The Jones Family Adventures

Our Family Christmas Card

2011-12-10T07:57:00.009-07:00

Well this year was eventful to say the least! Greetings to all who received our Christmas card or are just stopping by for an update.

This year (like in past years here, here, here, here, and here) we decided to give you the scoop on each other, but we also let the kids fill you in on what they thought you should know. We asked them each what they wanted people to know about their past year:

Baby Girl (4 1/2)
"I love Bubba and Mimi and I am excited about Christmas." She also says she misses the white house (see move details below:) but she likes the "hope street house". "I also like cupcakes, dancing, ornaments, and presents under the tree, and counting" (she could not count or know to start with "1" when she first came)...we love and are proud of her sweet counting too :).

Mimi (2 1/2)
Eryn: "Do you want to talk about what you have liked this year?"
Mimi: "Ummm..... Yeah!" Then she waddles/runs into the living room and says the following things she likes. "Dance"- we dance alot after dinner time in the living room. Occasionally we will also partake of a ring-a-round-the-rosey and then all fall down, otherwise referred to as "ring roun". She also mentions "kikecream" (ice cream), "pee party" (having tea parties with mommy and baby girl in which she usually spills more of her thimble size tea cup than drinks it).
Then I thought she was done; however, she came back in for a second round.
Mimi: "Eat, eat".
Eryn: "Oh, yes I know you like to eat eat a lot! I will let them know".
Mimi: "And Daddy, Mommy, Bubb Bubbee, Awisha (baby girl)....bye bye Mommy"
Still not done, she came back in about 40 more times of making sure I knew she liked to "eat eat" :)

Bubee
Eryn: "Bubba, what did you like about this year?"
Bubee: "Ehh, ehh (which means yes and no, probably no in this case), and then he said "bideo peeese" (translation: video please because I see you are near the TV :). That boy loves his Baby Einstein videos!

Eryn (written by David)
Eryn has had a great year. She has continued to counsel clients and her practice has grown (at least up until the time we got the kids). She is a great mom- Eryn is very patient and loving, but also firm when she needs to be. She is really able to get to the root of what is going on with the children. Here is an example of a conversation we might have: "Well David, Baby Girl is probably feeling sad that she cannot be with her mom (bio-mother), happy that she is with us, mad that she cannot control her situation, worried because she doesn't know what will happen next, responsible for her brother and sister, apprehensive about her life in general, and worried that we will not be pleased with her." To which I reply, "Hmm, I just thought she was being ornery"! The kids are all pretty good eaters, mostly thanks to Eryn's creative and healthy cooking. She is very ambitious and brave (as far as I'm concerned) when it comes to taking on tasks with the three little ones. Example: "David, I think I'm going to take all three of the kids to a birthday party an hour away at which they can eat nothing because of their allergies and which would fall squarely during their nap time." That's the kind of thing she does regularly because it's good for the kids, but for which I would rather go grocery shopping than undertake (that's saying a lot for me!).

David (written by Eryn)
After 6 Christmases, I am still so happy to be married to this guy! David is a wonderful, loving, firm, playful father and the kids really love him. It has been kind of a bummer, but lately Bubee has been saying, "Dadddeeeee" more- which means he wants the ole Dad more than Mom sometimes. Maybe it's because he knows that Dad will wrestle with him and Mom is quite frankly just not very good at it :) David is very creative with his parenting and it has really benefited all of them, especially Baby Girl. She didn't seem to have a concept of what a father figure was at first so David began playing Ariel/ the Little Mermaid with her where he would be King Triton and she would be Ariel. She really responded well to that and began to work out the role of a "dad" through her play with him. She adores him!
David continues to excel in school and he will start adjusting folks in the student clinic really soon. I'm excited to have my own personal chiropractor :)

On Everything Else
The kids are doing great. We are so proud of the improvements they have made over the past couple of months. Although most of those improvements are to the Lord's credit and not ours, we are very proud of them. Baby Girl (4) has both grown up and grown "down" so much since we first got her. She has grown up in that she is more settled, more helpful, has learned a years worth of information in the last two months, and can regulate her emotions better. She is flying through the phases that she missed in her earlier years. She is growing down in that she is less "hard" and visibly feels less responsible for her brother and sister. Mimi has perhaps changed the most, which is saying a lot. She is a much happier little girl and although she has her two year old moments, she is very pleasant to be around. We would now classify her as "well-adjusted" little girl who instead of throwing a fit and pulling out her hair will give a typical two-year-old response of "Duhdee, I'ont want too" :) Bubee is perhaps the happiest kid that we have encountered. He seems to weather things well. He is active and loves (LOVES) to sing! He is much more active (and interactive) since we took him a couple of times to a great Pediatric Chiropractor who helped him with a neck issue. (Had to throw in a plug for the chiropractic profession :) He has learned the word "Mommeeee" and "Dadeeeee" and will say it 100 times as long as we respond with some form of "Yes". Sometimes it's a game we play to see how long he will say it.

Everything else is also going well. Not only did we take in three kids in September, we also moved a couple weeks later in October. Many thanks to Eryn's family for helping out with the massive undertaking of moving with three kids. The kids also loved the garden at "the white house" (old house) which we did again this year (like last) for which I will spare you the numbers, but our crop produced more yield than last. We were sad to leave that behind at our new house. We hope to start one here in our new home this Spring. We love our neighborhood and the kids have other children around to play with. We have had a rough year, but in a good way. The transition from zero to three children has been tough to say the least, but we have not regretted a single minute of having these babies in our home. We cannot imagine ever loving any children more than we love them, nor did we know we were capable of loving little people who we hardly know this much. We are getting to know them better and know more of what they need each day and God has given us a ton of grace through the whole year from before we had them to now as we are parenting.

Hope you all are well and have a wonderful Christmas season!
Love, David, Eryn, Baby Girl, Mimi, and Bubee

If you want updates on our adoption/ foster care timeline or other stories here are some more links to other blog posts:
Why we chose to adopt through the foster system
Our Adoption Decision Journey
The first Two Months
Funny Things about the Kids

Funny Things

2011-11-30T13:45:00.008-07:00

At Thanksgiving with David's family we were all watching the Alabama/ Auburn Football game on Saturday. So Baby Girl heard a lot of "Roll Tides". We had rolls for dinner that night and after dinner Baby Girl asked me if she could have another "roll tide" :) It took me a while to figure out she wanted an actual roll. I think she might have thought we were all screaming "Roll Tide" because we were really, really excited about the dinner rolls :)

When we put the kids to timeout we usually give them 5 seconds to change their behavior. We say, "1..2..3..4..5, OK timeout" or if they actually change, we just stop counting. Well the other day Mimi was playing with BeekBock in the hall and she was saying something that I couldn't make out. Then I heard her say to him, "3...4...8..9....OK, PIMOUT", which is what she calls timeout. I don't think she enforced it very well though!

Bubee is very compliant; although, I'm not sure he always knows what he is agreeing to. If you tell him something and ask him if he understands he always nods very slow and seriously up and down for yes. The other day I was testing him out to see if he knew what he was agreeing to:

"Bubee all done with his dinner?"
Nod for yes
"Bubee want to get down?"
Nod for yes
"Bubee want to try and discover some unknown element so that he can win a Nobel prize for it?"
Pause, then nod for yes!

Both him and Mimi always say, "K" for "OK" whenever we ask them to do something/ remember something that we just taught them that most likely resulted in a timeout. They also are not sure about exactly what "K" means:

"Mimi share your toy with Bubee. You have had it for a long time."
"K" and then we give the toy to Bub.
Pause.
Scream and crying.
"But Mimi you said OK to sharing your toy."
"K"
Pause.
More crying.

David's parents are called Mimomo and B-Pops by all the other grand kids. The other night during prayers (they usually repeats after us) Mimi was praying and said "Thank you for Mimomo and P-Pots". So poor Buddy is now P-Pots until Mimi can talk a bit better :)

Mimi is a do-er. She loves working at her play. She also loves taking everything apart and putting things back together. The other day when they came home from school I noticed she took all of her big sister's clothes out of her back pack (which Mimi calls a pack-pack). I know Baby Girl will need those clothes for school tomorrow so I told Mimi to "put all of sister's clothes back in her pack pack". I didn't realize how literally she would take that! I came back about ten minutes later to find Mimi lugging a hugely stuffed Hello Kitty back pack full of all of her sister's closet contents. Underwear, shoes, socks, scarves, ,etc. I couldn't be upset because I was laughing so much. I mean I did tell her to put "all of sister's clothes back in her pack pack"!

Baby Girl kind of has a speech delay. It has gotten TONS better since her surgery and she has been able to hear better. But she still speaks with kind of an Ebonics type country accent sometimes. I know that seems hard to picture, but she will say "oooohh (ten syllables for the "oh") lerrrrk (look) at my berrrk (book)". It's hilarious to us even though were are working on the correct way to pronounce the "OO" sound.

Bubee is called "Beek Bock" because he has been talking a lot more lately. But for the last two months any time you ask him to say two or more words, your reply was always "beek bock".

Bubee say "Drink, please"
"Beek Bock"
Bubee say "I want to get down"
"Beek Bock"
Bubee say "Supercalafragelisticexpialidocious"
Pause. "Beek Bock"

He is so cute saying please for everything. Well, it mostly sounds like "peeeee", but we take it :) And he is a really good singer. He loves to sing and dance around the house. The other day I gave him chocolate for the first time (a brownie), and his singing and dancing around went into overdrive. He was a dance machine! I don't think I will try that again anytime soon:)

I'm finally ready to blog again/ have the time to do so :)

2011-11-29T07:41:00.007-07:00

Well, it's right around the two month mark that we have had the kiddos. Man, to say we have been "adjusting" feels like the worlds biggest understatement. Sometimes it has felt like surviving the hardest thing anyone could ever experience in an entire lifetime (no, I'm not being dramatic :). And other times it has felt like we were the luckiest people in the whole world and this whole parenting thing is a piece of cake. Now, I will admit that it was more of the former statement than the latter!

Here is what we have been dealing with over the last two months (side note- this is not intended to be a "complaining blog"- I just wanted to be able to look back and remember what all the craziness was like of the first couple of months):

We took in three kids. A (from here on out referred to as "Baby Girl"-4 yrs. 6 mos.), M (who I call "Mimi" -2 yrs. 5 mos.), and B (who we call BeekBock or Bubba or Bubee- 19 mos) on Sept 23, 2011**
We began to notice that Baby Girl couldn't hear very well. She would only look at our mouths when we talked so we made her an appt. with a pediatrician to get a physical and a referral to an ENT. She had a great doctor (who thankfully was also hearing impaired!) who said she definitely needed to see someone. We got her hearing checked and she had significant hearing loss. Thankfully the ENT performed surgery- basically tubes and fluid removal, and he said he was surprised that her speech was as good as it was with how much junk he pulled off her ears. Sweet baby girl went home and watched Bolt and noticed that puppies whimper for the first time. She also said I can hear y'all when you say "cockadoodledoo" now (Mimi and Bubba have a favorite book with that sound in it :) This whole process took about a month with about 4 appointments, 1 surgery, and several follow ups for the surgery and more hearing tests.
All three kids came with lice. I think I would rather handle vomit than lice. Apparently they had had it so long that their little heads were breathing Super Lice, a genetically enhanced breed of lice that could withstand any pesticide or treatment. I still don't think I'm rid of them. It's also hard to get a 2 1/2 year old to sit still for an hour so I can pick out the nits. We are thinking of cutting hair soon, but I really really don't want to cut their pretty hair. Bubee's hair got buzzed, along with Daddy's, the fist week we had them :)
Pinworms. Not gonna say much more about that. But thankfully they are gone and that wasn't a huge ordeal.
Bubee was sick most of the first month he was with us. He came with a nasty ear infection, got the flu, then got the stomach flu. Sickness has been rampant in our home. I think we all five had upper respiratory infections for about three weeks. Then David got some kind of eye issue- conjunctivitis? and I got the stomach flu. Also had two ruptured cysts happen. At one point I was just laying on the living room floor and Baby Girl was rubbing my head asking me if I felt better. Sweet girl should not have to take care of her mama so early! Then David let them go to the store in these outfits to get them out of the house for a while (proof that there is more than one reason why mama's can't get sick:) -
We noticed one day at dinner when Baby Girl complained that her teeth were "itching" that she had several brown spots/ gaping holes in her teeth. A dental appointment was for sure needed. We thought that her dental appointments were up to date because she was already in foster care, but that was clearly not the case. We took her to a "family dentist" who cleaned her teeth and said that she needed "too much work for him". So we took her to Children's Dental of Atlanta and there we found out she had 12 affected teeth. "Affected" meant everything from a cavity to being too far gone. On Nov 10th, Maurine/ David's mom came down to help take her to a sedation dental appointment so they could just do the bottom teeth, which was pulling the middle two, two crowns and some fillings. She has her appointment for her top teeth next week. She will have 5 crowns before it's all over, and we hope she doesn't look like 50 cent! Thank goodness all of this happened to her baby teeth. Everyday she talks about her new "big girl teeth" coming in.
WIC appointments. Let me begin by saying that I am grateful to the government for the services my kids receive. Thank you. Now let me complain about budget cuts and how they affect my week: Last week I spent a total of 9 hours at the WIC office- yes that's correct, 9 whole hours. 4 1/2 of which were with a 21 month old who did not like the WIC office after about 30 minutes. It was, however, a neat experience because all the moms are there with their kids who are hating life and wanting to eat (thankfully I packed enough for a small army to eat not knowing how long it would take) and there is kind of a camaraderie with everyone. Like we're all miserable together why don't we try to talk to each other and hang out even though you speak English and I only speak Spanish! That did happen to me because Bubee's new best friend was a little boy who's mama only spoke Spanish. I got her name and that her son was 18 months old out of her and that was about it :) For us, we don't depend on WIC like others so at one point I was wondering if this was even worth it. Especially since I have to do it all again in a month to re-up the girls. But I'm glad I did it and I'm can block most of the stressful parts out!
We moved! Why did we decide to move two weeks after the kids came home? Great question. I'm still not sure we knew exactly what we were doing, but after seeing Mimi put some cards in the radiator (no it wasn't yet on) we felt like we needed to get the fam to a place with central heat and air before the cold weather set in. Our story about how God got us a house is sure to be a post of it's own soon. Thankfully my Mom/ Rhonda and my Grandma and Grandpa (who the kids call Mamaw and Papaw- I'm not sure why they came up with those names but I think it was Mimi or Baby Girl. That is exactly what I called my Grandpa's parents so I guess it fits! Mimi actually called them Mamaw and Mamaw for a while- sorry Grandpa :) came (well Mom actually had been there a week to try and keep us sane!) and helped us pack up while the kids were in daycare on Friday October 7th and we moved the following day with the help of my Uncle Bryan too on October 8th. We love our house and the kids have much more space to run around and play.
Allergies! If you know us well you know that we don't "eat like normal people" because we have some abnormal allergies. David is allergic to salmon, eggs, dairy, and mustard. I also cannot have dairy. So the allergy adjustment with the kids was not as bad as it could have been. When Mimi and Bubee came to our house their digestion was pretty bad. We're talking sometimes 7-8 Bms per day. The diaper adjustment, meaning how often we would have to buy them!, was huge for us. Mimi had been tested sometime before- like when she was a baby- that she was allergic to milk. Great, we already eat that way so not a big deal right? Well after Bub's 3rd doctor appt in a month his pediatrician suggested he may be intolerant (not the same thing as an allergy but just as inconvenient if you eat it) to wheat or dairy so she said to take him off both. Then Mimi's doctor and chiropractor suggested taking her off gluten as well because she had a lot of edema- basically she was a squishy 2 year old. I'm all for kids being on a gluten and casein free diet, and I think it has helped a ton of kids with variety of symptoms from exema to autistic features. HOWEVER, I did not want to be one of those mom's who has to always read every tiny label and tell their kid, "No, you can't have that!" when other kids are eating this awesome thing right in front of them. Now, I guess that is good for character development. But sometimes I wonder if people think I am depriving my kids. I even make their lunches for daycare, who actually provide meals for them already. I also have to educate so many people like their daycare workers, case managers, their parents, anyone who could possibly feed them anything- because wheat and milk are pretty much in everything sold in stores today! So there you have it. I am not a high maintenance mom with kids who have food allergies/ sensitivities. I am dealing with it. I will say that when they have a good week where they have not been exposed to one of those things, their diapers are fantastic! Only one normal poopie per day :) No weird rashes or throwing up either- all is well with the world. So I guess it's worth it.
Parent visits. Our kids still see their biological parents once a week. I'm not going to say much other than it's hard on Baby Girl. And the other two really don't seem too affected by it. But it's hard. It's really hard on us to see regression once a week. But even though there is that little aggression, there is still so much progress that has been made since two months ago that it's all worth it in the end.

