thursday things

1. FINE. I  am a blogging delinquent.
I apologize. I could blame it on the craptastic Internet I have in my apartment or I could just own it. I promise to be better...to the 5 people who read my mostly-scattered thoughts.

2. Apparently cutting my hair is the only thing worth talking about, but I have done a few other interesting/fun/maybe only fun to me things since then. Which I will now list, in random order of importance. 

3. I have been given way more opportunities to write, which is awesome and has kept me very occupied. I am working on two bigger stories that I am excited about seeing unfold. 

4. After scaling back my daily coffee consumption by half (I don't want to say how much is half. A little ridiculous) and experiencing two weeks of intense headaches, I am proud to say I am over the hump of caffeine withdrawal. 

5. I took the online test to be a Jeopardy contestant. I love trivia. I am so weird. It made sense. Stay tuned. 

6. One friend moved away and one friend is moving back. Emma, my lovely Canadian, is now laughing at all of us still in the throes of winter from her apartment in summery Brisbane, Australia. Way to take on for the team, Em. On the flip side, however, is my lovely friend Stephanie moving back to the motherland from NC! It’s about dang time, is all I have to say. 

7. And speaking of friends I made in college, I got to visit my roommmate from freshman year in Hess Hall, Taylor, a few weekends ago in Atlanta! She has been working there right around two years and I hadn’t gotten to see her face since Sept. 2010. TOO. LONG. We had a great time reminiscing our days as 18-year-old roommates and wondering where our twenty-something selves will be in the future. 

8. The Fellowship and friends are headed up to the mountains for the weekend, which I could not be more excited about. 

9. Actually, I might be more excited about these little pieces of heaven I’m making on Saturday. Oh, excuse me while I wipe slobber off my keyboard.

10. I would like this bout of cold weather to produce some snow, and then it can get warmish like last week. Was it not just so beautiful that you wanted to eat it?

chop chop

Until about 2 weeks ago, I had been growing my hair out for about a year and a half to donate.

It was the winter-induced-static-cling, 20-minute blowdrys and general hard-to-manage-ness that sent me over the edge and prompted the CHOP.

I've never shown this much of the back of my neck before. I'm loving it. 

The Last Ponytail

CHOP

What had been attached to my head.

holiday catch up

2011

This is my belated nod to the holiday season.  I think it went faster this year? 

Well, even if it didn't, I've been comparing pictures of all the cousins at the traditional Christmas Day at Granny's house. I realized we didn't take a customary cousins-on-the-couch picture this year, mostly because there was a baby asleep on it, but we have made the Blue Couch picture for many years. Here are a few of the most recent...

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

the worst

I have made this statement several times to different audiences and I will continue to stand by it.:
3:30-4:30 p.m. is THE worst hour of the day.

Here are the facts:

1. It’s the weird time between lunch and dinner. If you eat lunch during this hour because you got busy earlier in the day, you can forget being ready for dinner at a normal time. So you just continue to be hungry until you hit up senior citizen dinner at 5.

2. When you had a snow day, this is the hour in which your attitude goes from "NO SCHOOL TODAY!!" to "Crap, we have to go to school tomorrow."

3. It’s right when you would get home from school and the only thing on TV are Japanese cartoons and melodramatic talk shows.

4. It’s the time after lunch, but not quite quitting time at work that your brain starts checking out of everything and/or nothing makes sense anymore.

I could think of some more but I’m currently in the throes of the worst hour of the day.

america's hat

This is what Canada is like, eh Emma?

She can ride a moose ya'll. I've seen it.

chills

My sister Bethany always finds the BEST videos of the Avetts. She has done it again. This was about 2 weeks after we saw them. I would have loved to have seen this live. Just beautiful. 

thanksgiving day

morning porch sit

grandma's house

feeding time

happy baby

no kid table this year

grandchildren

pumpkin cupcakes