was a great start to the weekend!

Before- note the 6 azalea bushes in front of the porch

After - a blue sky can make any picture look better : ) This is where I should also mention all of my husband's hard work on the grass.  He put in a ridiculous amount of hours making our front and back yard look the best on the street!  

Now onto the party!  We started the weekend out with dinner at The Admiral - Sam and I love this place!  If you are ever in Asheville you must go!  But you need to schedule reservations in advance.  I actually scheduled our party of 10 over a month out (there's only spot in the restaurant they can fit a party of 10 ).  It's a small restaurant, with amazing Top Chef quality food, but has an Asheville, hippie, eclectic atmosphere.  Lucky us, Sam and I are eating here tonight.  We didn't make our reservations until yesterday at 6pm, and the first available time for 2 was at 9pm!  On Saturday we all went up to Bernardsville, NC and did a Navitat canopy zip line tour.  Unfortunately pictures from that were taken on my cousin's camera, so sorry I don't have anything to share with you from that adventure.

Saturday night, everyone came to our house for dinner catered by 12 Bones, another must eat-at restaurant in Asheville if you love BBQ.  Everyone was pretty tired from their whirlwind visit to Asheville on Saturday evening, so it was nice to have a relaxing get together with everyone.  To satisfy everyone's different dessert preferences, I ordered a cupcake pull-apart cake.  There was 3 different flavors of cupcakes, and I thought it was a pretty cute idea.  And wasn't that nice of us to not make my Dad blow out 60 candles : )

Happy Birthday Dad!

And we did manage to get 1 family picture this weekend, and Roscoe even managed to smile (isn't he a cute dog!). 

Good News!

I heard from Sophie's parents, Sean and Naomi, and Sophie had her best night yet after her photo shoot!  Yay!  I don't know how her last few nights have been, but hopefully she'll figure out her nights and days soon.  I am so excited to share these pictures with you, because I love newborns (aren't they amazing?!), Sophie is cute, and the Tiptons sure do make a beautiful family! 

Sophie is bound to have dimples : )

See how alert and awake she was this afternoon!

Such a cute little face!

Sean and Naomi, I can't wait for you to see all of the pictures!