New Year!!

This past holiday season was extra special; We had so much family to celebrate with!  And of course, you can't have this much family together without doing some pretty awesome things.  Like paintball.  And downtown New Years Eve festivities.  Like I said before, awesome.

 

Somebody was tuckered out by the end of the night!  He didn't even wake up to get his food from McDs!

 

More house pics :)

Ta-Da!!!  The top portion on the right is our bedroom (complete with porch on the far right :) ), and to the left is our bathroom.  The front door is underneath the bathroom with, yes, tree posts!!

Part of our bedroom.

Old Man Oak--thanks Angela!!

Walter.  He doesn't come with the house, but he was excited to help out!

Our front yard and a quite large cumulus cloud coming over the mountain.

Ashley Bay Designs

A good friend from high school and college has recently shared her wonderful website with me!  She does beautiful work in photography, and her portfolio, which shows not only her photography but her drawing as well, is outstanding.  Ashley also works in web design so if you are interested in creating or managing a website, check her out!

Ashley Bay Designs

These are just a few examples of her art which you can find on her website!

We were supposed to go camping...and we did!

I'm sorry this is so late...but I realized that I really didn't take many pictures of us doing camping stuff (and I'm so upset that I didn't!).  A couple weeks ago, five of us (Bruce, Taylor H, Leah, Handsome Taylor and myself) left on a camping trip into Cherokee.  Don't worry, all five returned safely.  :)  We decided on Indian Creek Campground http://www.indiancreekcampground.com/, a fabulous campground for tent-ers and rv-ers alike!  I wanted to camp in early April before it started getting warm at night and I will admit, the weather was perfect...the bugs were not.

Bruce, packing up the truck to head out!  Yay!

Bruce, beginning to set up our 9-person tent--don't worry, Leah and I helped!   Oh, and that "9-person" tent really only sleeps 5-6 comfortably.

Our beautiful campsite complete with Kojak, the wolf-dog.  He kept the scary things away at night!

This trillium is for Chrissy McAllister...and bio-block! 

Our second campsite...just in case we (or the dog) needed more room.

Riverfront property!

Bruce cleaned his fish in this spot :(  I shouldn't have watched that...

This is the "bear-slide".  A year or so ago, a couple was camping out in our spot (tent) and it was raining pretty hard...well, in the middle of the night they hear a huge crash which turned out to be a frightened bear who literally slid all the way down the mountain into their tent!  Luckily, he wasn't hungry and quickly tried to climb back up.  I was hoping for a bear too :)

The fire that Leah and I started!  No gasoline required!

While cleaning breakfast dishes, Taylor H or Handsome Taylor (I don't remember which one) dropped the plate into the river.  This is them trying to fish it out (and it was freezing!!!).

The rash I got from spraying 98.1% deet onto my bare, sensitive skin.  It itched like crazy!!!  Note to self: do not spray deet near sunglasses, watch faces, sensitive necks, or food.  

I shave my legs for days like today!

The weather here in Fairview/Asheville has been, for lack of a better word, wonderful.  Just this morning I woke up and went out to my deck to catch some much needed rays (with sunscreen of course!).  In the winter, because of my fair skin and blonde hair, I turn into this off-white blob--the color of my apartment walls.  Blah.

Back to the weather; this weekend we were able to play some Frisbee golf which was sooo much fun.  Granted, we all were pretty rusty, and Handsome Taylor's disc somehow kept ending up in either the thick brush or a body of water.  Not only did we get to play some f.g. but we went downtown to SkyBar: a little, tiny bar in this super old historic building complete with old-fashioned rickety elevator (similar to the one's in Titanic).  However, my camera isn't very fancy so the picture is a little blurred :(  But you get the idea.

Leandi 

News Update

Dear reader,

I apologize for the long delay in my writing, but things have been busy in these last few weeks...and I have been slightly lazy.  Handsome Taylor and I have moved apartments from the 3rd floor to the 1st floor.  We sacrificed our spacious living room and volted ceilings for an extra office, larger kitchen, and of course no stairs (the best part).

