Eventful Friday

Apologies for not posting in a while, no real excuses just laziness


But today was quite the eventful day so it deserves at least a post.

The day begins actually the night before when a friend calls me (Jordan) to see if I want to go for a run in the morning at 7:30. I said yes, thinking that usually when I go on runs with him they are 3 to 4 miles at a nice pace. Upon arrival at 7:30 I realize there are others joining the morning run, one of which ran division 1 cross country and she can seriously run. Needless to say, my lack of running in the past 5 weeks was not so advantageous in this brisk 8 mile run through the muddy meadow.

I finally get back home, completely exhausted with jell-O legs, to find Katie waiting to see me before she heads off to work. We say bye to each other and she walks out the door as I start stretching inside. Thirty seconds later I hear a frantic knock at the door. Katie has some how sliced through her jeans and has a 1 inch gash in her leg just above her right knee caused by somehow trying to get on her bike. With blood rolling down Katie's leg I grab the first aid and start cleaning up the wound and calling emergency to see if we need stitches. We get it bandaged up and finally head off to work/class.

Pretty eventful day as is...

I then attend some really interesting lectures on genome wide analysis of genetic obesity factors and developmental programming for obesity and Katie has a full day of event planning.

And then we grab some dinner and head to the highlight of the day Ray Lamontagne and the Pariah Dogs with The Secret Sisters

Absolutely incredible show. The new CD, God Willin' &the Creek Don't Rise, transitioned from some of his soul/folk to more country/rock and roll, but all in his own way. He covered Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried" which was awesome but, the highlights of the show were the songs off the new album "Rock and Roll and the Radio" and "Repo Man" - Every song they played was infused with pedal steel giving it a deep country feel and causing us to miss home.

 

But the opening for Ray was incredible... I am openly advertising, proclaiming, whatever you want to call using your blog to promote something you like. But for anyone who really likes the sounds of Patty Griffin or Allison Krause or Gillian Welch . Look no further than Muscle Shoals own Secret Sisters. Their opening for Ray was stunning. Katie and I were blown away by how beautiful they performed. After the show the sisters were meeting people by the merch table, so we went up and talked to them a little bit and they were so sweet and gracious. Anyway, check out some of there stuff T Bone Burnett exec. produced their album (T Bone also produced O' Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, Ryan Bingham, Crazy Heart soundtrack etc.) We bought it and its great. Here's a video of them doing an original

Something about them made Katie and I miss home more than we had in a long time

Again sorry for the posting absence but we will have a  more in depth update on the last few weeks in the near future.

Love,

Jordan and Katie

February 2nd - A great excuse to enjoy Bill Murray

The greatest and possibly only movie ever made for Groundhog Day

Craftscapades

Some of you may know that I have been suffering from the craft bug this past month. Due to the sad fact that we aren't able to have everyone over for dinner to humor us about how great our crafts look(PS- yall have to come visit!) I thought I would show you a little bit of what I have spent too much time doing these past few weekends..

For the first time since we have been alive, our AU Tigers took it all the way.

How could we not show everyone on Iffley Road how proud we are?

We finally got rid of our brown-ish tweed door curtain (I cringe just thinking about it)

and made a new orange one out of fabric we found on clearance

War Eagle baby

Along with my sweet friends Leah and Claire wreath making came on the radar as Christmas craft but has since turned into a multi-seasonal joy...

We finally got around to taking down the Christmas wreath last weekend

and skipped right ahead to a Valentine's Day wreath.

With a little twine and felt, anything is possible

Growing up I had a chalk board wall in our kitchen &

Jordan and I thought it would be fun to make one here too.

We took a trip to B & Q (aka home depot) and picked up a piece of wood and chalk board spray paint

Please note Jordan is practicing his 'Super S' again.. haha

We have been meaning for months to get another bedside table for Jordan

But Jordan took things into his own hands

I knew I loved Jordan for so many reasons, but dang I had no idea 

I was going to love him for his carpentry skills too. Talk about a bonus!

Check out what he made

Last but not least..

I had been wanting to do something above our bed

With the help of my sweet mom, who sent us hankies from home,

We painted this canvas and mounted the hankies on it

It kind of makes up for the headboard, right?

Well those are all the crafts we have for you now.  But the best news yet is about to drop.... 

One of the porters at the Rhodes House, who is a great friend, heard that I enjoyed sewing.  Being the nicest person in the world that he is, he offered me his mom's old sewing machine on Friday! Seriously, I could have cried.  I told him I couldn't take it and his response was "Well, if you want it to keep sitting there for another 8 years you can walk away" haha.  So thanks to Bob we are about to enter a whole new era of crafting, I am so excited!

PS- last year, this weekend, Jordan asked me to be his wife.  Isn't it insane how much can happen in a year? God is so good.

Ooops... Valentines Day Came Early

So I'll give a little background first...

For Christmas, my sweet Aunt Pappy gave Jordan and I an i-tunes giftcard that we have really been looking forward to cashing in.  Being back at home at Christmas I was reintroduced to how awesome American music is, specifically Taylor Swift.  Being our first Christmas together and still being newlyweds, I knew in the back of my mind that I should take the higher road and get a CD we both wanted.  But selfishly, knowing Taylor Swift had a new CD out, and knowing we had 15 glorious dollars to spend at the i-tunes store, I have been dropping hints for months that we should use it on the new T-Swift CD.