Even though all of these things have happened/ we have had to deal with them we don't regret a single moment of becoming "Mommy/ Mom/ Mother and Daddy/ Dad/ Father" to these three precious kids. We love them with our whole hearts and we are so proud to be their parents.

**Note: since we cannot use their names on the internet, I will be blogging about them with these names. It's a privacy issue with the state since they are still on foster status. I'm also probably fudging a bit with the new blog banner pic, but you can't see faces so it "should be just fine", as Baby Girl would say.

Our Adoption Decision Journey

2011-09-18T20:01:00.005-06:00

So for posterity, I am going to share our journey over a few blog posts so that I will remember this whole crazy journey we have been on. Today, I'm posting about our decision to adopt through the foster system.

A couple months ago, I posted this. Something I had written back in 2008, around the time I felt like God was saying that adoption is something I should do. Notice I didn't say "we"...not yet anyways. I love how the Lord took us on our own journeys to get to the same decision. I have laid out a timeline and overlaid what details we now know of the kids' lives as well.

Summer 2008- Eryn wrote this and felt the Lord calling her to adopt through the foster system. Our lives were hectic. David was working 55-60 hrs a week and was also getting sick with an illness that would plague him for the better part of a year and a half. (At this point our oldest girl, A, is 1 year old.)

October 2008- Eryn feels called to go back to school for a MS in Counseling Psychology and enrolls in a school in Colorado for a quarter.

End of 2008- We decide to move back to Tennessee from Colorado so that Eryn can go to a good school for my MS in counseling and we can be closer to family after David decides to quit his PhD program to focus on his health. Clearly, it wasn't the time to adopt or foster for that matter, and moving states would have negated that even if we had of begun the process in Colorado.

2009- David struggles with the decision to go back to school to finish his PhD. He has been teaching as an adjunct professor up until this point while Eryn goes to school and nanny part time. He decides after much trial and prayer that he wants to pursue a Doctorate of Chiropractic instead and he chooses Life University. Eryn has two more semesters to finish school at this point. (M, our second girl, was born in April '09.)

January 2010- David begins Life University in Marietta, GA while Eryn finishes up school and works on her internship at Agape Nashville (who incidentally also does foster to adopt through the state of TN, but obviously this was not a good time since we lived apart for 4 months, seeing each other on weekends, and were about to move to another state!). (February 2010 is when B, our youngest, a boy, is born.)

May 2010- We find a home in Marietta, Georgia (two counties over from the county the children we hope to adopt, but they aren't placed in the state's care just yet). Eryn continues to travel to school in Nashville for one night a week while David is in the throws of Chiropractic School. Eryn also works at an internship at an Atlanta counseling center.

August 2010- Eryn graduates and stays on as a newbie counselor at the center she did her internship at. We also decide to check out a local private agency that specializes in foster-to-adopt programs with the state. We feel good about what we learned and decided to sit on things for a while.

October 2010- Eryn gets an admin position at her job site and earns extra money while she decides to build her clientele. David also has a vision of two little girls running around our home and feels like it's time to pursue adopting, feeling very strongly that with the Lord all things (no matter how overwhelming!) are possible.

January 2011- We attend a three day training, right on our 5 year anniversary weekend no less! Also, our children are put into foster care at the very same time. We also get checked out by a clinical nutritionist to help us with some health issues (David really hasn't felt back to 100% by this point and would like to be by the time he becomes a dad!). We also have our first adoption homestudy with a wonderful contract social worker.

February-May, 2011- We complete a vast amount of paperwork, gather records, get tested for various things, get fingerprinted, etc. for our homestudy to be complete. We didn't particularly feel a rush during this time, but we felt like we had a bit more time before we needed to be approved. We get the official word that we are approved just for adoption at the beginning of May.

May 2011- The referrals start pouring in for children who are free to adopt. We don't feel led to pursue any particular referral. We begin to be more open to sibling groups of TWO. In fact our adoption agent said that she thought of us for a couple sibling groups of THREE, but we weren't approved yet at the time. We were like, "Three? Yeah right!"....

June 2011- We receive a referral for three precious children who Eryn, immediately feels a connection with. We just have an email with a small blurb about a paragraph long and no pictures. Eryn calls David and says well it looks like we have a referral we need to talk about. David excitedly listens. Eryn says, "Well it's for a sibling group of two sisters 4 and 2.....and their 1 year old baby brother!" To Eryn's surprise, David laughs and says, "OK, let's find out more about them!". We both felt a connection with these kids that we can't explain. But we still aren't approved for foster care yet, and we have been trying to get approved for a while!

This is where I leave you till next time for a posting on all the obstacles!

Some News and Kid's Room

2011-08-20T18:11:00.004-06:00

This is it...This is not a drill people....

That has been the phrase running through my mind this weekend. We received some "positive news" this week, which is what we are calling it because things can always change! And all weekend long we have been getting ready for our final homestudy visit on Monday. (Yes, we are already approved to adopt, but we have not yet been approved to foster- just a couple more technical things and paperwork that has to be finalized before we can have foster children in our home that might be ready to adopt soon.)

So all weekend we have been shopping/ looking on Craigslist/ having minor freak-outs about what a __ year old might eat? what kind of bed do they need?/ getting really excited/ freaking out. again/ trying to make our home look like it did in April when we had our last homestudy (which we thought was our last one so we let our house go to pot...j/k...sort of :).

We have felt so blessed by many of you with your thoughts, prayers, checking ins, and donations (THANKS HURTUBISE FAMILY!!!). Huge shout out to Maurine and Mom for their contributions- Maurine got us the adorable curtains and Mom donated my childhood armoire and cute laundry basket for them to put their dirty clothes in. And we also feel blessed by Craig and his list!

Here are some pics of the kiddos room we just finished today. Also, we just kindof got a lot of things because they will be checking to see how many beds we own on Mon. We may have gone overboard with the beds in the room but this is just so our social worker can see that we have plenty of space- we can always rearrange :)

The Things That Grow at Our House

2011-06-22T20:35:00.007-06:00

Isn't it amazing that something this small can grow into a giant of a thing producing 25+ zucchini? I am still amazed at how God created the world to work. Small things producing such bounty. Makes me feel like I can make more of a difference in the lives of others with just my small gifts. And it has been so, well for lack of something less dramatic sounding, spiritual to tend our garden, our little piece of earth that is our responsibility to tend. I am probably more contemplative this year than last since I have motherhood in mind. I hope the seeds I plant in my children will come to fruition, but just like the garden- sometimes it is up to the plant whether or not it will bear any fruit or survive. Ultimately it's out of my control, even if I do everything I know to do. Thank you God for this lesson in parenting. And thank you God for our blessing of a garden. We feel very blessed to be in a home with a large space to grow and experiment, and we even have an apple tree and a grapevine to boot!

We have had much success with our garden this year. We got planning early this year and already have had plenty of "harvest" so far:

42 cucumbers (lots of pickle making going on at our house :)
10 zucchini
5 green tomatoes
1 jalepeno pepper
64 apples from the apple tree
several salads worth of lettuce, kale
and also fresh basil, mint, and rosemary out the wazoo

Here are some pics of how we gathered our apples. We were very red-neck about it. David got a rake and we spread out this blanket. He would shake the tree with the rake and we would move the blanket around the yard to try and get it under the apples that might fall. It was fun. And now I have plenty of apple butter and applesauce :)

In other news, I came home the other day and there were these new curtains hanging in our dining room:Yes, my husband sews! He did a good job. Just made roman shades with some old fabric we have had for a couple years, an old pair of corderoys, and some supplies from Lowe's. I was so amazed that he just threw them together while I was gone to work. He is a man of many talents :)

Also, random, but I wanted to post some pics of Easter. We got to go to Memphis for a couple of days and visit with some fam. Look @ how long David's hair is. It's much longer now. I married a hippie ;)

We're Approved!

2011-05-22T19:33:00.002-06:00

The Drive Time commercial with the guy saying, "Approved, approved, approved..." keeps running through my head!

We got the word from our adoption agency late Thursday night that we are officially approved by the state of Georgia. Our adoption agency is now looking to match us with children. This will depend on what kind of referrals our agency gets from the state. Sometimes the summer can be slower, they say. We could be getting a call any day/ week/ or month now!

We will see....and definitely keep you posted.

Amicalola Falls

2011-05-21T14:08:00.003-06:00

David and I went to Amicalola Falls State Park today. It's only about 1hr. 15 min. away. It reminded me a lot of Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee, but with more mountain views. We did a "strenuous/ moderate" first mile. I don't know who put the "moderate" in there, but for Eryn Jones- it was all the way "strenuous"! We could have done several more miles and hiked to a really neat inn and lodge that you can only get to by trail, but we whimped out and went back down the falls :) We got some good excersise though, and it was great being out in nature all day!

Also, we saw a bear cub (or so we thought)! If you can see in the photo below, it's the big brown blurb kindof in the middle. David didn't get a chance to get a great pic because I was already at a mild walk/jog (you know, fast- but not too fast to attract undue attn. from a bear :) 1/2 way down the trail! If I had the camera, I would have had a great shot because the little guy looked right at me....as if he was saying, "My momma is going to be here any minute, and she will eat you!" But we met a nice couple further down the trail that said he was most likely an adolescent and then I got less scared for our journey back!

Waiting on Approval

2011-04-16T09:29:00.002-06:00

Well, we are all done! No more lists of what we need to do for our homestudy because we just had our last one. We met at Starbucks yesterday, and proofread our mini biographies and gave the go ahead for her to turn everything in to our agency on Monday!

We did ask her what a realistic time-line would be...and you may need to brace yourself here. She said about a month, two at the most! Now that doesn't necessarily mean we will have a placement in a month or two. Let me explain:
1. The time-line of 1-2 months means that we will have been approved (hopefully) by the state at that point. That means they can begin calling us with potential matches.
2. Our social worker said that they usually get referrals from the state in batches and things generally slow down in the summer time.
3. They will try to place a child/ children in our home that are about 95% likely to become legally free in the next 6 months to a year after placement. So that limits our placement possibilities a bit.
4. Also, after we are called with a potential match, we will have extensive meetings with their case workers, their therapist (if they have one), and any other resource person. I believe we also may meet with the kids in an informal setting- all of this before we make our decision.

So there you have it. It could be as early as June! But not, necessarily. We are living in limbo a bit. Trying to rest on God's timing and guidance- knowing that He will make us ready when our kids are ready to be placed in our home!

So exciting :) Thanks for everyone's prayers and support- and we will post updates when we get them!

Home Study

2011-04-08T20:30:00.002-06:00

Well, first we dealt with a little mishap:We were moving right along cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Then I thought, hey I haven't washed my bath mats in a while.... Well, apparently the washer and my bath mats had a fight and the bath mats lost...in a death match! So I quickly burried them in the trash and ran to Target to replace them. Those things can be expensive! Not that it mattered all that much. I think she just walked through the house in about 5 minutes and then we sat at the table for the rest of the time. She didn't even look in my refrigerator (why I expected someone to look in there- I do not know, but at least it, as well as the rest of the house, is clean and organized!:)

It went very well. I made this yummy orange cranberry sweet bread (healthy of course :)And we sat individually around the table and talked with her for about 45 minutes each.

She was really sweet and supportive. There were a couple of surprise questions like, "How did your parents do the sex talk?", and "What schools are near by?" First, I understand that they have to ask that question, but I was not expecting it (neither of us really remember that much about our birds and bees lessons anyways)! And I had no idea what school we are zoned for. But she didn't count off for not knowing. Then, after quickly looking it up on the internet, we found out that our school is about 1 mile away and all the Kindergarten teachers have their own blogs! When did teachers start doing blogs? I guess that's a good thing, but I'm picturing kids going wild, throwing paper airplanes and Mrs. Johnson saying, "just a minute, I need to get this post out!" :)

So, on to the next steps... which we found out aren't that many! We will have one more, our third and final, home study (actually @ Starbucks) on Friday....yes, this coming Friday April 15. Then we will just go over our report to make sure our details are accurate and hand her the remaining things we will do this week: medical evaluations, drug tests, and getting Davids verification of employment. She goes home and sends of the report within a week.

Once she sends it to the Atlanta Lutheran Services office, they take however long they need to take to let us know if we are "approved" or not. If we are, then they send off everything to the state (DFCS- Dept of Family and Children Services...the cool people call it D-Fax....it took David a long time to figure out what people were talking about when they said D-fax this or D-fax that :)

Then when "D-Fax" has our info they begin the matching/ placement process. We are hoping all of this takes longer than at least a month and a week because my work is moving and I'm kind of helping with the move- which if you have ever moved a business, you know it's a BIG undertaking.

We know there are bound to be kinks in the flow of things, and maybe they might need a couple of unexpected documents. But that might be welcomed because things are goin fast! As usual we are a combo right now of extremely excited and a little bit terrified :)

We will keep you posted in the mean time!

Special Company

2011-04-06T07:15:00.002-06:00

Whenever someone is coming over- family, friends, etc.- you tend to clean the house (either extra good or even at all :) and you want to make sure they have good eats. At least these are the two things I usually think about when having company over.

Well not this week! We have been painting, redecorating, deep spring cleaning out closets, giving stuff away, trying to come up with a yummy quick bread recipe, and so much more...all for our home study which means our home study social worker will be here on Friday! She is very special company. Special because whatever she puts in her report decides whether or not we will be parents soon. So she gets the five-star treatment :)

Craziness

2011-03-26T14:27:00.005-06:00

So David and I just finished (sort of) rearranging our entire house! If you remember the house post, you may know that our house is a little bit...let's just say- not typical. Since we have no hallways, we had to switch our room for the future kids room. We did this so that the child(ren) who come to live with us will have their own space and we would be able to shut their room door since the only door in the house was to our bedroom! So now, it somewhat makes sense to have them in the "back" room of the house- quieter and all.

For those of you who just flipped out at the mention of children (if you flipped out at the mention of any kid at all- please read here :), that is my main reason for this post. We are putting on our form that we are open to sibling groups (of no more than 2, of course). We just realized we have not yet leaked this information because we have been in a couple month long discussion on that topic.

