lessons & carols in the clouds

Lessons & Carols is an annual Advent ceremony held at All Saint's Chapel in Sewanee, TN. Granddaddy was kind enough to invite both me and my great aunt Jane to attend this year. Sewanee's fog is rather infamous. I remember two whole months one year where we were literally just walking around in the fog. With our heads in the clouds. I never minded the fog or lack of sunshine during the winter months. It made it that much easier to pretend I was walking around Oxford, England (a place I hold very dear to my heart.)

During my freshman year of college, I walked past this amazing old cemetary on my way to and from class, the dining hall, you name it. I always found it a very beautiful and peaceful place, never creepy or grotesque. In the fog, it always seemed magical. This is long before I'd found a passion for photography, but the mental image is one of those "real" moments I've mentioned before, where I've captured a photograph in my memory. Lucky me, I was able to actually capture some of those memories/moments this past weekend:




The Lessons & Carols was exactly how I remembered it. The Chapel had been "greened" and the candlelight service was awe-inspiring. I had chills. And tears. And just felt so very reverent. Until I'd look over and see my 90-year-old Granddaddy checking the score of the Auburn game on his iPhone. Nice. I was able to sneak back into the chapel the next day to photograph some of the amazing poinsettias and decorations. The choir was practicing. So it was me, the choir singing, and my camera. All by my lonesome in that big big beautiful place. What a great way to start off this holiday season.




We stayed at the Edgeworth Inn on the Monteagle Assembly Grounds, an old 1896 inn originally owned by Adam Edgeworth. You can read more about it here: edgeworthinn.com
Granddaddy and I spent some time meandering the Assembly Grounds, taking photos, remarking on the snow, just enjoying our time together.






The Inn itself was perfect for this week's theme of Black & White:




And, just one more photo. This is during Granddaddy's texting lesson. You know how amazing I think my grandfather is, already, but this weekend he decided to tackle texting. Except, no amount of trying to convince him that texts should be short and sweet and to the point seemed to get through to him. So he sent a text message that was longer than most emails. It was like a blog entry, I swear. Not to mention that the whole thing read like some telegram one might have received in the 40's. I had a hard time not peeing my pants. He keeps me young, this guy.

It's Christmas Time

I had a completely different Christmas experience this year. No parents. No brother. No sister. BUT. One killer fiance.

Christmas Eve Eve was spent at Great Aunt Jane Hodge's, where we took shots of her home-made eggnog and watched her walk around in the Snuggie my Granddaddy searched for for weeks. Yes. He went to numerous stores and found all the available Snuggies sub-par. So he googled "Warm Things" on the Internet and lo and behold! he found an entire website devoted to being warm. Literally. Warm Things.com Here's Matt and his fraternity pinkie sipping his eggnog toddie.

I worked on Christmas Eve. Yeah, that's right. I woke up at six a.m. NOT to open presents, but to go and listen to people chew me out because of their tooth aches. Fun stuff. But there was a pretty amazing sunrise.
Sipsey really enjoyed Christmas Eve at the Souths. Seriously. I knew she was in the Christmas spirit because I have tried no less than 86,000 times to try to get her to wear this Santa hat, and she kept it on for at least ten photos that night.
The best present EVER from Dirk. A remote control for my camera. We all know how many calories I burn by running back and forth depending on how many seconds I've set the self-timer to, and we all know how fond Dirk is of remote controls. This is actually one I will use all the time (unlike the universal remote for his entertainment system that I received for my 24th birthday.)
The South Family Christmas Tree. All gorgeous and LSD'ed out.
We headed home to Birmingham on Christmas morning to open gifts from the Youngs, the Amyses, and the dogs. Yes, I got some great gifts from the dogs. I got "Inkdeath" the last in Cornelia Funke's Inkheart trilogy, and "A Lion Amongst Men", the latest in Gregory Maguire's Wicked books. Sweet. Dirk got a fun new wii game, one that I can actually play, although apparently I shouldn't take the time to get every single coin on a level.
Minnetonka Moccasins! So warm and comfy and on my feet right now! Oh, and I also got the chubby cheeks from Santa. Thanks to all the dentist's offices that have been delivering goodies to the office for the last month. One of the benefits (and curses!) of working the front desk is that we get to hide all the yummies that we don't want to share.

