The Favorite Aunt

Happy Birthday to You

2010-01-31T19:16:00.000-08:00

This post is for my hubby : ) He turns 27 years old tomorrow! I can't believe that we have been together for over 5 years now. At the same time, it's hard for me to remember my life without him in it. Walt brings so many things to my life. He brings me laughter, friendship, stability, protection, guidance, patience, perspective, dedication, and love. What a boring life I would lead without him!

Happy Birthday Walt. I'm so excited to start this new chapter in our lives together! I know this next year is going to be so important and life-changing for us, and I am so blessed to be able to experience it with you. I miss you and can't wait to celebrate with you this weekend!

Love,

Cristin Claire

Prayer Request

2010-01-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

As most of you know, I have had the joy of being pregnant with my best friend, Bekah Gannon. She is 7 weeks ahead of me and is pregnant with twin boys- Isaac and Eli. They are going through a very stressful time right now after finding out that there is a chance that Eli might not make it. Bekah goes back to the doctor in 2 weeks to see if his little heart is still beating, so PLEASE take a moment to say a special prayer that Eli's heart remains strong and he continues to grow and that Bekah and Chris (her husband) can be at peace over the next 14 days.

I am attaching an email that they wrote requesting prayers. I am a firm believer that prayer works, so please help me lift up these amazing Christian people and their babies in prayer.

email:

"Hello friends and family,

We have a special, urgent prayer request that we would like for each of you to personally pray about on our behalf, and ask your friends, families, co-workers, churches, etc. to pray for as well. We believe in the power of prayer and that God hears us when we pray.

Today we had a doctor’s appointment, with an ultrasound to check on the progress of the babies, and were given some difficult news. Basically, they aren't sure if Eli is going to make it. Eli is the smaller baby who has been giving us concern all along. There's nothing wrong with him or anything on/in his actual body; yes, he's still small, like always... but his heart they said looked "beautiful" and "perfect." (A few weeks ago they saw fluid on his heart and were concerned, but now they are saying that looks fine.)

The problem is with the placenta that is feeding him. We are little fuzzy on all the details, but basically there is some type of resistance with his placenta/umbilical cord that is causing his heart to have to work much harder than it should be. (It's equivalent to an adult having high blood pressure, basically.) This probably also has something to do with why he's so small, and has been small all along. (He's in the 4th percentile for weight.) So since his heart just has to work so hard, there's a chance it could just stop working.

Today (Tuesday) they gave me a steroid shot, and I'll go back tomorrow for another one. Then we will wait two weeks, to see if Eli has grown. He's 350 or 360 something grams right now, and he would have to be 500+ grams for the doctors to even consider taking him, and Isaac, from the womb early. The steroid shot is to help develop each of their lungs, should we be facing the decision to deliver them in two weeks. They would do this (take them early) so that Eli's heart wouldn't have to work so hard anymore. But then there are all the risks involved with delivering 26 1/2 week old babies. They did tell us, too, that there's a chance that he won't even be alive when we go back for another ultrasound in two weeks.

So really it's just a waiting game. There's nothing Bekah can do differently to change or effect what happens. This condition most likely happened at implantation. He's just big enough now that they could detect it. So in two weeks, we will just hope he's still alive; and if so, that he weighs 500 or more grams (I think that would be just over a pound), and then we would have to decide if we want to go ahead and have them delivered at 26 1/2 weeks, or continue to wait. But if we continue to wait, if Eli does weigh 500+ grams in 2 weeks, we are running the risk of Eli's heart still having to work so hard in the womb.

We don’t know exactly how to pray or what to pray for right now, but we just know that we need to give this to God. And your prayers on Eli and Isaac’s behalf would mean the world to us.

We apologize for the long email, and for sharing this news in this way. We appreciate everyone wanting to know how we are and how the babies are, but we just don’t think we can handle re-telling this news over and over. We hope you can understand that. This is all we know for now, and there won’t be any new news for 2 weeks- when we return to the doctor on Tuesday, January 26th. We promise to keep you informed as we know anything. For now let’s just all pray.

We love you,

Chris and Bekah"

IT'S A GIRL!!!!!

2010-01-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

It's official! Walt doesn't stand a chance. Our sweet little girl will have him wrapped around her finger in no time! Everything is checking out great at 15 weeks. She is at 4 ounces which is exaclty where she needs to be and her heart rate is at 146 which is smack dab in the middle of where it needs to be. We are so blessed and so very excited!

Anyone have any girl names they would like to throw out there???

Baby Malone at 9 weeks

2009-12-04T10:52:00.001-08:00

Thanks everyone for their sweet words. I am actually 11 weeks today. I am attaching the picture from our 9 week ultrasound so you can see sweet baby Malone : ) Our due date is June 20, 2010! More pictures and info to come soon!

2009-12-02T19:28:00.000-08:00

Chocolate Milk Boutique

2009-09-24T08:31:00.001-07:00

Several posts back I explained that my friend Bekah and I have been working on our new website for custom baby and children's items. Well my friends, we have finally completed the website (thanks entirely to Mindy- THANKS SO MUCH MINDY!). So, without further ado, I would like to present to you our new business- Chocolate Milk!

http://www.chocolatemilkboutique.blogspot.com/

The site is still a work in progress as there are several more projects I am currently working on and some pictures I have yet to upload (monogrammed burp cloths, a custom birthday shirt with a # 2, hand made Halloween shirts, new shots of some of our tutus, etc).... so please check back periodically for new items!

The concept behind the business is simple- decide what it is you are looking for, ask us for it, and we will make it happen! Don't know what you are looking for? We can help there too. We simply want to create custom items for your children, nieces, friends children, etc. To order, click on the email button on the right hand side of the chocolate milk site and let us know what you are looking for.

Ok- let the fun begin : )

Taylor Swift

2009-09-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

I have lived in Nashville now for over 4 years and have yet to see any stars except at a concert or award show... until Saturday that is. I finally had my first encounter with a star- and I couldn't have picked a better one to meet!

Walt and I were both in a wedding this weekend (pictures and a post to come soon on that) at the Factory in Franklin. We were in the middle of having pictures taken with the bride and groom when someone came running around the corner announcing that Taylor swift was in the building. That's all I needed to hear. The moment our shots were done, I lept up and sprinted over to the store she had been spotted in and snuck to the back of the store where she was trying on some cute and expensive coats.

Before I could get the nerve to approach her (yes, I am apparently 12 years old), one of the other bridesmaids beat me to the punch and asked her for a picture. She very sweetly obliged. As soon as they were done, I knew it was now or never. So I politely asked her with a shaky voice if she would mind one more picture. She of course agreed with a big smile, and just like that I had my picture made with Taylor Swift!

I must say that she is BEAUTIFUL in person. I have become more and more of a Taylor Swift fan lately. I have always loved her music, but I saw her when I was at the CMT awards this year and just fell in love with how genuine, sweet, humble, and hilarious she can be! And the fact that she is just as pretty on a rainy Saturday afternoon as she is on TV just makes her the total package.

And before anyone asks, yes, Walt happened to be the one to bring up the Kanye thing to her. He proceeded to tell her that she made Nashville very proud in the classy way that she reacted to Kanye's RIDICULOUS outburst. She smiled back at him, thanked him, and her words were: "I know, right? It was so crazy. I was standing up on stage like.....ooookkkkk...." Even after everything, she still didn't really have a negative thing to say about the guy. She truly is a class act.

So that's my story. Thanks to Heather for choosing such a cool venue for her wedding day. As soon as I have pictures back from that, I will be sure to post them!

Black Tie Affair

2009-09-16T08:00:00.001-07:00

I got a call up at work yesterday at 11:15 am, and this is what my husband said: "So you know how we are supposed to go to that ribbon cutting ceremony tonight for Martin Methodist? Well, I just found out it is a black tie event."

My reaction... WHAT????? I frantically say there trying to go through my closet in my mind to see if there was anything out of the 14 bridesmaid dresses that I have (okay maybe just 8 dresses) that I could pull off without looking like I was about to walk down an aisle. Lucky for Walt, we are both in a wedding THIS WEEKEND and his tux was available for him to pick up yesterday.

I left a little early and rushed home to shave my legs as quickly as possible and started the quickest process ever of trying on all of my bridesmaid dresses to see first off if I could still fit in any of them, and secondly out of the ones that did still fit, which one looked the less obvious. I decided on a sleek black dress that was floor length with a simple sash around the waist (thanks Ashley B. for picking out a dress that I literally could and did wear again : ). So one pair of spanx and a tux later and we were ready to hit the road!

Now to fill you in on what this evening was about, one of Walt's clients is Martin Methodist College in Pulaski. They just completely gutted out one of their oldest buildings, an unused gym, on campus and re-did it to be their new Fine Arts cetner. I must say, the building is absolutely beautiful! They did such an amazing job of keeping memorable parts of the old building and blending it with the new. They decided to keep the gym floor and just re-arranged it which made for the COOLEST looking hard wood floors ever! They also kept the exposed beams on the ceiling giving it such an urban, cool feel. Throw in a quaint art gallery, a concert hall, and a VERY cool custom made (by Advent may I just throw in) piano key piece that hung on the wall to show that the school is an official Steinway Accredited School, and you have the new Fine Arts Center.

Walt did all the branding and pretty elements in the whole building.....wood print, signage etc. A few shots of just the front entrance lobby is above. Gives you a small taste of what Walt does!

It was pretty snazzy, to say the least. We ate some yummy hors d'oeuvres, listened to some talented people sing and play the piano, and met some really interesting and important people! All in all I would say it was a very fun night. After all, it's not every day that you get to dress up to the nines, wonder around a new, beautiful building FULL of amazing history, eat expensive food, meet rich and important people, and hear some great entertainment!

Thanks for letting me be your date last night, Walt! I'm looking forward to our next black tie affair : )

Disney's FastPass

2009-09-01T14:08:00.000-07:00

So as a "PS" to my first Disney post on the Magic Kingdom, I thought I would write a few quick tips on Disney's FastPass (Bethany- this one's for you).

So what is a fastpass, you may ask? The ticket you use to enter in to the park is actually what you use to get a fastpass. Simply stick your ticket (whether paper or plastic) in to the fastpass machine at the ride of your choice, and out pops a paper FastPass ticket with a scheduled time on it! I found a great write up on the details of how to use it, so instead of re-inventing the wheel, here is a quick summary of how to get and use a fastpass:

Disney's FASTPASS allows guests to make 'reservations' for a popular ride to avoid waiting in long lines.

As you approach the attraction that uses the FASTPASS system, you will see three lines. One is the FASTPASS distribution line (where you get your FASTPASS ticket ), the second is the FASTPASS entrance (when you're returning to ride after making your FASTPASS reservation), and the third is the Standby entrance for guests not using FASTPASS.

The FASTPASS distribution line features a clock showing what times the tickets are being issued for. A clock with the current time is displayed outside the FASTPASS attraction entrance. The Standby line will have the current wait time posted.

Let's see how this all works. It's 11:00am and you want to go on Kali River Rapids but there's a 60 minutes wait posted outside the Standby line. You take a look at the FASTPASS distribution and see that passes are being issued with a return time of 1:00 - 2:00pm. You get your FASTPASS and instead of waiting on a one hour line, you have two free hours before coming back, bypassing the standby line and getting on Kali with little or no wait.

For the attractions, the assigned time will give you a 1 hour window to return, so you don't have to run back to be there the minute it goes into effect. With the theater attractions, you'll have a FASTPASS for a specific performance.

One thing to keep in mind, there are restrictions as to how many passes you can have at once. Your FASTPASS will have the time that you can get your next FASTPASS printed on it. (Usually this is when your current FASTPASS can be used or after two hours have elapsed.) Don't plan on going from one FASTPASS attraction to another gathering up slips. These machines are smart and won't issue another until your current pass allows it.

Every one in your party will be expected to turn in a FASTPASS at the attraction. And please don't return before your scheduled time because you will not be allowed to enter.

I think that pretty much sums up what a fastpass is and how to use it for your advantage. There are definately certain rides that I would recommend getting a fastpass to every time. In Magic Kingdom, the ones that jump out to me the most are Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Peter Pan's Flight, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin.

Now I'm not saying to NOT get a fastpass for any other rides at the Magic Kingdom as I know that lines can get lengthy at various attractions. What I am saying is that these rides almost ALWAYS have a long line, and the line usually takes as long as the wait time says. Other rides such as Pirates of the Caribbean tend to move pretty quickly and you are waiting inside in an air conditioned and themed hallway. Just FYI.

Also, this past time that we were there, a cast member told us that you can get an additional fastpass to another ride 2 hours after you got your existing fastpass. In other words, if you walk up to Space Mountain at 9:00AM and get a fastpass and your pass time is for 1:00-3:00 that afternoon (and that happens), you don't have to wait until 1:00 to get another fastpass to a different ride. In this instance, you could get a new fastpass at 11:00am. I believe the tickets now have the time a new pass is available at the bottom of them.

WHEW! Ok, so that was a bit more complicated to explain than I thought. I'm pretty sure I just said the word fastpass 50 times. The passes are not really that hard to do once you get the hang of it. I hope this has been helpful instead of confusing and lengthy. And Bethany, just email me if I have managed to scare you with this post : )

You might have the swine flu if....

2009-08-31T09:29:00.001-07:00

you wake up looking like this:

ok sorry... I thought this was too funny not to post : )

Brag Alert!

2009-08-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

For the past 6-7 months, Walt has been working with Mississippi State University on several re-branding efforts around their campus. He has absolutely fallen in love with all of the people there and they seem to have completely accepted him in to their MSU family. The biggest (and coolest in my opinion) job that he has been able to work on with them has been the re-branding of their football stadium. They spent two weeks in Starkville, MS hanging these GIANT banners of different pictures such as their new head coach Dan Mullen, several of the team members, etc.

This week the school newspaper did an article on the new banners, and they mentioned Walt! I'm so proud of him and all of his hard work over the past several months. I wanted to post the link to this article for anyone who is interested in reading it. Way to go, Walt! You have made your entire family very proud of you!

http://media.www.reflector-online.com/media/storage/paper938/news/2009/08/25/Sports/Banners.Adorn.Stadium.Redefine.Image-3756779.shtml#4

To see more pics of the banners you can go to the link below -

http://www.adventresults.com/brand-spaces/mississippi-state-bulldogs-update-look-with-stadium-banners/

and you can see some interior work of the main football offices - one of walt's first projects at MSU!

http://www.adventresults.com/brand-spaces/mississippi-state-brands-football-facilities/

Magic Kingdom

2009-08-21T06:46:00.001-07:00

What better way to begin a series of Disney World blogs than with the most classic park- Magic Kingdom.Although I am a huge fan of Hollywood Studios (formerly known as MGM), I'm not sure you can be a true Disney fan at heart and not rank Magic Kingdom as the number one park inside WDW. There's nothing like the feeling you get when you first step in to the park and begin your walk down main street (see 2 blog posts below). When you glance up and see Cinderella's castle for the first time, it is the PERFECT way to get into the magical mood that WDW radiates, therefore making this the most logical park to begin your journey. This park has an awesome mix of rides for children young and old making it in my opinion the most inviting park out of the 4 parks. The park is broken in to different sections: Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Frontierland, Adventureland, Toon Town, and Libery Square.

So without further ado, here are my ride/show recommendations for Magic Kingdom. I have also marked a couple of rides/attractions that I personally feel are not worth your time if you are pushed for time. However, if you have the time to do it all- DO IT ALL. So, let's begin.

In no particulare order, here are the MUST DO's at Magic Kingdom:

Fantasy Land (all rides for children of all ages)
- Peter Pan's Flight: One of my favorites. I recommend getting a fast pass for this one as the line is ALWAYS long.

- It's A Small World: Staple ride. You have to ride this one if nothing else than to get the song stuck in your head.

- Mad Tea Party: this is another classic for most. I personally can't handle the spinning around without getting sick. Cute idea, not for me.

- Dumbo The Flying Elephant: if you have kids, wait for this ride. It's another staple ride of Magic Kingdom.

- Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: cute ride for kids, but tends to have a pretty long line. Another Fast Pass recommendation.

- Mickey's Philharmagic: BEST ATTRACTION IN FANTASYLAND. Don't miss this one. Great way to cool off while watching an awesome 3-D show. Auditrium seats a lot of people, so line usually isn't too bad. Good option to do while waiting for a fast pass time for another ride.

- Snow White's Scary Adventures: skip (if you are short on time). This is a child's ride, yet focuses mostly on the wicked witch. Short ride= not worth the wait.

- Storytime with Belle: if you have a child that is a princess lover, this is a cute option. Belle comes out in a corner of Fantasyland and reads a story to everyone.

- Cinderella's Golden Carrousel: skip. it's a carrousel. If you love that sort of thing, do it. If not, there are way cooler things to do and see.

Tomorrowland

- Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin: do it. Very cute ride that you will want to do more than once. Check out the wait times- it varies depending on how crowded the park is. For kids of all ages

- Monsters Inc Laugh Floor: GREAT SHOW. This is an interactive show based on the movie. Very cute, original, and funny. Also seats a lot of people, so fast passes usually aren't needed.

- Space Mountain: best roller coaster in this park. There is a height limit as this is a coaster that runs completely through the dark. This is a must do if you like rides. GET A FAST PASS FOR THIS ONE.

- Stitch's Great Escape: SKIP. This is supposed to be a child's attraction- it's not. It's dark, scary, and not worth your time or your child's fears.

- Tomorrowland Indy Speedway: typical car-on-a-track ride. Fun for kids, but nothing special. SKIP if you are short on time.

- Tomorrowland Transit Authority: call me lame if you want, but I enjoy this slow moving ride through tomorrowland. Great views of the park and great way to cool down and prop your feet up.

- Astro Orbitor: Same exact ride as Dumbo minus the elephants. If you want to wait in a long ride to spin around, do this. If not, I say SKIP.

- Carousel of Progress: This is an old yet classic attraction. My family personally loves it, but its age is showing. This was one of Walt Disney's personal projects about how America has progressed over time. If you like a bit of history mixed with a catchy jingle, or to see an original Walt Disney creation, do it. Cool, relaxing, no wait.

Adventureland

- Enchanted Tiki Room: SKIP IT. Outdated, not cute or worth your time.