I realized that we have come to terms with feeling really "led" to be open to having 2 children instead of 1, but I know that is an idea that takes getting used to. Believe me, we have thoroughly thought about so many different pros and cons. I felt the need to post this so that everyone we now can "get used to" the idea like we now are :)

So there you have it; David and I may go from a family of 2 to 4 very soon....maybe not. But if it does happen, we want to give you time to adjust to the idea and not have a heart attack when we introduce you to our children!

Besides being open to siblings, there is a list of about 3-4 pages of what we are willing/ definitely will not/ and are open to taking. This list includes everything from behavioral problems to severe medical and mental health problems. While we are not going to share our "list" with the world wide web, I will say that we are open to any race, any sex, and some other minor (in the grand scheme of things) issues the child or children may come to us with. We also stated that our "ceiling age" (meaning, the oldest child we will take) is 4.

If the language of all of this sounds kind of ugly to you; it does to us too! It feels weird to be "picking out features" of our future children. We like to look at it as though we are trying to best serve those that will be in our home, and to do that we have to search ourselves and know our limits. And, thankfully, being Christians and being OK with not being perfect, we are secure in our "limitedness" :)

We are excited! We are freaking out! And we are tired! That is the adoption update for now. We will keep you posted :)

Why we want to adopt

2011-03-06T09:29:00.002-07:00

First, let us say, "Thanks!" to everyone for commenting their support and encouragement about our decision to adopt. We thought we would document our decision process that led us to this point.

It all started in Colorado, when we were made aware of an organization called Project 127. A Colorado church-based initiative whose aim was to decrease the number of children waiting for families by empowering and equipping Christian families and the churches in Colorado to adopt them. I wrote this down at the time, because I wanted to remember exactly what I felt like God was saying to me....... (below is what I wrote in July 2008, it is in past tense, but I purposefully wrote it so that I could use it later- turns out that came in handy!)

My friend, Emily, once stated (as she does so matter-of-factly, but in a light-hearted, funny way, about various statements people just say that can be slightly annoying :) that she hates it when people say that they are "trying". I thought nothing of it and dismissed it as Emily just being Emily...until about a year later. The thoughts that came changed my life. They changed it drastically forever (please excuse the dramaticism :).

It was a July day in Colorado 2008 when I could say "it began". The truth is it could have begun the day I was born. It could have begun the day I was two and my parents' divorce became final. God had been working on me for longer than I knew, but the culmination of His work on me in this area "began" on that day in July. It was one of those crazy seasons where everyone you know comes to visit within a matter of months, you have illnesses and surgeries, and your marriage seems to be just a tad bit on edge because of lack of time together, sleep, and communication with one another. My friend Jen called, and normally I would stay in my hole (or apartment) and hide out, ignoring social invites, but I decided to go and visit her despite my reclusive tendencies. I am so glad I did.

She fixed me some tea, and we exchanged small talk which grew into how each other was doing which grew into the sharing of struggles and funny stories. She was giving me updates on the “infertile” of our group of friends (actually pretty much all of our friends were going through this or had just been through it). She then shared with me some website she had recently been researching called "Project 127". Honestly, I was curious, but not interested until something she had said flipped on one of those heaven sent light bulbs that stay in your head until you or someone else allows them to be turned on. She said that the website/ ministry, Project 127, had been named after James 1:27: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans... in their distress.

The widows and the orphans. The least of these. Jesus on earth.

Recently I had read a book by Shane Claiborne called The Irresistible Revolution. His book, in premise, challenges my generation to follow the Rabbi Jesus in all ways, including peace-making, bridge building and care-taking of those Jesus talked about and with whom there is a degree of separation from us comfortable Christian Americans. I felt as if someone had given words to some of my feelings and had convicted me of further action. But after reading it I felt the need to take some kind of major action towards those convictions, but I had no idea what that was. This is where the conversation comes in and the light bulb came on.

I mentioned earlier that my friend Emily hates the word "trying", and I think now I feel it's not such an appropriate word for me either. My husband and I had been doing just that (you can call it trying, planning, wanting-- they're all the same here). I had even gone in for surgery/ treatment for endometriosis only to find that it should not have been affecting my chances to get pregnant after all. I was starting Chlomid, a fertility drug for ovulation as well at this time (July 2008). We had wanted a child so badly for what felt like the whole time we had been married (actually only 1 1/2 years at this point). I always was astounded at the number of people that I would hear about having problems having kids with-in the first five years of trying (there's that word again, bear with me you will soon see my point:). I also marveled at the number of stories you hear about teen-age and unplanned pregnancies.

And at that moment on Jen's couch, I heard the answer to my suffering and to my questions. It was so clear to me everything I had wrestled with over the past year and a half, every dry spell I went through in my walk, every fire I got in my heart and had no place for it to set something a blaze. We are "trying" our own plans. And that is all we are accomplishing is the "trying" because we are in the realm of our own plans. I believe I heard the Lord say to me, "I care about the least of these. The least of these are ME. What you do for them you do for ME. What you do to them, you do to ME. It is possible that I could have designed it this way so that there is a balance. Many of my people (Christians) are unable to get pregnant. It could very well be by my design. I control everything under the sun. My first priority for you is not your comfort, but it is for you to take care of the least of these. The widow, the homeless, the orphan. I am the FATHER to the fatherless. My people are my vessel. My people should be "trying" to love and embrace the fatherless of this world."

I shared these thoughts with Jen, and she said very thoughtfully, "I wouldn't put it past God to be behind all this". I felt freed by this, and even surer that I wanted to adopt, but I still didn't know where to start. I mean I hadn't even talked to my husband yet about it for crying out loud! Here I am so convinced that adoption is my future, and I have no idea what he wants to do. He had a lot on his plate at that time, being an organic chem student and all. His minimum hour requirement by his boss was 60 hours a week. How would we ever get the money and time. Had I completely gone from the woman who wanted to "carry her own babies" to this woman who wanted to raise and love a perfect stranger? Would it be harder to raise a baby like us, with our ideals if that baby did not have our genes? And what about what their previous parents did to them? And as I thought about all of those things, they paled significantly to the power and resources of the Almighty and His people.

So I did what every young whippersnapper with a vision for change does, I went surfing the internet. I found the website for Project 127. I bawled my eyes out, and I wrote down this little excerpt (yes I wrote it in past tense-- who knows it may go in a book some day and this will save me the time of changing all the verbs). I encourage you to check it out. The stories of the waiting children are compelling. The commission to the church to stand up for the orphaned is inspiring and this ministry has developed a real way to actualize this call. And even better, they are working with local government agencies which helps to bridge the gap between secular and Christian.

But, alas, it was not our time to adopt in 2008. With the events that unfolded at the end of that year, and the beginning of the next year, we now know that we weren't even staying in Colorado. I was called to go back to school, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and David struggled for about a year with his own health, having to quit his PhD program.

David and I joke about how (if our relationship were like a boat) he is the rudder and I am the sail. Sometimes we switch back and forth, but mostly I am the passionate idealist who wants to press forward from challenge to challenge. Sometimes immediately. And he is the harness-er of the passion so to speak. He makes sure that we have balance in our marriage. A balance between what we are called to do and the wisdom with which to carry out the call.

In this case, the wisdom took three years! But here we are. David is very excited about adopting, especially from the state system. He said to me that he has "grown to see that there is a balance between understanding that this is a Big Scary Decision and realizing that it's not big or scary with God!"

As we mentioned before, we are knee deep in paperwork and errands right now. They basically want to know when your Grandma's cats last vaccine was (slight exaggeration :). But we have the first homestudy done, and the next homestudy we will have (hopefully) all the paperwork done. We are shooting for April/ May for this one.

Announcement

2011-03-01T15:44:00.002-07:00

(Chris, Sarah- insert the announcement, announcement, announcement song here :)

So........

David and I are adopting.

Wow, that seems really official.... and scary. As it should I guess.

Many of you know already. But for those that don't, here are the details so far:
1. We are adopting through Lutheran Services of Georgia
2. They get referrals from the state, so we will be adopting through the State of Georgia- through the foster care system. (This just means that our first placement may or may not be permanent)
3. We have had our first home study and are still filling out paper-work/ completing a bunch of crazy tasks that we never thought we would need to do to be worthy of being parents (but hey, I'm really glad there are a lot of hoops to jump through. It's sort of like parenting "pledging"...If you can't do this, then you aren't cut out to be in the parenting club!)
4. We will post updates, but this is pretty much what we know as of right now.

Valentines Day 2011

2011-03-01T15:07:00.004-07:00

If you have been following us since last year's V-day post, you know a couple things already.
1. My husband has weird names for things
2. He likes to do it up big on this day.... He actually said that since we never celebrate actually on February 14, that we should just have our own Holiday that has nothing to do with Valentines Day but happens to be celebrated sometime mid February! I agreed to that.

So here is our "Balemtimes Day" Celebration:

First I was told to be up and ready around 10:30 (those with kids, please insert scoffs and laughs here :)

We drove to our favorite place, R. Thomas, for "brunch". I love brunch! However, we both are eating raw right now and so this "brunch" was more smoothies + lunch, but we made do.

Then we drove to an unknown location where David had scored us a cheap COUPLES MASSAGE! It was heaven! When we left my masseuse had marked down several "problem areas" that I needed work on (you know, to try and get us to come back), and David's masseuse just said, "You are really pretty much relaxed. I was just going wherever you muscles wanted to go. You don't really need a massage unless you just want to unwind every now and then." URG! Now, though, I have proof of why i need a massage, and why he just simply doesn't understand why massages are important to those like me! And David was happy to be called "laid back" by a professional :)

Then we went home for some time out on our porch in the sun (this was planned time). David made us smoothies, like this one here, to sip on. We had great conversation and then I got ready for the evening (had to wash the oil out of my hair from the massage!).

David made dinner for us both. The menu was barely steamed veggies, cauliflower "rice", fish (for me- I can have fish sometimes), and this sour cream (in the blue bowl), which was off the chain, and very close to the dairy version! David found the recipe all by himself. (He knows I love the Spunky Coconut blog :)

The Chef, himself

Then we went to see a movie.

I love how he kept it casual, and it was definitely one of the most relaxing days I have had in a really, really long time. Thanks David!

Blog Name Change

2011-02-28T10:09:00.002-07:00

So I changed the name from "Tales from the West" since we now live in the SouthEAST. We will move again, so I felt Jones Family Adventures was appropriate.

And we miss the west! Oh, Colorado....

Music City Bowl 2010

2011-02-27T13:19:00.004-07:00

Dad got us tickets to the Music City Bowl for Christmas. We stayed in downtown Nashville, and enjoyed going to the game... even if the wrong team won!
David showing his true colors underneath. Thanks for being a great sport!

(Dad's forever-old, never washed, TN sweatshirt.)

The Pride of the Southland Band!

Our faces after the game was over, we won, then the game wasn't over! You can tell by the girl in the background that the crowd was not happy.

Christmas with the Joneses

2011-02-26T12:04:00.005-07:00

I know, I know... way behind as uaual. If you follow this blog at all, you will probably know that my recent pattern has been to post several in a row that relate to events happening at least three+ months ago. I'm ok with this pattern....I guess we'll both get used to it ;)

This year for Christmas all of David's fam gathered at Zidon Aveisha, a lovely lake house that is owned by the Cunninghams at David' old church. It was a fun Alabama Christmas. It even snowed a bit on Christmas Day.

Here are some pics of the Jones Family Christmas.

There were many trails to walk around on and tons to do here!

Also, we had family pictures taken that you can check out by clicking on this pic below, by Jenny Dixon:

And check out my SIL's blogs for more pictures and info:
Melanie and Anna
(you may notice many repeat pics. I'm not as good of a documenter as these two, so I stole some pics from them :)

Our Home

2011-02-25T07:41:00.019-07:00

FYI: This post has a lot of random fact and pics of my house. If that bores you, please feel free to not read :)

We like to say we live on a farm.

We don't.

But if you consider the fact that our house is about 100 years old, we have an apple tree, two walnut trees, a gravel driveway, a huge garden and a decent amount of land to roam around on if we wish to, then it sounds kind of farm-ish.

If you consider the fact that we live about 30 yards from a major highway (all the land is in the back) and within walking distance to a Publix and a Kroger (we walk during the summer... and also when a snow storm hits for quick trips) then you would just think we lived in the Atlanta metropolis that we do.

Either way you look at it, you probably have been wondering what our house is like (well, maybe not:). How do you make a 100 year old house with holes in the floor (slight exaggeration) feel "homey"?.... please enjoy the following before and afters :)

Our Kitchen
I like our kitchen. It's galley style, has no pantry, little cabinet space, has a 50 year old gas only stove and oven, but I like it :)

Before:

After:

I love the natural light in the kitchen, despite the weird stain glass pieces on the window. Just outside that window is our apple tree.

Quirky things about the kitchen:

1. Apparently, when the previous owners decided to make an addition to the countertop in the kitchen, they thought that this was a good enough match:
HA! At least we know one is granite so we can say we live in a farm house with granite counter tops :)2. The kitchen outlet situation is not much better than any other room (we only have one outlet in our entire bedroom!). So we have jerry-rigged a TV tray to be the designated Kitchen Aide mixer stand:

The Dining Room

Before:After:
Fun and Not-so-fun Things About the Dining Room:

1. Our fireplace mantle used to be in the govenor's mansion in Georgia around the beginning of the 1900s. The architect for the mansion apparently used to live in our home, which I guess was prime real estate back in the day! However, the previous owners (right before us- I think they had kids) decided that they should add red and orange paint to jazz up this beautiful antique! Take a look...So glad that red is not a single color in the themes of my kitchen and dining room- maybe we can get some paint thinner and fix it!

2. Well, this isn't too weird, but because we have no closets/ pantry's/ storage I had David make me this curtain to go in front of this cheap book shelf we got from Big Lots. The shutters on the wall were from Good Will for $3 each! I like this little arrangement because I like to mix up nice things, like crystal, with old/ old-looking stuff.

3. Speaking of mixing the old/worn/ etc with something newer/ fancier.... David got me these two incredible anniversary gifts. They are Baker's Scales. One is at least 50 years old. He painted some parts that matched our colors in the kitchen and dining room. I was so proud of him, his color matching skills were right on! I like them because they are old, but I can dress them up in interesting ways. The big one I actually use for weighing and baking.that "8" means half a pound (8 oz.)

Living Room

Before:This is the living room and the "front door" which is really on the side of the house, but we have 6 doors total, 2 that aren't sealed up and usable to get in and out of the house. The "back door" is just behind me where I have taken this picture :)

After:

BedroomHere, we got a carpet remnant from Grandma and Grandpa, but we had to spend a week with heavy books along the edges so it wouldn't roll up our bed in a burrito!

Well, no Before, or after here. This is a combined pic...bedrooms are always too messy to take good after pics of... well at least ours is!

Other Quirks about Our House
1. We have no hallways. Therefore, living room leads into guest room that leads into our bedroom and we are about to have to switch our bedroom with the guest room (hint: be looking for an upcoming explanation post about this)

2. Below: These random shelves in the dining room are my "Cupboards" as you can see from the kitchen pics, I have only 1 cabinet for pantry, dishes, etc. Here they are before...And after.........I think they turned out all right. And I now like them. Who knew I would enjoy having shelves on the walls of my dining room.

Why I have been away.........

2011-02-18T12:38:00.003-07:00

For those of you who would like a Jones family update, one is coming soon- I promise :)

This blog is why I have been away! Yes, that's right, I started a food blog. I want it to offer a wide range of food choices so be looking for everything from raw yummy treats to French Baguette bread. Here is the intro page to explain more.