Brunch and five mimosas was had at the Graffeo's. Aunt Jane really outdid herself, with placecards with cute little Christmas ornaments. But my favorite part of the gathering was when Matt read a letter Jane came across that Granddaddy wrote home to his parents in 1944 on Christmas Day while he was stationed in the South Pacific during WW2. Tears. I kind of choke up even typing about it.

It seems as if everyone in the blogosphere had a wonderful holiday, and I am so jealous of all the snow :( It just wasn't the same without my folks, but I was fortunate enough to get to ichat with them for a little while Christmas afternoon. Oh, and Dirk and I went to see Avatar in 3D and it was so amazing. Absolutely positively a must-see for everyone out there!

On a final note, here is Aunt Jane modeling her Snuggie.

Happy Valentine's from Lake Superior

I made snow angels today to celebrate VD. They turned out to look more like Snow Bald Eagles because my booty slid down the embankment. Oh, well. I'm having so much fun playing in the snow!

Cute Overload and a Holiday Hangover

Well, the holidays are over and that's a little sad. It was quite possibly the best Christmas yet, but probably because it was so different from years past. This was my second EVER Christmas away from the farm in Iowa (the first one was when I was like, five, so it doesn't really count,) and it was my first Christmas spent with Dirk and my brother-in-law Chris, and Taylor's very first Christmas! We had Christmas Eve with his family, and then four days of Christmas with mine, which I feel is a fair compromise :-) Piper LOVED Taylor, probably because Sipsey really doesn't want anything to do with her (we're hoping that she'll warm up to her new little sister eventually.)
On Saturday we took Taylor to Wald Park in Vestavia, which is the coolest playground in the city (in my humble opinion.) I won't share photos of my parents riding double on the special needs swing, because the image has been implanted in my brain and haunts my dreams at night. Note: no one over the age of 8 should ride double on the swing set. It should be a law. Doesn't Taylor look just like a Baby Gap ad in this photo?
I love watching the Amyses interact with each other. There is so much love in their family, and this shot captures the warmth and fun they exude when you're around them.
Who's more afraid of the slide?
Sipsey has gotten better about letting Piper touch her, and this photo is one of the first times Sips let the puppy cuddle up next to her (they've since spent most of their naps snuggling.) Last night Sipsey "accidentally" trampled Piper and the puppy started screaming like she'd been shot with a bb gun. Sipsey went nuts and was maniacally sniffing Piper from head to toe to make sure she was okay. It was the first maternal instinct we've seen her exhibit and it was hopefully a display we'll see more of in the future.

rounding off a fun summer...

We started out the summer by spending Memorial Day Weekend at Lay Lake with our friends Aimee and Jorge, and we ended up the summer spending Labor Day weekend at the same lake and house with most of the same people. Except Dirk didn't drink a bottle of Maker's Mark and I didn't spend an entire night taking care of him. Which was fabulous.We celebrated Aimee's birthday, ate tons and tons of yummy food, drank caparini's to our heart's content, swam, slept, and kept a close watch on Gustav, which was heading straight towards Aimee and Katie's family's home in Franklin, Louisiana. Thankfully Dirk had brought bunny ears for the television (God forbid he miss the first Alabama game of the season!) I have to hand it to him, though, ever since he bought ME a plasma television in December (just what I wanted, right?) he has been counting down the days to Alabama football. He was even going to stay at home and drive down separately after the game, but the antenna was the wise decision. Plus, it enabled us to get hurricane coverage in an otherwise remote area (no cell phone service.)One must never forget one's alcoholic beverage when floating around the lake.
We all enjoyed watching our two lesbian dogs make out.
Sipsey and I floated around on the raft....someone failed to tell me that sunscreen EXPIRES (I blame my mother)! I applied 30spf TWICE that day and STILL got a horrible burn!
Enjoying the sunset on the dock.