Christmas!

With much help from my brother, the house is all ready for Christmas :)


The lovely tree


Entry hall table


The piano


The mantle with no flash (and a little blurry... using our little lens Sony)


The rest of the living room


The mantle area with flash, but still blurry (it was late, ok?)



Outside lights - with new LEDs


The yummy smelling wreath on the front door

Wordless Wednesday

Well, almost wordless.

Long lost brother returns today!

My amazingly talented brother is returning to the US today after a 3 year stint in Japan. We are so excited to be spending Thanksgiving with him and my parents. We are also ecstatic that he'll be staying in the Raleigh area in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Right now I'm planning on lots of story telling, Wii playing, movie watching, eating, eating and more eating.

Right now (7:30ish am) he's in flight from Toyko to Atlanta (where my parents will pick him up). Delta airlines has a cool flight tracker thingie with details. Since I'm such a nerd I wanted to share the details of his long journey.

His current flight status - (as I blog)


He's flying on a sweet Boeing 777 - 6,831 miles over 12 hours and 15 minutes. He left Toyko at 4:30pm (local time - about 2:30am EST) and will arrive in ATL around 2:45 this afternoon!

I have to wait until Wednesday night to see him - I just can't wait!!!

Snow update

Yeah, so as expected, there is no remaining snow to see. It's sunny (and COLD) outside. If you want to see more SNOW pictures check out WRAL.com's coverage. You *might* even see a familiar picture in their slideshow...

Slideshow: http://www.wral.com/weather/image_gallery/4001718/

Coverage: http://www.wral.com/weather/story/4001687/

Familiar picture? :) http://www.wral.com/golo/image/4002301/ (right now it is 49 out of 99 in the show)

More snow (and pictures!)

It does feel kinda wrong to not only be talking about snow, but posting pictures of it while my 'fall theme' still covers the blog. Oh well! This morning I listened to Christmas music on the radio as I drove through an early "winter wonderland."

Ok, so it wasn't the most exciting snowfall, but it is November, NOVEMBER, and the ground was covered in white! Well, it was dusted in white. It was exciting for me!

My first view of the stuff, around 6am

I stood in disbelief at the front door thinking, is this some kind of crazy pregnancy dream?



I figured it would stop and melt soon, so I took a few more before breakfast

Those strange green things growing are bulbs - they're terribly confused on what season we're in.

However, it did not stop and the sun rose so we could enjoy the wintery sight!




Yes, I am well aware that you probably need to squint and use your imagination to see the snow in these pictures, but in person, it was beautiful!



At this point I was starting to run late for work...

So I hopped in my snow covered car and hit the road.

I found some traffic, boo! But I also found more snow covered scenes. I thankfully did not crash!



Once I arrived in Raleigh proper, the snow was pretty much gone and there was very little on the ground. It made for a fun morning as I haven't actually driven in falling snow in a long, long time. I'm not sure if the 2 small snowfalls we've seen this week bear any indication of what we may see this winter. I'm tempted to get a snow shovel just in case!

A picture explains it all

More to come...

SNOW FLURRY SIGHTING

YES, I AM YELLING! Ok, so it's not that exciting, but seriously, I have spotted our first frozen precipitation of the 2008-09 winter season! It is bitterly cold today (for November) but I can handle the cold with little flurries in the air!

Today's forcast:

Chance of Snow - 30% chance of precipitation
Tuesday afternoon-
Partly sunny with a 20 percent chance of snow showers. Breezy with highs in the lower 40s. Northwest winds 15 to 20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph.


WRAL story on the cold: http://www.wral.com/weather/story/3979936/

A little annoucement

It's time for us to share a little update on our lives. As you've probably noticed we've been slack with updating the blog. Ok, so there have been plenty of slack blog times over the past few years, but this time I have a reason! We've been a little preoccupied with a new addition coming to our lives next spring...




The Oldmarrieds are starting a family!!! Finally!

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled programming. I'll try to add a few updates later, promise.

Election Day is here!

And we voted! Well, actually we voted early, but still, our votes are in. Is yours?

What we've been up to lately

A quick photo narrative of the last month or so -

We took a trip to Myrtle Beach with my parents. It was the perfect weather weekend!

We ate yummy local seafood


We played silly putt-putt


Even though it was the strangest course and so hot/muggy!


Did I mention some of the holes were insane?


Played on the beach - Paul perfecting his water re-routing skills.


Fed hungry hungry alligators (ACK! They're coming to get us!)

Once back home, we went on a local farm tour.


We hung out with Black Angus cattle


We each took a turn at wood turning


And watched little piggies play in the mud

A few weekends later, Paul decided he wanted to put his mountain bike skills to the test at an endurance race. Endurance = 6 hours of riding (3pm-9pm) - yes, in the woods in the dark! Ok, ok, lights were required after dark, but one little spotlight in the woods made it a whole different course after dark.

Here he comes flying down the start/finish road.

Paul then took a trip to Idaho for work. The land of Napoleon Dynamite. Seriously.


Pretty scenery


Lava flow!




What I think is a lava tube (I'm just downloading pictures off the digital camera willy-nilly at this point).


I am so jealous I didn't get to see this!

Last weekend we made our annual trip to the NC State Fair. It was a chilly morning and we only lasted a few hours, but it was, as always, well worth it.


The winning (massive) pumpkins! Everyone takes pictures of these babies!


Steve Troxler (Ag Commissioner, up for re-election) and the Japanese Ambassador boarding the HUGE shopping cart (which they drove through the grounds - video to possibly follow).


And finally, wacky art on the Midway rides. It's kinda hard to see, but it's quite the story there (aliens, blasters, robots). Reminds of something Justin would draw back in the day.


A quick video of the giant souped up shopping cart in action.

It's Fall, y'all!

Today is the first day of fall. As such I decided to update the look of the blog. I will admit that the fall season is my favorite and I look forward to the cooler temperatures and the bright blue skies of autumn. A few leaves have starting changing and I'm ready to haul out my fall decor. In the meantime, I'm planning to light a few fall spicy candles and look forward to wearing a nice cozy sweater.

Wordless Wednesday

Hurricane season is on!

So, it looks like little miss Hanna may stop by for a visit this weekend. We are/were planning to make a trip down to Wilmington for the weekend, but I'm really starting to rethink those plans. I know it isn't a major storm, but it's still a lot of rain and possibly wind - lovely!

And Hanna is closely followed by 2 more named storms - Ike & Josephine. September is the 'big month' for Atlantic storms and this year is definitely proving it!

Happy birthday house!

A few days before closing

We closed on our house 4 years ago today. FOUR years. We've still got so many projects to finish, but it's really become our home. I hope to post some updated pictures of our projects later this week...

Backyard invasion!

Paul noticed my parsley plant looking a little sad last night. After closer examination, we found these invaders!



Not quite clear enough? How about now?


Ok, so it was a little stressed from all the heat last week, but they've eaten off most of the leaves! Seriously!

Pesky boogers - eating my lovingly grown from seed parsley!


And they just had to go... I cut off all of them (more than I want to count) and I 'served' them at the bird feeder. Not sure if the insect eaters will find them, but I hope they are put to good use!


They should make a nice dinner for a birdie tonight...


Speaking of birds, I got a chance to watch (and listen to) Mrs. Cardinal and some perky goldfinches. There was a gaggle of morning doves hanging around as well as a hummingbird I just couldn't get a clear picture of as he buzzed by me.

Mrs. C is hanging out in the willow tree, trying to ascertain my danger status


Sadly, our feeders were empty, sorry!


There are 2 goldfinches in this photo... can you find them?

(hint, far left and center)