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Toadfrogs & Elephants

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Month: December 2005

31 Dec

King Kong

Finally, the long weekend is here! I can’t really complain, I didn’t go to work on Friday. Wade and I took the day off to look at houses. Daniel drove over from Huntsville and got in just in time for dinner. The three of us realized we hadn’t seen King Kong and decided to go to the 10 o’clock showing. That might not have been the smartest move – it is a three hour movie. We didn’t crawl into bed till about 2 am.

The movie was pretty good. I am curious now to see the original. I loved the dinosaur/gorilla fight scene. In what other movie would you see that? I was also impressed with the range of emotion that was displayed by a non-talking gorilla. However, the movie seemed to have an overabundance of long looks and huge, creepy, crawly bugs. Did I mention the island natives were a little freaky?

30 Dec

House Hunting

Wade and I are now officially house hunting. What fun! Now if we can just decide on which one we like…..

Most of the houses we are looking at are older houses that could use a little updating. The hardest part has been finding a house that has a shop (or a garage that can be used as a shop), but both of these houses have two car garages.

29 Dec

One of Those Days

Do you ever just feel a little behind or a little different from everyone else?

28 Dec

Aren’t We Silly?

27 Dec

Dark Chocolate!!

As I was unpacking my bags, I discovered lots of forgotten presents. My favorite was the dark chocolate M&Ms that Jenny found for me. I posted about them a while ago – especially how hard they are to find. Thanks Jenny!!

25 Dec

The Last Stop

Our final round of Christmas was Christmas night. We always get together with the Upshaws for a snack supper and gifts. This year we were fewer in number – Ben, Stephanie, and their new daughter Liza stayed home in NC. We still had a good time and took the required toadfrogs and elephant picture. I think my mother is trying to convince Wade to insert the missing people – we’ll see how good his photoshopping skills are!
Pictured below: Me, Wade, Jason, Matt, Chris, and Melissa.

Aren’t we cute?

25 Dec

Christmas Day

Christmas Day finally arrived! We started the morning with madness at my mom’s house. She was doing the Christmas breakfast for our extended family. (We have oyster stew with the normal breakfast things – weird, huh?) I think about 18 people came. Wade and I snuck off as everyone was eating to join his family for breakfast. Then we went to church and then back to his grandparents’ house for presents. After presents, lunch, naps, and a couple of games of Uno – Santa and his elf even dropped by for a visit….

24 Dec

Ho Ho Ho

The last stop for us was my Grandmother’s house. The family has grown considerably in recent years and we now have little ones running around. This was the first year we decided to downsize the gift giving. We drew names, but excluded the grandparents. They still wanted to get everyone a present. My grandmother makes the best macaroni and cheese. I wasn’t really hungry, but I always manage to find room for that and rolls with grandma’s jelly. Yum!

24 Dec

Christmas Eve is Here

My family does most of our celebrating on Christmas Eve. I’m not sure exactly why this happened, but I’m not complaining. Melissa, Chris, Wade, and I spent Friday night at my dad’s house. Madison woke up at 6:30 (yuck) but wasn’t too excited about going out to the bathroom. My dad has three big dogs and they were a little intimidating for Madison. She cowered between my legs and then leapt into my arms. I was amused.

We had a wonderful breakfast with Dad, Laura, and Laura’s dad Ken. Did I mention there were cheese grits? Yum. Then we opened gifts – Wade got the tiny video camera he has been drooling about.
We left my dad’s and headed for my mom’s. There the madness ensued. Mom was excited to have us all home for Christmas and we were excited to be there. Madison had fun too!

23 Dec

High School Friends

I had two days of work and Wade had two days of errands – then we headed to Paducah for the holidays. Our car was packed full! We spent Thursday hanging out with Mom and taking care of details. Madison loves having a new yard where she hasn’t scared off all the birds and squirrels.

Friday night, Wade and I joined his family for dinner and then I left to see my high school friends – Johnna, Jenny, and Amy. We get together once during Christmas and for any other occasion when we are all in town – weddings have been the reasons lately. Johnna has her own place in town so we always meet at her house. We got her fiance to take the picture before he left.

Below are the girls holding my gifts to them and wearing the bows I tied on their packages. They are Amy, Johnna, and Jenny from left to right. It turns out Jenny and Johnna are avid readers of my blog – thanks girls!!

19 Dec

A Trip to Anderson

After arriving back in Atlanta late last night, Wade and I got up early to drive to Anderson, SC. Wade and I visited with his work friends and just toured the area. Wade has a tentative job offer from his internship and we wanted to check out the area. House prices are great!

These fish are all over Anderson – painted in a variety of themes. This one was located outside of Wade’s company, Ryobi.

18 Dec

Christmas in Memphis

Wade completed his internship on Friday and finally moved back to Atlanta! We spent that evening finishing up our Christmas shopping and wrapping and then went out to the movies. Aeon Flux was the movie of choice – and it was exactly what we expected – fun but not really thought provoking. We got in the car early Saturday morning and drove to Memphis – the nice short 6 hour trip. We spent the weekend with Wade’s family and even met his sister’s new boyfriend, Brian.