Check it out, if you like, Eryn

Christmas Card 2010!

2010-12-14T20:23:00.008-07:00

Merry Christmas from the Jones' (we never really know if we want to say Jones', Joneses, or Jones Family??)

This year we decided to actually send out Christmas cards to family and friends we don't often see... so congrats to all you card receivers! We figured after 5 years of marriage we should send out something tangible at Christmas time in case someone wants to put us on their fridge :)

This year has been even more eventful that last year! We made move number 6 (in five years of marriage :).

David has been doing so well in school. He is always learning something new and exciting and sometimes I am amazed at how much knowledge he fits into his head. The other day my hip was hurting and he was like, "Oh, yeah, your ilium"....rather matter-of-factly! Maybe more people know what each hip bone is- but I sure don't, so I was impressed :)
Not only has David been going to school full time and doing well, he has a part time job as an online professor on the side. The last two quarters of this year he has taught 3 classes while taking 20+ hours at school! Yes, I am married to superman....I know- too sappy!

This year we started a garden (I will let David tell you the totals- he kept a tally of EVERYTHING that grew!)

Ok, David here. The totals for the garden were 97 tomatoes, 96 cherry tomatoes, 84 beans, 68 okra, 39 cucumbers, 29 peppers, 4 eggplant and 1 beet! The garden was so much fun, I really enjoyed it.
So now it's time for me to brag on Eryn. She is amazing. This year she finished her school (Master's in Counseling Psychology), and has started counseling for a center here in Atlanta. She is so good at it! She has already gotten several referrals and many people telling her how much she helped them. She really is a natural. Every time she tells me a little about some of her counseling techniques or her approaches, I am amazed at her wisdom and discernment about people.
So basically things are going really well for us right now. A couple of years ago (some of you may remember), our blog was a little....shall we say depressing. We were going through some hard times, and I felt like honesty was the best policy (although I'm not sure making-everyone-who-reads-your-blog-depressed is the best policy, but oh well). Well in the spirit of honesty, I must say that God has blessed us tremendously over the last two years, and has taken us from a very difficult position of poor health and a toxic working situation (for me), to a place of rest and peace. We are both really excited about where He is leading us, and I think we appreciate it all the more due to the hard times (I'm sure many others out there can relate). God taught us so much in the bad times, and now is teaching us so much in the good times. And that's the goal right? Not to have good times instead of bad, but to grow closer to him no matter what (learned that lesson from Daniel).
Thanks for reading and caring about us everyone, we love all of you! And Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving 2010

2010-12-12T19:28:00.005-07:00

Thanksgiving we were in good ole Memphis Tennessee (and McLemoresville :). My mom graciously came down and stayed the weekend before so I could ride back with her since David and I had to come separately (he had school til Wed.)

The Tuesday before, Mom, Grandma, and I got to have a fun shopping time together along with a visit to the Tea Room

Here we are sipping our tea :)

Thanksgiving we went to Granny's and apparently I only got shots of us and Caitlin!

Saturday after Thanksgiving we had "Christmas", which really turned into David and Eryn opening a bunch of gifts (because everyone else only had our gifts to open :). We had fun and felt very blessed! The house was all Christmasy. In fact, Grandma "let" (we had to twist her arm she really wanted to do it all by herself ;) David, mom, and me decorate her tree. It was a fun tree to decorate- the kind where you need a ladder to put on some ornaments (it felt very movie like :)

Whole Family Pic

A couple of funnies from the night:

This mountain-o-santas was made at dinner. These little guys are my Grandma's napkin rings. Uncle Bryan kept piling them on and they were still standing here at the end of the night.

The above was best explained by mom as David double-dipping Alabama....yes he still sported his Bama gear even after the great loss!

Halloween 2010

2010-12-12T18:40:00.004-07:00

This year we drove down to Ocala, FL. David's brother, Daniel, took David to Sarasota, FL for the National Ultimate Frisbee Championships. David LOVES Ultimate (I think I may have mentioned that before ;) and he said that this was up there in his all time favorite birthday gifts.

I stayed in Ocala with Melanie. Let me just take a minute to congratulate any mom who goes out in public with more than two (or one for that matter!) children at a time. You all deserve a round of applause, how bout a standing ovation (is anyone else singing that Rihanna song in their heads right now?)....I digress!
We had a full weekend of Fall Festivaling, church, the mall, cookie making, etc. And I must say it wore me out! But in a good way :) I have some really neat nieces and nephews and they are a blast to hang out with. Can't wait till Christmas to see more of Jon David, Luke Jombers, and sweet baby Caleb.

Daisy and Isaac are very well behaved kids. Daisy is super helpful to Mel and she was so much fun to hang out with.... she even helped me pick out what shoes to wear to church :) She loves to give shortened names for things (which is very Jones of her) like Mimimo (grandma) is not Mims. So through out the weekend she went from "Aunt Er" to just "Aunt" by Sunday!
Isaac and I had some good bonding time on Friday when Uncle David left him with the impression that maybe all aunts and uncles are as energetic and rambunctious as David! He soon learned that I was not near as fun; however, we had fun at the park playing hide and go seek.
And Colbie is just a sweet happy, happy baby. I was telling Maurine the other day that I only saw her cry once all weekend and that was when she wanted to eat!

If you want more of this weekend go to Mel's post.

Sweet Daisy (as Jesse from Toy Story 2 & 3) and Isaac (as Lightning McQueen's pit crew)

I LOVE Isaac's face here....classic :)

Eryn's Highschool Reuinion, September 10-12, 2010

2010-11-11T09:11:00.003-07:00

It's hard to believe that I was old enough this fall to have a ten year reunion for high school. It's also didn't really seem like it had been ten whole years....maybe five or six.

Here are my high school friends (me, Kara, Melissa, Emily, and Mandi) at the homecoming game (a game in which we did not watch a single minute of football)...it was also about 1000 degrees out there that night so excuse the sweatiness :)

I must give my husband some credit for being a trooper this weekend. I was so caught up in seeing/ catching up with everyone that he was left to himself for much of the weekend...thankfully, he got to hang out with the other husbands who were also in the same boat :) He was, however, around in time to take pictures like this one, all of us at the reunion dinner at the Magnolia Room

I had a lot more fun than I had expected and it was so great to get to see people I hadn't talked to in 8, 9, 10 years. It's really neat having a small graduating class. David did not understand why my high school reunion was so important to me (he graduated with 700ish and did not even know that he had a reunion last year!). But after this weekend I think he realized that we all knew each other so well and most of us had been at the same school for a really long time so we were kind of bonded through the years whether we were super close or not.

Also, if you want better insight to just exactly how nerdy we were in high school check out my friend, Mandi's blog post here.....hilariousness.

Stay tuned for our trip to Savannah (Sept 26-30, 2010).....

We Heart Savannah

2010-10-12T07:57:00.011-06:00

Savannah, Georgia, that is....
Fortunately for our budget, we got a chance to have a little vacation on the cheap. We used our United miles (we got check cards in Colorado that earned rewards- Denver being a United hub--- but you can't get flights out of ATL with United rewards on account of there only being a total of two united gates- because of Delta...bummer) to purchase two nights free in a hotel in downtown Savannah and then used Hotwire to book another two nights for half price! I recommend it because you can get a really nice hotel at half the price (you just don't know the name of the hotel until you purchase, but you know where in town the hotel is located). I had intended this little trip to be for David's b-day since he was off school (and Strayer...his online teaching job) for the week and he wouldn't get another break until Thanksgiving. Also, on his actual birthday he is going to the Ultimate Frisbee championship in Sarasota, FL with his brother Daniel.

Let me just take a moment to tell you how much David LOVES Ultimate. He started an ultimate team at Harding, and now He is trying to start an ultimate league/team/ even a pick up game at school so he carries his frisbee in his backpack, sometimes just stands outside on the quad with it, waiting for someone to come along and just throw the thing. Can you tell he misses it? He has had a long drought from Ultimate and going to Sarasota with Daniel is going to be a real big pick-me-up!

So back to Savannah.....
We stayed for two nights at Thunderbird Inn (super cute remodeled historical motel, which was pretty nice with 50's theme music and served Krispy Kreme Doghnuts every morning for breakfast...another reason why I chose it for David :). The second two nights we stayed at the Hilton.
I didn't get a picture of The Thunderbird, but here was our room at the Hilton....

This was our view from the Hilton room....

Savannah has a very New Orelansy/ European feel. It's also very ecclectic. There are these squares (several in the downtown area every couple blocks or so). Most have some sort of statue in them, like this one....

But surrounding the little park-like squares is a borage of architecture/ period type structures.... homes, churches, really historic big money type mansions...all around the same square! Here is an example of all the builings around one particular square we went by.

Church.....

....Notting Hill (there was one with a red door although it's not pictured :)/ the Huxstable looking row of town homes.......

....then this really cool building with the pretty blue tiles (see below)....

.....and this New Orleans looking old mansion (this place was HUGE)...

....yes, eclectic! Also, notice the palm trees mixed in with the old south big tree feel...it didn't feel like the ocean was just a couple miles away.

Savannah also has a rich history side. This was The Pirate House...literally where pirates used to come in and eat after a their long months of looting and carousing on ships :) David and I ate in the original room- so technically we ate in the oldest room of the oldest building in Georgia! The food wasn't super awesome though...but if you like fried stuff I bet you would like the food there :)

Also, the place was supposedly "haunted", so here is a waiter showing the kids at his table how to "catch" a ghost on camera (which is pointed at a glass window)....very clever waiter, very clever.
Also, this city was the site of the boating and rowing events of the 1996 Summer Olympics...this statue stands by the river

There are tons of cool churches to visit
This was our favorite church we saw. It's kind of breathtaking!

David below to show you how big this place was

Here is the inside...

I must admit that I was a little uncomfortable inside the church.... not trying to judge- but it felt SUPER weird being in a place that cost a cogillion dollars to make this ornate. I'm just saying- maybe we could have done without one golden column- maybe made it silver and then feed all the homeless in Savannah? Perhaps...but it was quite beautiful. Maybe they felt this was honoring in some way? Again, not judging...just felt weird for me.

TYBEE ISLAND

This island, for those of you who don't know, is a vacation home for Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, and the shooting site for The Last Song (with Miley Cirus :).

We found the island quite calm and not too inhabited. We rented bikes and covered the ENTIRE island in one day (actually a couple hours)! Here we are riding our bikes through the streets...

Savannah/ Tybee have great tunnel trees!

We also stopped by the local lighthouse...

David loves showing off his pull-up skills :)

The only pic I got of the ocean...although you can't see it too well...maybe you can imagine!

Eryn's Birffday (that's how we say it at our house :) August 20-27, 2010

2010-10-09T14:50:00.003-06:00

Some of you may be wondering why I put a week long period (August 20-27) for my birthday. Well, in our house we celebrate "birthday weeks" instead of just a birth"day". During David's birthday week he may enjoy a surprise or two like apple crisp, and during mine I MAY get a back massage, but mostly the privileges of birthday week are for not having to get up or do things when you don't want to.

Here is a little sample of one of our birthday week conversations (taking place after we are both comfy and cozy in bed):

David: "Did we lock the door?"
Eryn: "Oh, I don't know, I might have gone to the car and forgotten to lock it back."
David: "Aw man, well do you want to go check it?"
Eryn: "Birthday week?"
David: "(sigh)...Fine, it's your birffday week"

Let me take some time to brag on David. For those of you who don't know, he is a full time student in a pretty competitive chiropractic program, he is usually the one who takes good care of the garden, AND he teaches three classes online (a full time income). And on my birthday week(end) he decided to surprise me with a weekend all about me and things that I like to do.

Thanks to a wonderful couple at North Atlanta Church of Christ, the Eatons, David and I had a great getaway for a weekend in their pool home. David had all my favorite fruits and foods waiting for me when we got there, and he bought groceries for a gourmet meal to make me on Friday. He made Cornish game hen in a white wine sauce, Portabello mushrooms with Gorgonzola and herbs, and sauteed asparagus! When he told me the menu I laughed and said, "No, what are we really having?". It was delicious!

On Saturday, we woke up and swam a bit in the pool.....

Then David took me shopping to spend some of my birthday money. I must give him credit for waiting in Anthropologie for about 2 1/2 hours while I tried on 30 pieces, deliberated, and then decided to frugally go with a necklace on clearance!

We went to see The Switch.... which was surprisingly good. Then we went and got pizza at the place we went on our first date, Mellow Mushroom (apparently it's a chain but we were unaware when we first went there in Nashville and thought we were eating at a cool local joint!).

Here are a couple pics of the wonderful place we got to celebrate at:

Doesn't this look like a catalog or magazine photo?

Jones' Family In Town- August 12-15, 2010

2010-10-09T14:14:00.006-06:00

The week after this one, David's sister Sarah had her dissertation defense at Emory. She is now Dr. Nicholson, about to work for the CDC and soon, Africa (well, not work "for" Africa, but work in Kenya, as a post-doctorate studying a disease, I think :)

We went to her defense and it was very impressive! We learned about the eyes of fruit flies and how Sarah's work can impact tumor research (really that is about what I understood from it, but if you want more info-- ask David, because I think he understood about 50% of it, which was more than the rest of us).

The next day David's Brother and SIL, Daniel and Melanie, and Daisy, Isaac, and Colbie Jean (our nieces and nephews) came to stay with us. We had a blast having them over. Friday night everyone came to our house to eat. It was fun hosting so much fam under our own roof.
We had a sort of celebration for Sarah, Isaac (his third b-day was a couple days away), and myself. Here is the cake I made. I deliberated over whether to do a Buzz cake or a Lightning McQueen cake, both hold a special place in Isaac's heart, but I decided to go for Buzz.
Here he is (David wrote the bottom "congrats Pumpkin"- he was very proud, so I am "tagging" his handywork..... I feel so 2010 using FB lingo in my blog post)....

I couldn't get a good pic of both Daisy and Isaac together, but here is the b-day boy all smiles and sweet sister, Daisy

On Saturday we went swimming with the kid's. Well, really the kids and the boys went swimming and most of us girls hung out by the pool. That night Chris arranged for a big Cheesecake Factory celebration for Sarah, in honor of her becoming Dr. Nicholson.
Here we all are at the Cheesecake Factory

Melanie, who is a professional level documenter, has more details of the weekend here.

I Am A Master!

2010-10-04T22:01:00.005-06:00

Master of Science in Counseling Psychology, that is. As of August 7, 2010 I am officially Eryn Jones, M.S.!

I must take a moment to mention that as soon as the plane landed in Atlanta from Cancun, after waiting TWO HOURS to go through customs (in our own country!...apparently in the ATL airport you have to RE-CHECK your bags after you go through customs if you are leaving the airport!).....anyways, after all that we drove home, I packed for the wedding, drove to Nashville, crept into my friend Whitney's house (who had just had the baby and was getting precious sleep!), woke up, went to get my hair did, had my final final exam (no, not a typo of the word “final”…hopefully last one ever!... not planning on getting my PhD….. for now :), then drove downtown to Robin's bachelorette party! It was a very eventful 24 hour period to say the least.

The week of graduation was also vacation, and best friend's wedding week! There is no ceremony for August grads, and I didn't want to drive back to Nashville to walk in December. So I got my diploma in the mail a couple weeks later....it seemed a bit anticlimactic, but I was too glad to not be driving back and forth from Nashville to notice.

