Coming!

Come, Thou long expected Jesus

Born to set Thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us,

Let us find our rest in Thee.

Israel’s Strength and Consolation,

Hope of all the earth Thou art;

Dear Desire of every nation,

Joy of every longing heart.

Born Thy people to deliver,

Born a child and yet a King,

Born to reign in us forever,

Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.

By Thine own eternal Spirit

Rule in all our hearts alone;

By Thine all sufficient merit,

Raise us to Thy glorious throne.

("Come, Thou long expected Jesus", an Advent Carol by Rowland Prichard and Charles Wesley.)

(Thanks mom for the pictures!)

You're My Butterfly...Sugar...Honey

One of the popular tourist spots in Callaway Gardens is the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center.  We arrived at the Gardens pretty early and had the Center to ourselves!  One slight drawback was that it was cloudy out and the butterflies like the sun.  But some of the butterflies were still very active.  One other slight drawback is the humidity is about 90%!  Hello frizzy hair!  It also took about 20 minutes for our cameras to unfog!  But the wait was worth it!

I couldn't help myself!  I had to post more flowers!

The butterflies were beautiful, even with the cloudy skies! 

These two were chasing each other and when they were together it looked like a crazy person (and I looked like a crazy person trying to photography them together as they would not stay still for very long)!

PURPLE FLOWERS!!

Did I mention how much I enjoyed Callaway Gardens?  :)

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

I love Christmas!  Love Love Love!  I started putting up my Christmas decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving and it has been a progress, but I think I am almost done (though it would help if I stopped looking at Pinterest and finding new ideas!).

It is a good thing I went to those photography lessons, am I right?  Sheesh!

This is my mantel area (in case you couldn't tell!).  I found the idea of the picture frames on another blog which pointed me to Pinterest (here: http://pinterest.com/pin/529050617/ and here: http://pinterest.com/pin/578485235/).  What a great way to remember the meaning of Christmas!  The nativity scene is from Waccamaw (oh how I miss Waccamaw).  Disregard the 4th wise man in the nativity...I am not sure why there are 4.  Maybe he is the innkeeper?  And of course my mom made the stockings for me and Allie (the dog)!

Random Christmas decorations in a chair.  I had the decorations, so I had to put them SOME where!

Here is my tree!  And look...two presents already wrapped!  Go me!

And this is a sneak peak of some of the Christmas presents i am making!  I took up knitting last year (thanks mom) and love it (I think I am on par with a record number of 'loves' in this blog post).  Last year I gave my friends cup coasters, and this year I am working on another homemade gift!

I do love Christmas and all that it means.  I love the birth of Jesus Christ.  I love spending time with my family.  I love giving presents (I particularly enjoy that at work we give Christmas presents to the Guardian ad Litem program and other organizations.

Merry Christmas!

Oh you can be sure this is NOT the last Christmas post!

We're From The Country And We Like It That Way

Before I begin, I still have one more post from Callaway Gardens, but I am blog-digressing for a moment (I don't care that that "blog-digressing" is not an actual term).  As a bit of background, my parents live in the country and I love it.  I love driving by cotton fields, peanut fields (and I love love love the smell of freshly turned peanuts!), and corn fields (though I don't like to eat corn...except for popcorn...and candy corn).  Why do I love these fields?  For the delicious food grown?  Nope.  I love the straight lines of the fields.  Random and weird?  Yes.  But I embrace my inner love for organization lines.

So anyway I was going to my parents house (with my parents) from Florida the other day and we had to pass over the Chattahoochee River (insert Alan Jackson song here).  Well, right when we got to the bridge to cross the river, a truck stopped us because something was coming over the bridge.  Something large that took up both lanes.  I was pretty excited as I wasn't sure what was about to come over the bridge and we were first in line to see what it was!  Granted, my parents told me it was probably a cotton picker, but I was pretty sure it was a space shuttle or a UFO.

As we waited, suddenly a giant ship (okay, it was a cotton picker) emerged on the horizon.

I love it!  Only out in the country would this happen!

Now I have decided I would like to drive a cotton picker.  I could see myself as a farmer.  (Not really...I like the idealized romantic thought of being a farmer, but I am not sure I could be one.  However, I do have the utmost respect for farmers and their hard work and the food they grow for me [except for the corn]!  They ROCK!)