Late Sunday afternoon was the Burch Christmas. The family gathers for a big meal and the opening of presents. Wade’s Aunt Viola is 94 – doesn’t she look great? I think my favorite part of the evening was playing hide-n-seek with Wade’s little cousins, Marie and Tina.

16 Dec

Papaw’s Joke

The holidays tend to bring back lots of memories, especially those of loved ones no longer with us. As I was looking through some pictures, I found one of my papaw and remembered a joke he always told. Our family still gets a good laugh out of it.

A young man has just started dating a young woman. The young woman’s mother has invited him to dinner and he is rather anxious. The young woman has told him her mother is slightly hard of hearing.


During the meal, the mother asks the young man, “Would you like any more potatoes?”
The young man responds, “No thank you. I have dined sufficient.”
The mother says, “You say you went fishing?”
The young man replies, “I said I’ve had plenty.”
The mother asks, “And you caught twenty?”
The young man shakes his head and says, “The poor old sole.”
The mother sighs, “And you broke your pole?”

15 Dec

Brr..

I woke up this morning to the sound of falling rain. Then I looked outside and saw a winter wonder land. Then I looked again and realized I had been fooled. It was just ice. Thank goodness the roads weren’t slick. I definitely think the dog will need a bath tonight!

14 Dec

The Newest Project

I spent last night making Madison a new blanket. It turned out pretty well, but it took longer than I was anticipating. I’d like to say the idea was my own, but a coworker made one like this for her niece’s dog. She had red as the backing and even voiced that black would have been better (you see I agree with her suggestion). After I took this picture, Madison moved back to my blanket. I guess she’ll just have to get used to her new one. I am reclaiming mine!

13 Dec

Free as a bird!

I’m done. I’m really done! I finished my week of class in DC and took my EMT final last night. I had a little (make that a lot of) trouble getting motivated to do any studying. I finally did some studying and then the test turned out not to be so bad. I stayed late to help grade tests and even found out my grade for the entire quarter – an A. Woo hoo! Now if only I knew if I were going to be finishing the class at Gwinnett Tech….

11 Dec

Oh Christmas Tree

I had sadly thought there would be no Christmas decorating this year. With my traveling and studying, I just wouldn’t have time to put decorations up until the week before Christmas. Then I would have only had them up about five days to enjoy. Wade decided we needed a tree regardless (thank goodness). We both strung the popcorn and then Wade did the rest. Now I’m into the Christmas spirit!

09 Dec

Here and There and Back Again

My week in DC was mostly good. The bad part was having class for 10 hours 6 days in a row. The material was presented really well, but that is a lot of time to stay focused. I did meet two nice girls – Kadie and Lisa. I still have a lot of studying to do before I take the patent bar. I’m hoping for late January or early February.

My evenings were spent with friends and family. I stayed with my Aunt and Uncle, who were only two miles from my class. I got to see my little cousins twice, and even read bedtime stories one night. I also had dinner plans every night during the week. One night with German, one night with Rob and Sarah, and one night with the old dinner crew. Matt cooked brisket and I got to see his new place, Trassie, Katie, Dave and his girlfriend.

08 Dec

Snow!!!

It snowed twice while I was in DC! There wasn’t enough to cause any trouble, but it did cover the ground and looked pretty.

03 Dec

Off Again

I have 8 hours of EMT class today – we are getting CPR certified and then I am off to DC. My company is sending me for a 6 day class to prepare me for my big Agent test. The good news is that class is about 2 miles from my Aunt Gayle’s house so I can stay with her. I still have most of my old friends in DC so I get to do lots of visiting. The bad part is I fly back in on Friday night, have 8 more hours of my EMT class the next day and then a final in my EMT class on Monday night.

Needless to say, I won’t be posting for a while…..

02 Dec

Buh Bye

Nothing official has been announced. SA being bought by Cisco won’t even be official till March of 2006, but it is looking more and more like the IP department will disappear. One of my coworkers found an article today talking about Cisco and their patents. They only employee two patent lawyers and then use 10 outside law firms. I suppose they could decide to try something different with SA, but I doubt it. Why maintain five salaries when they can pay a flat fee per patent? Oh well, this will make deciding to leave Atlanta much easier.

01 Dec

A Day Late

I started making my Christmas wish list a few weeks ago. I had decided that a new laptop would be great, but that meant looking for one (the part I hate). My current laptop is a Sony Vaio and I swore it was the last Sony laptop I would buy. But of course, when I was searching for a new laptop, I found a Vaio that was awesome – it was red! I got really excited about it and put it on my list. Then I tried to show it to Wade and it was gone. Evidently I had seen it the last few days it was listed for sale. Darn it! Now I can’t even find anywhere that has a model still in stock – especially in red. There is a new version out, but I don’t like it and it doesn’t come in red. The same thing happened when I was car shopping. I liked the older version that was no longer made. Obviously I am jut always a day late and a dollar short…

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