- Jungle Cruise: slow moving boat ride. A bit dated, but people tend to like this one. We have been known to skip this one, but if you have never been to this park before, I say do it just to see the cute theme. Kid appropriate.

- Magic Carpets of Aladdin: another "Dumbo" ride, except with flying carpets. Take that for what it's worth.

- Pirates of the Caribbean: MUST DO. Classic Disney ride that was updated with Johnnie Dep cameos after the movie came out. A favorite. Check line times. They tend to be good at getting people on this ride, but there are times that a fast pass may be necessary. Kid appropriate, yet gets dark during a couple of parts.

- Swiss Family Treehouse: not a ride or show. A lot of walking and climbing stairs. If you are a fan of the movie, this is a must do. If not, it's just a large treehouse based on the movie. We usually skip, but some never miss this one.

- Captain Jack Sparrow's Pirate Tutorial: See it. A 15 minute show with a talented Jack Sparrow look alike. Entertaining, especially if you have a younger boy with you.

Frontierland

- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad: Ride it! Fun roller coaster that is not too scary even for those non-roller coaster lovers. No loops, no major drops. Just fast, windy, and fun! There is a height limit, and a fast pass for this one is highly recommended!

- Country Bear Jamboree: SKIP it unless you have small children. This is a dated show with bears that sing and dance. Cute for kids, not so much for adults. However, if you are hot or stuck in the rain, this is a good place to take cover for a bit without a long line.

- Splash Mountain: A FAVORITE!!! This is one of if not the best ride in this park. Great theme, great ride. Be prepared to get pretty wet, though. There is a height restriction, and a fast pass it a must! Line here is almost always really bad and it's out in the hot sun!

- Tom Sawyer Island: a large "play" type area to explore. Based off the books. If you do go, look for the hidden paint brushes. If you find one, turn it in to a cast member for a prize (sometimes a fast pass to another attraction)! Just know, some people take the search for the paint brushes really seriously : )

Liberty Square

- Hall of Presidents: literally what it says it is- a show of all of our presidents. Do it if that sounds interesting to you. If you are with younger children, you may have a hard time keeping them still on this one. For what it's worth, President Obama was recently added to this attraction.

- Haunted Masnion: MUST DO! This is a ride through a dark, haunted mansion. It's not terrifying, so most children really enjoy it. However, there are some dark spots (expecially when you first walk in) and scary screams, so beware if you have small children. Line usually isn't terrible.

- Liberty Square Riverboat: 17 minute slow cruise on a big boat. Sometimes can find entertainment of characters on board. Good option if you want a break from the theme park madness. If not, SKIP.

Toon Town

I say do it all. This is a small little road that has everything from Mickey's house to a cute smaller Goofey themed roller coaster for kids. It wont' take you long to ride and see everything that Toon Town has to offer. This area is targeted at children, though, so if you don't care about seeing what Minnie's kitchen looks like (cute special affects in her kitchen)- SKIP

Main Street

Main Street is mainly shops and restaurants. There is a cute barber shop not to be missed as well as a delicious bakery. Casey's Corner has yummy hot dogs and a cute theme. The Train is found here and is a classic ride for children. Pay special attention to the neat things found in the train station!

***Other tips***

- DON'T MISS THE FIREWORKS SHOW. The Spectro Magic parade is pretty neat at night, and kids will love it! However, the fireworks show that follows is my favorite. Don't miss Tinkerbelle flying at the beginning of the show!

- Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique: this is a place for little girls to literally be transformed into a princess. They have done a great job with this, but you will pay for what you get! The ladies that do your hair are dressed like people from Cinderella's time, and they refer to each little girl as Princess (name here). They get hair, makeup, and nails done along with some magic pixie dust. Costumes are also available which are again very pricey. I recommend booking an appointment a couple of months in advance, purchasing a costume off of ebay, and having the hair and makeup treatment. It's expensive, but precious and worth it!

- Enter in to the Town Square Exposition Hall (Kodak Camera Shop) on the right immediately when you get into the park. Wind around to the very back of the store. There is a large room (that's typically empty) with several cardboar cut out photo ops as well as a large screen and theater seats to watch old classic Disney cartoons. This is an overlooked area that is super fun to see and is a great way to escape heat, rain, or just get off your feet for a while.

For other overlooked attractions, clink on the link below. This site is a great resource when you have a question about something Disney related:

http://allears.net/tp/mk/issue140.htm

So that's it! I hope that was helpful and not too much information. I will be writing about dining options in a later post, but feel free to email me at Cristingunnells@yahoo.com if you have any questions!

Update

2009-08-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

There's no excuse. I'm well aware of that. I have been beating myself up lately over the fact that I haven't put a new post on here since BEFORE MY DISNEY TRIP!!! I know everyone was on pins and needles to see how our Disney trip went after my lovely description of main street : )

To state it simply, the trip was AMAZING. Without a doubt the best Disney trip my family and I have ever taken. Everyone got along great, it wasn't too crownded, my nieces took in every moment of it, and we had enough days there to truly enjoy all of the wonderful Disney touches of each park. When I started to write this post, I was trying to concentrate on which rides, restaurants, parks, etc. of our trip that I wanted to highlight, but I quickly realized that all of the fantastic highlights of Disney World cannot be put in to one post.

My family and I tried to figure out how many times in my life that I have been to Disney World. I was blessed enough to go multiple times as a child, three times in High School with our cheerleading squad and my chorus group, I had a roomate in college that owned a house near Disney and hooked us up with free trips a couple of times, and I have a family who still feels the magic of Disney and attempts to go once every couple of years. I have helped several of my friends plan vacations and even honeymoons to Disney World recently, and I would love nothing more than to share my knowledge of "the world" with others who aren't as familiar with it. That being said, I am contemplating writing several separate posts on the best rides, restaurants, shows, and hotels that Disney World has to offer.

So saying all of that, I would like to know two things: First of all- do I still have any readers out there? Second- is there anyone out there that would be interested in reading about the best of Disney World?

If you answered yes to either of the questions above, write me a quick response. If there are no responses, no big deal. I have after all been MIA for almost 3 months now, so I probably deserve to be writing in to the great blog abyss.

I'm happy to be back posting again, but I'm sad that my vacation to the most magical place on earth has come and gone. There's nothing to do now but look forward to my next visit. Thanks for sticking with me during my hiatus. Happy Monday!

Where Dreams Come True

2009-05-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here on this slow, cold Monday morning checking corporate emails..... but all I can think about is that one week from today I will be WALKING IN TO THE MAGIC KINDGOM AT DISNEY WORLD!!!!!

Do you know how hard it is for me to concentrate right now? My mind is in over-drive thinking about first walking down Main Street. I absolutely love the smell of fresh baked cinnamon rolls and chocolate chip cookies, the bouqets of Mickey balloons everywhere, the smile on every child's face as they see Cinderella's castle for the first time, and the excitement of knowing the magic that the day has in store. So trying to focus on an Excel Spreadsheet right now is pretty difficult (needless to say).

My entire family will embark on a 8 day journey beginning on Memorial Day to visit all of the parks at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. For those of you who do not know the Gunnells Family, Disney is pretty much our heaven on earth (insert making fun of us here). We are all just grown up children. Each of us understands and appreciates the magic that Disney World brings, and we completely embrace it. We have been known to go on vacation there even before my two nieces were born, but now that they are both here (Sophie is 7 and Maddie turns 4 today) the magic has been once again renewed in all of our hearts as we watch their eyes continuously light up.

For the other Disney World fans out there, this post is not to brag or rub it in, but rather to re-awaken that Disney magic in your soul as well. So since this has been one of my cheesiest posts in a long, long time, I will end it with one of my favorite (and yes cheesiest) quotes of all time:

"A dream is a wish your heart makes

when you're fast asleep.

In dreams you lose your heartaches-

whatever you wish for, you keep.

Have faith in your dreams and someday

your rainbow will come smiling thru.

No matter how your heart is grieving,

if you keep on believing,

the dream that you wish will come true."

- Cinderella

Recent MIA

2009-05-12T07:04:00.000-07:00

So I've obviously become TERRIBLE at posting on here recently. There is actually a reason for that. Besides the fact that Walt and I are constantly on the go, I have been working on a "side project" with my best friend Bekah.

Bekah and I have been friends since the 9th grade, and we love hanging out with them! So what better way to start something on the side than with your closest friend doing something you love! We both love children and being creative, so we have decided to start a small side business doing embroidery and making children's clothing! We have been playing around with some ideas and creations over the past few months, and we are almost ready to debut our new site!

We will start off with a basic blog where we can take orders via email. But we hope to soon jump on to Etsy and possibly get in on some shows around town. I guess this is my way of beginning the hype.

Our name has been decided on, but I will wait to publicly unvail it once the finishing touches to our website/blog have been made. In the meantime, if you have any embroidery/monogramming needs for burp clothes, onesies, blankets, t-shirts, coffee travel cups, etc.... get your orders ready!!!! The machines are greased up and ready to go!

Beach!!!

2009-04-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

We had a BLAST at the beach on Easter weekend with our best friends Bekah and Chris. The four of us get along so well, which is truly a blessing. Bekah and I have been friends since the summer before our 9th grade year at MA. We have continued our friendship all these years and I feel like we are just as close now as we ever were. Walt and Chris met when Walt and I were engaged. They immediately hit it off and have been great friends ever since.

So anyways, last year the four of us decided to take a long weekend trip down to the beach. We searched prices and settled on Gulf Shores. We had such a great time last year that we decided to go again this year. So this year officially marked our 2nd annual Malone/Gannon beach trip. We even stayed in the same place as last year since we liked it so much. It's called Sanibel. It's so nice with two king size beds and individual master baths. We prefer to both get the big daddy room instead of having to flip for it, so it just works out perfect for two couples. We talked the whole weekend about how we were going to continue to take this annual trip together, babies/children and all.

The food on this trip was DELICIOUS. We seriously all over-ate. Our favorite spot (just like last year) was the Oyster House. Yum. We also enjoyed King Neptunes, Lambers, and Lulus this year. Here are a few pictures taken from our trip!

My new love and obsession.

2009-03-24T18:52:00.000-07:00

I can’t remember what life was like before the dyson.

I have obsessed over this thing for the past 2 years while we managed with a JOKE of a vacuum cleaner. Ahhhh – she was worth the wait. If anyone is looking to purchase a new vacuum, I definitely recommend looking at the refurbished ones, waiting it out for an awesome deal, or both while harassing a manager and working out a killer deal like my husband did. Either way you get one, it is so worth it. You wouldn’t believe what you are living on top of, until you see it all collected in a tiny plastic container.

We love this man.

WATERMARK

2009-03-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

Many of you know, that for our 2 year anniversary Walt was at Mississippi State University working on a VERY large deal with the new head football coach Dan Mullen. Very exciting, but he’s been having to travel quite a bit, so of course it was tough being apart. However it was totally redeemed when he took me to one of the best restaurants in Nashville called Watermark. I would recommend this to ANYONE and EVERYONE! It was some of the best food which included a signature grit soufflé, porkchops, a fillet you could cut with a fork, and of course something extremely chocolaty. It was amazing! Also I was given a sweet reminder from our tiffany blue wedding that you’ll have to ask me about in person. It was a wonderful 2 year Anniversary. Even more in love than we were 2 years ago!!

Twilight on blu-ray

2009-03-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

Look what Walt got me for our date night....

So excited!

Fireproof and He's Just Not That In To You

2009-03-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

Fireproof- What a great movie. Walt and I have had the privileged to watch this movie twice now and have loved it both times! This is a movie that EVERY married couple, no matter what age, should see. I think that the movie was amazing considering that the only experienced actor or actress was Kirk Cameron (he did awesome). The movie was sold out almost everywhere the first week it went to video. It makes me happy to know that there are still so many people out there who want to see a movie based on Christ and having the Lord present in marriages.

He's Just Not That In To You- I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I LOVED most of the movie. Precious actors/actresses (especially the main character Gigi), hilarious, good story line, and somewhat realistic. Which leads me to the other side- it was almost a bit too realistic. SPOILER ALERT- the storyline of the guy that had the affair on his wife... that was hard to watch. You just hear of stories like this all the time, and imagining being the wife going through that was just plain hard to watch. Obviously, I pray that never happens in my marriage. But none the less, I have several people in my life who have experienced affairs in some way, shape, or form. Without that part of the movie, I loved the movie! I can't say that I still didn't like it, though, because in the end, they didn't end up together after all : ) That made me happy. Regardless, I would give the movie an A and say that it is a must see. Just be prepared for some hard parts...

My Best Friend

2009-03-03T14:03:00.001-08:00

My Best Friend

Two years ago today, I walked down the aisle,
Dressed just like a princess, I couldn’t help but smile.

Two years ago today, flowers covered the stage.
My favorite songs were playing, my dad gave me away.

Two years ago today, I hugged my mom and my dad,
Though tears streamed down their faces, I knew they were not sad.

Two years ago today, my sisters held me by the hand.
One held my bouquet for me, the other his wedding band.

Two years ago today, I embraced my new name.
I said goodbye to my childhood, for I would never be the same.

Two years ago today, God blessed me more than words.
He granted me a husband who I do not deserve.

Two years ago today, I joined another life to mine.
We said our “I do’s, hands shaking, fingers entwined.

Two years ago today, I became the happiest girl I know
With each day that passes, our love steadily grows.

Two years ago today, I knew we’d be together until the end.
For our love lasts through laughs and trials. I married my best friend.

Word to the Wise

2009-02-16T07:10:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I was trying my very best to find a parking spot at a place I have a love/hate relationship with here in Nashville called Baja Burrito. If you live here, then you already know what I am referring to. They have excellent food. Period. It's a build your own burrito, taco, salad, etc. type atmosphere. So where does the hatred part come in, you might be asking? Well lets just say that whoever decided to open this place didn't really take in to consideration the fact that people would be DRIVING A CAR to get there. The parking is probably the worst in Nashville. It's like winding through a tiny maze to find a spot, which is never available, and to top it off, the small side streets surrounding the place are ONE WAYS!!! Not to mention that once you get inside, there is literally only a small handful of tables. So there's a good chance you won't find a table at all, and an even better chance that you will be sitting at one long table with about 8 other people who you have never seen before. Yes, it's one of those places. So one must mentally prepare themselves before deciding to adventure to the Baja, and must also ask themselves, is the food really worth it? Well, last week for me, it was. I had a craving- what can I say?

Jump to last Thursday. I called my hubby to ask if he would like to join me for a mid-morning lunch at the trendy taco house. As I waited patiently with my blinker on for the hipyy "I'm so cool" Vandy chicks to finish their conversation about which latte flavor is better, or what type of doctorine they were hoping to get, a crazy haired looking lady approached my vehicle, knocked on my window, and proceeded to tell me that I was holding up traffic and needed to pull over my car. Ummm, ok... how do you propose I do that, crazy lady, since there was a car literally blocking me in from every angle. And by the way, who the heck asked you? Maybe if you took as long to get ready in the morning as you do butting your face in to other people's business, you would be able to control the sad excuse you call a hairdo. I understand that I was in that area of town where the un-norm is welcomed, but you are in your fifties and if someone asked me what color your hair was, I'm not sure I could answer them. Go take a shower first, then come back and talk to me about where I need to park my car and how I need to do it.

Ok. I'm done. Sorry, that just REALLY got under my skin. I am not built to approach random strangers and tell them what they should or should not be doing.

So now that I've spoken my peace about it, I will say one thing on her behalf. Yes, maybe I waited too long for the girls to decide to pull out of their spots, and maybe I could have moved my car a couple of feet to the right to not block oncoming traffic before I was blocked in on all sides. I honestly just didn't expect those girls to be THAT RUDE. In fact, as one of the girls was leaving, she literally, honestly pulled her hair down over her face as she was getting in her car so that she wouldn't have to make eye-contact with me. I'm serious. So why was I the one getting yelled at?

So the moral to this story, children, is beware of the parking situation at Baja Burrito before visiting. As it turns out, they own all 5 buildings surrounding them, so feel free to park in any of the lots surrounding. This came from the owner who literally almost found me in tears as I was attempting to back in to a way too small spot. The end.

Twilight

2009-01-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

I have never been a reader. I was one of those kids that thought that reading was for nerds. I made fun of all of those Harry Potter obsessed weirdos constantly. Even when I was "forced" to read books each summer for school, I always managed to sneak the movie in or read enough about it online to ace my summer reading tests. Reading was simply not for me.

Fast forward to a year ago. I made my first move up in VF. I became a National Account Coordinator which required a decent amount of travel all over the United States- alone. After my first two trips to LA, I realized that there is only so far that an ipod and US weekly magazine will get you. After I had exhausted those options, I was begging for an alternative method of passing by time. It was then that my sister-in-law (shout out to Ashley) really sat me down and told me to trust her on the Harry Potter thing. The first book is only a couple hundred pages. How bad could it really be?

So it began. I finished the first three Harry Potter books in about 2 months. I literally couldn't put them down. I looked forward to plane rides where I could dive in to the book of the moment with no other distractions like cleaning the house or working out. It didn't take me too much longer to finish the next 4 books, even though they each contain around 500 pages a pop. I wondered if I would only enjoy that particular series and return to my hatred towards reading once I finished them.

Scene: Christmas Day. I open a present from the same sis-in-law, Ashley, to find the entire set of the Twilight series. I had heard so much about these books and knew that most HP fans enjoyed this series as well. It just so happened that we left the next day for Barbados, giving me the perfect opportunity to dive right in.

As you have probably already guessed, I'm obsessed. The books are awesome. They leave you with the same type of feeling that the HP books did. You literally think about the characters throughout your day. I began reading on Christmas Day and I am now about 3/4ths of the way through the third book. That's sad. I will be leaving on a work trip to New Orleans on Thursday, travelling alone. I think you can all guess what is in store for me once I arrive at the airport.

So that's it. Now you can all make fun of me. I deserve it after all of the nasty things I said about my fellow readers before I jumped on the band wagon.

Hello. My name is Cristin Malone, and I am addicted to Twilight.

