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

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

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

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

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

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.