I'm very proud of this little piece of paper :)

Robin and Nathan's Wedding- August 7, 2010

2010-10-04T15:20:00.008-06:00

My dear friend Robin Lee (one of my maids of honor in my wedding) married Nathan Mace on August 7th. It was a fun few days of festivities. Nathan is super awes and we are super happy for Robin! Also looking forward to their visit to Marietta......hint, hint :)

But before we begin.....Enter my new addition: bangs. My friend Whitney's little sister Kingsley (who if you live in the Nashvegas area and need a cut or color- she is the one to call!) was doing my hair before the wedding festivities and I felt like a change. She said, "How bout bangs?", and after asking her several questions about my face being able to pull them off, I agreed ;)

Robin's dad Rick (or Ricardo for short:) prepared us a WONDERFUL 5 star meal for the Bride's maid luncheon.

The bridesmaids: Jenna, me, Whitney, and Miranda

The wedding was at The Hermitage (where Andrew Jackson grew up I think). They were married in this church.......

...and the reception was at a sort of open barn all lit up with twinkle lights:

The Wedding Party

Whitney (other maid of honor in my wedding), who was part of the wedding party, had just given birth to a precious, chill, sweet baby boy about six weeks prior, Cole Huckaby Cantrell:

She had Allison traveling along throughout the wedding day to help "nanny". David took some turns during the reception. Doesn't he look like a natural?

We had a great weekend....stay tuned for what else happened that weekend in my next post :)

Cancun Trip July 30th

2010-10-04T12:56:00.008-06:00

Dad and Annette took us all to Cancun for a week. We stayed at the RIU Cancun. It was amazing! We hung out by the pool, went to Tulum and XelHa (literally means "mixed water" where the fresh water from a river mixes with the ocean and Mexico cashed in on the great snorkeling to make it a natural water theme park). We went snorkeling, jumped off cliffs, snorkeled around in a cave, floated down the river in inner tubes, and had a blast. We only took out the waterproof camera for that part of the day, so no pics here...but I did get one shot of these guys haning out at the park:

Below are the ruins from Tulum, a preserved Mayan city.

This one has some tiny red hand prints in it. I asked the guide what they were from and he didn't know. Maybe since they didn't have plates to record a hand-print on for mom to keep, they just had kids record them on the side of their ritual alter buildings.....maybe??

We had GREAT food the whole time. The RUI had a Brazilian, Japanese, and Steakhouse restaurant along with a huge buffet...can you tell we loved to eat on this vacation?

We also went deep sea fishing. I think between David and myself we reeled in four fish.

Here is our sea vessel

And yes.....we took the tradish pic in khakis and white shirts :)

And last but not least.....I must pay homage to my Dad's awesome pineapple colored traveling shirt. Can you pick him out of the crowd :)

Hint: he matches the weird flying corn thing??? What is that?

Thanks so much for the trip Dad! We had a blast.

Picking up where we left off..............Get ready!

2010-10-03T22:01:00.008-06:00

A lot has happened that we need to catch you up on. I guess the "you" would really only be the three people who happen to look at their Google Reader account to see that we have actually posted because I know everyone has most likely lost hope and given up checking this site!

Anywho...as promised in July we had a visit over the 4th of July weekend from Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom. Here are some highlights:

1.We took a trip up Kennesaw Mountain (actually a battlefield site for the civil war), and even though you can't tell much from the pictures it is a pretty view!

David and Grandpa at the top

2. We got to enjoy the Marietta Square Fireworks show. We had pretty good "seats" for the event.

Our attempt at a creative pic:

3. We went to Stone Mountain....sadly we couldn't go up top because of the thousands of people waiting in line to do the same. Note to self: don't go to Stone Mountain on the fourth of July weekend if you want to do or see anything good! We did eat at this little restaurant there that had "throwed" rolls, which was fun.

4. We celebrated Grandpa's birthday by grilling out at home and going to the Square and getting some pretty tasty ice cream!

"Is That Your Apple Tree?"

2010-07-07T21:23:00.005-06:00

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit us Fourth of July weekend (my mom came too for a week...more on that later). Anywho, David and Grandpa were touring the grounds and Grandpa asked, "Is that your apple tree there?" David looked over and saw this

If you blow this up you can see apples in the tree and some on the ground (actually when they first discovered the tree there were about 50 rotting apples on the ground...how this wonderful tree escaped our notice until now is beyond us!). So there you have it folks, we have an apple tree. That produces these little lovely things:

But it gets better........
We also discovered that these two trees that border our little garden are walnut trees that we can gather in the fall.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for pointing out our little treasures. And, Yes, (those of you who know David are probably wondering)an apple crisp was soon made :)

Our new home

2010-05-28T19:12:00.019-06:00

Ok, David here. This is my first attempt at blogging, so don't get your hopes up about this one. We have recently moved into a new house in Marietta, and planted our first garden, which I am super pumped about, so I thought I'd share some pics. It's about 100 years old (the house, that is) and has a lot of character and we are having a blast fixing it up. That being said, I don't have some great pictures of it (I just realized), so you will all have to make due with these until you can come visit us.

Here's one with some flowers that just bloomed in our yard. Pretty cool.

(Maybe it's because I'm working with an insanely slow computer, but I feel like I did when Mom and Sarah used to take me out to buy jeans and I would get exhausted after trying on two pair....this blogging will wear you out!)
A couple of weeks ago our landlord let us borrow his rototiller to start a garden. Here I am working the beast.

I'm actually digging up bricks in the above pics. Apparently there were a ton of bricks in the garden, and they kept making the rototiller pop up and nearly take my leg off. I felt like a little weakling who couldn't handle a man's machine in front of my manly farmer landlord, but I'm hoping after he saw the pile of bricks I was trying to till through he cut me some slack (good thing he doesn't know that I sew and that "You've got mail" is one of my favorite movies).Here's the pile:

Here's the finished product. We planted tomatoes (a couple of heirloom varieties), bell peppers, egg plant, okra, squash, cucumbers, and something called a muskmellon (supposed to be like a cantaloupe).

Here's the garden two weeks later:

Also, since we had two trash dumpsters, we decided to cut one up into three parts and use it for cool "green" purposes. The top part is being used as a compost bin. The middle part is a leaf holder for use in the compost. And the bottom part is our new herb garden (mint, basil, cilantro, and rosemary).

Finally (I guess I caught a second wind here cause this baby is a marathon), we have a grape vine in our back yard!

Here are the beginnings of our grapes.

Whitney's Baby Shower Cake

2010-03-21T14:58:00.006-06:00

I have decided that baby shower cakes are my favorite. There was one I worked on at cafe Columbine (well I think it was a baby baptism cake) where I made cupcakes with white calla lilies on top. There is just so much more you can do with baby colors and designs...that don't look too cheesy/ themey (I know, not a word... but there is just not a better substitute for what my friend Kristy called-- in reference to an elephant themed room she had seen-- like an elephant threw up all over the room).

And my latest undertaking was inspired by this Land of Nod bedding:

This was what I came up with:

The above pic is a back view, which I was not anticipating (for some reason I pictured it being on a buffet or something where no one would see the back...but I thought it turned out not too hideous from a 360 view :)

Me and the soon to be mom of "CHC"--love how the monogram looks! (I refrained from giving the name out yet in case she changes her mind on baby boy's name. Also, in case there are haters out there that have something to say about the name of an unborn child whose parents have every right to name him/her Green Bean Jones if they want...don't read too much into that one :).

Congrats Whitney, and cannot wait to meet your new addition!

Valentines Day...and older stuff

2010-02-14T23:03:00.009-07:00

***Warning: REALLY, REALLY Long post because I have a lot of catching up to do!***All events are in reverse order***

Valentines Day (or Balemtimes Day)

David and I haven't really ever celebrated V-day, but this year we have been a part quite a bit so far, and David planned a really romantic date for us on Sat (which is really the 13th so we still haven't celebrated Valentines Day ON V-day). So the first part of this post is going to be me bragging on my wonderful husband, so please bear with me :)

David is really creative. He probably would disagree with that statement; however, he's funny.... I think funny people are naturally creative. So here is what he did for our Valentines day (which he calls Balemtimes Day so that we have a holiday that is all our own :) Let me back up and explain...sometimes funny turns into ridiculously silly, but that's why I love him! When we were dating we he started this thing where he would switch the v's for b's. Then he started saying things where he switched the w's for m's...now I gues it has progressed to also switching out n's for m's. He likes to have a language all his own (If you know a Jones this would not seem so strange :)

So we get in the car and he has a CD playing of songs that mark our history together in somewhat chronological order. For example we used to sing this song together in the car when we were dating by the Postal Service that had a guy and girl part and that song was right after the son Forever, by Ben Harper which he put on the first mixed CD he made me after we had been dating a month (this mixed CD also had songs like "I'm gonna love you more than anyone" by Gaven DeGraw...I was wondering if he was trying to tell me something :)...but to his credit he wasn't, he just really likes those kind of songs!

Then we head to one of my favorite restaurants, the Mad Platter. Here is a pic the waiter took of us.

At dinner he had cards to give me at different courses... most of them we had gotten in the mail from my grandparents or mom, but it was still fun (The last one was a Balemtimes card made by David:). Then he had a final "card" but it was a gift certificate for a massage! I cannot tell you how much massage is my love language (Gary Chapman, you left one out!). I was totally NOT expecting any sort of gift...because just going out to eat together is a gift these days! And my week this past week was terrible! Car broke down, forgot two appointments, bombed a test, had a million things do PLUS a presentation...I guess he felt sorry for me.

Then, we headed to The Boiler Room Theater for Fiddler on the Roof. (David had planned on taking us to my fav frozen yogurt place, but dinner was three courses... and took a long time.) The guy who played Tevye was AWESOME....the papas........tradition. It was a pretty good show and the theater only seated 100 or so, so every seat was a good one. This is us just before the show...in the car....I don't document very well so most of our picture consist of one of us with an extended arm holding the camera.

Then we came home and attempted a full outfit pic...that didn't work out so well...

So we took this :)

We had gotten some ice cream on the way home and decided to eat it while we watched Community...hilarious! David usually gets comfortable (and by comfy I mean down to his skivvies), so I look over and this is what I saw on his arm.

Now, I know he hadn't had time to get a tattoo, but it looks kind of real... I wasn't too worried though. This was the final surprise of the night...for those of you who know us well, the picture will make sense...for those of you who don't David has called me this since I can remember. I don't know, it just stuck! (This came from a fortune cookie we got on our anniversary weekend to PF Chang's!) Maybe he will start calling me Nan-gua!

Snow Storm 2010
(For our friends in CO, this will seem humorous, and yes...everything was shut down for a couple of days :)
Here are some pics:

Notice the U-Haul in the background......poor people who had to move in the snow!

We stayed in ALL weekend... it was a nice retreat for the two of us to not have to go anywhere (we both work three out of the fourish days David is home). This is mostly what we did........fix food!

Also, the snow here is not quite the wonderful powdery goodness that we got in the big CO. It's more like this...

And finally, David's First Day of School Pic:
I think he was re-enacting his first day of kindergarten pic... all geared up for the great unknown of Chiropractic School, armed with burnt almond flour cookies and a suitcase :)

Merry Christmas...............hey better late than never!

2010-02-01T19:37:00.003-07:00

SO... we have been a bit delayed in our 2009 Christmas Card.
Here's why: January's seem to bring a lot of change for the Jones family. January 2006- marriage, January 2007- moved, January 2009- moved across the country on a whim :), January 2010- decided to live in two separate cities... and also move again (just to the other side of town for now)!

So here is our 2009 Christmas Card... (see past years below if you have no idea what I am talking about)
2008
2007
2006

(Eryn Here) David has decided to be a Chiropractor! Let me back up a bit to the beginning of last year. You may have read a year ago in our 2008 Christmas Card that David had mono... well it turned out to be a bit more chronic than that. Over the last year he suffered quite a bit of health trials. We tried many things that did not seem to work. I decided to go to the chiropractor in September and David went along with it, getting a set of free x-rays because he was a relative of mine. Then he got his x-rays back and saw that his spine was pretty jacked up. We noticed a change in his energy levels a few weeks after beginning treatment, and now, with living a healthier lifestyle, he seems better than I can remember him being! I am so grateful that he is back to his usual funny, energetic self. He also gets to take in an Ultimate Frisbee game or two on Saturdays.

He is currently staying four nights with his sister Sarah in Atlanta, GA. Sarah and Chris have been so gracious to let him stay with them so much! He comes home on Thursday afternoons and leaves Sunday after church [our church (which we love and feel blessed to have found) is at night]. So I relish my time with him. Even though he is tired from driving, he works teaching a weekend class at a community college (so we can live :). He also teaches an online class in his "spare time". Even though he does all of these things, and is tired from driving when he gets home, he still finds time to serve around the house. I'm so glad I married such a servant-hearted man!

This past year God really blessed him with jobs tutoring and adjunct teaching. He brought home the bacon but didn't have to work a 9-5 job when his health wasn't 100%. His most interesting teaching stories came from the community college. There were government incentives for moms who didn't finish college to go back to school this year. David taught many middle age ladies who called him "son". David, being the polite southern boy he is, would answer, "Yes, ma'am?"! Must be weird giving out grades to people who you feel you should call "ma'am".

(David here) Here’s an update on what has been going on with Eryn in 2009. First, the supportive wife that she is, she transferred from Colorado Christian University to Lipscomb to continue her Master’s in Counseling after I got sick. Once back in Nashville, Eryn committed herself to her studies (4.0, baby!), and also helped to support us by babysitting on the side. As a matter of fact, she basically raised a pair of newborn twins for a few months. Their mom was from Hong Kong, and their dad was in the Italian mafia (we don’t know this for sure, but he would use terms like “I took care of it” and “I know a guy”, and he paid her large amounts in cash saying “I know I would prefer cash, so here ya go”, and he was very vague about what he did, explaining it in a way that sounded suspiciously like money laundering).

Over the summer, Eryn’s mom Rhonda got very sick, having multiple surgeries on a large tumor in her abdomen. This meant that on top of her other responsibilities, Eryn also traveled to Memphis and back every week for a couple of months. Basically she’s amazing. More importantly, though, we were both so glad to be so close (not in Colorado) and be able to be with Rhonda and the rest of Eryn’s family during that hard time.

In the fall, Eryn started an internship at the Agape Counseling Center on top of her other classes. She is learning a lot and has about 10 clients now. I am constantly amazed at her insight into people and her counseling intuition. She has helped me a lot too as I have been struggling with a new direction in life. She asks “how does that make you feel” a lot (not really, but that’s what I always think of when I think of counselors….in fact, she asks very good penetrating questions that always help me to see things more clearly).

Well, I think that’s all that’s been going on with Eryn. She continues to do wedding cakes on occasion, counsels all day long, takes care of me at night, and is all around the best wife I can imagine.

So to recap 2009:

- Moved across the country in one weeks time (from the time we decided to the time we moved into our Nashville apartment)

- Eryn went to Grad school

- David made life-changing health decisions and got his energy back

- David made a career change

- We moved, again (if you count December 31^st move to our new Nashville apt)

- Will move again in a couple of months to Atlanta… oh yeah, move number 6, here we come!

Fall Photo Shoot

2009-11-14T14:34:00.003-07:00

As promised (from several blogs ago), here are some pictures of me and David in case you forgot what we looked like.

The first ones are of us at a park nearby. The sun was setting so we got some good ones with a handy flexible tripod (I'm not sure about the brand, but we love ours... it hooks onto lots of things like trees etc. and is really small and lightweight).

This one....

