the music room

many of you know that i left my job before the holidays. (if you didn't know, feel free to ask me about it.) i'm hoping to get involved with a volunteer opportunity that i learned about through our church. i'm still keeping an eye out for counseling positions, but they're relatively scarce. in the meantime, i'm finding things to keep me busy...

i've started a small project that combines two of my loves: poetry and art. here's some background: my junior year at georgia tech, i took a poetry class (yes, there's poetry at tech!). it was absolutely one of my favorite classes (chris liked the fact that half the football team was taking it with me). one of our assignments was to write an original poem based on a photograph. i chose this one i had taken of my grandparents' living room because it's a place where i feel inspired, and i have many wonderful memories of daddy buck listening to my mom play the piano there.that year my poem was published in gt's literary magazine, and i shared it with my family. so now i'm working on a collage that will hopefully bring it to life in a visual way (kind of like what an artist did for a favorite wcw poem of mine).
here's another picture from last christmas (2007) that illustrates what i had in mind when i wrote the poem. i plan to give the collage to my grandparents when i'm done. in case you were wondering, blogging about it doesn't ruin the surprise because daddy buck - who turns 85 today! - does not own a computer, much less has access to the internet.

christmas recap

after a great christmas break, we're getting back into the swing of things. chris had two weeks off, and we spent all of that time out of town! though it was fun to see all of our family, i'm not sure we'll stay gone that long again. we spent the first weekend with chris' grandparents in south georgia. this is at their church on sunday:
then we stayed with my parents in augusta during the next week. we had a chance to visit with some of our old high school friends. monday, we had lunch with my friends christy and lindsey, & her husband gerrit. tuesday, we had dinner and saw four christmases (i don't recommend) with chris' friends jessica and patrick, & his wife brooke. i always enjoy catching up with them...i just wish i had taken some pictures!

we celebrated christmas eve with chris' parents and brothers. we went to a silent Lord's supper service at their church and went to their house afterwards.we did christmas morning with my parents. christmas day, we traveled to see my grandparents in alabama.as you can see, rummikub is a riddle favorite! that's chris there with my cousin ashley's friend patrick, uncle larry, and daddy buck. on saturday night chris & i went to birmingham with ashley & patrick. we were getting tired of dressing and turkey/ham (seeing as how we had four christmases ourselves), so we had sushi and saw the curious case of benjamin button (very good movie!).

after we returned to augusta, we spent the rest of the week with chris' parents. we made a day trip on tuesday to greenwood, sc (between augusta & greenville) to see my good friend from high school, tori, and her boyfriend ron. tori's parents moved to greenville when we were in college. it turned out that chris & i weren't going to be in greenville when she was visiting them, so we met halfway for lunch & bowling. she gave me the cutest paint-by-number stationery.

we rang in the new year with chris' parents' good friends from church, the faircloths (we like to call them mr. chris & mrs. cathy's BFFs!). the men watched the gt bowl game, the outcome of which which made me so very glad we didn't buy tickets. mrs. cathy's friend, mrs. dale, is a consultant for scrapbooking supplies and has gotten mrs. cathy interested. so they worked on some of their albums while i painted the cards tori gave me. chris spent much of the rest of the week watching bowl games with his dad, and i took the opportunity to go shopping with my mom and visit the morris museum of art.