One Year Older

Happy Birthday Dusty!

This year Dusty got a surprise party, which is sort of a big deal since we really aren't super big birthday party people. I think we even managed to surprise him. I called some friends and we all waited, and waited, and waited for Dusty to come home from picking Preston up from the airport. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity he came home and we surprised him out on the patio. We ate pasta, drank apple cider and topped it all off with some ice cream cake.

Hey friends - Thanks so much for helping us celebrate, decorate and have a great night!

Dusty, happy birthday and thanks for being so awesome! This past year went by super fast and was a blast, thanks for sharing it with me! xoxo

Presto!

Is it just me or did November go by in a flash? Earlier this month Preston came to visit us in Nashville. I can't believe it was almost 4 weeks ago! What I really can't believe is that my younger yet taller brother is graduating from High School this year and is starting to apply to colleges. We were so lucky that one of the schools he's looking at is Vanderbilt right here in Nashville!

At the top of Preston's "to do" list, after a campus tour of course, was to get some BBQ. So, on Saturday night we headed downtown to Broadway to try out Rippy's. It was a really fun atmosphere with live music and football games on big screens. We had ribs, pulled pork, and some really yummy fried pickles. The guys didn't waste anytime digging into the ribs!

We were so lucky that Saturday was nice and didn't rain! We headed over to a park by our house to play football and go for a little fall foliage walk. It was really awesome having a person to take our picture for us, thanks Preston!

This flag is for you Mom :)

We had a fun time messing around. Hey Mom, here are some "senior pic" shots of Presto :) he was really hammin' it up.

This is what I got when I was walking behind these guys and said " Hey guys, turn around" I'm not even kidding, so silly.

The boys doing their best "Heisman Trophy" poses.

Playing football with Dusty's birthday football.

Playing some pool back at the house.

Some crazy gourd things we found at the farmers market.

While Dusty was at work on Friday we went and saw the Egyptian exhibit at the Frist Museum. It was pretty cool, they had quite a few mummies. Below, Preston making his very own print on papyrus at the museum. He came up with his own design and everything.

Here are some pics from our tour of Vanderbilt. The campus was so beautiful. We saw a lot of squirrels, apparently they have a 3:1 squirrel ratio, 3 squirrels for every student. Pretty impressive!

Here is Preston in one of the dorms. The dorms were brand new and had super tall ceilings( you know 'cause that is really important when you are choosing a school) but really, the dorm room felt really spacious. All the freshman have to live in the dorms their first year.

Checking out the library

Preston looking very collegiate.

In the library foyer they had this neat projector that projected words all over the floor.

The night Preston got here we went to a late movie. In the theater about to see Puss and Boots in 3D! The movie was super funny and we basically had the theater to ourselves!

Thanks for coming Preston! We had so much fun seeing you!

Brick patio (part 2)

Ta-Da!

After we finished laying all the bricks we brushed some sand over everything to fill in all the little spaces. Fortunately, the weather has been great so we have been able to enjoy it before it's too cold.

We don't have any patio furniture yet so we just use our camp chairs. A couple Sundays ago we took our camp chairs out and had hot chocolate while we read, that was a lot of fun.

Brick patio (part 1)

During the summer we decided that we wanted to make a patio in our backyard off the back door. When we bought the house it came with a pile of old bricks just sitting in the back corner of the yard, which we thought was awesome. We spent some time cleaning and counting the bricks to see how big of a patio we could make. We knew that this was going to be a pretty big project but we thought for sure we would be done by the end of the summer just in time to enjoy the perfect southern fall. This picture was taken in July, and yes, it is November and we've just barely finished.

Dusty spent a lot of time digging and digging some more, I tried to help once in a while but wasn't as efficient as he was so I ended up just being the cheerleader. Those are all the bricks stacked up by the house.

This was the day we got gravel delivered, we thought for sure we would have some left over but sure enough it all spread out. After we tamped down the bigger gravel we added some smaller gravel on top.

Leveling...

This is the little stool I found at the goodwill for 5 bucks, and boy am I glad I found it because I spent a lot of time sitting here cheering Dusty on while he dug, and leveled, and tamped. I had been wanting to paint a chevron stripe pattern for awhile and this stool seemed like a good way to get it out of my system.

Laying the first bricks! This was a very exciting moment, and I finally got to help out! Dusty and all the strings he used to level the gravel, (he had to move them out of the way to lay bricks)

what an engineer!

I think this was sometime in September....we thought that once we started laying bricks we would have it done in one weekend, but that was not the case! All the bricks were old and different sizes so it was sort of like a huge puzzle.

Chattanoogie

This past Memorial Day weekend we went down to Chattanooga,TN. On the way there we stopped at a fun place called Ruby Falls. We took an elevator down a ways into the ground and then walked for a while underground to get to a really tall underground waterfall.

It was really neat to see all the different formations, the one in the picture above is called the chandelier.

They had little lights hidden in the rocks throughout the whole cave to help us see where we were walking and to highlight certain formations, then when we got to the waterfall they had a light show. It was amazing to be underground and see this huge waterfall coming from, what looked like, out of nowhere.

Wildlife Wednesday

The other day we looked out our bedroom window and saw these deer walking across our backyard. At first they didn't notice us and we watched them wonder around for a while. Then I decided to go downstairs and grab the camera to take some pictures, as soon as I stepped in front of the window they spotted me and ran away. Talk about good senses!