Ski Boots

This weekend we celebrated Sean's 24th birthday with a trip to the mountains.  I booked this trip a little while back, and would have loved to have been someone who could keep it to myself until Friday when we left, but secret-keeping isn't much of my strong point, so I had to give it to him at Christmas.  So so much for that :)

We stayed here, which ended up being a decent place to stay, and the food was awesome, but when we got there I was surprised to find that instead of the bed and breakfast, lodge with a fireplace environment that I'd envisioned, that we were staying in a cabin room at the top of a dirt hill (advertised as "mountain view").  It had a bed with a quilt, a shower that was literally a glorified tile corner, a toilet that you couldn't use if you were much bigger than me, and a space heater.  We had to follow 'Jacob' up a sketchy dirt hill in the middle of nowhere to find it.  If you watched LOST, then you know why we were prompted to go ahead and text Lyndsey to let her know where we were staying in case we didn't ever come back.  That said, it'd be nice in the summer and if you were expecting these accommodations, really.  But I wasn't.  Since I'm married to an eternal optimist though, Sean didn't cry, and instead saw the bright side.  This was all he could come up with:  "Do you have the rest of your Nutter Butter?  You should leave it outside to see if we can lure a bear.  You think bears like Nutter Butters?".  Later, when I apologized for my lack of research concerning a place to stay, Sean looked on the bright side with the following:  "But Maria!  If we hadn't stayed HERE, we'd never be able to see a bear eating a Nutter Butter!!".  We didn't end up seeing a bear eating a Nutter Butter.  Or any bears for that matter.  But we did find a fireplace in the multipurpose room above us which lessened the blow.

Aside from this small detail though, we had a great time.  I highly recommend the place to eat or camp.  The food was SO good and the service was great.  And it was relatively close to a lot of things.  On Friday night, we hung out by the aforementioned fireplace with a glass of wine from the resort's vineyard (a nice touch on their part) playing games.  That sounds lame, but I love hanging out with Sean, and it's pretty freeing to be in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone reception...even if it did start out a little creepy.  We spent Saturday morning at Grandfather Mountain where I spent plenty of time in my childhood, Saturday afternoon and night trying to sharpen some of our skiing skills, and Sunday hiking and shopping in Blowing Rock.

The view from part of our Grandfather Mountain hike

The top of Grandfather.  At the risk of sounding dramatic, I'm not sure what the wind speeds were at the top of this mountain, but I felt like I needed to sit down to keep from blowing over.  According to the weather report from the mountain, they've charted wind speeds at 115 mph and temperatures as cold as -32 degrees F.  Obviously, it wasn't that cold or that windy, but it felt like it to me.

1 mile high suspension bridge at the top of Grandfather.  As a civil engineer, this suspension bridge was pretty much the highlight of Sean's entire trip.  At his request, I also have pictures of the turnbuckles and springs that operate this bridge in a way that Sean would have to be the one to explain.  But I'm just keeping them for us to enjoy :)  He crossed it, but like I said, I was scared.  Even as a non-civil engineer, this is pretty cool.  But I've been here on a sunny day as well, and it's still scary.

Sugar Mountain- the reason for our entire trip.  Hopefully in that afternoon/evening, we've sharpened our skills enough to ski Idaho in 6 weeks, although that's doubtful.

Casualty of the trip.  In addition to Sean's elbow.  Sean is insisting that this "isn't that bad", but he can't feel it, and as long as there's any visible evidence of this catastrophe, then it's "that bad".  Naturally, this wasn't my fault, but the resort's since it was the result of a huge patch of straight ice :)

Sunday short hike to a waterfall near the lodge on the Toe River.  It'd be a good place to swim sometime around July, I'm sure.

This is such a fun place to go, and there's so much to do, especially in the summer.  And it's always fun to spend some time in a place so different from home.  Happy Birthday Sean!  You're such a blessing to me and I hope this year's the BEST EVER!

It's already been a year since we didn't become better people, but it never hurts to try again.

