A Lovely November

It has been a beautiful (though chilly) November!  Of course, as soon as Halloween is over, Ryan and I are itching to put up our Christmas decorations, so that's exactly what we did the first weekend of the month.  I love this view!

 Our travel tree with it's new ornaments this year.  They hail from Spain, Canary Islands, Lebanon, Key West, Disney's Yacht Club, New York City, and the Forbidden City in Beijing.  This tree is one of my most favorite traditions of our family.

 Our family had the opportunity to serve with Feed My Starving Children one Friday evening.  We all love this organization and this serving time.  We fill bags with rice, dried veggies, and vitamins that is both Kosher and Halal certified, so it can meet the needs of anyone around the world.  We were thrilled to have the Casey family join us this time too.  We were surprised when the girls showed up in the church's Instagram feed for this; we were all so hard at work we didn't even notice the pictures being snapped.

 We were excited to welcome the Lutz family back to Atlanta for an evening!  Our old neighbors are now living in Boone, NC as Andy is the Assistant Athletic Director at App State.  App was playing Georgia State, so the whole family came down for the game.  We joined Brandi and Aberle at the game and got to see Andy for a few minutes afterwords.  It was great football weather too...cool but not windy.  This was such a fun evening!

 Mia's braces came off just a couple of days after her birthday!  Here's a before and after picture about 18 months apart.  Look at that gorgeous smile!

 One of my friends sent this picture to me of Mia at the school Thanksgiving feast.  Love this sweet girl!

 Mia was excited to go to Rocket Fizz after school the day after getting her braces off as that meant she could pick out several candies to enjoy.  Ryan added to the fun by asking her friend Charlee and Lily's friend Avery to join in.  I think they were all happy to!

 November is always such a wonderful month for us.  There is so much to be thankful for!

North Georgia Getaway

Our family loves when we take a long weekend getaway to the North Georgia mountains.  We go just about every year, and for several years, we've stayed at the same vrbo rental in Mineral Bluff.  It's just right for our family.  We left Friday evening and arrived when it was already pretty dark.  When we got up on Saturday morning, this was our view.  Definitely overcast, but still pretty.  I love seeing all the changing colors on the trees!

Even an overcast sky (or the resulting rain for the entire day) can keep me from smiling when I see this little guy.  How adorable is he?

We were inside a lot of this trip, but that was fine by us.  There was good football on, but we also had a lot of fun playing Apples to Apples and Superfight as a family.

 Lily and Decker hung out a lot.

 He loved just looking outside.  He'd do this in Lily's room or go out on the enclosed porch.

 Dad and Mia had fun playing video games together while Mia and I chose pool and Chinese checkers.

 Just relaxing...

 Decker and I went on a nice walk around the neighborhood/mountain side after it stopped raining.  I liked this little decorated area with the waterfall behind it.

 We had lots of good snuggle time too!

 This was our view the morning we left.  It was stunning!

I love it when our family can get away together.  It's always fun to be with my favorite people!

Happy 11th Birthday to Mia!

Mia is 11!  She woke up to a very magical surprise on her birthday.

 It's a Hogwart's acceptance letter from Professor McGonagall!  The newest Gryffindor is on her way!

 With Thanksgiving being a week later this year, Mia's birthday actually fell on a school day which she was excited about.  We had a birthday party for her after school.  All the girls in her class (8 in total) changed clothes, and then we had snacks on the playground.  After a little bit of running around, we loaded up our two cars and headed over to Rockin' Jumps.  Mia had her party here last year, and she loved it so much, she wanted to do it again.  With it being a Monday afternoon, there was virtually no one else there which was great.  All the girls had a great time playing on the silks, jousting, jumping on trampolines, rock climbing, shooting basketballs, and of course, dodgeball!  This was such a fun celebration time for all the girls.

 After an hour or so of playing, it was time to take a break for pizza and birthday cookie cake.  We are so thankful for these girls.  From left to right we have Eliana, Olivia, Mia, Faith, Yabsera, and Layne with Charlee and Danielle in front.

 After dinner it was time to head back out to the gym until parents arrived.  Mia was on Cloud 9 the whole time.  Being with her people is her favorite!

When we got home, Mia was excited to see this lovely bouquet and balloon that had arrived from Grandpops and Grandma Jan.  What a great way to end our celebration of Mia!

Of course, I asked Mia all the traditional birthday questions of favorites, and she said:

Color: Bright purple like the one on the Descendants 3 poster

Movie: Originally said "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" but then we went to see "Playing with Fire" a day or two later, and she changed it to this.

TV Show: Hotel Transylvania the series

Book: The Wings of Fire series

Food: Dad's brisket

Drink: Hi-C Fruit Punch

Restaurant: Golden Corral

Animal: Lion or Tiger

Friend: Can't pick just one as she has lots of best friends

School Subject: Latin

Bible Verse: John 3:16

Activity: The hoverboard we gave her for her birthday

Place to Go: World of Coke if around town, Universal Studios in Orlando if traveling

Game to Play: Monopoly

Memory from the last year: Trip to Italy!