Bragging Rights

2009-01-12T11:12:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to write a brief post to brag on how amazing and thoughtful my husband is. Today as I was sitting in a lengthy Monday morning meeting, I heard my name being paged over the intercom. Apparently I had a delivery at the front desk. I was expecting to find a taped up box with Trade Show leftovers in it, so you can imagine my suprise when I saw sitting in front of me a huge bouquet of 2 dozen roses! Apparently these are "just because" roses. On days like today I realize just how blessed I am. So Walt- thank you so much for everything you are to me.

Ok- no more sappyness. Thanks for bearing with me.

A Traditional and Tropical Christmas

2009-01-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

This Christmas began as a very traditional one. We spent all day Christmas Eve and most of Christmas day with my family in Huntsville. We played games, ate yummy foods, exchanged tons of gifts, and just spent time together. Santa Clause was very good to me too! I love that he still visits even though I am 26 years old! We left mid afternoon on Christmas day to head to Montgomery where we exchanged gifts with Walt's family. Once again we ate some yummy food (steaks for the second time that day) and Walt's family did WAY too much for me for Christmas. Ashley gave me the entire Twilight series (a post on that to come)! Mr. and Mrs. Malone also spoiled me rotten as usual. Thank you SO MUCH to all of my family members for all of the wonderful presents! I'm so blessed to be able to spend the holidays with you all!

The day after Christmas we left Montgomery with the Malones to head to Atlanta. After spending a relaxing night in the airport hotel, we left bright and early on Saturday morning and flew directly in to Barbados for a full week of pure paradise. Literally words could not describe how amazing this trip was! We did everything from swimming with sea turtles to renting a car and sightseeing the island for a day to a Barbados BBQ on the beach complete with fire and limbo pros! It was by far the most tropical and beautiful place I have ever seen. Straight off of a postcard. I have attached 10 pics below to give somewhat of an idea, but I have a ton more on Facebook if any of you out there care to see them.

So all in all I think it's safe to say this was by far one of the best Christmases ever. It's hard sitting in my office right now thinking about all of the amazing memories that were just made.

The gals on the trip: Mrs. Malone, Emerson, me, Charity, and Ashley.

This was Bathsheeba beach- my favorite on the island! Such a natural beauty!

An old church from the 1600's that overlooked the ocean. They have a very strong history and culture there.

An amazing site near the sugar cane farms. The picture was taken right off of one of their roads.

Banana trees! There were fields and fields of them, including little monkeys running wild!

Peaceful Paradise!

Lobster Alive- a precious restaurant right on the beach where you literally pick out a live lobester for them to cook up and serve you! Mr. malone is holding up a piece of his!

Me and Precious Emerson. We bonded.

The view of the beach at our hotel. Simply amazing.

Aiden with his cute little smile : ) He LOVED the water and sand!

Me and Walt at Crane Beach- ranked in the top 10 most beautiful beaches on earth.

Elf on the Shelf

2008-12-17T08:41:00.000-08:00

Christmas traditions are the best. This year Walt and I decided to venture out and try a new one- even though we don't have any children. Lets face it- when it comes to Christmas time, I totally revert back to a child at heart. So that being said, when we were at Gatlinburg in October, we spotted the book Elf on the Shelf. My sister said she had heard it was really cute and that we should grab it while we could (apparently the book was almost sold out everywhere last year). So we gave in and purchased it along with the little vintage/retro looking stuffed elf that came with it. I am all about some vintage stuff these days, so I was ready to buy the elf alone without the book.

Fast forward to last week. We remembered our three month old purchase and decided to pull the little guy and the book out. I literally made Walt sit on the floor with Lola as I read the book aloud. IT IS ADORABLE!!!! We loved every minute of it! I honestly can not wait to have a family where the elf is part of our yearly Christmas traditions! The book is basically about an elf who comes out the day after Thanksgiving every year and watches over all children during the day. At night while everyone is sleeping, he reports back to Santa if the kids were good or bad that day. Each morning he returns to a new place in the house- so the children wake up every morning eager to find his new hiding place. It's up to you to name him and everything! It really is an adorable idea and our little elf is currently sitting above our fireplace.

I'm thinking this book will be the basis of the next big Christmas movie!!!!

Christmas Countdown

2008-12-10T19:21:00.000-08:00

I hate that I have been so busy lately, I haven't had a single Christmas post yet. That is really not like me at all. So withou further ado, I am going to list the top five Christmas movies that I WILL be watching this season, followed by the list of Christmas songs I can't get enough of!

5. 8 Crazy Nights- ok I need to put a side note here. I HATE this movie. It is, however, one of Walt's favorites.... so unfortunately I will have to sit through it : (
4. Smokey Mountain Christmas- no laughing please. Yes, I realize that this may be one of the cheesiest movies ever created, but I love me some Dolly and this movie reminds me of my sisters and growing up!
3. Home Alone- I'm not usually the biggest advocate for this movie. However, this year I have been somewhat "craving" watching it since it has made my list of favorite Christmas songs!... see below.
2. Elf- who doesn't love this one?
1. Polar Express- no competition as to which movie made my number 1 pick. It is without a doubt the most amazing Christmas movie ever.

Walt and I did rent Fred Clause and enjoyed it. We saw Christmas with the Kranks last year... it was okay but I think my parents would like it more than we did. Christmas Vacation is another favorite of ours and as long as we have the time, we will fit it in! I would love to watch It's a Wonderful Life if time permits as well.

Now on to the songs. The following list are just a few of my favorite Christmas songs this year. And it will be obvious, as Walt says, that I am apparently still stuck in the 80's.

- Polar Express Soundtrack- my all time favorite : )
- Amy Grant- she has really stepped it up in my book this year. I love her classic Christmas album from the 80's, but this year I'm really liking Breath of Heaven, Grown Up Christmas List, and my new favorite from her new CD- I Need a Silent Night
- Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers Christmas CD- LOVE Greatest gift of all and the last song on the album... not sure of the name. But the entire CD is great and makes me so happy
- Alabama Christmas- classic
- Silent Night- Sinnead O'Connor (amazing)
- All I Want for christmas is You- Mariah Carey
- War is Over
- theme from Home Alone
- Baby It's Cold Outside
- Blue Christmas- Elvis
- 2000 Miles- The Pretenders
- Christmas Wrapping- The Waitresses (random but fun)

So these are my random, fun lists. I'm sure I have left off some that are classics to you, and I would LOVE to add to my list! Please tell me which movies and/or songs should go in to our yearly rotation!

Updates

2008-11-24T09:26:00.001-08:00

Since it has officially almost been a month since my last post, I have a ton to update on. Instead of doing a long drawn out explanation of what all we have been up to over the past few weeks, I will allow the pictures below to do it for me! One thing to comment on, however, is that as scary as it is, my husband makes somewhat of a pretty woman : )

Fun morning at Lovelace Cafe with Chris and Bekah.

Walt and I under the Lovelace sign. Mmmmm, best hashbrown casserole ever!

Ok, after you get over the initial shock of seeing Walt this way, he is actually kind of pretty... weird.

So hopefully this picture will explain the one above- we were Elvis and Pricilla for Halloween.

Our good friend Matthew graduated from Police Academy. Here are some of the gals that attended his graduation. Good friends!

And here is the man of the night himself- Office Mehaffey. We love these kids!

Heather (Officer Mehaffey's girlfriend) threw him a graduation party complete with yummy smores! We enjoyed these way too much...

I have a hard time roasting marshmellows without catching them on fire... but have fun doing it none the less!

We took a road trip to ATL to see Angels and Airwaves and Weazer in concert. It was awesome! Here is a pic of me and Walt in our hotel room, which was also awesome!

Walt, me, and my sister Laurie right before the concert began.

Best Birthday Ever!!!

2008-10-30T12:37:00.001-07:00

I had such a fantastic birthday this year! I honestly felt more blessed than I have in a long time. My birthday was actually this past Tuesday. I actually took off work on Monday to enjoy a long weekend and a day all to myself. Walt got home a little early and we hung out for a while. Around 5:30 or so he said he had gotten a call from two of our friends who apparently wanted us to meet them for a quick dinner. We have a really good Mexican restaurant right across the street from our neighborhood, so I got ready as quickly as I could and we hopped on over. Much to my "surprise," there sat a huge group of our friends who were there for a surprise birthday dinner for me! It was sooo sweet, and so much fun! It truly got my birthday off to an awesome start.

Tuesday morning at work, my co-workers threw me a little birthday breakfast complete with donuts and bagels from Panera Bread!!! They also all went in together and got me a gift card to my favorite store- Forever 21!!!!!!!!!!!! I was soooo pumped about it all day. My sweet friend/co-worker Rachel also took me to a fabulous lunch at Jacksons. We had such a great time. As soon as Rachel and I were pulling back in to the office parking lot, I spotted my sister who had brought me a cupcake from the most amazing cupcake place in Nashvile- Gigi's! It was the sweetest thing!

Tuesday night was set aside for me and Walt to have a nice dinner. He took me to Stoney River, which I must say was by far one of the best meals I have had in a LONG time! I got the coffee cured steak which was to die for, and we also got a whiskey shrimp appetizer and chocolate cake for dessert!

As if my day couldn't get anymore special, Walt topped it off by showering me with presents including the much longed for Chi hair straightner, Chi hair dryer, and brand new amazing coffee grinder/maker! He did SUCH an amazing job and spoiled me like he always does : )

A huge thanks to Walt for everything he did to make my day so special. Another thanks to Laurie for checking in on me Monday, attending my party when she didn't know a soul, and bringing me a delicious cupcake all the way to my office!

I am truly blessed with my family and my very sweet friends who went out of their way to make me feel so great. Shout out to the Malone family for surprising me a couple of weeks ago with a birthday cookie and some amazing presents! I love yall!!!

Here are some pics from the party:

The Great Smoky Mountains

2008-10-14T07:08:00.001-07:00

My Aunt, Uncle, three cousings, and their families......

Alan (brother-in-law), Walt, and my cousin Jil's husband Zach making a super weird face....

Maddie, Sophie, and 2 of Jil's children- Layla and Max.

Precious Maddie Lynne. There was a random guy with a parrot and she did so well holding it!

One of my cousin Jennifer's daughter named Piper, Layla again, and Maddie Lynne.

Most amazing grandparents ever!!!! I love you grandmother and grandaddy!!!

Grandmother and Grandaddy with all 10 kids! (Again, all under the age of 6)

Me, Laurie, and Walt- the only ones without kids. We spent alot of time hanging out together and also helping with the fifty babies.

Me and Laurie at Cade's Cove where we had our family picnic. It was beautiful! We saw so many deer!!!

Our family picture in front of the Flap Jack Pancake house... yummy!

This past weekend was the first family reunion my family has had in almost 10 years! We actually managed to get every memeber of my mom's side of the family and our side of the family in two cabins up in Gatlinburg- including 10 children under the age of 6!!! As you can imagine, there was never a dulle moment. It was so much fun getting to catch up with my family. We very rarely get to see them (it has almost been 3 years since I have seen a couple of them) and always enjoy our time together acting goofy. My mom has one sister and both her and her sister each had 3 girls. It wasn't until the oldest cousin had her first child that we introduced a boy into the family. Now there are actually 4 boys in our family and they are so hilarious! Of course the Gunnells side of the family is still a girls only family- hopefully one day Walt and I can break that : )

We did come away with one rather hilarious story from the weekend. We all thought it would be a great idea to pack everyone up and head into Pigeon Forge to try out the Jurassic Park boat ride. The sign said that it was calm enough for kids and the prices quoted on the sign went all the way down to 2 year olds. All of the little boys seemed so excited to see the big dinosaurs and ride in a boat. The girls, on the other hand, had to have a little motivational speech before agreeing to hop on the ride. After persuading each of them that this was a friendly and safe ride where the dinosaurs were all sweet and calm, we got all of the kids on the boat. The moment the doors shut behind us I knew we had all made a mistake. The lights immediately went out and all you could hear was some growling coming from the shadows. I could suddenly hear about 8 children starting to question what was going on and getting a little worried tone in their voices. A few moments later, one spotlight came and shown in the face of this huge terrifying dinosaur which was thrusting at us while growling a very hungry sounding growl. As soon as the light went off and our boat crept forward, every child in that boat was screaming bloody murder. It was a totaly distater. Ten minutes of scary dinosaur sounds, scenes, and blackouts later we were exiting the ride and trying to calm down 8 kids at once. Everyone waiting in line on the outside suddenly took a step back to ponder whether or not they dares enter the boat. i'm sure it was a sight to see.

All in all though we had some great food and a ton of fun. Word to the wise- do not eat at Fanny Farkels. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. Just remember the name and to stay far far away.

One last shout out to Jillina and Mark- thanks so much for letting us invade your Sunday afternoon to meet the newest member of the family. Little Andrew is such a doll and William is as cute as ever!!! Also, sorry for the pictures being at the top of the page before the write up. I'm having issues with blogger today.

I hate this picture of me but Sophie looks so cute I couldn't resist!!!

The infamous terrifying boat ride! DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!! PS- this pic was taken before we entered. Notice the children are still smiling.

One last shot of me, Laurie, and Walt

XXI Forever

2008-10-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

So one of my favorite stores here in Nashville is Forever 21. I know it is a chain but we didn't have one in Huntsville, so I was thrilled when I moved here and had one right down the road from me. Anyway, my sister called me this week and told me that they just opened a new store in Opry Mills and that it is the size of a department store!!!!! I'm so excited! I work about 5 minutes from Opry Mills, so I'm pretty sure overall this will end up being bad news for me : ) My first official visit will be on my lunch break tomorrow.... wish me luck.

NEW ORLEANS!!!!

2008-09-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

Several weeks back I had a work trip to New Orleans, so Walt came out for the weekend to visit and we made the most of our time. We had a blast together as always and wanted to post a few pictures!

It's Time

2008-09-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I really REALLY need a vacation. It hit me this morning as I had my 5th panic attack of the day that I have not had an actual vacation where I took off work at all this year. I have actually made it to the end of September without taking a much needed break. My job has gotten continously more and more stressful, and my brain is starting to surrender. That being said, it is not very easy finding a free week where I'm not already scheduled to do something important with work as well as a free weekend where both Walt and I are free. I think I have managed to find one weekend before November hits that would possibly work. However, finding a location has proven to be more difficult than I had imagined. We need to go somewhere that doesn't cost an arm and a leg to get there. And as much as I would love to go somewhere beachy, we will be going on a vacation the day after Christmas with Walt's family to a very beachy location. So that being said, we would like to stray away from any ocean-based locations (although if worse comes to worse I will totally go to Gulf Shores, cold or not).

So my question to you out there still reading this poor excuse of a blog is where can we go??? If you are kind enough to leave a suggestion, please do not include anywhere near Atlanta, Chattanooga, or Memphis, as we have exhausted those and they no longer go under our vacation umbrella.

New Camera!

2008-09-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

Anyone looking to buy a new little point and shoot digital camera in the next little bit needs to hear a shout out for the Canon SD Series of cameras. For a small point and shoot camera they really are the best out there. Since Walt and I got married we've used his 4.0 digital camera which was about 6 or so years old when digital cameras first came out....so needless to say this is something we've been wanting for a long time and we were thrilled when we heard a knock at the door tonight and it was the UPS man! After doing months of research and debating on what style camera to get, (thought we'd hold off for one of the big SLR's till we have kids) we decided on the Canon Powershot SD Series and actually went with the model SD890 IS. We love it!!! It's tiny - has all the cool features of the other powershots - color swap, image stabilizer, face detection, but the best part is it's 5x zoom and 10.0 mega pixels!! Very affordable! Just thought I'd share and encourage everyone to check them out!!

Tiger in Training

2008-09-05T08:53:00.001-07:00

These shots were taken at the first home game in Auburn last weekend. I must admit, Sophie makes one adorable Auburn fan : )

Cheese!!!!
the game is sooooo intense....

Future Auburn Cheerleader
Can't get close enough to the action!

The Fam

2008-08-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

I miss my family. I don't see them enough. My sister went home last weekend and took a few pictures. I have found myself looking at these pictures almost daily longing to see my precious nieces!!!! So instead of having to find the email she sent me and click on each attachment, I am going to post them on my blog so that I can now just click on my blog site to see them.

On a seperate note- this weekend is the Malone Family Reunion. This is actually the very first year that we will not be having the reuinion in Mississippi where their family is from. That being said, we needed a new location to meet up with Mrs. Malone's side of the family. After a few brainstorming sessions, I mentioned a place called Double Head. After much debate, everyone decided to try it out! Now I'm really nervous about it since it was my suggestion and I haven't been to the place since I was in High School! Wish us luck and hopefully I will have pictures to post as soon as we get back.....

little Maddie Lynne....

Maddie and LaLa

Big sister Sophie and Maddie. I can't believe Sophie is in the 1st grade this year!!!!

Fun Weekend at the Malones!

2008-07-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

Ticket

2008-07-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, I just received my second ticket this morning in the past month. That’s right, two. Dos. Deux. 1 + 1. So let me set the stage for this pleasant little story.

About a month ago around 7:30am, I was pulled over for an expired tag- let me just add here that my tag had not even been expired for a month. The expiration date was May and it was the very beginning of June. Warning? No way! The police officer was nice enough to book me on two offenses: expired registration and metro sticker law. What the heck is a metro sticker law??? So after spending two weeks of figuring out how to pay the ticket and how much I truly owed, I finally got that taken care of last week. And on a separate note, my husband actually went a full year with an expired tag and was NEVER pulled over for it.

Then, this morning as I was driving around the corner on Briley Parkway, a police officer who was standing on the ground near his motorcycle pointed at the car in front of me to the left and the car in front of me to the right and motioned to them to “slow down” by pushing his arms furiously up and down in an MC Hammer style dance move. Just as soon as he had finished his little jive, he looks back at me, points in my direction, and waves for me to pull over. My mind is racing as I try to figure out why in the world I would be pulled over out of three cars, me driving behind the other two. The ever so sweet officer told me I was going 55 in a 45 and was the closest one to him, so therefore I got the ticket. Wow. What a lucky day for me.

Let me just add to this lovely story that I haven’t received a speeding ticket since I was in my teens. I am the one who is literally afraid to get anywhere near 80 on the interstate. I am also the one who is married to a somewhat reckless driver who is oblivious to most driving laws yet NEVER gets pulled over!!! I seriously think I am one of the most unlucky people ever.