We moved in very quickly, not necessarily because I have a slight form of OCD, but because we had company coming that night...a lot of company.  Handsome Taylors brother Garrett and his wife, Emily, our best friends Taylor and his girlfriend, Leah, and his cousin Phil were all to stay in our cozy 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment.  It was a spectacular weekend though as we celebrated both Meredith (T's sister) and Jenn's (T's cousin and Phil's sister) birthday in downtown Charlotte.  Let me remind the reader that I have not had a night out past 10:00pm in a very, very long time.  I don't even remember what time we all went to bed, but I know it was past 3 because we left Charlotte around 2 and Phil got a Bertolli dinner (he was hungry) at Harris Teeter on the way home...and that takes 45 minutes to cook.  We celebrated the morning after by going to The International House of Pancakes.  I do not recommend IHOP (unless you know it's a good one) after a long night because the greasy food I consumed has had a terrible affect on me in the days following.

We also have a new bird: Butterball (more photos on her later).  Why Butterball, you ask?  1) Handsome Taylor named her and as you know with Tyson, he likes the members of our family to be named after meat products. 2) I couldn't think of a quick enough rebound name. 3) I will admit, she slightly resembles a slab of butter.  So Butterball it is.  It's really okay though, because I just wanted Tyson to have a house mate to talk to, peck at, woo, etc.  We'll see how she adapts to her new environment :)

I have also started a new job!  I am currently a fitness instructor and aquatics instructor at the YMCA in downtown Charlotte.  Let this be known that this is the largest Y besides the one in Chicago.  It is HUGE!  7 stories huge to be exact.  I do love the people I work with and the environment is wonderful!  I even get a free membership!!  Woohoo!  Although, in weeks following, I'm sure I will come up with fantastic excuses not to work out...  I start teaching swim lessons in January so I'm excited about that too.  It will be nice to have an income again!

Well, that is about all of the news I have for right now.  I will take some pictures soonly when our apartment starts to look like an apartment.  Enjoy the snow for me (no snow in Charlotte)!

Sincerely,

Randilicious

We were supposed to go camping...

So this past weekend I had planned on going camping up in the mountains...maybe Linville Falls or something spectacular like that.  I had called several of our friends (Taylor and Leah, Scott and Jenn) and we were going to have a fabulous time hiking and setting up camp and waking up to the crisp mountain air.

You know, a little bit of this (complete with scenery and lushness)...

...and some of this.

Nope.  Most of the leaves had already dropped by the time I came back home to Asheville (and this time the weathermen were right--it was a quick fall!).  Saturday morning greeted us with freezing winds and the first snow of the year.  

Now this isn't the record snow or anything we had last year, but flurries none-the-less.  And I realize that many, many people camp in the snow...but coming up from Charlotte where the temperatures previous to that weekend had been in the 60's, well, we weren't exactly prepared.  

So aside from me being slightly upset at not being able to go camping, we (all 6 of us) took it upon ourselves to deal with our grief in the best way we could: drink margaritas and eat enchiladas at La Paz, a fabulous Mexican restaurant in Biltmore, followed by board games at Taylor and Leah's new house.  Yes, it was an awesome night and I can't believe I didn't get any pictures!!!  We all ended up staying up really late that night and after Scott and Jenn left around 2, Leah and I played Battle of the Sexes with my Taylor until he subsequently fell asleep between us by 3.  (Leah's Taylor was passed out and was not able to participate).  

I am still planning on a camping weekend because this week in Charlotte is back up in the 60's and possibly the low 70's which means Asheville will be about 10-15 degrees below that (perfect camping weather, yes I know).  And my sleeping bag is beckoning usage because it has been unused for about 2 years now (since the last time Taylor and I went camping at Linville Falls).  And I promise, more pictures to come!!!