.. was actually cropped from a picture like this one to look like we were sitting on something.. we were trying to go all Olan Mills on a budget, ok!

And here is the only picture I got of us from Aly's wedding. I guess I was too focused on taking pictures of my cakes :)

Wedding Cakes Galore

2009-11-07T21:32:00.006-07:00

This weekend David and I ventured to believe (or really I did) that we could pull off three wedding cakes for two weddings, nine tiers in all, two chocolate iced German chocolate cakes, and seven buttercream frosted cakes in flavors butter pecan, vanilla, chocolate, carrot, and strawberry!

We really felt blessed by several things along the way. First, a church that we no longer go to (but one I once worked for) allowed us to use their church kitchen space for free. Second, my industrial mixer broke halfway through the icing making process, but after seven or so hours it still wasn't going. So we prayed over the mixer (sounds corny, but we needed God to heal it through the laying on of hands :). David took it apart, looked around, got some goo on his pants, and then decided to put it back together. Then after a few times of starting it it magically worked the rest of the day!

The deliveries went pretty smoothly and I was proud of the weekends worth of work. God really help me not to stress out like I would have. Actually a friend of ours talked about the verse where the Israelites ask God to give them only what they need for the day (not too much so they would forget Him and not too little so that they would be angry with Him). Sounds weird to have a scripture motto for a cake making process, but it totally helped me!

Here is the first cake. Please ignore the fire extinguisher in the background. We set up the cake in the kitchen because the wedding and reception were all in the same place. So they did a turn around after the wedding-- everyone went outside and they transformed the sanctuary.

This next cake was of my friend Alyson Williams' wedding. She married Stephen Strickhausen (think about that monogram for a sec...and we'll come to that in a bit:) Her wedding was in downtown Franklin. Cute church and old historic home that is not a catering company. It was beautiful. This was the first wedding where I made a cake that I actually got to go to and hear peoples comments. I would try to be all stealthy and walk around the tables of people eating cake and watch their faces and try to hear their reactions :)

Funny side note: We had stored the cakes in the freezer the night before the weddings. Apparently the freezer was negative 100 degrees because after five hours the bottom two tiers were still frozen when they cut the cakes, well there was an outer perimeter of about two inches that they could cut. I was really embarrassed at first. The catering guy who was cutting the cake was like, "Oh don't worry about it, you're new at this.... you'll know for next time". HA! Little did he know this was my twelfth or so wedding cake + delivery! It turned out to not be that big of a deal. Except that they broke their lovely serving knife on the cake toward the end, oops :) But one of my friends I overheard saying, "Wow there is one chocolate cake that has a frozen strawberry center.. I've never seen that before!" Even though that wasn't the intended effect, I think the frozen thing turned out to not be too big of a deal after all.

Here are Aly and Stephen taking their first dance.

And here they are cutting the cake.

***WARNING*** ***CENSORED***

So back to the monogram thing. Alyson and Stephen decided that it would be a funny joke to put their monogram on the grooms cake. They had been getting wedding gifts with their monogram (towels and mugs and such) with "SSA" and they just wanted to have one momento of the "real" monogram. Since their parent okayed it, I decided it would be alright to draw a lovely A** monogram for them, trying to make the middle "S" look significantly bigger and pronounced. Apparently someone took a picture of it and sent it to Jay Leno for his headlines bit!

Glee

2009-10-12T02:45:00.003-06:00

Here is a clip from our favorite episode so far of Glee. If you haven't been able to see this yet, David and I recommend it. Background: The football team has been loosing all year so the captain (who is in glee and also the quarterback) decided to read up on how to help the team win. He found out that alot of pro footballers are good dancers so he gets the glee coach to teach the football team how to dance. They even make a play called "ring on it" .....you'll see.

And thanks to Mel, my sister-in-law who's post reminded me of this clip :)

My Nashville Favs

2009-10-01T16:42:00.009-06:00

Looking back to four years ago when we were looking at moving somewhere unknown, I remember being SO READY to leave Nashville! Yet, now that we are back, I am secretly loving this good ole Southern town full of wonderful restaurants and a lot more culture (in more ways than one... see Sweet Cece's below- sorry for the pun :) than I had thought.

Here are my top places/ things I really like about this town:
1. Pfunky Griddle (Berry Hill Area)- many restaurants are getting behind the wave of more healthful eating. The Pfunky Griddle offers yummy whole grain pancakes, gluten free pancakes, and also the not-so healthy white kind. BUT the best part is that you have this cute little griddle built into your table (the tables kind of look like a smaller version of a hibachi grill's table) that you can grill your own pancakes (hence, makes them healthier because there is not some cook in the back cooking them on a fake-butter laden grill right beside some greasy breakfast sausage. ALSO, you get all you can eat (per person). So when you are craving breakfast for dinner/ lunch/ or breakfast :) don't head to the local Ihop, head to the Pfunky Griddle.

2. Sweet CeCe's Yogurt (Belle Meade)- This place is Nashville's PinkBerry but better. It's self serve yogurt, and their no sugar options are yummy! You can also pick your own toppings from everything from Lucky Charm-type cereals to FRESH fruit (I'm talking fresh here peeps, not the kind that comes in a plastic tub with so much sugar has been added to preserve it it comes in a syrupy sauce). They just weigh it and you pay when you are done. I walked up with my giant tub of rasperry and tart yogurt topped with fresh kiwi, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries and expected it to be $9! But is was only $4 so I was pleased. To learn more click here:

3. A New Idea for A Cheap Date- Recently my mom and I discovered that P. F. Chang's offers GIANT soup bowls (I'm talking 2 quart size soup bowls) for around 6-7 dollars! And they don't skimp on ingredients. You could go and get two to share and get whatever you wanted to drink and manage to get out of there for about $20 + tip. And P.F. Chang's has some nice romantic atmosphere goin on.

4. Baja Burrito- David cannot ever get enough Baja. Unfortunately for our pocketbooks, it is about 1/4 mile down our street! I usually get a taco salad that is free of sour cream and cheese, and David has begun to join me in the healthier Baja option. We like going here because it's very filling ingredients while being very fresh and flavorfull. We will always love Baja, even if we move :).

5. Mad Platter and Flyte: For fine dining, I cannot think of two better restaurants in Nashvegas. Thanks to my friend, Elizabeth, we went to the Mad Platter a couple of weeks ago with a $25-off-coupon from Restaurants.com. (We still have one more that I plan on using soon :). And Flyte has one of the best Pastry Chef's in the city, if not the best! I have been a couple of times for dessert and my mouth has been blown away by her creativity. I think the last item I ordered was a rice pudding with raspberries and rhubard topped off with olive oil ice cream (for all non-foodies, this sounds wierd but is delish!).

6. Sweet Ole' Southern Sayin's: So I just have to post about this for all of our CO friends. I was at the YMCA the other day and I had lost my keys. So I went back to the eliptical machines I had been in that day and there was on older lady on one of them. I aksed her if there were any keys in that machine, and she got off to let me look. Then I told her they weren't there and she just exclaimed, "Well, bless your little heart!". It made me smile that, even though I couldn't drive home, my heart was blessed by a sweet southern lady :)

7. Greek Restaurant... so I do not know the exact name, but I think it is called Greek Taverna and it is also in the Berry Hill area on Bransford Ave. It is TRUE authentic Greek food. Last time we went we ordered the Baklava for dessert, but the chef said we should get this custart filo thing that I could not pronounce so we did. It was AWES! Tasted like Greek funnel cake sprinkled with cinnamon.

Mom's Visit

2009-09-28T18:20:00.004-06:00

Most of you know that my mom had a tumor removed earlier this summer and had several surgeries. She has been recovering well, and this weekend she decided to brave a trip to Nashville (David and I have crazy schedules this fall, so she decided to come to us). Since she hasn't eaten since before her first surgery on June 17, she has had plenty of time to think about food and so she decided to prepare us gourmet meals ALL WEEKEND! It was great. Here was our menu. And since I never remember to take pictures, you will have to settle for the yummy BH&G's pics.

Saturday Night:
Roasted Beet and Clementine Salad with homemade Spicy Orange Vinaigrette

Sweet Potato and Hominy Stew made with barbecued chicken

Creamy Pumpkin and Rice Pudding topped with Apples, Cranberries, and Walnuts

And for Sunday she made us fresh, healthy Sirloin Burgers with a kick

We had a great time. Thanks Mom!

Be looking for upcoming posts of my favorite Nashville deals and places and my fav Fall cooking ingredients... Also, if you are lucky, I will actually post pictures of me and David :)

Our New Venture

2009-08-18T19:30:00.004-06:00

Hello all. We have had some changes in our lives recently. David has decided not to go back to Vanderbilt to finish his PhD right now and he will be teaching at some local universities this fall. But.....he also has decided to put a recent hobby of his to good use.

That means.......
We have an ETSY page!

It's http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7900394

So far he has just posted a couple of purses to see what the interest is. We decided to only use unusable clothing (like torn jeans that can't be given to Goodwill) and scrap fabric. So........if anybody has any good items that fit that description, please send them to us (we will pay you for the shipping if you want :).

Here are some pics of David in action (I love that my husband is secure in his manhood:)

Here are some pics of the latest purses:

No longer in the west

2009-05-05T12:58:00.008-06:00

To the five of you who still check this blog with the hopes that there will be something new, this blog is for you!

You may be wondering why the blog still says "Tales from the West" when we are clearly back in the South. I just didn't have the heart to change it... I feel like we are not southerners anymore, and maybe one day we will have more tales from another western place.... or Florida :) So, I decided to write some things that we miss from Fort Collins.

While I don't miss seeing this in MARCH, or even MAY!

I desperately miss seeing this everyday...

Granted, this picture is taken from the I-25, not our house, but it's still quite frequent a view. And the snow doesn't always stick around... there are plenty of 75 degree days sprinkled in the spring months...lovely, sunny, DRY 75 degree days....ahhhh how I miss the dryness.

Another thing I miss about Fort Collins is the smallness. Average car trip in Fo Co: about 5 minutes, average car trip in Nashville: 20! So much more time in the car. These picture were taking of Down town Ft Collins, and it only took us about 4 minutes to get there by car... sometimes we walked...People- I live 1.2 miles away from my school here in Nashville, and sometimes is takes TWENTY MINUTES to get there, ugh! (I'm really not that bitter about it, just sometimes frustrating :) As you can see, downtown Ft. Collins is definitely a place you can just hang out... downtown Nashville is not quite the same scene.

And finally, this one is for you, mom....I know you will miss this place (there were gardens open in the Summer and Fall of all sorts of flowers- it was really beautiful- the pic doesn't do it justice)

We also miss our friends:

Carly, I have no idea why I don't have a picture of Grayson other than when he was about 3 months old! And Kimberly and Bruce-- Why don't we have pics of you guys???

Despite what you may think, I really do like living in Nashville. It has taken some adjustments, but we are grateful for being close to family and old friends. Also, there is a plethora of new restaurants to try, and I LOVE finding new foodey places!

Ok, ok........ I'll try to get better

2009-02-15T00:24:00.005-07:00

So, a WHOLE LOT has happened sice the last little teaser post. But I am just going to blog about this one thing-- for now. More to come with pics of our new house (well, apartment really) and details on our new and very different life.

Orlando

This last weekend we went to Orlando to see my sister at UCA Nationals. We thought Daisy might enjoy it, so we took her as her birthday present (little did we know her little wheels were already turning toward cheerleading instead of her curret basketball career). So needless to say, I think she enjoyed her time with us at the competition. Melanie (who if you are reading this post- it's basically a copy of yours, so if you need to save time- it's not going to be that exciting:)got to go too, and we had a good time.
Here are some pics............
A whole lotta cheerleaders

JCS got 6th in the nation!!

The event was at Wide World of Sports at Disney and it was cool to see- we had never been there before

Who knew that my sister would someday be equal to Mikey Mouse or Cinderella in a four year olds eyes!

Daisy had a great memory of the cheerleading stunts and wanted to recreate one when she got home. She gave David and Daniel instructions :)

Nashville, Here We Come!

2009-01-06T07:57:00.001-07:00

Yes, we are moving back. More to come...........

Christmas Card Time...

2008-12-21T17:09:00.005-07:00

It's that time of year again, not to stamp 50-100 Christmas cards (although, I admire those who do!), but to type out our anual Christmas blog post that takes the place of our yearly mailed Christmas letter.

I (Eryn) will write first. This year has been eventful to say the least! First, I have decided to take on a new career... well, it was counseling that I went to school for in the first place, but I kindof sidestepped that for a while and decided to bake. We prayed and felt that God gave us the go-ahead to both be 26 and 28 year old students. So I quit my job at the bakery and am full-time in school. It feels strange sometimes walking up to the movie theater and saying, "Two student tickets please." But we don't complain about the discounts! So far, I have felt really blessed by Colorado Christian University and my masters program in counseling. My teachers are great and very experienced.

This year we have felt more homesick for the South, but we had a great vacation to YellowStone with my mom and grandparents and also got to go to visit David's family for a while when his sister, Sarah, got married. (I did the cake... see posts from Sept. for pics:) I got to go home for Thanksgiving, and David made it home for a 1 day whirlwind trip getting to visit with my dad and my mom's family.

Our health has been up and down all year. David had a malaria scare, and currently has mono! I had surgery, and I think we have basically traded off who is going to be sick with something from week to week. Well, it hasn't been that bad, but we have definitely had some interesting times of playing who is going to get up and get that (meaning I or David want something but don't feel like getting it, so we just wait each other out until someone finaly gives:).

We did get to have a wonderful vacation together this year in Clearwater Beach, FL. David's brother-in-law's parents graciously let us stay in their condo for a week. It was heaven! One day it was raining and we just stayed in bed all day and watched movies. The relaxation and the ocean helped us get back to the grindstone.

David here, and i just thought I'd add a little tidbit of my own. Eryn pretty much covered everything. I must add, however, that this has been a really hard year for us. We're fine, and really blessed. And really, the fact that we're having a hard year should be even more of a comforting read than all of the good stuff, because it makes the truth of God's relationship with us more apparent: not that he will make the path easy for us, but that he will give us the right feet to deal with the difficult path that is before us. Here is the quick run down: my job is insanely stressful, we have both been sick a lot, we have no money, we don't have a good church home, and we miss our family and friends terribly. However, God has also strengthened our faith, drawn us closer to each other, taught us about trust in him, proven himself (o'er and o'er, as they say), and overall made us more into his image, which, lets be honest, is pretty great. So, although I'm sure we'll have great blogs in the future about how our fifth child just won the junior surf competition on the north shore of Oahu, where our church plant has just passed the 5 million attendance mark, for the time being, we can all be glad of the truths that Eryn and I have learned about trying to put together a departmental seminar while your wife writes three papers, after which you eat a bowl of Ramen noodles, check how big your neck has swollen from mono, get ready to take your malaria medicine, look online for a church to try, all while trying not to think about what your passive aggressive boss will say about all the time you missed from your various tropical diseases (obviously a little exaggeration was used in that last part, as well as a liberal use of the run-on sentence)....and how God has used those things to mold us.

(Eryn again) You can see why I didn't want to follow that:) I feel the need to add that our family truly blesses us through gifts of money, necessities, and good comforting conversation. We do feel that God uses our friends here and those we keep in touch with as well as family to bless us.

We are at the halfway point in our stay here in Colorado and we still love it, but miss our family and friends terribly! We hope you all are doing well and we look forward to one day being in closer proximity to all of you.

Love,
David and Eryn Jones

Update on the cold!