Most Thankful For: Our family

Goal for next year: Make 20 new friends.  Thinking this is possible with camp and new church group

We are so thankful for Mia.  She is ever the optimist, looking for the bright side of everything.  I love her attitude in life as she always lives in the moment.  She is joyful, helpful, and generous.  She loves to read, play video games, do just about anything athletic, love on Decker, listen to music, and sing.  She gives the best hugs of anyone I know.  She is beautiful, inside and out, and we are so proud to call her our daughter.

A Wonderful Trip to China

I fall more in love with China each and every time I go to visit.  This was my 6th visit, and it didn't disappoint.  

I traveled with three friends to Beijing and Chengdu.  

We did lots of awesome things, met some amazing people, ate a lot of delicious foods.  I took a ton of pictures, so I am pretty much only posting the collages I put together.  Otherwise this post would be way too long!

We left on Monday morning and arrived on Tuesday evening.  We checked in to the hotel, went to eat a quick bite of dinner, and then came back and crashed for the night.  On Wednesday, we wanted to be out and about as much as possible.  We visited Tienanmen Square first, and then we went in to the Forbidden City.  I've visited the outer courts of this each time I've come to China, but this time we were actually able to get tickets and go all the way in.  It was amazing and beautiful!  I noticed that yellow was used more and more the further back into the City we went.  Walter explained that only the emperor could wear yellow, so I guess that's why it was used more heavily in his area.  I'm so glad we got to explore further!

 After exploring the Forbidden City, we ate a quick bite of lunch and then went to visit the Temple to Heaven.  I love this space because it shows that at some point in its history, China was a monotheistic society.  This is where emperors came to sacrifice and worship "the God above" aka Shun de.  It's so beautiful and a lovely place to visit. 

 On Thursday we got up and flew to the city of Chengdu.  We spent part of one day at the panda reserve here.  Ahhh, so many cute pandas everywhere!  Of course, I love the giant pandas, but we got to see two baby pandas.  One of them was considered especially rare as he was more of a gray color than black.  It appears his fur is darkening now though.  We also saw several red pandas.  One of them actually snuck out from his enclosure and walked right beside us on the sidewalk.  Funny little guy!

A few miscellaneous pictures from the two cities.

One evening in Chengdu, we walked down a famous ally that is set to resemble old China.  We went to a show while we were there which had several cool acts, like a ribbon dancer, calligrapher, magician, and mask changer.  The magician actually had me come up and participate in his show which was really fun!  I always love the mask changers though; they are amazing.

 Chinese food, especially Sichuan style, is out of this world fantastic.  So colorful, fresh, and delicious.

 I couldn't resist all the fun potato chip flavors.  I bought a few of them to bring home and try later!

I am so incredibly thankful for the opportunity to go on these trips.  This was another great one!

Beautiful October

This October has been so beautiful and fun!  Here are a few of the things we did.

We had a cookout one evening to make "mountain pies" like Scott and Laura Keesee taught us a few months ago.  You take sandwich bread and then put either marinara sauce and mozzarella in it (Ryan and the girls did this) or several cheeses (like I did), and then cook it for a few minutes in the cast iron square over a fire.  For dessert you put in some croissant dough, chocolate, and jam (dark chocolate and raspberry is the bomb) and cook that.  Oh my goodness, this is fabulousness!

One Sunday afternoon the Stonehaven volleyball team went to a GT women's volleyball game to celebrate the end of the season.  It was so fun to watch these amazing women play.  Even better, Tech got the win over Duke!

The girls had a lot of fun carving pumpkins themselves this year.  Ryan found this neat set that is more like a mallet and cookie cutters, and it worked really well for making great designs.

Ryan and the girls went to the Jonquil Festival one Saturday while I was in China.  They met up with the Henderson family (minus Parker), so I know they had a lot of fun together.  I love this family.

 Ryan taught Lily had to smoke brats one evening.  She took these to a party at Molly Kate's house.

On Reformation Day, Mia dressed up as a warrior princess.  She looked awesome!

 On Halloween we went over the Foxes.  We had a great time catching up with them.  Lily and Sarah dressed up as Sully and Mike from Monsters Inc.  How cute were they?

 All five of these girls were ready to have fun and get some candy!

 Everyone sorted out their loot afterwards.  Mia scored big!

Lily made the dough by hand for deep dish pizzas one evening.  Yum!

I sure do love these two.  Ryan treated the girls to a J Christopher's breakfast one morning while I was in China after a visit to the doctor for Lily's check-up and their flu shots.  This was a fun treat.

This has been such a beautiful month!