Wedding Season

2008-07-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

It has obviously been weeks since my last post. The number one reason for this is the wedding season. Weddings have suddenly taken over my life. I have had to take off a total of 3 vacation days to participate in weddings already this summer. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE weddings and I LOVE being there for my friends, but I must admit that it is slowly but surely wearing me down. In fact, last weekend I was in a wedding and I suddenly got sick out of nowhere. I honestly felt like I had the flu- which immediately made me flashback to our honeymoon and literally start freaking out. I’m not exactly sure what I had, but 6 days and 24 pills later and I’m feeling MUCH better.

Since I have been taking off so much work for these weddings, when I arrive at work during the week I am so behind and spend most of my days playing catch up and sitting in meetings- hence the lack of new posts recently. So I say all this to say that this weekend is my last wedding until December!!! Another one of my bridesmaids, Misty, is getting married in Oxford, AL this weekend and I’m on my way there after work today. I’m extremely excited for her and hope that I can muster up enough energy to prove that to her over the weekend. I just keep telling myself, “one more weekend.” Did I mention that I could totally be the girl in 27 dresses by this point in time?

I’d like to take this time to thank Walt for being so supportive over the last few weeks during this crazy madness, and I would also like to thank Lola for being such a good sport through all the traveling….

The Happening

2008-06-17T06:36:00.000-07:00

M. Night Shyamalon. Most people recognize this man by his name alone. He has made some of the most intense movies I have ever seen- The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village, etc. Therefore, when Walt and I saw the preview for his latest movie, the Happening, we knew we just had to see it. We were able to squeeze a matinee in this past weekend, and to say I was suprised would be putting it lightly. The movie is about some weird happening going on where everyone is killing themselves. Don't worry- the previews tell you that. It's really weird because you don't know exactly what's going on, what is causing this, and how it starts and stops. The storyline is a good mystery for a while. The only thing that I will say is that it is by far the goriest movie I have ever seen. Some of the killing/death scenes are literally unbearable. Of course Walt loved it. It was intense and hard to watch, and without giving anything away I will say that I believe it ended up being quite the political movie.

The one thing that is cool about all of his movies is that they always have an underlying story behind them: example of this would be how Mel Gibson found God again at the end of Signs. The same is true for the Happening. There is another story within the story that is pretty entertaining.

So I guess the question is, would i recommend it? Well, it is M. Night Shyamalon's first rated R movie, and it ABSOLUTELY deserved that rating. If you are looking for a suspenseful movie with a LOT of hard scenes to sit through, this is the one for you. If you are among the weak of heart, I would not recommend it. I for one will probably always watch his movies because I am a fan. In turn, I won't be sleeping easily for the next few nights.....

Hope Floats

2008-06-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

Last night Walt had a guys night with some of his buddies from church. Usually when this happens, the girls also have a night together where we end up talking all night. However, last night each of the girls had somewhere to be and something to do, so we all just did our own thing. I, however, ended up having nothing to do. Therefore, I put on my PJ's, heated up some leftovers, and plopped down on the couch with little Lola to watch some TV- something I rarely get to do. Of course there was absolutely nothing on since it is summertime. After channel surfing and watching parts of shows that I am too embarassed to mention, I came across the movie Hope Floats. I decided to watch about 20 minutes or so until a commercial and then head upstairs for a nice long bath. About an hour later I found myself totally engrossed in the 90's movie and weaping like a small child. I can honestly say that I haven't cried that hard in a long time! The scene was hilarious- me sitting on the couch in the dark, wiping my tears on my t-shirt, Lola looking at me totally confused, and a wad of tissues in my hand. It's been a long time since I have sat down and cried at a girly movie. It's a great movie, just so depressing at times! At the end of the movie, scenes are showing while Sandra Bullock's voice comes on. She says the following line which was actually my senior quote in our yearbook and something that I constantly refer to:

“Beginnings are scary. Endings are usually sad, but it's what's in the middle that counts. So, when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will.”

Things I'm Currently Thankful For

2008-06-09T08:39:00.001-07:00

Since my last, much more depressing post, I have developed a new attitude and would like to share the things I am currently thankful for:

- my husband
- my friends
- my new small group at church
- the 2 year old class i'm helping teach on Wednesday nights
- my job and the new opportunities that are coming from it
- Walt's new job!!!!!!
- the face that although we complain about it a lot, at the end of the day we can afford to fill our cars up with gas
- the fact that both me and Walt have nice cars
- a beautiful house with new shudders (pictures of shudders to hopefully come soon!)
- a stimulus check that should be in the mail any day now!
- the two cute new pair of shoes that I got over the weekend
- my new found excitement to study the Bible and discover MY own true beliefs about God's word and why I believe the way I do
- my parents successful mission trip to Honduras and their safety
- my sister's safe return from NYC
- the fact that I still have two healthy grandparents that have been married for over 60 years and who are the perfect examples of living each day for the Lord
- Beautiful hot sunny days
- the new laptop i'm about to get through work
- my friends that are all about to get married
- my precious nieces and nephew
- the AMAZING family I married in to
- my two sisters, my brother-in-law, and my parents
- tickets to go see Les Miserables this September at the FOX Theater
- the possibility of going on another brief vacation this August
- little Lola Belle
- the desire to go home and clean my house tonight
- God's creation
- my family's, my husband's, and my own health

I could literally go on all day. I'm not sure if anyone out there has been praying for me since my last gloomy post, but I must admit that I have a whole new attitude this morning and I'm feeling so incredibly blessed and thankful for the life I have! I literally need to read the words of the old song "Count Your Blessings" when I'm feeling gloomy. It's kind of hard to feel down and out when you sit down and think about all the things you have to be thankful for. Sorry for the deep posts lately. More recipes and pictures of the house/Lola to come next!

Things I am currently missing.....

2008-06-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

- Being at the beach with our best friends

- Having a low stress job

- Having free time outside of work to do something fun and for me!

- Being skinny and feeling good about myself

- Having a clean house

- My husband= I haven't seen him in over 24 hours due to a work trip gone bad

- My nieces and nephews.... all 4 of them!

- My mom and dad= they are on a 9 day mission trip to Honduras

- HAVING A SUMMER VACATION!!!!

- College days. I had no clue how easy I had it during those 4 years.

- A close group of girlfriends that I share everything with.

- Motivation to work and succeed in the workplace

- Motivation to work on decorating my house. Now that we have our shutters, I will probably wait another 3 months before doing anything else.

- The stupid stimulus check from the government that we still haven't gotten!

- Sleeping in

- My old boss

- Being able to eat whatever I want whenever I want without seeing a change in my body

- My grandparents. I am feeling more and more everyday like I need to be spending as much time as possible with them. They have been such an important part of my life!

- And last but not least, I'm apparently missing my positive attitude. I'm feeling as gloomy today as the weather outside. Here's to trying to start this day over again with a new attitude!

LOST

2008-05-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

So as most of you know, I am an avid LOST fan and last night was the Season Finale.... insert tear drop here. Last year's Season Finale was without a doubt that best show that I had ever seen on television as far as it being entertaining and FULL of surprises! Last night's Season Finale did not compare. Grant it, it was good and had a few random surprises in it, but overall, I found myself a little disappointed in some of the lengths they went to in it. I won't go into detail just in case someone out there hasn't seen the episode, but I'm just flat out undecided as to whether or not I am happy with last night's episode. Did anyone else out there see it? If so, what did you think???

Update on Walt

2008-05-20T13:35:00.001-07:00

Walt begin his first day at his new job yesterday! He officially no longer works for Comdata. He is now working in the Sales department for a company called Advent, which by the way is a super cool company! They are a Christian based company that is very family-oriented and encourages things like Mission trips! The people that work there are all very friendly and outgoing. I feel like he is going to fit right in! It's basically a Trade Show/Marketing company. If you are bored, take a moment to look at their site- it will show you how interesting they are! The site is http://www.adventresults.com/. I believe there are around 25 people or so that work there, so it's small, yet big enough for him to grow! I'm soooooo excited for him!

As far as any other updates- wedding season is absolutely in full swing. I had a shower last weekend and another coming up the last weekenf of this month. Walt and I are leaving for Gulf Shores this Thursday to take a much needed vacation with our best friends Bekah and Chris. I haven't been to the beach in over 3 years : ( I will hopefully have some fun pictures to post on here when we get back!

Seinfeld

2008-05-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday Walt and I went to the sold out Seinfeld concert for the second time! He was SO HILARIOUS! I must admit, before we got married I wasn't the biggest Seinfeld fan in the world. However, Walt is pretty much obsessed. He owns every Season on DVD and insists on going to see him whenever he is anywhere close to Nashville. As walt says, he is a part of history. He has definately grown on me. Anyone that can just walk out onto the stage and get the crowd laughing just by his entrance is a pretty successful comedian in my book. Literally from begining to end we were laughing out loud. He was very clean for the MOST part, only have a cuss word every now and then. He never got perverted or anything like that, which is a huge relief to me. He just kept us rolling, so we had an absolute blast! I highly recommend seeing him if he ever comes to a theater near you!

Yummy Muffins

2008-04-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

This weekend my in-laws came to visit us. We had so much fun! I absolutely love getting to spend time with them. While they were here, I wanted to whip something simple up for breakfast just in case anyone felt like eating on Saturday morning before we hit the town. I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com (my favorite recipe website) and just had to share! It's sooo simple, uses mostly things you have on hand, and tastes GREAT! Even Mr. Malone sat down and ate 2 muffins Saturday morning, and he never eats breakfast!

This recipe is for Banana Muffins. I've never really been one to eat muffins unless they had chocolate chips in them, but these are very moist and yummy. I think I will try this recipe as banana bread next time. Try them out and let me know what you think!

INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large bananas, mashed
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup butter, melted

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Coat muffin pans with non-stick spray, or use paper liners. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
Combine bananas, sugar, egg, and melted butter in a large bowl. Fold in flour mixture, and mix until smooth. Scoop into muffin pans.
Bake in preheated oven. Original recipe says to bake for 20-25 minutes. Mine were completely done in 17 minutes, so check accordingly. Muffins will golden and spring back when lightly tapped.

Lola Belle Update

2008-04-16T10:10:00.001-07:00

So I have had several requests for an update on Miss Priss, so here it goes. Lola has actually been doing amazing! I had my worries and my doubts about her simply because she was/is so small. I have heard horror stories of teacup chihuahuas dying unexpectidly due to low blood sugar. The guy that we bought her from kept reinforcing in us that we had to keep a close eye on her to make sure she was eating 3 times a day to keep from low blood sugar. For those of you that know me and Walt, you would not be suprised to know that we immediately went out and bought the most expensive "sugar jelly" you could buy for a dog and give it to her religiously. She is actually so good at eating on her own, though. We hear her eating in her cage every night before she goes to sleep and every morning when she wakes up. Any time we question how much she has had to eat, we just pick up her bowl with food in it and give it a couple of shakes and she comes running to eat it!

She is soooo sweet! She absolutely loves to snuggle! Her most favorite time is on Saturdays when me and Walt are trying to sleep in a little later and let her in the bed with us for about an hour or so. She can't sleep with us at night or we would literally roll over on top of her and kill her. But for that last hour of sleep on a Saturday, she does great and Looooves getting to snuggle with us.

When she wakes up in the morning, she is super hyper and loves to play with her toys- all 15 that Walt has bought her : ) He literally cannot pass by a tiny toy at any store without buying it for her. She has more toys than she knows what to do with!

We gave her her first bath yesterday, and she did soooo good! I was able to hold her in one hand and bath her with the other, so it was really easy! But she did get really cold when she got out of the bath, even though we had her covered in a big towel.

This weekend will be the first time that my mom and dad will see her as well as my 2 little nieces! So lets all say a little prayer that it all goes smoothly : ) Above is a picture Walt took of her with his phone a couple of days ago. As you can see, she is really not any bigger and she still loves to stick that tongue out!!!

Look at Lola's size compared to Walts IPOD!!

Love, Sex, and Marriage

2008-04-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was a busy one for me and Walt, but a great one! We spent our weekend at a birthday party, baby shower, and most importantly, a marriage seminar. Our church, Tusculum Church of Christ, had Joe Beam come in to do his seminar on Love, Sex, and Marriage. Let me just tell you that it was awesome! Joe is a really great speaker and has such a great way of explaining why we do what we do, feel what we feel, and why our bodies react the way they do. I seriously learned so much about why Walt and I don't always see eye-to-eye, and what I can do to be a better wife to him! I would highly recommend attending one of his seminars if you ever ge the chance to. We also bought two of his books- Seeing the Unseen, and Angels. I will let yall know how the two books turn out. I will be really honest, though, I will more than likely be finishing the Harry Potter series before I really dive into the Joe Beam books : )

Nashville Predators

2008-04-07T06:02:00.001-07:00

So Walt and I have recently discovered a new hobby- Hockey games! My new boss at work is very sweet and has season tickets to the Nashville Predators Hockey games. He has been travelling a lot lately with work, so he has been so graciously passing along his tickets to me and Walt! He has AWESOME seats pretty close to the ice. This is the first year I have ever been to any Hockey games at all, and I must admit, it's fairly intense. The fans are TOTALLY into the game and LOVE to try to intimidate the other team. The music (they sometimes play blink and walt starts to cheer) and entertainment is so much fun and the food is yummy! We have absolutely had a ball! This past Thursday is the most recent game we went to, and this one was for the championship. If they won the game, they made it to the finals. There was a bank that sponsored the game, and they handed out free white t-shirts to everyone that came to the game. By the end of the game, everyone was so into it that we all started waving our t-shirts over our head and using them as somewhat of a shaker/pom-pom. It looked sooo cool in the arena with everyone waving their shirts! We would both highly recommend attending a Predators game...

We are hoping to start to go to more "Nashville" things. There are so many things this city has to offer that we don't take advantage of. Next on the list- a Titans game.

Lola

2008-03-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

WE GOT A PUPPY!!!!!!

Thursday afternoon, Walt called me to tell me about this puppy that we had inquired about on several occasions. She was WAY overpriced to the point that we had just put her out of our minds. Well, apparently the owner had accidentally posted the wrong price for her when he was updating his website, and they had marked her way under half of the original price!!!
Since we had been inquiring about her first, they felt it only fair to call us and offer her to us first for the new price. We had to make a really quick decision, but for us it was an easy one. We hopped in the car Thursday around 5:00 and drove 3 hours to pick her up!!! We didn't get home until after 1:00am! But it was SOOO worth it. She is so much more than we ever hoped for! She is almost 4 months old and only weighs 1.5 lbs. She will grow to be around 2.5 pounds full grown. She literally is the tiniest dog I have ever seen. She has the best personality and is SO friendly!!! We love our little Lola Belle! She is so spoiled already!!!

PS- she loves to stick her tongue out at people : )

Easter Fun!!!

2008-03-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

Bethany, this post is for you…

We had such a great Easter Weekend! We went home to Huntsville and just hung out with my family all weekend. My dad had actually just had a pretty major foot surgery, so we spent most of the time just hanging out with him and watching TV/movies together.

Friday night the girls spent the night over at mom and dad’s house with us. We stayed up late making sugar cookies in the shape of Easter things! Then on Sunday before we did our Easter Egg hunt, Sophie and I decorated the cookies with icing. Maddie actually got sick on Saturday night and was passed out on the couch as we did the cookies. I hated that she had to miss out, but I guess she needed her rest! The pictures below are from the weekend:

New Office!

2008-03-19T14:05:00.000-07:00

So I know there's not much to it, but this is my new office!!! I haven't had a chance to truly decorate it yet. I hope to add a little color to the place. I'm the lucky one who got the giant pole in their office : ) The flowers you see are from my VERY sweet husband. He had them sent on the day that I began this position (this past Monday). Thanks, Walt, for being so sweet and supportive through the last several months! Yay for a new office with privacy and a window!!!

Let it Snow!

2008-03-11T20:10:00.001-07:00

So as everyone already knows, it snowed in Nashville this past weekend. This happened to be the first weekend in ages that we didn't have any set plans. We stayed up late Friday night watching movies we had rented and went to sleep with the intentions of sleeping in until whenever we felt like getting up. However, for those of you that know Walt, you know that he gets rather excited about certain things. As it turns out, snow is one of those things. At 7:30am I was woken by the sound of our front door opening and closing repeatedly. After about 10 minutes of this, I drug myself out of bed and joined him downstairs to look at the beautiful snow! We just had to get out in it, so we dressed as best we could and headed on out. The pictures below are from our fun filled morning in the snow! And yes, the first picture is of the front of our house, for those of you who have been asking to see some pictures!!! The front door with our address- 4331!
A picture of our back yard.... My car was covered! This shot was taken from inside the garage
At the Malone residence, we don't make ordinary snowmen.... we make chocolate covered snow turtles!!!
Here is a picture of our snow turtle with the tools we used up above!!!

And last but certainly not least, this is a picture of what I like to call the Walt Snowman!!!

Marketing 101

2008-03-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

So Walt and I seem to always have something pretty big going on in our lives whether it's a wedding, travelling, getting Walt a job, building a house, moving out of an old house, etc. So now that we have been in our new house for about 2 months, it was time for the next big thing in our lives- I got a promotion!!!! YAY!!! I will officially be going back to my educational roots and I will become the Marketing Coordinator for our largest sector- Red Kap! I think I am going to be doing some REALLY exciting and fun new things. However, the best part of this job is that I won't be travelling 24/7. I will still be taking trips from time to time, but they will be much more spread out and only 1-2 nighters instead of week long trips. I'm so excited to make this transition! I will also be getting my own office!!!!!!!!!! I have to hang out in my current role until they can officially hire my replacement. I must say, I have absolutely loved this job, so it is very hard to be leaving it, as well as the team I have been working with.

I guess it's on to new and bigger things, right? Thank you to everyone who was praying for me throughout my interview process. God is so good!!!

1 Year Anniversary!!!

2008-03-03T11:50:00.001-08:00

Today is our 1 year Anniversary! I absolutely cannot believe it has already been a year since we got married! Our wedding was truly a dream come true. Everything about that day seems like such a fairy tale. Over the past week or two, so many stories about our wedding day, rehearsal dinner, and of course, the terrible honeymoon keep coming up and reminding us about all of the crazy memories we made during that stressful, yet magical time.