I don't know what came over me after dinner... maybe it was missing 36 (my roommates) and all the times we belted Taylor Swift together in our kitchen, or thinking about Will and MF and the time MaryFran and I had a 13 hour drive to Roanoke accompaied by Taylor herself,  but something hit me and I HAD to buy her new CD tonight. I HAD to. (Sound like all the stubborn little kids you babysit? I'm not proud)  I asked Jordan, "Hey why don't we just split that i-tunes gift card that Aunt Pappy gave us?" and he replied "Ah, I don't know where it is..." with a very suspicious look on his face.  But for some reason I was determined and pushed and pushed him, "Are you sure you don't know where it is?"  "Uh yeah I'm pretty sure"  At this point, I battling wanting the new CD so bad and trying not to be frustrated he didn't know where it was.  Sensing this, he got up and pretended to go look for the gift card in his desk.  I heard some rustling and even logged on to the i-tunes store and started sampling some of her awesome new songs.  Jordan came back into the room and with a sheepish smile said "Happy Valentines Day, I knew how much you wanted it" and handed me the new Taylor Swift CD.

Ahhhhhhhh.  I am a dummy, my stubbornness totally spoiled his sweet surprise.

But dang, I will not complain about jammin to my new hott tracks next to the best husband in the world! How did I get so lucky?

Andalucia Part Dos

After reading journal articles for the past 2 hours while Katie napped on the "Big Green"(our couch), I decided to abruptly switch the music from Debussy to Bruce Springsteen and take a break to finish up the blog about our trip to Spain.

Following our tour through the mountain town of Granada we took a bus to Sevilla and stayed in a little Hotel near the downtown.

(Not our hotel haha, but pretty)

Knowing that our fellow American friends Jared and Leah would be joining us in Sevilla in two days we didn't want to tour too much of Sevilla without them, so we took a day trip to Cadiz to check out the Spanish view of the Atlantic.

(No disappointments found)

After returning to Sevilla from our trip to Cadiz we were surprised to find hundreds of thousands of people swarming the streets. While still in shock of the surreal experience of unknowingly walking into a massive celebration of something you have no idea about, we stumbled upon a huge parade going through the center of town....  Later we became aware of the Spanish holiday Epiphany, to celebrate the arrival of the three kings to deliver gifts to Jesus. This is the more commercial portion of Christmas holiday for the Spanish and they go ALL OUT!! The parade lasted 45 minutes complete with marching bands playing the world cup song "This is Africa", massive themed "Mardi Gras"-like floats tossing tons of candy, and kings riding horses with their faces painted black (a little strange)...

The Beethoven Float. 

We liked all the little kids' wigs. 

After the parade was over there was so much candy on the streets that you inevitably ended up with a sole of smashed candy stuck to the bottom of your shoes.

Our friends from Oxford finally arrived after a long taxi ride through all the parade traffic

We toured all over Sevilla, ate the tapas, drank the wine, tried to watch some flamenco dancing but decided not to after it was going to cost muchos euros and last 3 hours. However, we did find the Plaza de Espana which was one of the most beautiful buildings either of us had ever seen (that is besides Samford Hall).

The plaza was filled with intricate mosaics all over everything

Katie was more interested in sliding down the railing than the mosaic

The trip was awesome and tons of fun, a nice break from the cold of England. But we're off to some friends to cook some Mexican and Bread pudding (whoever heard thought of that combo?? I don't know but I am really excited about it)

Love Ya'll

Jordan and Katie

Andalucia part 1

So we took a New Years trip to Spain a few weeks back and then came home, tired and lazy, and never blogged about it. Thus, the long anticipation for the blog post has abated, for those who have already looked at the pictures on Facebook, you will see nothing new. Sorry.... But, you will get the insightful commentary to correspond with some of the pictures.

Welcome to Granada, the first stop on our trip

We stayed here for about 3 days and in between trips to the churro stand we got to tour the palace of La Alhambra and fight off gypsies and street scammers (Nothing too serious but a little bit unnerving at times)

I'm not going to try and give any kind of history of the palace because I'll screw it up and Wikipedia is just too easy. I will however say that it was an enormous castle with beautiful gardens and was by far the highlight of the trip altogether. Also, the great American writer Washington Irving (who also wrote stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Legend of Rip Van Winkle) while serving as a diplomat in Spain lived at Alhambra for a time and wrote a book called Tales of Alhambra. I bought the book and it provided some pretty interesting reading about the palace and its history.

One of many Palace Gardens

Some Arabic architecture poking out around my head. Also, reppin' AU, starting to get pumped for the big game. Furthermore, I should add that Granada offered our only War Eagle moment in Spain. While eating ice cream one night a man standing adjacent at the counter greeted us with a War Eagle. He was from Ohio and had come to Spain to work for one year as an engineering project manager, "that was 16 years ago", he sighed. We stood delighted, conversing in English for an hour with John who had no affiliation whatsoever with Auburn but knew about the War Eagle.  After countless miscommunications at restaurants and shops having desires and expectations lost in translation it was a nice change to speak in a native tongue for a while.

I have to go to class now, but I will finish the rest of this blog later with part of 2 of our journeys.

War Eagle and Love ya'll 

Mouth Full of Metal

I will never forget the glorious day I got my braces off.  April 19th 2003.  I crimped my hair the night before and made sure to wear my 'coolest' American Eagle shirt to go along with my new gums.  I can kinda remember my orthodontist that day talking to me about how I was going to have to wear my retainer at night in turn for having my braces taken off blah, blah blah... I wasn't listening (partly because I couldn't stop running my tongue over my new teeth) and mostly because I just wanted to get to school and show everyone how mature I was not to have braces.

Am I the only person in the world who still has to wear their retainers?!  Seriously, I would have never thought 8 years ago I would have to still wear them to keep my teeth from looking like snaggle teeth.  For the first few months we were married I wasn't wearing them to bed. Who wants to talk with a huge lisp and have purple glitter (because that was the obvious choice in 8th grade) spilling out of their mouth when they are newlyweds? Not me.... until I looked in the mirror and realized I was starting to fit in a little too well with the Brits :(