We haven't really done resolutions in that we aren't going to commit to running a set number of miles per week, and we're not going to eat more vegetables even though we should, and we're not going to lose weight (I saw a poster that said that the 20 lbs you gained over the holidays makes your resolution of losing 10 less impressive, and this applies here).  But we do have goals, and one of the few things that I learned from Motivational Psychology in college was that writing them down is a good step towards attainment.  So we sat down and came up with the following "be a better person by next year" list.

Spiritually:  

Truly pray for the people that we say we will pray for, and write it down so we don't forget.  I hate it when people use the phrase "I'll be praying for you" or "you're in my prayers" because while well-meaning, that's a lie and what they mean is "I'm glad it's you and not me and that makes me feel sorry for you".  I am certainly guilty of confusing the two sentiments, but they're not the same thing.

Create goals within the groups that we lead at church to improve the preschool  and elementary school ministries, and follow through with them.  Sean would like to add here that he's going to "keep doing what he's doing".  I guess Meredith Lamb needs to humble him a little in the near future.

Read the Bible every day.  "Quiet Time" is something that we both struggle with and could do much better holding each other accountable in.  There have been times that we've been much better when we have a more structured plan, so that's something that we need to reinstate.

Consider leading an e-group in the fall.  Either for young married couples or for high school/middle school.


Relationally:


Make being uplifting towards Sean my biggest priority.  One of the most eye-opening things that I have learned about marriage this year is that you should pretty much be in a good mood, or at least act like it, all of the time.  People don't normally give that as advice because it sounds unrealistic, unattainable, and "fake".  But that doesn't mean that you can't have a bad day, just that you can't use that as an excuse to be a jerk.  I'll say that I think that I do a good job with this, but it's still my biggest relational goal of the year.  Sean makes fun of this saying that I'm basically saying "I'll just keep doing what I'm doing because I'm great at it!" but I've reminded him that he's lucky to be married to someone that he can't argue is great at being nice :)  And I can improve in uplifting him.

Sean says that he hasn't bought me flowers in a while.  Does that count as a goal?

Sean also expressed some sentiment that he wants to make sure that my needs and wants are a priority to him, citing that it's easier to tell me no than people at work...or in e-kids...or his parents...or Mogatu (who's a cat).  I'm not totally sure how to take that, but he smiled when he said it...

And then he expressed some concern that this is public on my blog, and thus the end of our relational goals.


Professionally:


Be involved in some professional organization or team through the NICU outside of general staff nursing.  I did a lot of different things within and outside of nursing at Clemson that I enjoyed,  but since starting work, have felt like a pretty mediocre asset at best and could probably do better.

Do and feel comfortable doing NICU admissions.

Sean wants to get better and more relied upon to communicate with clients.


Financially:


Stick to the budget that we have set.  Our budget is set in a way that encourages us to live a lifestyle that would afford me the ability to not work full time when we have children.  It's not particularly difficult, but I am guilty of spending money keeping in mind that I have an entire income instead of in a way that respects a budget really is set to ultimately benefit me.

Give on a level that requires faith.  Recognize the difference between a tithe and an offering and show that recognition in our giving patterns.

Other:


Put curtains in our living room (I realize how shallow this sounds).

Redonate our dining room table and get a new one.

Sean wants to attempt to dispell the notion that he's a crazy cat guy.  It's not helping that his goal earlier in this blog was to prioritize me over the tabby.  Or maybe it will help.

I refuse to reminisce about the past year unless it's in a "best of" format.

I'm not so much a fan of the "how far we've come" reflections, mainly because I keep this blog for that very reason, but in a best of format, I don't mind.

January:  I got my job offer.  It snowed enough for Sean to take an early day off of work and make soup and grilled cheese.  I took a cake decorating class.  I spent most of my time doing crafty stuff.  We celebrated Sean's 23rd Birthday.


February:  We went to a cooking class.  We celebrated Valentine's Day with surf and turf.  We spent a weekend at a hotel in Uptown Charlotte.  My mom finished her "bad chemo".