Walt and I have learned so very much over the past year of marriage. The one thing that sticks out to me when I think of my marriage to Walt is friendship. We literally do EVERYTHING together. Whether it's going to the grocery store, watching TV, running errands, you name it- we do it together! We take walks together, play Nintendo Wii together. He truly is my best friend. This year we have gone through a lot together- finding jobs, getting promotions, building a house, moving, etc. Through it all Walt has been my stronghold and I know that our relationship and friendship has only grown. I just want to say Happy Anniversary to the love of my life! Thank you, Walt, for loving me with all of my flaws. You mean everything to me and I cannot imagine a life without you in it! Here's to the next 365 days of marriage!!!

Ok.... you can all go throw up now : )

27 Dresses

2008-01-28T06:35:00.000-08:00

I saw this movie with my sister this past week and must say that it was precious!!! I was very pleasantly surprised! Walt and I rented Knocked Up which also has Kathryn Heigle in it, but after a scene with nudity as well as every other word being a cuss word, we had to turn it off. I was very skeptical that this movie would somehow be the same. It didn’t even come close to Knocked Off. Yes, there were a few cuss words in it, but it honeslty was a fairly clean movie for the most part! It was hilarious. She did a great job in it and Laurie and I both really enjoyed it. The guy in it is James Marsden who also played in Enchanted (such an AWESOME movie too!!!!) as well as Hairspray and I absolutely love him! He is so cute! Definitely one of my new favorites.

Just wanted to pass along a good movie recommendation. Now, as far as one not to rent- The Heartbreak kid with Ben Stiller. The movie has a somewhat funny story line, but is FILTHY! Just don’t waste your money. So sad that comedies in this day in age must include complete nude scenes as well as terrible cussing.

Ok, so now that I am off my soap box, have any of you seen any really great movies lately or any that should be on my “don’t see” list???

I am pleased to introduce..... Emerson Lilly Mills!!!!

2008-01-21T14:28:00.000-08:00

I would like to introduce you all to my newest niece, Emerson Lilly Mills! She is the most precious thing! Walt and I were able to spend the weekend in Montgomery this past weekend and love all over her. She is even more beautiful in person…. Gosh, I’m such a proud aunt! Emerson was born on Wednesday Jan. 16 at 11:56 am. She weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces and was 10.5 inches long. Both Ashley and Emerson are doing great. Here are a few pictures!!!! (I stole the bottom one from Ashley's blog...)

THE DAY HAS ARRIVED!!!!

2007-12-28T06:31:00.000-08:00

So the day is finally here. This morning at 10:00am Walt and I will meet with our builder to walk through our house one final time before signing the official closing papers to our home. After months of chaos, drama, and stress, our house is complete and ready for us to move in! I cannot believe it has gotten here so quickly. It's almost scary. In the mean time, the packing has almost done us in amidst the stress of Christmas and work. We are literally exhausted. I am looking forward to this part being over with. We are extremely excited, however, at this new chapter in our lives. I know it is only the end of December, but in a way it is happening right around our 1 year anniversary (2 months shy of it), so it is like we are taking the next step past that first year and into the next. Of course it just had to rain today.... and all last night. Every time we move, the weather turns bad. But hopefully it will clear up by tomorrow when the movers come. We are so extremely blessed to be able to buy the house we are buying. God has been soooooo good to us and I know we don't deserve it. We also have amazing friends who have offered to take their Friday night to help us move boxes. So thank you so much to Bekah, Chris, and Jonathan for stepping up and being true friends. We love yall! Also major thanks to Walt's dad and my sister, Laurie, for helping us all along the way as well as throughout the weekend!

I will update as soon as we get situated, and hopefully even have some pictures to post! Thanks to all who remembered us in their thoughts and prayers over the last several months! We finally made it!!!!

The rest of the movie list....

2007-12-19T10:29:00.000-08:00

Walt and I have tried our best to continue on with the 12 days of Christmas movie watching. Here are some of the other flicks we hav watched along with my personal ratings of them each on a scale from 1-10:

- How The Grench Stole Christmas (real with Jim Carrey). Rating- 7. It's a cute movie with a good meaning.

- How The Grench Stole Christmas (cartoon). Rating- 6. It's a tradition, so you have to watch it, right?

- Christmas with the Kranks (thanks to our good friend Jonathan). Rating- 6. Cheesy Tim Allen movie with cheesy ending... but still cute enough to hold my attention: )

- 8 Crazy Nights (Walt forced me to watch this one. Word to the wise, don't waste your time). Rating-4.5. Sorry Walt, this one was awful....

- Polar Express. Rating- 10. This is my personal favorite movie!!!! I love it!!!!

Now we just need to watch Christmas Vacation and It's a Wonderful Life to end our movie watching for 07! What are your favorite Christmas movies???

I'm Dreaming Of A Smoky Mountain Christmas

2007-12-10T14:41:00.001-08:00

Walt and I decided to try to be a cute little first year married couple and everything and do the 12 days of Christmas thing by watching a Christmas movie/show each day up until Christmas. Of course, we will be leaving to go to Huntsville and Montgomery on the Friday before Christmas, so we had to start this past Sunday in order to get our full 12 days in.

I was lucky enough to get to pick the first movie to kick us off, and without hesitation I chose "Smoky Mountain Christmas." For those of you out there who don't know about that movie, here is all you need to know: Dolly Parton in the 80's = pure bliss. It's basically about a famous Country Singer (Dolly) who goes to the Smoky Mountains alone for Christmas one year to get away from it all. While arriving to her little cabin in the woods, she realizes there have been 8 little orphans living alone in the cabin. The story is full of excitement, including sing along songs, a crazy old witch, and "Mountain Dan!" It's one of my favorites from when I was younger.

I'm not so sure that Walt was thrilled with my selection since he laughed throughout the first five minutes of the movie and then slept through the rest of it. Oh well. Maybe tonight's movie will prove to be a little more entertaining. More on that to come....

2007-11-30T09:56:00.000-08:00

Tonight Walt and I are heading to the sold out Keith Urban Concert here at the Sommet Center in Nashville!!! He surprised me with tickets for my birthday and I'm so excited! They say he puts on a great show especially since he's playing for his hometown tonight, so it should be awesome! It will be a blast getting away with Walt, and who knows maybe we'll get to see Nicole Kidman as well! Can't wait!

So I married an Eskimo...

2007-11-30T05:37:00.001-08:00

Can you pick out my husband?

WAR EAGLE!!!!!

2007-11-29T09:49:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to say War Eagle! 6 in a row.... not too shabby!

The best sign of the night held by an Auburn Fan:

Bama hired Satan instead of Saban:

6 wins

6 losses

6 straight

Good movies!

2007-11-19T11:43:00.000-08:00

Friday night Walt and I went to see a movie with some friends. After a somewhat short debate, we settled on Dan in Real Life. We ended up loving it! It is in no way shape or form a comedy, which I think we all originally had believed. However, it had a great story line, almost no cussing at all, and no crazy sex scenes. It was a really good movie.

Last night, Walt, Jonathan and I decided to hit up our favorite movie rental store- Red Box- are rented the only movie none of us had ever seen. It's called The Illusionist, and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised! It held my attention from the beginning to the end and there is one major twist you won't see coming! I give that one an A as well.

Just two ideas in case you find yourself searching for a good movie!

Harry Potter

2007-11-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

So I finally gave in. After making fun of person after person, I finally gave in and read Harry Potter. I have always been the girl standing back pointing and laughing at the "losers" who dressed in long capes and hats, waited in line for hours upon hours to grab their own copy of the new releases, and spoke often about the differences in the world of Harry Potter verses the world of the Muggles (no offense Ashley). However, since I have been travelling so much lately, I have discovered the world of reading. Yes, I was that kid in school who HATED to read. It wasn't until about a month ago that I went out and purchased a book to read on my own free time. It was a book called "90 Minutes in Heaven." It's about a guy who died for 90 minutes and claims he went to heaven. He describes it in great detail and tells the story of how his life has changed since then. I'm not sure if I believe him or not, but regardless it makes for a very interesting read and paints a beautiful pictures of heaven. After I was through with that book, I grabbed one from my parent's house that my mom just gushed over- Message in a Bottle. I never saw the movie and I was about to be on a 5 hour flights, so I thought, "What the heck?" I read through it in a week and it was extremely depressing, yet a good read. So that brings me back to the main subject- Harry Potter. Last time I saw Ashley and Jamin, they both went on and on about how the books are so awesome, especially the last one, and how I wouldn't regret it if I finally caved in to read it. Keep in mind I have never even seen one of the movies. I started to watch one once and left shortly into it. I simply couldn't get in to it which is odd since I love imaginary stories and make believe. But with another 5 hour flight lying ahead of me and an additional 3 hours in an airport with nothing to do, I didn't have much of a choice. I searched up and down the aisles to make sure there wasn't another book that caught my attention before I finally gave way. Still skeptical, and with Ashley's help via the phone, I found and picked up the first Harry Potter book- The Sourcerer's Stone. Two hours and $10.00 later, I was on the flight and deep into the book. I will admit, I didn't put it down the entire flight. I finished the book in 2 days.... an all new record for me!!! I found it to be an easy and interesting read leaving me wanting more!!! So to all those "losers" out there, I have now joined you.... and please accept my apologies for my previous behavior. Maybe next year I will even dress up as a character for Halloween.... ok so that would be pushing it : )

What's Going On....

2007-10-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

Life is busy. Especially since I accepted a new position within my company working for the National Accounts. In the past two months, I have already been on 5 trips. A trip to Minneapolis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Las Vegas, and all over Southern California. I leave in another week to go to Salt Lake City. So basically, my life has been flipped upside down over the past couple of weeks. In between my traveling, I have been entertaining many customers here in Nashville. It is a completely different job from what I was doing before, but it has been extremely exciting! All the sudden I find myself sitting beside the President of my company during many meetings and dinners! It’s almost overwhelming! On the bad side of things, I am EXTREMELY tired and run down and being away from home- Walt- is really sad. Things will slow down for me tremendously within the next month or so, but this new job is definitely going to take some getting used to.

So what else has been going on with me and Walt? Lets see. We are still building the house which is coming along beautifully! I will definitely post pictures of the progress soon. It is completely up with walls in and everything! I guess they will be installing our cabinets this week which is pretty exciting.

This weekend will be a hectic but fun one since it is my birthday!!! YAY!!!! Tonight I have of my best friends coming to stay with me for a somewhat grown-up slumber party! The girls are going to crash in the King size bed and the guys can sleep wherever they want… I think the plan is for us to go to a haunted house, which I absolutely hate but feel like I need to since everyone else wants to go. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as I’m thinking it will be. Then tomorrow we are all going to wake up and eat at the Pancake Pantry (my favorite) and then head out to the Nashville Flea Market since this is the biggest one of the year. I love going there!!! We always have so much fun! Saturday night Walt is going to take me out for a nice dinner, just the two of us. I can’t wait!

So all in all, things are going really good, just really busy. I apologize for not updating my blog sooner. Hopefully I will be able to jump right back in where I left off. Hope everyone is doing good!

TrashTheDress.com

2007-09-22T12:25:00.001-07:00

Our Random Night at the Fair

2007-09-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Walt and I, along with our good friends Chris and Bekah, decided to muster up some courage and attempt to tackle the Nashville State Fair on Friday night. Boy, we were in for a surprise! We were all excited when we got our “discount tickets” for the fair at the local Kroger, convinced we were saving so much money! Much to our surprise, those tickets got you only entrance into the park. There was not a single ride or attraction that came with that purchase. After walking the fair one quick time we realized we needed to return to a local Kroger to purchase a wrist band that would allow us to ride all rides and do all attractions without draining our bank accounts…. Or so we thought. One Kroger trip and 4 wrist bands later, we found ourselves in line for our first fair ride, which ended up being an actual roller coaster that looked as safe as if I were to go in my back yard and make an entire roller coaster out of leftover metal I found laying around. We dared each other to ride it and before we knew it we were headed straight up on a very scary incline only to find out there was a HUGE drop on the other side that literally went straight down instead of falling at any angle whatsoever. That was probably huge scare number one of the night. The picture that resulted was priceless and worthy of posting. Notice how absolutely terrified both Walt and Bekah seem to be. Chris, not sure what was going on in his mind at the time, and I seem to be somewhat enjoying myself surprisingly enough. A couple of rides later, I could feel the sweats starting to come on. All the sudden the multi-colored fair lights were spinning all around me and the smells of the giant turkey legs were bringing some of my dinner back up in my throat. I looked over at Walt and the poor fellow was literally DRENCHED in sweat and gagging over by a distant trash can near the bumper boats. Although we both felt as though we had come to an end, the scene was absolutely hilarious. Bekah and Chris helped settle our stomachs a little bit by generously offering some of their funnel cake.

For weeks, Walt had been talking about going to the freak show once we got to the fair. He said visiting a real live freak show is on his top ten list of things to do before he dies. Of course, the stupid freak show tent wasn’t covered by our wrist bands. So in addition to the entrance to the park, parking fees, and wrist bands, we had to purchase additional tickets ($20 total) just to go in the stupid thing. Walt was SO EXCITED to go in he couldn’t stand himself. So we walk in the tent to find one nice, big, empty tent with about 3 things in it. To the left you could find the only living thing in the entire tent and also the only thing worth seeing: the world’s smallest horse. The poor thing was TINY and we questioned if it was real or not until it started blinking and barely moving it’s head around. Needless to say, that horse does not have many more days left to live. We all felt so terrible for it as it struggled to take each breath. Who knows what all it goes through each day. Opposite of the horse was the spider woman, which I KID YOU NOT was a plastic spider with a plastic skeleton head and wig on it that was probably found either at Party City or Hobby Lobby on their Halloween Clearance sections. I mean, really? The other side of the tent consisted of a 2-headed baby doll in a jar of water, a bulletin board with pictures of a women wearing a snake costume, and one small aquarium with a 2-headed turtle in it. Throw in a huge snake in a tank and you got yourself a Freak Show worthy of $20!!!

We managed to find our way to a stand selling fried oreos and all decided we couldn’t leave the fair without trying them. We took the oreos over to a nearby table to listen to people singing karaoke while we ate them. About the time we had decided that Chris just had to sing a song, this short man walked up to the stage and the DJ began introducing him. Apparently this guy had won some sort of a contest and was going to sing a song for us as he practiced for the final contest coming up. The music began. Although we were expecting to hear the music for “Achy Breaky Heart” or “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy,” surprisingly enough the song that came on was Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” The guy began belting out in an extremely high falsetto voice and closed his little eyes as he motioned through the heartfelt song. Wow. We could hardly hold our composure. Everyone there thought he was so good, but I’m pretty sure this was a deleted scene out of the movie Napolean Dynomite.

As we made our final walk towards the exit doors, Bekah realized she couldn’t find her money in her pocket. She was missing $20.00, which is enough to make you mad, especially after we had spent what we had on the evening. She was upset, so we all tried to start thinking of where it could possibly be and if she maybe dropped it somewhere. All the sudden I knew where she dropped it- by the roller coaster about 45 minutes prior. However, there was no way it would still be there under the bright lights with all of the mullet-headed freaks walking around. But to make her feel better, we slowly made our way over to the roller coaster only to find her $20 face up right where we thought it would be! It was literally in the middle of the brightest light in one of the busiest areas of the fair! What are the odds that it would still be there 45 minutes later?

That was a great way to finish the night, so we all walked away dirty, smelly, sweaty, broke, and exhausted, yet completely satisfied.

Transitioning

2007-08-28T06:45:00.001-07:00

So I have been a terrible blogger lately. To say that I have been busy would be the understatement of the year. Not only have Walt and I been throwing several showers for friends of ours, but we have also attended our favorite nephew’s 2nd birthday party and are about to attend a family reuinion. However the real reason for me going MIA is due to my recent job transition. I have been promoted to the National Account Sales Representative. Fancy title, huh? Anyway, for the last full month, I have been undergoing some heavy duty training here at VF and it has been intense and exhausting. I am finally starting to see the end in sight, so I feel like I can breathe again. There have been so many exciting things going on for Walt and I lately and I haven’t written about any of them, but I feel like it would take too long to go back from my last post and update. So I will start fresh from today and try to do a better job from here on out. Stay tuned!!!

What we have been doing lately....

2007-08-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

It has taken me so long to post on my blog because we have been busy doing things like…. BUYING A HOUSE!!!! YAY! About a month ago, Walt and I began somewhat searching for a house to buy to just get an idea of what area we might like to live in since our lease will expire at the end of this year. Before we could really sink in to a full out search, we fell in love with the first place we looked at!!! For those of you who are not familiar with Nashville, the neighborhood we are building in is called Lenox Village. It is in the line between Brentwood and Nashville which means it has a great location! The neighborhood is going to be completely self sufficient when it is all said and done. It is a neighborhood made up of townhomes, condos, single family homes, retails stores, and restaurants ( and eventually a grocery store too). We bought our house in their last and final phase. Our close date is December 28! They haven’t quite broken ground on it yet, but they are apparently supposed to start that any day. We actually picked out our lot last weekend, and have been busy picking out everything to go inside! It can be quite overwhelming, but so much fun! I will keep you all posted on the progress. In the mean time, here is a picture of exactly what it will look like from the front. A little different, but along this idea. I will also include a few more pictures of the actual neighborhood so that you can get a better idea of how precious this place is!

The house will look very much like this one...

These are some pictures of the rest of the neighborhood:

A few of the retail stores such as a coffee shop and a book store will be here:

This place is currently a Pie in the Sky (pizza) and there is another restaurant location identical to this on the other side of the retail plaza that is currently for rent:

Some of the condos. Retail centers/restaurants on the bottom level here too:

We love Wii

2007-07-18T07:08:00.000-07:00

Walt and I are somewhat obsessed with our Ninetendo Wii. It is seriously one of the coolest things I have ever seen. At first we couldn't get enough of the Tennis, Bowling, Baseball, and Boxing game.... but now we have been re-introduced to Super Mario Brothers. Mario Brothers was my all time favorite game back in the day when the original Ninetendo was really the only thing around. Now, thanks to the Wii, I can enjoy those cute little flying turtles, mushrooms, flower power, and warp zones once more!