2008-12-15T12:43:00.004-07:00

Today, the national weather service said that this morning the temp here in Fort Collins was 5 degrees colder than the North Pole! So basically, I wish I was haning out with Santa right about now. It's supposed to get to be -19 tonight.......ahhhhhhhh!

Lots to blog about...

2008-12-15T00:05:00.008-07:00

I will begin by saying that it is NEGATIVE THIRTEEN DEGREES RIGHT NOW! Windchill: -29!!! I really don't think it has ever been this cold here!

With that being said, I have dicided to write about some things that are fun about the snow (trying to convice myself that snow is fun). I know all you people from the south thing I'm crazy for not liking snow right now, but it kind of looses its appeal after it snows two or three times a week.

So, that being said, fun things about snow........

First is a picture of what I like to call a "Car-hawk", a mohawk on a car. Now you can't get the full effect because it's dark and the car is white, but it looks kind of funny when you have 8" on your car and then you brush off all you can reach and there is a mohawk looking thing on the top of the car! I tried to get a better picture of the one on our car that goes all the way to the bumper, but my camera died, you get the idea anyways.

The evergreens are really pretty when it snows.....and this picture was taken at 4 pm! Not 8 pm like it looks, another joy of living in Colorado: short, short winter days (but the summer days are extra long so that's nice).

I just liked this pic of our mailbox:)

David's Christmas Wrapping Skills

David is awesome at wrapping presents. I would like to treat you all to some pictures of his Chrismas wrappings...

This one is my favorite, in case you can't see- he gave the gift a "santa hat"

Cafe Jones

When you live in a really small home, you have to make do. Since we will be living like this for a couple more years, I decided to problem solve. We currently have nowhere to eat in our house. We have, in the past, put the table somewhere in the living room- but it always felt too crowded. So I decided to clean out the guest bedroom and put the table in there and kind of make a private dining room out of it. Than thanks to my mom, I have really cute Christmas table decorations. Here are some pics...

This one gives you a good idea of the lighting- the rest have a flash, so you can't tell as well

Turkey Day

2008-12-01T14:28:00.003-07:00

I got to go home for Thanksgiving week this year to visit my mom's family and my dad's family. David was going to be at home and work all week here in Colorado. On Wednesday night, my dad, stepmom, brother, sister, and me went to see a movie. When I was coming out of the movie, I was supposed to meet some friends who had just gone to pick up their cousin, "Trevor", from the airport. When I called them after the movie I turn around and saw this guy with an Alabama hat running toward me- turns out "Trevor" was really David Jones. So David came home and surprised us all. My grandma and grandpa (thank you both so much!) knew, but no one else did.

So we had Thanksgiving lunch with my dad and stepmom's family, and then we traveled to Memphis for a meal of sloppy joes and pizza with my mom's family. My mom was really surprised. Then we got up the next morning at 4:30 to take David to the airport! That part was not fun.

Here are some pictures we took on my stepmom's parents land.

Procrastinating.....

2008-11-10T01:49:00.004-07:00

So I am supposed to be writing a paper right now. I have one paper down, and 1 paper, a presentation, a really long paper, and studying for a midterm to go! This week is a busy one. I feel like I am back in the second grade and I have no idea what the homework assignment is or how to do it and my mom (or, in this case David:) has to help me figure it out. So you know when you got the MLA book in college and it explained exactly how you were supposed to write a research paper? Well I have to write in APA style, and now they seem to think that you are actually smart and they don't give you the 10 different examples of citations so you can figure it out. I have a question about every other minute, so I hand the APA book to David and let him help me figure it out!

Anyways, this post is about CHRISTMAS!!! I have resigned myself to be "that girl" who cannot wait to put up the tree. Last year I put it up early November, and this year I did the same. I decided to dedicate this post to memories through ornaments... enjoy.
Heres the tree...I love my tree, I think my favorite part is the garland...I got almost everything on the tree and the tree itself from a shower by thrown by my good friends Emily, Melissa, Mandi, Kara, and their moms!

This ones for Phil...I mean I'm not really a fan but when he cried at that press conference, I really felt for the man. Isn't this sweet, these ornaments go so well toegther:)

Stockings and decor...

This Willow Creek nativity set was a wedding gift from my dad's secretary, Jennifer- I like how simple it is. It makes me think it's more realistic than other nativity sets with a baby Jesus wrapped in gold and in a tricked out expensive designer manger

Our first Christmas together, David and I decided to start a tradition of picking out one ornament together (when we have kids they will get to pick out one and fight about it in the store:) This is our ornament from that first Christmas we were married.

This ornament I got in London at Harrod's when I went to tour Europe with my friends who did HUF

My old boss, Andrea, gave me this ornament... I like how she is carrying pastries:)

So the first time David met my mom, he said that he wanted to get a motor cycle one day. Strangely my mom seemed to support him! So this year for his birthday, he got this one...

Thanks to Maurine for letting go of this one, a childhood ornament of David's

self explanatory, got it before we got married. Since we got married in Jan, we got some cool ornaments like this one for the Christmas before.

Ok, I gotta mention the info-mercial I am watching while I type this. Has anyone ever heard of the Flavor Wave oven? It looks awesome! It's this plastic portable oven that can sit on your countertop and it cooks stuff thats frozen in HALF the time of your oven, and because of the infrared flavor waves, the food is jucier and tastes better than if you cooked it in your microwave or oven. AND if you act now, it's only $133 instead of $800 normally! Go to www.thane.com to get yours now:)

Actually, seriously, I think I want this thing!

"Old" School

2008-11-03T18:05:00.003-07:00

Pardon the pun, but I am older, and I am going to school now. My neighbor took my first day of school pic for me in all the fashion of the olden days-- in front of the door ready to go conquer the world. School is going well. It is a TON of reading, but I enjoy it. Next semester I am going to try to take 15 hours! If anyone has ever gone to grad school- they know that this is a feat... but I want to be done by the time we need to leave Colorado so that my husband doesn't have to move without me!

Please excuse the goofieness... and see my new post below!

Fall in Colorado

2008-11-01T13:15:00.013-06:00

Ok, so I promise that I will be more faithful at posting. We just got the internet, so I'm up and running. Alot has been going on, so I will try to catch you up in one post. Here goes....

First, every year I think about how awesome the leaves look here when fall time comes, but by the time I remember to put my camera in the car, the trees are leaveless! So here are some pics of the fall scenes we have gotten on camera in the past three years....

(Above) This was from the first fall we were here, thought it was worthy of reposting
(Below) These are taken around our neighborhood.

Also, David turned 28 on Halloween. We had a fun party with our neighborhood. We weren't going to dress up, but I had a random last minute idea. (Not a very original one, because I'm sure everybody and their grandma went as a politician.) We went as Sarah Palin and John McCain....I even sported the peep-toe shoes that Sarah wears (although hers are a cute red or maybe black)... I must admit that the girl has got style. Poor David, when he got home I threw him in a suit and proceeded to douse his hair in baby powder and hairspray since he has A TON more hair than John (which we found out that the two DONT mix...it turned into this plastery goo on his head and he ended up looking more like Albert Einstein :).

These are my version of "peep toe" shoes :)

Trying to show that my hair looks somewhat like hers, maybe a funkier version

Einstein McCain and Lisa Loeb Palin :)

Quick Anecdote

2008-10-11T13:21:00.003-06:00

I know I haven't blogged in a while, but I wanted to post a quick little story about the other day. So David called on his way home from work and this is how it went:
Phone rings and I answer...
David: "Hey, is this Eryn Agee?"
Me: (sort of laughing, sort of playing along) "Yes."
David: "Hey, I don't know if you remember me, but we met at Alyson and Kelee's house, and I was wondering if you wanted to maybe go out with me today."
Me: (not passing up a chance for a possible date) "Sure"
David: "Well, uh, great. I guess I'll just pick you up in fifteen minutes."

Moments later, the doorbell rings (and I must admit all the feelings one has when dating, nervousness, constant double checking on how you look in the mirror-- totally came back to me-- I don't miss those days). I answered the door and we exchanged small talk. Then we walked to the car, David opened my door and this is what he said:
"Sorry, I didn't have time to clean the car out, and my roommate is pretty messy!"

Then I proceeded to hit him and the little game was over, but I will admit that the car is my main area of messiness and I am working on that:)

Sarah's Wedding Festivities

2008-09-17T11:58:00.006-06:00

David's younger sister, Sarah, married Chris Nicholson on Sept 6th. We got to spend the week with all of David's family and we also made the cake. Yes, I say "we" because David was my very talented sous chef for the week. He was VERY helpful and I think he enjoyed himself a lot! Here are some pics.
Lingerie Shower, all the Jones/former Jones women:

Rehearsal Dinner (Hawiian Theme with AMAZING food!).....

The Wedding was at a Georgia Plantation Home, and even thought the train ran by at least three times during the wedding, the ceremony was sweet and beautiful
The House:

Sarah, Chris, and the flower girls and "ring bearers" even though the didn't exacty carry anything...still cute:

The whole wedding party:

Sweet Baby Isaac in his wedding attire:

The Reception:
The cakes.......was supposed to be a five tiered one, but that didn't quite work out:) Pretty satisfied with the final product, though

This is the Groom's Cake made by Chris' mom, Nana, and Grandpa: all the placed he has been to in Africa

They had a line dancing instructor come to the reception and teach us new line dances, afterward, we all did the electric slide and the cha-cha slide. I have to say that the award for the best dancer of the night went to David, surprisingly!

Trying to get this dance

The send off was set to giant sparklers...there they go.....

26!

2008-09-16T12:55:00.007-06:00

For my birthday we kindof did it in stages. When I got home from work on my actual birthday, I came home to this........

I don't know if you can tell very well, but David made me a tent to come home and relax to after a long week of work

Then, David took me shopping at the mall (had some birthday money to spend), and we went to my favorite restaurant in town, Wilde Rock Cafe, and there was even a guy playing piano right by our table. Here are some pics of us at home that day:

Part Two:
We had a chance to stay at a condo in Clearwater, FL (near Tampa) thanks to Mike and Wendy Caulley! So, on our last night, we went to a nice restaurant by the bay and went putt-putt golfing. Here are some pics from that:

This is the view of the bay from our table

Us on the pier by the restaurant (smelled like fish guts, but still romantic:)

Here we are practicing our putt-putt skills

At the Airport......

2008-09-14T17:26:00.003-06:00

So we checked our fantasy teams (yes, thanks Aaron Henderson for roping me into fanatasy world) in the Orlando Airport before we left for our trip home, and I saw that the game between Baltimore and Houston had been cancelled. So I'm super bummed and on the plane to ATL, we realized I could still drop add if I had people who hadn't played yet (which I did:). So, happily, I get out the computer and see that internet access is $8! Which, as you probably can guess by this post, we paid!!!! So in efforts to feel justified in spending $8 to win a fantasy football game against my husband, I am writing a post from the Atlanta airport. Here are a few pics to whet your appitite for future posts. Eryn's Birthday, Sarah's wedding, and our Vacation are coming soon!
These are the niece and nephews....first one is of Daisy at a water fountain:)

The best weekend ever

2008-07-24T14:43:00.007-06:00

This past weekend was probably one of the funnest weekends in our marriage. It started on Friday, when we went to The HuHot for dinner. David was wearing his Alabama hat, and as soon as our waiter came up to the table we got a "Roll Tide!". He explained that he was from Muscle Shoals (Musssholes-- said in one word if you are from there:) and he moved here when he was done with college to be by the mountains. He was full of fun down home conversation, and the dinner was great. After dinner we went to see Mama Mia, which we got great seats in because everyone and their grandpa was going to see The Dark Night last weekend! If you like Abba, you will like this movie. We had never seen the play, but we were really pleased. Who new the girl from Mean Girls could sing so well? There are a couple of dog poo type things but not enough to ruin the whole movie--- but it is pretty hilarious when Pierce Brosnan sings.

That would have been the end of the excitement of our weekend. David went to work on Sat and I actually didn't have to work that day. So I get a call at about 12:30, and David said he was coming home because he just couldn't be there on such a pretty day. So when he got home we spontaneously decided to go to the pool... but we weren't quite enticed enough by our city pool. So then we were like, we gotta go to Water World! It's the biggest water park in America. And it's truly a blast! They don't just have the typical water rides, they have theme park water rides where you are inside the whole time too. We got there right at 2 oclock when the cheap rates start and we had 4 hours to play. We had killer sunscreen, so we didn't get a bit burnt (with the exception of a couple sploches on David's chest:). We also got to ride 8 rides which was pretty amazing for how crowded it was and how late we got there.

After Water World, we got in the car and planned on grabbing a quick bite to eat in Denver and then go back to Fort Collins. Then David was like, let's go to Boulder! I must brag on my husband here for his spontinaiety. He is good at making things fun at the spur of the moment. We did Goog-411 if you don't use this it's extrememly helpful! (Just 1-800-goo-g411) We found a California Pizza Kitchen (yummy) and when we got there it was part of the 29th Street mall, the newest mall in Boulder (also the home of the only movie theater in Boulder, or so we were told). We ate, walked outside, and there was a Police cover band who were really good. We listened to them for a while and I spoted a Sephora (we don't have fancy places like that in Fort Collins, and I had been at water world all day so I was make-up-less)! So I dragged David in, and he felt very out of place. So I told him he could pick out anything in the store and I would put it on (for those who don't know Sephora is a huge make-up store and they have everything on sample). So I got blue eyeliner, green eyeshadow, glittery stuff, and other crazy things! Here is a pic of my eyes-- (I fixed em up a little bit after the blue eyeliner!) And please excuse the unkempt eyebrows, I am embracing my inner hippie:)
Then, since we were by the theater, we decided to go see Wall-E. Great movie! Ranks in our top 3 PIxar movies for now.

We had a blast, and thank God for everything working out so well. Also, David's chemistry is going really well right now, so thanks for your prayers!

The 4th of July

2008-07-15T17:49:00.004-06:00

Fort Collins has a huge city park and shoots fireworks over the big lake there complete with an old fashioned band playing and everything. Luckily we live only about a mile from here and walked to the park-- parking would have been a nighmare since the whole city comes to this park for the show. Here are some pics.

David was sporting a very patriotic look :)

Friends

2008-07-07T07:51:00.007-06:00

So June/ July have been visitor month here at the Jones household. With my mom taking care of me after surgery, Aaron coming a week later, and my friends a week after that. Here are some pics of what all we did.

Went to Rocky Mtn Natnl Park, Robin documented her trip well, and I stole her pics:)

Weather was cool and creepy

There is little Michael way far off

My piano got some good use while my friends were in town:)

We got to go to New Belgium and do a free tasting

Here we are in David's world

Robin posing with 14,15 Dihydroxi Gelsinisene (sp???)

We also grilled out and went to the Drive-in. It gets pretty cold at night at the drive-in so sweatshirts were borrowed from me-- sorry Delta Sigma :)

Stay tuned for 4th of July pics and video!

Yellowstone Vacation and long time-no-update

2008-06-18T14:24:00.009-06:00

Sorry about not blogging for a while. Between having surgery and no internet access at home, we haven’t had much of a chance! The surgery went well. My mom was our personal house cleaner and cook for the week and it was great! Thanks again, mom!

Before the surgery, we had a mini vacation to Yellowstone National Park with my mom and my grandparents. It was way more exciting than I thought, I mean did you know it’s basically one giant volcano and you just walk around near these geysers that are 150-300 degrees? We also saw the Grand Tetons on the way up and stayed in Jackson Hole, WY. We had our share of buffalo and elk. Saw one mousse and one bear too. Here are some pics………

This little guy’s mom (see rear end to the right) proceeded to rush the car shortly after this pic was taken, she just missed us! (as soon as you get into the park, they give you this nice yellow piece of paper that says, beware of getting gored by a buffalo! several visitors are killed each year because they get too close!)