March:  I started my job at the beginning of this month.  We visited my family in San Francisco.  I learned to sew.


April:  We spent most of this month looking at houses.  We celebrated Easter in Charlotte.


May:  We bought our first house.  We celebrated Jake's graduation in Hilton Head.  We started our new roles at Elevation.  We celebrated the marriage of Dallas and Liz in Beaufort.


June:  We spent most of this month settling into our new house.


July:  We celebrated the fourth of July at the whitewater center and had a full date weekend.


August:  We celebrated our one year anniversary.  We adopted two cats, Aurora and Oliver.  I went to night shift.  We spent the majority of the month in an effort to restore the health of our adopted cats, and sadly lost one.  I started a young women's Bible Study with Holly Furtick about marriage.  I have learned SO much about our relationship from this study.


September:  We celebrated Labor Day in Hilton Head with Sean's parents, Nick, and Lyndsey.


October:  We went to New England to see the leaves in North Conway, NH and ate lobster in Maine.


November:  We celebrated Thanksgiving in Charlotte with Sean's family.


December:  I turned 24.  We celebrated Christmas in Charlotte, in Greenville, and in Alpharetta.

We have been abundantly blessed.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Last week we celebrated Jesus's Birthday in Charlotte.  The first Christmas that Sean and I have hosted, mainly on account of my call time at the hospital.  Call time is I guess what I would call a necessary evil in that I knew I would have to work holidays, but it still sucks a little bit to forfeit Christmas in Hilton Head, and to leave family on Christmas morning to go to work.  But still, I'd rather be a nurse than a parent with a sick little one on Christmas and after it was over, life still went on and it was still a great Christmas.  Really, I couldn't ask for more.

On Christmas Eve, we went to church with Sean's family and my mom and then came home and spent the afternoon eating hors d'eouvres (I can't spell that, I know) and celebrating the Holiday.  Later that night, we opened 1 sibling present by the fire, and most of us opened our stockings mainly out of impatience.  Sean and I scored fire pit essentials from Nick and Lyndsey in the form of marshmallow sticks and hot dog roasters, and a date night gift card from Jake.  And our stockings were pretty great too.  And since I like to take pictures of food...

Marcy's pigs in a blanket

Gram's cookies

My cream cheese ball

Mom's shrimp cocktail

Nicholas opening his drive-time sermons to help with improving himself

Part of Nick and Lyndsey's new living room painting

And Mr. Jake Crandall opening his sand volleyball

In the morning, we got up and started the process of going around opening presents one at a time until I had to go to work at 10.  So I had a cinnamon roll (a Crandall tradition that I had heard a TON about, and it WAS a good cinnamon roll), dared Sean to open his presents without me, and went to the hospital. Thus, when I came home, our stacks were sitting by the fire-less fireplace ready to be opened.  So after restoring the Christmas spirit in my house by turning the fire back on, and reinstating the Christmas music, we started working on the presents.  There's two sides to this.  The first being that I was sad that I didn't get to see what everyone got and I missed the circle one-at-a-time thing.  And the other, which is the side that I'm focusing on, that everyone just had to sit there and watch Sean and me open our presents by ourselves since they were all done.

So everyone's happy and hopefully still remembers the reason for the season.  On the 26th, we went to my mom's house to celebrate with Jensen, Laura, my cousin, his girlfriend, my aunt and uncle, and my grandparents.  Everyone left there happy as well, and we headed to Charlotte via Atlanta to see the rest of Sean's family.  Merry Christmas everyone!

A Very Late Post About New England

I'm just now getting around to writing about it, but at the beginning of October, Sean and I went up to New England to see the leaves for our 1 year anniversary since we'd never been and both of us love fall.  There's actually a verb specifically for what we were doing that we didn't know about before-hand.  "Leaf-Peeping" is what it's called, and the people who do it are "Leaf Peepas".  We went up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to North Conway where we stayed here, at the Farm by the River Bed and Breakfast.  The people who run this place are really nice and it's not far from anything.  We did most of our peeping around North Conway, up the Kangamangus Highway (The Kank, as the locals call it), and up north into the White Mountains.  We did several really pretty hikes through the rain and looked for a moose, which we never found.  As a side note, Sean and I have looked for a wild moose in 4 states and so far have only found one in the Maine injured wildlife park which I'm not sure counts since I had to photograph it through a fence.