Each night when we get home from a long and tiring day at work, we rush through our dinner to start up our Mario Brothers Tournament for the night. I must admit, I'm still pretty good. I still remember all of the secret worlds and tunnels. I have yet to beat it, but I have come awful close.

Thanks Summer TV for not having a single show on worth watching.... besides Age of Love!!!

Don't you love it when....

2007-07-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

you are in the right place at the right time? Yesterday I was sitting in with one of our Inside Sales Reps here for some training. All of the sudden, this very nice lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, "you are the first person I have seen! So can you please help me? I am with Chick-fil-a and we are wanting to give out some free lunches to your company today. Do you know who I should speak with? If you help me, I will gladly give you a lunch."

Not only is Chick-fil-a my all time favorite fast food restaurant, but we were totally out of groceries at home and I was doomed to PB&J's for the next couple of days. I gladly helped her along to the right person and walked away with an AMAZING box lunch from Chick-fil-a complete with a chicken sandwich, bag of chips, side of coleslaw, a brownie, and a coupon for a free meal there! Gosh, I love that place! They are so great.

It's funny what a good, free meal will do to you on a rainy Tuesday :)

50 tHiNgS aBoUt mE

2007-06-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

So I was finally tagged to do my 50 things about myself. Here we go:

1. I talk WAY too much
2. I am one of the loudest people I know
3. I make a huge effort to be nice to every person I come into contact with
4. I HATE fake people
5. To say I am a chocoholic would be a major understatement
6. I use the word major, extremely, absolutely, way, and completely to often
7. My biggest goal in life (besides being the best Christian possible) is to be married to that one special person (done) and to have children.
8. I really don’t want to work after I have a baby
9. If I did have to work, all I want to do is be an Elementary School teacher
10. I love to eat hot wings and French fries soaked in ranch dressing!
11. I absolutely love to cook but rarely ever get the chance to do it
12. When I was three years old two elevator doors closed on my tiny little thumb and broke it in half
13. I am now double jointed in both of my thumbs
14. I have a birth mark on the back of my neck right where my hair line starts
15. My youngest niece, Maddie, has the same birth mark
16. If I could go one place in the world it would be Bora Bora
17. I am way too obsessed with Reality TV shows
18. My favorite band is Nickel Creek (they recently broke up)
19. I was attacked as a child by a German Shephard and almost lost my right eye
20. I was born and lived in Atlanta, GA for 3 years
21. I learned that Santa wasn’t real when I was only 5 years old after I demanded my mother tell me the truth about him
22. I was baptized when I was only 11 years old
23. I was baptized again at the age of 18
24. I played basketball, softball, soccer, and cheered in High School
25. I have a secret love for Broadway plays, especially Les Miserables
26. I played the piano for 12 years and was the pianist for my chorus for 3 years in High School
27. I absolutely LOVE to entertain guests at our house and do it quite often
28. I have to keep the kitchen freakishly clean or I can’t sleep at night
29. Taking long baths is one of my all time favorite things to do
30. Clean Cotton is my favorite scented anything
31. I hate people who are mean when it’s not necessary
32. High School was one of the best times of my life
33. Sororities are overrated
34. I often go out of my way to make sure everyone else is happy
35. I don’t have a single creative bone in my body
36. I am way too hard on myself- especially my appearance
37. I compare myself to my sisters daily
38. My wedding day was literally the best day of my life
39. I completely took my college days for granted
40. There are A TON of things I would do differently if given the opportunity
41. I am extremely close to my family
42. I hate eating at food places that are located inside a gas station- pet peeve
43. I also hate eating outdoors… I think the food tastes funny
44. I am naturally good at interviews
45. I hate ironing… just say it’s supposed to be wrinkled, that’s the style!
46. I am very impatient and always looking forward
47. Eating is one of my all time favorite things to do
48. I do feel like I married my best friend
49. I have a new found obsession with the Nintendo Wii
50. I long to be retired with Walt and able to travel the world over!

I tag Meredith and Ashley B.- you're it!

Do you remember....

2007-06-25T09:12:00.000-07:00

My favorite character from Sesame Street?

My favorite cartoon and play set?

The show I wasn't allowed to watch?

My favorite Saturday morning show?

My all-time favorite children's show?

What are some of your favorite memories from TV as a child?

Weekend

2007-06-19T12:35:00.001-07:00

For this post I want to say Happy Father’s Day to my new father-in-law. I honestly could not have asked for a better one. Mr. Malone has become one of the most influential people in my life. He has such an awesome heart and truly puts both God and family first- way above everything else. I hope that I can one day be as devoted of a mother as he is a father.

This past weekend Walt and I drove to Montgomery to spend the weekend with Mr. Malone for Father’s Day. He honestly seemed so moved that we spent our weekend with him. We had such an amazing time! He cooked us literally the biggest steaks I have ever seen. Walt’s steak covered his entire plate! And of course he ate every last bit of it!

I also got to spend some time with my favorite nephew who is completely starting to show his cute personality! I love the age that he is at… so much fun! He is so smart and can just be the sweetest thing ever!

On Sunday after we left the Malone’s house we headed back to Nashville but stopped in Birmingham to visit two of our closest friends- Paul and Betsey. They just had a baby boy- James Paul IV- and we just had to visit that little fella! He is such a sweetie. He was so tiny and precious, and he smelt soooo good like little babies always do. Betsey’s mom and dad cooked us all a big barbecue dinner, and we had a great time visiting with them!

Once again we had an action-packed weekend where we were blessed enough to spend time with some of those that mean the most to us. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about my own dad… he will get his own post!

I love Nintendo Wii

2007-06-10T14:27:00.000-07:00

Baskin Robbins

2007-06-06T13:19:00.001-07:00

We have a really small, quaint Baskin Robbins about 6 minutes from our house. We wandered in there one random night to try out some of their stuff since neither of us had been to a BR in such a long time. We immediately saw a huge line of folks and soon realized that we were there on a Tuesday night, and Tuesday nights are $1.00 scoop nights! We searched through the dozens of flavors and each picked out our favorite and ordered. I love their Chocolate Fudge flavor and their Chocolate Mousse Royale... Walt followed my lead as he so often does and ordered the same as me. Let me just say, if you haven’t been to a BR in a long time, go! It was soooo yummy! So much so that Walt and I now have our own little tradition of BR night every Tuesday night to take advantage of the dollar scoop Tuesday!

Warning: you will be bombarded by extremely overweight folks waiting, and sometimes pushing, in line in order to retrieve their 5 and 6 scoop whoppers of a treat! I kid you not! It never fails that the folks in front of us and behind us are there to literally buy out the store. I always wonder if they are seriously going to devoir all of that ice cream alone… it’s crazy!!!

Memorial Day

2007-05-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

Let me just begin by saying that Walt and I had an AWESOME weekend together! Everything from the drive to Atlanta, to all of the fun touristy things that we did together was just so much fun. To briefly review our Memorial Day Weekend, I will start at the beginning. We woke up early Saturday morning and drove from Nashville to the Georgia Aquarium (the largest aquarium in the world). We walked around that thing for 4 hours!!! Some of the fish and whales there were insane. I loved it! It really is a cool thing to do if you ever get a chance to do it. After that we headed on to check in to our hotel- Intercontinental Buckhead- which was way nice. Our room was awesome and the bathroom was great!!! There was a separate large Jacuzzi tub in addition to the large stand up glass shower. We decided to rest for a little while and then we cleaned up and headed to dinner at Steak and Ale. Yes, I know of all the nice ritzy places to eat in ATL. But Steak and Ale was my favorite place to eat growing up in Huntsville until they eventually shut it down. So when I discovered that they had one in ATL, we had to go! Gosh, I am sooooo glad that we did. The food was INCREDIBLE! If you ever go, you have to get the cheesy garlic bread appetizer… TO DIE FOR! Walt’s steak was extremely yummy too as was my Hawaiian chicken (favorite too from back in the day). We got done with dinner a little early and since we were staying in Buckhead we hopped over to Lenox Mall. We had both been dying to go to Anthropology because we LOVE the home-side of their store. We spent a while and a pretty penny in there followed by a much more brief trip to Urban Outfitters (sometimes that store is just too out there for me). But we weren’t done for the night yet! We had read about this coffee and dessert place called Café Intermezzo. They are known for the world’s largest cappuccino maker. When we walked in the door, there were three cases full of dozens of desserts. All kinds of chocolate ones too! We picked the dessert of choice and took it back to the hotel to finish up the night. So much fun!

The next morning we got up and headed to the Braves game. Sure, our seats may have been in the nose bleed section, but we didn’t care! After all, how much do Walt and Cristin really care about Baseball? Two hotdogs, a supreme nacho, and two souvenir cups later, we left the ball park and headed to Stone Mountain. We walked around the tiny village for a while, tried some of their wonderful homemade fudge, and eventually mosied on over to the sky bucket. My parents used to take us to Stone Mountain all the time to see the Laser Light Show, but I never remember riding the sky bucket to the top of the mountain. So we did it, and I’m so glad we did! The view is just AWESOME! We stayed up there for a while and just enjoyed the peaceful and beautiful surroundings.

CAUTION: this beautiful story is about to take a slight turn.

Walt and I laid back on the rock at the top of the mountain to truly just take the moment in and enjoy being there together. We both got quiet and comfy, really relaxing and taking deep breaths before our departure back down the mountain. Just when I reached that point of total relaxation and happiness, I felt a little something down towards my leg and saw a quick shadow. I thought Walt had knocked something out of our bag onto my leg, not thinking much of it. A couple of seconds later, I see the shadow again, which is now moving rapidly. I slowly leaned my head up, now worried about what I was about to find. A tiny mouse was playing hide and seek in the crevice in which my legs were laying on top of! Ahhhh!!!! I had a mouse crawl across my legs and scurry right up close to my body! I of course jumped up, screaming like a tiny child and began running around and waving my arms like a chicken. I’m not sure what I thought that was going to do, but it at least made me feel a little better. The thing was tiny, as in the size of my thumb. But still, it was a mouse! And it crawled over me! YUCK! All in all I actually handled it pretty well. It was just so random because we were on the top of this stone mountain where there really isn’t even grass or plants, and our of nowhere comes this tiny mouse. And although there was an entire 2,000 feet high mountain, he ended up on my leg.

Anyway, we decided to hike back down the mountain and made it down just in time to grab our dinner and head to the field and picnic on our blanket before the laser light show began. Aaron Tipton was actually playing for a good solid hour before the show, so I really enjoyed the free concert! The laser light show ended up being more like a fire works show and it was AWESOME! We had such a blast!

Monday was a day out by the pool to eat up some of the sun followed by lunch at Chipotle, Walt’s favorite Mexican/Burrito place. It was really good! On our way back to Nashville, we stopped at IKEA. Wow, I have never been to that place, but it was definitely overwhelming. I must say, I was expecting something totally different after everything that we had heard about it. It was neat and all, and there were some great buys. But all in all, most of the stuff there really wasn’t our style and didn’t go with our house at all. So instead of buying the place out like we thought we would, we left empty handed. So that completes our weekend! We were so sad when we got home last night that it was all over. Although I have been there time and again, we truly had such a great time in Atlanta!

LOST

2007-05-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

So my sis-in-law, Ashley, just recently wrote about this on her blog, but that cannot be enough to stop me from writing about it on mine!!! It has been two days now and I am STILL thinking about the LOST season finale! It was literally the best season finale of any show EVER! There were twists and turns that no one saw coming. It ended with a HUGE twist!

WARNING: If you have no seen the last episode, do not read any further. The rest of this post contains spoilers…

I’m not even sure where to begin. I guess I will begin by saying, are they rescued now? Is this some sort of vision? Who the heck died? Is Jack’s dad still really alive or was he so drunk that he was delusional?

So Walt pulled out a pretty interesting theory after we watched it. Jack kept saying, “I think we should go back” to Kate in the so called flash forward. Walt believes that somehow there are still several non-others left on the island, and he feels like they need to go back for them. That is a good theory. I honestly just though Jack’s life sucks now so that’s why he wants to go back.

Maybe after all of them were rescued and went back home, bad things started happening and they began to die off (hence the coffin). Maybe that is why both Ben and Locke didn’t want anyone to be rescued. Jack did keep saying that it wasn’t supposed to happen… maybe he wanted to get back to the island so that neither he nor Kate ends up dying too.

Someone somewhere said that they froze the scene where Jack reads the paper for the first time and that it states it was a man that died and that the name begins with a “Ja.” Of course, that could be one of 3 obvious people: Jack (which it clearly isn’t), James (aka Sawyer), or Jacob (which is basically a ghost already). So that leads me to believe that it is somehow Sawyer in that coffin and he must have done something pretty terrible for no one, not even Hurley or Jin, to show up to his funeral. Why was Jack crying so bad at the funeral? Go back and listen to that scene again. The man asks Jack if he was a friend or family. Jack replies, “NEITHER.” He does NOT say, either. We rewound the thing fifty times and he says neither. So would that mean it might be Ben? Is all of this even real?

Ahhhhh, so many questions! So we know for a fact that they aren’t in purgatory, but someone must be in that type of realm on the island because Jacob is clearly a ghost. It does flash a picture of Jacob, who by the way looks a little like a Pirate off of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, but he is clearly invisible when Locke was looking right at him, and he has a really freaky low voice. So what is that all about?

THEY CAN NOT KILL CHARLIE!!!! Are they serious? Did they really let him die? Did I really squall my eyes out for 30 minutes after it happened? His relationship with Claire was one of the few saving graces of the show when they were going through their drawn-out plot line days. I think it is insane that of all the people, they would kill him off! Why not Sayid or one of those other people who randomly show up but we can never really remember their name? Ok, I will stop there. If you have any guesses or comments, please leave them. I’m going crazy!!!

A Picture Story About Me

2007-05-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

Someone that I work with told me about her latest post on her blog, so I thought I might as well go ahead and rip her off and do a post like that myself! It's a little game... Here are the rules: Put the answer to the question in Google Image search function, and you have to use the FIRST image that comes up--you can't use quotation marks when you search:

The City and State where you were born: Marietta, GA

The City and State that you grew up in... where you consider "home": Huntsville, AL

Gotta love the Space and Rocket Center! Apparently every kid in the US went to Space Camp except those kids that grew up in Huntsville.

The City and State where you currently live: Nashville, TN

Look how pretty our downtown is!!!

Your first and last name: Cristin Malone

Ummmmm..... not real sure what to say here

Your Grandmother's name: Maxine Duke

Wow, I guess my grandmother is some sort of Scientist?

Your favorite food: chocolate

Yes, please.

Your preferred drink: water

Gosh, what a cool picture! Makes me wish I was outside in a pool somewhere...

Favorite Smell: Clean Cotton (it's a Yankee Candle flavor)

Best smell EVER!!!!

Favorite Song: Can't Help Falling In Love With You

The song walt and I left our wedding with! I love this man.

Place You Have Lived: Auburn, AL

WWWAAARRR EEEAAGGLLLEE.... HEY!

Place you have Worked: Rivals.com

It is an online Sports Recruiting Company, so I supposed this is one of the recruits they were doing a story on or something.

Place you want to visit: Hawaii

No comment needed here. I mean, how amazing is that picture!?!?!

Monday Nights at the Malones

2007-05-10T07:53:00.000-07:00

So this Season of 24 has been a bit of a disappointment so far to Walt and I. We are avid fans, so to be so excited about a season and then it prove to be extremely redundant and repetitive of season’s past is somewhat frustrating. However, we still always watch it. If you are a true fan of anything, you stick with it through the good times and the bad…. Sort of like how all Alabama fans have had to be over the past 5 football seasons :) Anyway, we sat down this past Monday night to watch 24 as well as The Bachelor simply because that’s what we do every Monday night. I was really excited about the Bachelor ( he is very pretty, but and looking forward to it, but I felt like I just had to watch 24 first to be fair to the show. I cuddled up under my favorite blanket on our ever-so-soft couch and began my slow drifting off to sleep during 24 when all of the sudden, the episode picked things up a notch. Before I knew it, I was glued to the TV with my hands over my eyes, completely anticipating every next step that was about to happen. THE EPISODE WAS GREAT! Finally, 24 was returning back to it’s old self again. And then, out of nowhere, BANG! They killed Milo! I mean, really? How can you just kill off one of the most beloved characters on the show (even though he looks kind of weird). I guess that’s what makes 24, 24. A great episode nonetheless.

The Bachelor did surprise me a bit, but then again it really didn’t. I did feel extremely sorry for Amber, though. Anyway, here’s to Monday night TV! Can’t wait until next week!

Chocolate Dream

2007-05-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been driving along stuck in deep conversation with the person next to you when out of nowhere, the last thing you expected to see pops up? You are then stuck trying to figure out whether or not you are asleep and dreaming it or if it is really happening to you. That's what happened to Walt and I last night when we were driving down the road together, just talking about our days at work. Out of the middle of nowhere, parked in clear site, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen:

Yes, that is right. A car made out of giant Hershey kisses. For those of you who know Walt and I, you know that we are the biggest chocoholics known to man. So seeing this car parked in the middle of nowhere, no driver in site, truly made me question if I was awake or if I was dreaming of a chocolate heaven where all the cars, houses, and buildings were made out of chocolate. Of course, we had to pull over and get a pic!!!

Good Times

2007-04-25T07:38:00.001-07:00

Walt and I have been very blessed to have multiple house guests since we have moved in to our new place. I have already written a post about a few of them. This past weekend was no different and we had several new people coming to stay with us. My grandmother and granddaddy were able to come down with my mom, dad, and niece (Sophie) this past Thursday and stay with us until Saturday afternoon. It was so much fun! I got to play house, as I like to call it, when I act as though I am a true grown-up and I cook with my fun cooking utensils and put the food in the pretty dishes I got for the wedding. Although I am fairly new at cooking, I think I am doing a pretty good job! Am I allowed to say that? Anyway, they left around lunch time on Saturday after we all went down to the river (The Cumberland river is about 1 mile from our house) and let Sophie and my granddad play on the playground in the park. Three hours, a clean car, and one major sunburn later, Walt and I rushed to get the house clean again for our next guest of the weekend- Todd. Todd was Walt’s roommate during college and a very dear friend. He arrived just after I walked out the door to head to a bridal shower. I was able to hang out with him (and some fun gals I brought back with me) for a little bit that night and he went with us to church and out to eat the next morning. Our last guest of this week arrived yesterday morning- Jonathan Simmons…. AKA Walt’s best friend from Montgomery. I opted to not cook this time around since we are literally out of any and every food and baking stuff and I am totally pooped! We ate at Walt and my favorite Mexican place last night- Cozymels. We had asked our neighbors to come hang out a while ago before we knew about all of our out of town guests, so tonight there is more entertaining as Trent and Amy come by to hang out for a while. Not sure what I am going to offer them as far as food is concerned. I think I have some uncooked lasagna noodles and a little bit of vanilla flavoring left. Other than that, they are out of luck! So tomorrow night is going to be the real only night off before heading off to the cabin this weekend with Lindsay and Daniel. More on that trip to come!!!