These are the Grand Tetons.

This pic would be awes if David had his eyes open :) (tallest peak behind us)

Me and Grandpa

This is David being superman, we visited this geyser called “Excelsior”, and it was basically like walking through clouds…...

Here is what the steam coming off of it looked like

The famous falls

Mother's Day and Daniel's visit

2008-05-19T20:36:00.007-06:00

Here are our handmade mother's day cards and our cute spring pic:)

David's brother Daniel came for the weekend. We got to go to the drive-in and see Prince Caspian, see Horsetooth rock (which Daniel decided was a single incisor-- spelling?), Dave and Daniel got to go visit Anna, Don, and the boys and they all climbed Castle rock. Also, Daniel got to stick around for a neighborhood barbecue. Here are some pics of the weekend.

The wind was crazy up at Horsetooth Reservoir...this pic of the boys was about the fourth one we tried--- sorry!

This is Hillbilly Golf.....great fun

Croquet....

Totally brothers....

The neighborhood kids...

This is Porter (3) and Grayson (9 months) who we babysit every Mon night

Phil, Chris, and Mandisa

2008-04-29T15:07:00.003-06:00

Ever notice how many Christians are on American Idol? It seems like there are a lot more Christians that are getting into the "secular" arts/ music scene.... which I'm all for! Even this year I have speculations on the top 5. Last season there were quite a few as well. So here is a plug for Christians everywhere following in the example of these American Idol contestants........now I know this is at the Dove Awards and that's totally Christian music all the way, but I liked their performances....

Btw-- Phil Stacey's new album is out and is getting pretty good reviews....see itunes:)

Update

2008-04-28T11:02:00.002-06:00

David is feeling much better. He is back in the full swing of his school schedule, and yesterday he enjoyed a couple games of croquet and bacci ball (have no idea if I am spelling these things right!). We feel like we are now back in a routine, and we even got good news about the surgery. I should be having surgery by at least the middle of June.... we are having scheduling problems-- so prayers for a cancellation for a slot in the next couple of weeks would be appreciated. I feel like the sooner we get all this over with the better!

Btw-- is anybody else having trouble with virus blog comments? I always get these comments from strange blogger names that I'm sure I don't know them like "jojojohoho"--- and they just leave a "click here" with a link to some crazy virus download I'm sure... I confess one time I clicked on it but then Xed out of the screen really fast.... maybe my computer will blow up someday because of that one fateful click-- oh well!

Malaria, Ruptured Cyst, and Surgery

2008-04-12T16:14:00.002-06:00

Needless to say, last night was one of the more eventful nights of our marriage thus far! Background: Wed night David asked me to come pick him up from work because he "wasn't feeling well". He had hot flashes, body aches, and his fever went from 98.0 to 100 in a matter of minutes, and then back down again after a period of much shaking and shivers. It was an interesting experience. So he turns to me and says, "This is exactly what malaria feels like"!!! (For those of you who don't know, David went to Togo, Africa in 2002 and contracted malaria, had about three bouts of it until 2005, and then thought it was gone). So then it was a matter of waiting (the incubation periods are about 48 hours).

So here is how Friday night went........

8:00-- David starts to feel bad again and we think, "Ok, we can make the urgent care clinics and wait for the fever to spike, and they might take us even though they close at 9." So we got in the car and were off.

8:30-- We get to the first urgent care center...... the conversation with the front desk lady goes as follows.....
Lady: "How can we help you?"
David: "Well, I think I have malaria, and I'm not sure if........."
Lady: "Well, do you want to see a doctor?"
David: "Yes"
Lady: "Well we ask that you be here well before 8:30 if you want to see a doctor."
David: "Well, yes, that's the thing....... I know that malaria cannot be diagnosed unless my fever is spiking, and it's not going to spike for a bit now, so I wanted to explain......"
Lady: "Well, I don't know any thing about malaria..... so, do you want to see a doctor?"
David: "Well, yyyeaah"
What David wanted to say: "No, actually, we just wanted to walk in here and explain some stuff... we're gonna go grab some Arby's-- you want any?"
Lady: "Ok, well I need to see some insurance information"
(We hand her the card)
Lady: "Oh, we don't take this insurance anyways so we can't help you"
David: "This is where my health clinic on campus referred me to for after hours care"
Lady: "Oh, yes they refer people here but we don't take their insurance."
What we wanted to say: "Does that not seem a bit silly to you?"
Then we left.......

We went to a second urgent care place, and by this time it was 8:48, and the nurses gave us stares as we walked in (I could feel their eyes saying, "don't come in here and make me stay here past 9!"). But at least after David explained his plight, they were all sympathetic and tried to help, but they had to refer us to the ER. They called the ER to tell them we were on our way.

On the way to the ER..........we decided to stop and get some magazines because we knew we were in for the long haul going to the emergency room. (Meanwhile for the hour prior I had been having bad cramps and backaches). By this point I feel pretty sure--- so I told David, "I think I am having a cyst rupture!" At this point it's pretty funny.....David in the passenger seat wrapped in several layers and a blanket (you get pretty chilly with malaria)....me driving the car contemplating "hydrocodone, or no hydrocodone". We had a good laugh.

We spent about three hours in the ER and the doctor prescribed a general malaria antibiotic, and referred us to an infectious disease doctor in our area to see about it getting fixed for good.

Also, I (hopefully) will be having surgery for endometreosis. We are waiting on insurance to say that it will be covered...... I know you got a medical overload with this blog, sorry! Thanks to all of our fam that prayed for us and keeps praying for us-- we need it!

Success!

2008-04-01T17:53:00.003-06:00

David is finished! He did great. They said good things. And he is much more relaxed.

We had a weekend of celebrating. We had free movie tickets and a free burrito, so on Friday we went to Chipotle Burrito and snuck it into the theater and saw 21. Then, on Sat we got free tickets (thanks to my boss) to an Eagles game (Colorado's minor leauge hockey team). It was the play-offs and it was crazy! I had never seen so many fights within three hours. They won 5- 0 and so they are advancing in the playoffs..... I had a lot of fun, but I told David the next time we get a chance to go, he is taking another guy! I mean, did anybody know that if they throw down their gloves the refs just stand back and let them fight until one of them goes down???? It was pretty barbaric-- and to top it off, everyone in row 12 of section P got free Taco Johns thanks to the fight!!!

Here we are at the game.

David's big week

2008-03-24T16:33:00.001-06:00

This week is the week David has his orals. He gives his presentation on Friday. Prayers are much appreciated, thanks!

Snowing Again!!!!!

2008-03-17T09:06:00.004-06:00

For Christmas, my mom gave us a cute sign with a snowman saying, "We love snow". This is no longer true. For the remainder of the year anyways. When it snows again in December we will probably be happy about it, but for now, we are sick of snow :( But God knows what He is doing, and it is beautiful, so here are some pics.

Around the House and Us (in case you forgot what we look like:)

2008-03-14T16:12:00.006-06:00

We (meaning mainly me, Eryn) love to redecorate! Here are some pics of what we have done lately........

Here is the new living room/ dining room... and, yes, I went a little twinkle light crazy. I liked the back lighting for the piano :)

Why is your dining table in the living room you may ask???

Because this is our dining area/ space.......

But the table by the window is nice. David says that we are like the busy-body neighbors that sit on their porch or look out their window to see the happenings of the neighborhood.... well, when we eat it's pretty entertaining!

And on to the kitchen........
My kitchen is small, but I really enjoy having everything at my fingertips... but I bet we win the contest for worlds lowest square footage in a kitchen!

excuse the dishes and the honey curry mixture...thanks Ashley for the recipe:)

view from the back..

...and we didn't redecorate anything in the kitchen... it's just clean!

And us.........

I've been Tagged!

2008-03-06T15:42:00.005-07:00

My friend tagged me, so here goes.........

10 years ago:
- I was 15
- I was in the 10th grade at Memphis Harding Academy
- I highlighted my hair for the first time (see reference below)
- My best friends were Mandi, Emily, Kara, Melissa, and Shannon
- I had a learners permit and drove a tealish Saturn that was my moms
- I went on my first ever date to the Macaroni Grill and to see Titanic (I think I saw it 2 or 3 times in the theater too, Ashley:)
- My favorite stores to shop in were Old Navy and Delia's (catalog), maybe the Gap and AE
- For Spring Break '98-- I can't even remember what I did!!! Highscool is a big blur to me--- sad!
- My summer was spent doing as much Youth Group activities as I could: camp, work camp, VBS downtown every week, devos every week, playing broomball, scavenger hunts-- was anyone else's youth group like total 24-7 there is always something going on?? I mean, I'm kindof dreading when my kids get into 7th grade and we will be driving them to all these places-- btw, thanks Mom!

Things on my "to do" list today:
- Work (check)
- Take a nap (actually, I'm doing this so that probably won't happen)
- Make dinner (have no idea what I will make... these days I throw a bunch of things in a casserole right before David comes home and call it "dinner"-- I'm in a dinner funk)
- Go watch Lost with the Sides'.

What I would do if I suddenly became a billionaire:
- Pay off our debt
- Adopt multiple children (twins or triplets)
- Then I would get my friend Mark Saunders to help me invest a ton of it.
- David and I would have a killer vacation-- in 5 years when he has some time off.
- Start an organization in Fort Collins educating people who are homeless or in need, and educating others on things they can do for these people in their community.
- I have considered buying a neighborhood and doing an experiment on community where it's a bunch of people I know, and a bunch I don't know and we all live in the same place, but we don't use money-- we barter with services etc. I'll get back to you on this when I get my billion:)
- Pay off other's debts
- My husband would probably want me to buy a boat and a lifetime subscription to an apple orchard that delivers to your door so he can have apple crisp every other day!

Three bad habits:
- I throw clothes all over the floor--- really bad about putting things where they go
- When my hair comes out in the shower I put it on the wall and sometimes forget about it-- I lose a lot of hair and the first time I visited my future sister in law's house in Birmingham, I took a shower in their guest shower and totally forgot to get the hair off the wall and so I called to apologize because I felt so bad!
- David would say that me always putting my bare feet on him would be one because they are always ICE cold! Sorry, I know you hate that :)

5 Jobs I've had:
- Sonic America's Drive-In (were you singing the song in your head??-- I do all the time when I wear my Sonic shirts-- I also waited on Vince Gill, Jay-Z, and Kenny Rogers during my career at Sonic)
- I worked for Lipscomb's S.A.C. where I basically checked peoples IDs when they came in to work out. Really fun job! I can't believe I once got paid to talk to my friends, hang out, and do homework!
- Order Entry Manager at Richmond Title Services-- sounds so professional! Really I was the manager of me :) but it looks good on a resume
- Babysitter-- the best paying job in the world!
- Baker at Cafe Columbine and Bakery-- my current job

5 Things people don't know about me:
- I like sleeping with a HUGE mound of pillows all around me; therefore, I take up 3/4 of our King-sized bed
- I am furious at 10th grade me that first got her hair highlighted and started the vicious cycle of never getting my natural hair color back..... if anyone has tips let me know--- right now my hair is half natural half orange brown.
- I own at least 20 pairs of shoes and that is probably less than I have owned in several years.
- I check facebook at least twice a day!
- I'm terrible at taking pictures. On our honeymoon, I remembered to take one picture the whole time. So I'm nervous that when we have kids, I will always forget to take pictures of them, and they will grow up and ask me one day, "Mom, what did I look like when I was 2?" And I will go searching for a picture and maybe find one that is badly taken and fuzzy! Maybe we just need to move to Florida and live close to Melanie so my children will have their picture taken often by a professional:)

I tag Whit and Kristy so she gets back into blogging! (And, of course, anyone else that wants to:-)

Ode to Child Prodigies and Other YouTube videos

2008-03-04T18:31:00.004-07:00

So this first link is for a 6 YEAR OLD GIRL........... her pitch and control of her voice is amazing. I think she was a semi finalist in Brittain's Got Talent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QUh6CLBZN8&feature=related

This next link is for David Archuleta-- amazing! Here is the full video of him singing "I'm Not Going" to the season one finalists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8SJXDPE_sQ

Also, here is a funny experiment in Grand Central Station. It's pretty neat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

Another fun thing: Go to google and type in "find Chuck Norris" and click on the "I'm feeling lucky" button..........hilarious:)

The Retirement of the Cake Bussiness :(

2008-02-29T09:58:00.004-07:00

Colorado law is about the strictest when it comes to health department regulations on food for the public. I talked to the Health Dept a couple weeks ago and they said that we needed to rent kitchen space from a commercial kitchen somewhere or we could build a new kitchen onto our home. I didn't think Granada Heights (our apt complex) would appreciate me building a whole other kitchen onto our small apartment, so I decided to call local churches. There are only a handful of churches that have a commercial coded kitchen, and the ones I have found won't rent to us! I mean I guess they have to have a pretty firm policy, but you would think they would want more money for their church ministries! Anywho, even if they did, it wouldn't be as profitable for us if we kept our cheap cake prices. Basically we would become like every other high priced cake shop/ bakery. So we decided that the Lord was leading us to a hiatus for now. It may come back sometime in the future, but for now we have one more cake this fall and we are done. So in tribute here is one last picture..........

A Quick Update on Us

2008-02-19T15:13:00.002-07:00

A lot has happened in the past month, and I have not blogged.....partly because I am terrible at taking pictures and I have no pictures to show for what has happened:( Anywho, here is what has been going on with the Joneses:
1. Buddy and Maurine came for a visit. We enjoyed some Fort Collins dives and Buddy's favorite coffe stop here in town (The BeanCycle). We also gave tours of our work places and got to eat at The Olive Street Bakery (a Belguim couple own this place and it is AMAZING!) where they all had a conversation with "Lut" the owner's wife and I just smiled and nodded and picked up on the words "13" and "weather"-- impressive, I know :)
2. We also got to go down and visit with Anna, Don, the boys, and David's parents again in Castle Rock. We got to go to a service at the Castle Rock Vinyard (the church Anna and Don came here to help start). We really enjoyed getting to go to church there and see how they have grown over time.
3. David is really, really, really busy with preparing for orals. They are in one month and he has to write a paper and prepare a slide show presentation that he has to sort of defend/ show he has a plan. Apparently this can be a big deal--if you don't convice the board you have been doing enough research/will be able to make your molecule, then you don 't pass and you have to drop out. BUT we know David won't be in that category :), but still keep him in your prayers. And me to, we don't see each other much these days!
4. We have started the "Truth Project" at church, a Focus on the Family thing. That's two nights a week. We babysit for one half of the team on Sun and the other half meets on Wed.
5. David has taken up rock climbing again. He is getting back into being "spiderman" on the climbing wall :)
6. We just had a really fun sortof Valentine's Day date......it was really a "hey we haven't seen each other in a week and need to spend time together date"! We went to see Definately, Maybe-- a little wierd but we decided we liked it......lot's of things we didn't like about it though for sure. Then we went to Loveland, C0 (20 min away) to Barnes and Noble to look at Books and go to PF Changs for dinner. We both decided that even though we only went 20 min away we needed the get-away! It felt like a mini vacation becasue we hung out for several hours in a row and we were away from home :)

That's about it. Just thought I would let you all know what has been happening with us-- again sorry for the no pictures..... I really need to get better at that!