After a few days around North Conway, we drove up to Portland, Maine, mainly for the food.  The Food Network cited Portland as the "foodiest town in America", and they were right, there is delicious food :).  While we were around Portland, we went up to Boothbay Harbor to look for a whale, which we found, although with a little less luster than I'd imagined (I was thinking a whale as big as the ship leaping out of the water Shamu style and finishing with a huge flap of his tail that I'd no doubt capture in all it's glory on camera with postcard-like quality).  It was more like a few fins.  But they were whales, so they count.  As a side note, turns out I'm married to quite the naturalist as Sean spotted half of the whales that we saw and pointed them out for the guide.  All while battling some pretty debilitating sea sickness.

The next day, we field-tripped to Freeport and checked out L.L. Bean and Harraseeket Lobster Shack, recommended by Rachel Ray herself.  It was also in Freeport that we tried Lobster Ice Cream.  In addition to finding a Moose, a goal of our trip was to have Lobster in every meal in Maine.  We pretty much succeeded and according to Sean, will be unable to eat Lobster in North Carolina as a result.  Afterwards, we headed up to Gray, Maine where we accepted defeat in our search for a Moose and settled for the captive one.

Some other things about New England that we really liked were: Demillos on the Water in Portland.  Literally a restaurant on a boat in the water.  The Portland Head Light and surrounding park.  Two Lights Lobster Shack and the two actual lights that gave it its name.  The Old Port in Portland.  Two Fat Cats Bakery where, again according to Rachel Ray, the best whoopie pies are made.  And of course, the experience of three New England bed and breakfasts where everyone was super nice.  Yep, that's right.  Nice in New England :)

Anyway, here's some of my favorite pictures of our trip:

I am Grateful.

For Jesus.  For the country that I live in that despite it's current economical situation is still richly blessed.  For the freedom that I have to write whatever I want on this blog without persecution.  For my husband who loves Jesus, loves me, and respects the institution of marriage as a mirror for Christ's relationship with the church.  For my marriage in general and God's blessing on it.  For my mom who is still here, is healthy, and has hair.  For my in-laws who cleaned my house this morning.  For FOUR grandparents.  For 5 almost 6 siblings that I'm lucky enough to call my 5 almost 6 closest friends.  For the sister that I prayed for all my life.  For our health.  For animals that have been entrusted to us that have brought us so much joy.  For the children's ministry at Elevation and for the hearts of all of the people who serve in it.  For women in my life that have invested in me in my marriage and for women in my life that have invested in me in my job.  For a job that I love, and for the people who taught me how to do it.  For really smart co-workers.  For God's obvious favor in that I can do my job at all.  For a Clemson University diploma with my name on it and the little letters under my name that let me think that at some point I was reasonably intelligent.  For a house that we love and for the ability to pay our bills.  For cars, clothes, and for all of the material things that make our lives easier.  For a Holiday during which we can consciously acknowledge all of the things in our lives that should make us totally unabashedly grateful.

Living Room Addition

When we bought our house, we started thinking about upgrading to a wall mount TV, but could never decide.  Thus, the old TV has been sitting on an old quilt in our living room for the past 5 months.  So it was time for a longer term solution in the form of a TV stand from Nick and Sean's old room that his parents gave us.  So we repurposed it to fit our current living room's colors and here's the handiwork.

After we took the shelves and doors off

Taking all of the pieces apart

Sanded and Primed

Painted and put back together

And the new World Market knobs that take the place of the old bronze handles

Overall I was pretty happy with this project after it was done, but it did prove to be much more work than I had anticipated thanks to the faux wood taking a LONG time to dry in between layers, and then we couldn't get the shelves back in which ended up being alright because I think I like this piece of furniture without the shelves anyway.