God is Good!

2007-04-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to update everyone out there and let you all know that Walt got a job this week! He was offered an awesome position at a company called Comdata in Brentwood and he starts on April 30! We had been praying really hard for him to get this job, and he got the call on Wednesday morning. So a huge thank you to all those out there that have been praying for him. God answers prayers! We are SO very blessed!

Stupid Girl

2007-04-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

So I’m sure most of my loyal readers remember the drama back when Walt and I were trying to get the house that we are now living in. To refresh your memory, we basically had 24 hours to find someone to sublease the apartment I was currently in from March until September. We were able to do that through the magic of Craigslist (new post on Craigslist to come at a later date). Now lets fast forward to this past Monday. We get a call from the Preserve (said apartment) saying that Kayce (the new subleasee… if that’s a word) had not paid rent for the month of April yet. At the Preserve, you pay your rent at the first of the month for the following month. It’s really quite simple actually. In fact, neither Laurie nor I ever seemed to have a problem with this concept. However, this was actually the second time in two months that we had been contacted by the apartment complex saying that she hadn’t paid. The first time Walt and I were on our honeymoon (see previous post about the disaster of a honeymoon) and Laurie had to deal with it by herself. The girl’s excuse for not paying yet was, “I really didn’t think it would be that big of a deal if I didn’t pay it on time.” I mean, really? Who in their right mind thinks it is ok to pay rent whenever they feel like it? The instructions were given to her clearly in the beginning as to when her rent was do. She shook her head as though she understood this. That was the end of the conversation. I didn’t realize at the time that I needed to literally spell it out for a 27 year old that has a full time job… but apparently that’s exactly what I should have done.

So back to Monday. We get a call from the Preserver, Kayce hasn’t paid, we need to contact her. So I call her right then. Nothing. I leave a detailed message asking her politely to give me a call back. Fast forward to Tuesday. Haven’t heard a word back from Kayce. I call her and leave another polite message telling her that rent is extremely late and it is going to affect mine and my sister’s credit and to please either return my phone call or just drop off the rent. Fast forward to Wednesday. Haven’t heard from Kayce. We call the Preserve… she still hasn’t paid. They now inform us that if she doesn’t pay by Friday, she will be evicted and it will go on mine and Laurie’s record that we have been evicted as well. Super. I found this information out at 9:30am. From 10:00am until 10:00pm I literally called that girl over 30 times (and Walt did too) and left well over 5 messages that started off somewhat nice and ended up in something like, “Kayce you are forcing me to take legal action if you do not respond to this message. The apartment complex is going to evict you if you do not pay. Why are you making this happen to us? Please just call me back and explain what the problem is or go pay the rent. It’s really that simple.”

Fast forward to Thursday. No reply from Kayce. I’m working a Trade Show and I am sick to my stomach the entire time knowing that Walt and I are going to have to come up with over $1,000 in rent and late fees to pay for stupid Kayce’s apartment so that our credit isn’t screwed up. I’m sweating and didn’t sleep the night before from all the stress. I ended up getting done from the Trade Show early and headed over to the Preserve. After arriving I spoke with the manager about the entire situation and she didn’t know what to tell me except that they would be evicted the next day if rent wasn’t paid by 5:00. It was now 2:00pm. So I headed over to the apartment, spare key in hand, and decided to stake out the place. I banged on the door. Hard. No answer. I banged again. Nothing. So I opened the door, slowly, and yelled out, “Kayce?” No answer. I yelled it out again, this time louder. No answer. I began to look around the what seemed to be decently clean apartment in search of the bottle of crazy pills she had to be taking or some sort of sign of marijuana plants, etc. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I kept yelling out her name… just in case. I turned around a realized that there was a door closed. I knocked gently on it… nothing. I knocked harder… nothing. I turned the knob. It was locked. Weird. There is a bathroom that connects to that same bedroom so I walked to that closed door and knocked again. Nothing. I turned the knob to find a pretty little bathroom that was definitely lived in. “Kayce?” Nothing. I leaned my head around the door that lead to the bedroom to find a bed which seemed to have someone sleeping in it! Sure enough, after taking a harder look, Kayce was sleeping in the bed! How could she be asleep after all the knocking and screaming I had just done? I got really freaked out and rushed back out the door. I called Laurie. Laurie left work and came to the apartment. We repeated all of the steps mentioned above again, only this time the knocks were harder and the screams were MUCH louder. In two hours, the girl hadn’t moved from the exact same position. I thought she was dead. We went back outside (we didn’t want to shake her in case she was on drugs and went all crazy on us) and called Walt. Walt came over. We all three attempted the steps again mentioned above. Nothing. We all three honestly thought the girl was dead. No one could out sleep the noise we were making, and this girl hadn’t moved an inch for over 2 hours! Finally the decision was made to tell the office everything that was happening and see if we should call the Police. The maintenance guys at the Preserve decided to take matters into their own hand and make sure the girl wasn’t dead themselves. So they rush into her bedroom screaming and hollering and finally the stupid girl jolts up- scared out of her mind. She starts crying and whining about being sick or something… she was lying. After listening to her say she hadn’t gotten any of our messages and that she had no clue that the apartment thought she hadn’t paid, we were eventually able to get her to go to the office. We ended up having to get her and her roommate to sign a brand new lease without our names on it and pay a hefty fine since we were “breaking the contract.” So after a major loss of sleep, skipping out on work, breaking and entering, and witnessing a half dead corpse, we were able to escape from the trap of the girl who wouldn’t pay rent.

Welcome to the world of the Malone drama. There’s always something going on.

Ode to the Double Doozie

2007-04-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

It is no secret that Walt and I love Double Doozies from the Great American Cookie Company. In fact, so say that we simply love them is quite the understatement. There is never a trip to Opry Mills where we don’t stop by and indulge ourselves in this tasty treat. There’s nothing better than when they are fresh out of the oven with fresh white icing sandwiched between two layers of gooey chocolate chip heaven.

After 2 years of this practice of spending way too much on this beloved cookie, we suddenly realized something: We can make our own Double Doozies! After hours of tweaking, stirring, grinding, smashing, and squeezing… WE DID IT! We created our own Double Doozie from the comfort of our home that tasted JUST AS GOOD as the $5.00 cookie from the store!!! And all from a tube of pre-made cookie dough and a tub of white icing!

You can see how busy Walt and I have been lately :)

So the Madness Begins!!!

2007-03-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

So Walt and I literally just jumped into married life and it’s been so much fun and fast-paced. I thought everything would slow down as soon as we got married, but quite the opposite has happened. Last weekend we made plans Friday night to have a date night. Around 2:00pm on Friday afternoon I got a call from my sister saying that her family and her closest friends family was coming to Nashville to spend the night and attend the Nashville Flea Market the next day (which Walt and I were planning to attend as well… I LOVE THE NFM!) So Walt and I of course offered for them to stay at our house. 7 hours later we had 5 adults and 4 young kids running around our house and I was baking cookies and showing off our wedding pictures. It was absolutely crazy but so much fun! Walt and I had to camp out beside our bed. We had gotten our Pottery Barn furniture the first week after our honeymoon. However, we had yet to get our mattress in. So we literally pulled out the sleeping bags and had a camp out in our room together. We got zero sleep that night but it was a lot of fun. We were giggling all night long just like little kids! Here are our guests - all of them excpet Laurie!! (our favorite guest of all)

So Saturday morning came and after breakfast for the crew and everyone getting ready, we all headed off to the Flea Market… which by the way is huge if you have never been there. Two hours later we left the FM with a new sofa table and this really cute, huge, tin star to put up in our kitchen. Sounds weird but it’s actually really cute. We flew home to get there just in time for the mattress folks to deliver our mattress. Let me just say that OUR MATTRESS IS AMAZING!!!!!! We knew it was going to be pretty awesome when we layed on it in the store. But once it was sitting in our new bed frame and all the nice sheets and pillows were on it, it looked incredible!!! The only problem is that Walt and I cannot seem to get up in the mornings. We thought maybe we weren’t getting enough sleep at night so we started going to bed earlier. But that hasn’t helped! The stupid thing is so comforatable that we can’t get ourselves out of bed in the mornings! It really is the best night sleep I have had in my life, and the things is massive! Walt can lay on one side of the bed and me on the other with our arms outstretched and not even touch each other! This was taken right after we got our mattress! This is actually the farmhouse canopy bed we just havn't put the canopy on it yet!!

After a quick clean up of the house, we got ready for our friends Bekah and Chris to come over. They took a quick tour of our place and then we headed out to eat at Red Robbin in Mount Juliet…. YUMMY! And Bekah asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding coming up! YAY! I’m so honored and extremely excited for the two of them. She was my best friend in High School and has remained one of my closest friends even after all of these years. Chris is a Youth Minister at a church in Madison, and he is really an awesome guy! We had so much fun just hanging out with them!

Sunday was church and class, which we atteneded Brentwood Hills and LOVED it! We hung out with Laurie that afternoon when we went on a walk down to the river. Once we got back we cleaned the house again to get ready for Daniel and Lindsay to come over! We ordered pizza with them, had rotel dip and chips, made milkshakes, and watched The Office and Felicity! It was soooo much fun!
So to state the obvious, we had quite the weekend last weekend. I actually think this weekend is going to end up pretty busy too. Sorry for not posting as often as I used to. I’m just now getting caught up with work, so I promise to be better.

I'm Back!

2007-03-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

Where do I even begin? It has been far too long since I have blogged. However, things have been more than a little crazy for me to say the least.

The Wedding: AMAZING! I never dreamed in all my life that my wedding day would turn out as beautiful and as fun as it did. No major flaws happened and I wasn’t even nervous until right before I walked down the aisle. My bridesmaids were so much fun, and my Wedding Coordinator literally turned my reception into a fairytale land. My only complaint was that I felt I wasn’t able to stay around and enjoy everything as long as I would have liked. The total guest count is not quite in, but rumor has it that there was over 400 people there, so I think that made for a good turn out! There’s always that fear that no one is going to show up, so that was nice to hear. We got more presents than you can shake a stick at! It’s incredible how generous people have been to us. We are more than blessed.

The Night of the Wedding: Walt and I made plans to drive to Nashville the night of the wedding to stay our first night together in the Opryland Hotel where he proposed. If we did one thing right throughout the entire process, it was this. Sure the drive was a little tough since we were so worn out, but we had a big basket full of food and goodies from our reception, so the hour and a half flew by. When we got to the hotel and began to check in, we were told that we had been upgraded. We later found out that was due to our travel agent, Georgia (who by the way is the BEST). We had not only been upgraded, we were put up in THE Presidential Suite of the entire hotel! They call it the “Dolly Parton Suite” because that’s where she stays every time she goes there. We were walking down the hallway to get there and passed white door after white door. Finally, in the middle of nowhere, this HUGE mahogany door appeared with our room number on it!!! We looked at each other like, ummm, is this a joke? So we opened the door slowly to find the most unbelievable room I have ever seen. It was straight out of a movie! Two floors. Spiral Staircase. Baby Grand Piano. California King Bed with drapes around it fit for a princess. Clouds painted on the cathedral ceiling over the bed. The bed was in a loft that overlooked the dinning room downstairs which also overlooked the 15 foot windows that overlooked the gardens!!!! Three bathrooms! Kitchen. This place was literally insane. I have pictures of it and will post them as soon as I load them on the computer. If I ever could plan out the perfect place for my honeymoon night, this place more than exceeded it. It was a dream come true and was the start to the most amazing honeymoon ever….. or so I thought.

The Honeymoon: Yeah. So this is where the fun really began. Sunday morning we woke up early and left our heaven on earth to make an early flight. We were very hesitatnt leaving that room but were anxious to get to Mexico! As soon as we stepped on board the plane, I started feeling bad. Thirty minutes into the plane ride, I actually looked over at Walt and told him I felt like I was getting the flu. I tried to suck it up and have a good time. We got to the hotel, which was enormous by the way, and got all checked in and began to explore (me still not feeling well but not so bad that I had to stay in the room). The Hotel was literally incredible. It took a good 20 minutes to walk from one side of the place to the other. Food was EVERYWHERE. It was so weird sitting down, ordering as much of everything as you want, and then getting up and leaving without paying a dime! It was awesome. Monday morning came and instead of feeling better I was feeling a bit worse. However we had planned a day to go in to Xcaret which is this park there with animals, dolphins, Mayan ruins, underwater caves to swim through, and the most beautiful beach! So once again, I tried to suck it up and we went. It was awesome! We got to see tons of sea turtles from little babies to the big daddies! They were so cool to watch. And the underwater caves were really neat to snorkel through! The beach was more than beautiful. We really had a good time. But in the mean time I was feeling worse and worse. By Tuesday morning I was feeling rotten. We had to cancel our excursion planned for that day and stay around the hotel. From that moment on, I was sick as a dog. I’m not just talking tired and cold kind of sick, I mean flat out sick… which I really don’t ever get. The only thing that I wasn’t doing was throwing up. At one point my fever had reach 104. I had Mexican doctors in my room from Tuesday until Saturday morning right before we left. If you know me at all, you know my number one fear is needles. In a period of 3 days, I got 6 shots!!! In Mexico!!! From people I couldn’t understand!!! I couldn’t feed myself or go to the bathroom by myself. It was literally awful. Poor Walt had planned this amazing honeymoon for us and he ended up spending the entire time in the room taking care of me… and I mean he literally had to take care of me. He proved himself to be husband-worthy in the first week or our marriage! Long story short, we were unable to leave the room for the rest of the week. We tried to get an earlier flight home but were unable to. My mom and dad drove up from Huntsville to pick us up from the airport since I was in a wheelchair to help Walt out, who by this point was also getting sick. According to the doctor in Mexico, I had a severe upper respiratory infection that was turning into Pneumonia. By the time I got home and went to see my doctor in the US of A, I had blood taken, X-rays done, etc. and he said at that point I had the flu. So I was out another entire week from work. So here I am now back in at work for the first time in 3 weeks. Tired, but ready to be back. I will post pictures as soon as I can get blogger to let me. I will also post a few from the honeymoon later along with some pictures of our house… which is really coming along by the way! Thanks for your thoughts and prayers over the past several weeks and sorry for the extremely long post!

This House is Ours!!!

2007-02-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

WE GOT THE HOUSE!!! After much blood, sweat, and tears, we got the house we were dying for!!! When all signs were pointing that we would not get it, God worked his magic and landed the perfect opportunity in our laps. I saw the house last Tuesday for the first time and absolutely loved it. After Walt and I discussed whether or not we could really afford it, we decided that if we ever were to splurge, it should be on a house! So we decided to go for it! In the mean time, I had to try to break my lease with my apartment complex. Seems easy, right? WRONG! After many conversations with several different "managers" at the apartment complex, we went from having to pay a $400 fee for breaking the lease to a whopping $4,000 fee for breaking it! That's right, they were going to charge us $4,000 for breaking our lease. Once I found that out, the house idea was totally out. Who has an extra $4,000 for getting out of a lease 6 months early? I was soooo upset about the fee and had to break the news to Walt. The only possiblity for things to still work out was if we found a subleaser to take over our apartment. We found the bad news out on Wednesday and had to tell the homeowners our decision about the house Friday morning. So basically, we had one day to find someone who wanted a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment for 6 months. Out of sheer desperation, Walt put a post up on Craigslist for my apartment. Thursday morning came and we were still calling every person we know in the area to see if they knew of anyone who needed a place over the Summer. We finally found someone who needed it for 3 of the 6 months. We had a very long conversation about whether or not we could truly afford to pay for the apartment for 3 months while paying for the house. Things were still not looking good. At this point I had 24 hours before I had to give an answer about the house (which by the way if we said no to the house there were already 5 couples waiting that wanted it for sure). Walt and I prayed really hard about it around lunch time on Thursday. No more had we gotten done praying about it than my phone rang. A girl in her mid 20's had wandered onto Craigslist and she saw our post. It just so happens that she had been trying to get a 6 month lease on a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment at The Preserve (where we live) but they kept telling her she would have to pay until Jan... which really makes no sense. She only needed the place until the end of August since her roomate was building a townhouse that would be completed by September. She needed the apartment for the middle of March to the end of August- the EXACT dates we needed to rent it out! So we were able to sublease our apartment to this girl and therefore were out no money at all! We signed the papers for the house this past Friday! We are moving in this coming weekend! I can't believe how much the Lord has blessed us! We have so much to look forward to right now! Thank you all for your prayers! I have posted a picture of the house. We will post pictures of the inside as soon as we get our stuff in!!!

Sweet Hour of Prayer

2007-02-07T06:41:00.001-08:00

I would like to request your prayers for Walt and I at this time. It seems as though several really big decisions have fallen into our lap lately, and we need prayers in knowing how to make those decisions as well as for the big transition that is approaching so quickly! Yesterday I found a house. Let me start by saying that Walt and I had no intentions of moving out of the little apartment that my sister and I currently live in. It is completely fine for us to start off in. A little cramped and far from my work, but fine. However, here lately I have found myself constantly looking for houses and townhomes just for fun. Yesterday I actually found one that looked AMAZING! Before I knew it, I was driving out to see it on my lunch break. You know, just to do a quick drive by. It was even cuter in person! I found myself calling the owner and asking questions and by the end of the conversation I had a meeting with the guy that afternoon to view the house. I prayed that it would be ugly on the inside because I’m not quite sure if it is something that Walt and I can afford at this time. But the house was absolutely incredible on the inside! IT IS HUGE! 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, BRAND NEW! Not to mention all of the beautiful upgrades from the precious countertops to the dark chocolate brown cabinets. This house is everything Walt and I dreamed of one day having. Could it be possible that we could actually start off in this place? We are number one in line to get it. It’s crazy because while I was meeting with the guy two people stopped by the house and both immediately said that they wanted it. The guy was so sweet and said that I had shown interest and filled out an application first, so they would have to wait for me to decide. So please pray for Walt and I as we try to decide on whether or not we should take this place. We will have our last visit on Friday at 1:00. This will be the first time that Walt actually gets to see it! So we should know by that afternoon and we would be moving in next Friday!!!

I would also appreciate your continuous prayers in Walt’s job search. I’m sure you all know how hard that can be. Any help would also be greatly appreciated as neither of us really know anyone in the Nashville area besides those I work with. I will keep you posted on the house!!!

Happy Birthday!!!

2007-02-01T14:33:00.000-08:00

Today is my soon-to-be-husband's birthday! Walt turns 24 years old today! I can’t stand the fact that I’m not there with him on his actual birthday. Hopefully we won’t ever have to spend one apart after this year! I will be going to see him after work tomorrow and I’m sure we will have a great time celebrating. I just feel really sorry for him today since he has had to work all day and go straight to class for a presentation and a test. Happy Birthday to him?!?! I would also like to make a shout out to my Bridesmaid- Misty and Walt’s dad- Mr. Malone. They are also celebrating birthdays today! I guess February 1st is a busy day in hospitals around the nation.

My Birthday wish for you, Walt, is that you get all that you have ever wanted in life. I promise I will try every day to make you happy! You are the greatest blessing I have ever received and I thank God for you daily! I love you! Only 29 more days!!!!

Copy Cat

2007-01-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

Per my friend Jillina's blog, here are my answers to the questionnare below. Copy and paste and do your own blog questionnare!

1. What time did you get up this morning? 6:45
2. Diamonds or pearls? diamonds
3. What was the last film you saw at the movies? Rocky VI
4. What is your favorite TV show(s)? The Office, 24, LOST, Friday Night Lights, The OC
5. What did you have for breakfast? Slim Fast Meal Replacement Bar- chocolate chip
6. What is your middle name? Claire… and it will stay that way even after March 3…. So long to Gunnells
7. What is your favorite food? Anything CHOCOLATE
8. What foods do you dislike? Seafood and spaghetti
9. What is your favorite potato chip flavor? I love all potatoe chips unless they are that really crunchy, homemade, frou frou wanna-be chips
10. What is your favorite CD at the moment? The CD that will play at our wedding… it’s a mix CD
11. What type of car do you drive? White Hyundai Sonata
12. What characteristics do you despise? I really hate fake people and those who seem to judge you before you’ve even spoken a word.
13. Favorite item of clothing? These stretchy dress pants Walt gave me from New York and Company
14. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would you go? Disney World but I’m going there this Fall, so probably Italy
15. Favorite brand of clothing? Forever 21
16. Where would you like to retire? On the beach… definitely
17. Favorite time of the day? 7:00pm b/c I’m done working out and working and it’s time to sit down, eat dinner, and watch my favorite TV shows!
18. Where were you born? Atlanta, GA
19. Favorite color? Turquoise
20. Favorite sport to watch? College Football (Auburn Football to be exact)
21. Who do you least expect to send this back to you? Probably Walt since he NEVER updates his blog anymore
22. Who do you expect to send it back first? Ashley or Laurie
23. What fabric detergent do you use? Gain
24. Coke or Pepsi? I am now proud to say- Pepsi!
25. Are you a morning person or a night owl? Hahaha… anyone that knows me knows the answer to this… I am totally a night person
26. What is your shoe size? 7 1/2,
27. Do you have any pets? Not anymoreL
29. When is your birthday? October 28
**********FAVORITES**************** >
30. Shampoo? Dove
31. Summer or winter? both
32. Favorite Advertisement? Hallmark- Because you care to send the very best
****RIGHT NOW***************** >
33. Wearing? Chocolate brown pants and a white shirt
34.Eating? 100 calorie granola bar
35. Drinking? water
36. Thinking about? Getting married in 37 days!!!!!
37. Listening to: the sound of fellow co-workers typing away at their computers.
38. Book - Bible and US Weekly (that counts, right?)
39. Cried: I cry at almost every episode of Friday Night Lights… I’m not sure why. I also cry at the drop of a hat these days. Brides to Be are very emotional!
41. Drove a car: about 2 hours ago
42. How many hours sleep? usually 6-8
**********DO YOU BELIEVE IN**************** >
43. Yourself? Yes
44. Your friends? yes
45.Santa Claus? Absolutely! Why wouldn’t I?
46. Destiny/Fate? No
47. Ghosts? sometimes
**********FRIENDS AND LIFE********** >
48. Who have you known the longest of your friends? Probably Katie Milam
49. Who do you go to for advice? Walt, Laurie, my mom, Misty, Bekah, Christine… any of my good friends
50. When do you cry the most? When I’m planning a wedding in a different state and my fiancé lives 5 hours from me…
51. Do you want your friends to do this and send it back to you? Sure!

Busy Little Bee

2007-01-23T07:56:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the slacking on the posts lately. Life has without a doubt been getting pretty hectic. I cannot believe that we are in the end of January! Time is literally speeding up! As far as an update on wedding-related things… Walt and I have been running around like chickens with our heads cut off. It’s all so much fun, though! I’m no longer quite as stressed as I was. Now I’m just truly enjoying all of the aspects of getting engaged! This past weekend was a busy one. Walt and I had our engagement pictures taken on Friday afternoon. After that was rushed over to the bridal store where my bridesmaid dresses were… they look beautiful! I’m so excited about how they turned out, and I just know that all of my bridesmaids are going to look so amazing! We headed over to Strasburg Children from there to pick out Aiden’s honorary Ring Bearer outfit. With Ashley’s help, I think we got a really cute outfit and I know he is going to look adorable! From there we headed over to After Hours to add yet another tux to our order for Peyton who is going to pull the runner down the aisle. We got finished with just enough time to speed down the road to my sister’s house for my niece, Sophie’s, 5th birthday! I cannot believe she is already five! She will be starting school next Fall and it just kills me. I love that girl more than life! The party was great and we had a really good time hanging out with friends and family. After the party we went home to assemble and stuff wedding invitations… such a task! We worked hard on that until about 1:00am. The next morning began with an hour long drive to meet with our wedding coordinator. She is incredible! I have no doubt in my mind that the wedding is going to be gorgeous! We had to nail down everything from flowers to food to decorations! It was a really long yet really fun meeting. As you can see below walt got a little bored at our 4 hour long meeting and started taking pictures with his camera phone! From there we had to make several errands looking for flower girl baskets and guest books. We got home about 4:00, stuffed some more invitations, and had to leave by 5:30 to head over to our shower. We had a great turn out! So many people came and we even had some great friends drive all the way from Florence! (shout out to Meredith, Jarrod, Macy, Brady, Lou, and Al). We got some awesome gifts and just had a really great time. The shower was followed by watching different videographers work while stuffing more invitations. Sunday was of course church at Mayfair followed by a meeting with our piano player to discuss music for the wedding. Shew! Busy weekend! So that is the most up-to-date status on the wedding planning. Things are finally starting to fall in to place. I can’t believe it’s a month and a half away!!! This weekend we have our last shower (the Church shower). I can’t believe this is all almost over!

Felicity

2007-01-18T08:33:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how many of you out there have ever seen this show, but I'm here to say that it is one of the best shows ever created! I watched this show years ago when it first came on and loved them! They cancelled the show after only 4 seasons. A couple of years later, WE picked it up and started playing re runs everyday. It just so happened that I was off at Auburn during that time and they came on when I had a break between my classes everyday! I never missed an episode! Now, about 3 or 4 years later, my sister and I started yearning to watch the show again. Laurie got the first season for Christmas. On Christmas day we sat down and finished 5 episodes in one day! (They are each an hour long). Two weeks later we had finished the first season completely and began our search for the second season. We had no clue how hard this would prove to be. After probably 12 phone calls to Wal-Marts, Best Buys, Targets, Borders, Blockbusters, Barnes and Noble, and every other book or movie store you can think of, we found out that the entire city of Nashville is sold out of Felicity in the middle of January!!! What??? I guess that everyone in this city decided that they just had to watch Felicity too, which is weird since it has been off of the air for literally years now. Anyways, one order off of Wal-Mart online (for those fellow Felicity fans out there, they definitely sell it for the cheapest online there and the shipping is free of charge) and one week later... probably the longest week of my life... we found ourselves able to sit down and begin the second season which unveiled who Felicity spent the Summer with- Ben or Noel- as well as her long lovely locks being chopped off. This season isn't quite as amazing as the first, but it is still a crucial year in the life of Felicity. We are now 5 episodes in to this season and I will let you know how it turns out! This show is so worth your time. Even Walt thinks so!

Let the Job Search Begin!!!

2007-01-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

So Walt has been looking for a job for a couple of months now. Since the wedding is less than two months away, it is now time for him to really get cracking! Finding a job can be one of the most stressful and discouraging processes ever! So please keep us in your prayers over the next couple of months as we both try to find Walt a good job here in Nashville. Also, if any of you know anyone here that has a good job and might be able to help Walt out, please let me know! I appreciate all of your prayers and help! Wish us luck!

Congratulations!

2007-01-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

So we just experienced yet another amazingly fun weekend together in ole Nashvegas! And a huge congratulations goes out to the future Mr. and Mrs. Click! Walt and I were privaledged enough to play a major role in the suprise proposal of Andrew Click (he is in our wedding) to April Mundi this past weekend. It's a long story, but to summarize it, April thought she was coming to Nashville for the weekend with Andrew just to hang out and spend some time with Walt and I. Once they got to my apartment, Andrew and Walt told "us girls" that they had planned some big suprise for us and that we would have to wake up at 4:15!!! When April and I were alone, we started brainstorming about what the suprise could be that would require us to wake up so early (of course I knew all along that this was a plot to get April to the pre-planned destination). She decided that they must be taking us somewhere to watch the sunrise since they mentioned it would be cold there and we needed to dress warmly. So we woke up after only 3 hours of sleep, and way before the sun was up, got ready, and got in the car. After we got in the car, the boys proceeded to tell us that we would have to be blind folded until we got to our destination. Being half asleep, we both agreed. Of course, I took my blindfold off only moments after putting it on to instruct Walt how to get to the airport. That's right, we went to the airport to drop them off so that they could catch their flight to NYC for the day! April grew up in NYC and her family just recently moved to Atlanta. So this year over the holidays, she was sad that she didn't get to return to her true home town. Since that is the most special place to her, Andrew got tickets for them to spend the day there. They held hands the first time on the ferry in front of the Statue of liberty, so it was very appropriate that he proposed to her in front of the beautiful lake that faces the ferry and the Statue of Liberty. We picked them up from the airport later that night with a sign for the newly engaged couple as well as a bridal goody bag! They were sooo excited, yet exhausted from the trip. We were thrilled to be a part of this big day for them! Congratulations to the happy couple!

On another note, we had a shower Saturday night in Nashville and it was so much fun! We had some of our closer friends in Nashville there from all different stages of life, yet everyone really seemed to get along great! We had awesome soups and salads and we got some very cool presents! This weekend was action packed and so much fun! I feel like being engaged is finally starting to feel real and it is getting so exciting! Less than two months to go!!!! (just a couple very random pics! enjoy!)

A Picture Worth 1,000 Words

2007-01-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

To most people this picture won’t mean anything. But to Walt and I, this picture is more than special. This past weekend we were going through all of our pictures and trying to find specific ones for our wedding video. We went through hundreds, and probably even thousands of pictures looking for one with family members, friends, growing up pics, etc. At the bottom of the stack of my pictures, buried way down, I found this picture. For those of you who know me well, and who really know Walt and I well, you will know what this picture is and understand why it is so special to us. This is a picture of me when I was probably about four years old with my cousin, Jil, and my Granddaddy. It was taken at the Opryland Hotel when we were attending Lads to Leaders one year, as we did every Easter weekend. If you look closely, you will notice that we are sitting in front of the Lion’s Head which just so happens to be the very spot where Walt proposed to me!!! It is so crazy to think about how many times I walked past that spot, and even had pictures taken there, and all the while I never had any clue what would happen there 20 years later. That picture was taken at random but now it has become one of the most special pictures that I own! To me it is a reminder that God is in control and that it is a small world after all! Walt and I used to attend the same Lads to Leader Convention at the Opryland Hotel every single year, yet we never knew the other one was even there! There’s no telling how many times we might have walked passed each other, or even looked in each other’s direction! This picture reminded me to sit back, take a deep breath, and appreciate all of this crazy wedding planning and be thankful for this time in mine and Walt’s life. We are blessed more than words!

The Holiday

2006-12-20T14:13:00.000-08:00

A few of my closer friends came up to see me last night to just hang out, go to dinner, and do a little Nashville shopping (which I was only able to do over my lunch break). We met at P.F. Chang’s since they do not live close to one and that seems to be the place we always go whenever we all get together. The food was good and the conversations were great! We got done fairly early and decided to hop across the street to the movie theater to see what’s playing. Side note- I had a really rough day yesterday. One of those days when all of your stress seems to come crashing down on you at one time and it literally feels like there is an elephant laying on your chest… yeah, one of those days. Walt was so sweet to me all throughout the day helping me cope, and then he went and did a totally Walt thing. He called me right before I left to go meet the girls and said that he knew I had had a terrible day and that he wanted to make sure I had a great night. Money has been a little tight this month, and he had gone to the bank to deposit some money in my account for my “girls night” so that I could order whatever I wanted at the restaurant and also see a movie!!! He is so incredibly sweet and thoughtful. He totally treats me like a princess!!! I don’t deserve it! So anyway, back to the theater, it didn’t take us long to all agree on a movie- The Holiday. Total feel good chick flick with decent A/B list stars- perfect for a girls night. Overall I guess I really liked the movie? I don’t know if you have ever gone to a movie and not really felt one way or another about it, just kind of agreed that it was entertaining, didn’t hate it, but didn’t LOVE it??? That’s kind of how I feel about it. I definitely enjoyed it and would probably even recommend it. But the movie was jaded before it even began due to the awful previews before it!!! Out of 3 of the movie previews, 2 of the previews were about a woman who had lost the love of her life- one being a fiancé and the other being a husband/father. It was terrible! I can’t stand watching something like that because it makes me wonder what it would be like if I was in there place. So needless to say, after my not so fun day, I had tears streaming down my face before the movie had even started. Super. The movie started off a bit rocky, but once you adjusted to the characters as well as the road they appeared to be taking in the movie, it got better. I definitely enjoyed the Jack Black Kate Winslett story more than the Cameron Diaz, Jude Law story. PS- Jude Law is hot. So all in all, the movie was entertaining and had a decent ending. Parts of it were a little unrealistic, but what movie doesn’t contain that, right? So I guess a big thanks goes out to ole Walter Pooh for being so sweet and paying for me to have a much needed night out with the girls. Thanks Walt! You’re the sweetest!

6 Flags!!

2006-12-13T17:31:00.000-08:00

What a fun place! Walt took me to Six Flags (over Georgia) for my birthday this year (back in October) for a fun filled, wedding-free day. We had an absolute blast! They have about a million new roller coasters and neither of us had been in a really long time. We rode the absolute biggest roller coaster I have EVER seen in my entire life called Goliath. In previous years when I would go to Six Flags, I always thought that rides like The Ninja and the Free Fall were the scariest, tallest rides I had ever seen. But Goliath literally towered over all of the other rides in the park. Apparently it is one of the tallest rides in the world. It is absolutely terrifying. Walt and I both like a thrill when it comes to roller coasters, but we also both went through a long stage in our lives that we were, lets just say, a little scared of them due to the fact that you allow yourself to be flipped upside down and rushed straight down a hill going 90 miles per hour with nothing protecting you but a little bar which is practically rusting off. So you can imagine our fear when we saw this giant roller coaster. I immediately said, “NO WAY!” I told him I would ride any other ride in the park except that one, and needless to say he didn’t quite argue with me about it.

So we went from ride to ride, screaming until we had no voice left at all, pretending that we really enjoyed all of the flips and falls when I honestly think we were both scared for our lives. Regardless, it made for a really fun day! We happened to be there for the yearly Fright Fest this year. Six Flags goes ALL OUT for Halloween each year with shows, decorations, Haunted Houses, and after dark, the entire park becomes possessed with characters from different scary movies that walk around the park and sneak up on you. It’s really fun but definitely scary when you are standing around deciding which kind of hot dog you want to order and you turn around only to find Jason, mask, chainsaw, and all directly behind you staring right through you through the two tiny holes in the mask. We saw all kinds of people including the scary girl from The Grudge… or The Ring… either way the pale black hair in face girl that walks double jointed and is the most horrifying looking thing ever! We followed her around the park for a while as she snuck up on various people who weren’t paying attention until they finally turned around and squealed like a little girl as she awkwardly jolted herself in their direction.

So back to the Goliath. After we procrastinated all we could and rode every ride in the park, played a few games, and crammed a Funnel Cake down in approximately 5 minutes, we looked up and were staring at our fate. We had to defeat Goliath. We couldn’t chicken out now! We had conquered the entire park and this one ride was not going to stand in our way of Six Flags completion. We shook our fear and decided that if we were indeed going to die, at least we would die together. We walked up to the line expecting to wait an hour or two and work up our courage but were unpleasantly surprised when there were only 6 or so people in the entire line which happened to be young boys dressed all in black with strange piercings and chains everywhere. We knew we were doomed, but it was too late to turn back. So off we went, up and down, upside down, and jerked from side to side for what seemed like an eternity. I think my heart only stopped beating 3 times during the ride, so all in all it wasn’t so bad.

Here are some pictures from that day which include some fun funnel cake moments, scary faces before plunging straight down on a roller coaster, and a few extra. Side Note- Six Flags has awesome food!!! The highlight was when we got to eat at a panda express for lunch! One of Walt’s favorites…and a new favorite of mine too!!