GIVING THANKS FOR THANKSGIVING!

Yeah! It is 2:30 and I am leaving work for the start of a wonderful LONG weekend! My whole family is coming to Knoxville and we are going to have the best Thanksgiving ever! I am so grateful to get to spend the holidays with both the Connollys and the Kittrells. I will be sure to take lots and lots of pictures and update when the weekend is over.

I guess some explanations are in order. The reason I haven't blogged in such a very long time is that I dropped my camera and broke it and haven't been able to take pictures. I know that entries are generally more entertaining with pictures and so I haven't updated. The WONDERFUL news is that I found my old camera this past weekend along with everything else I have ever lost (practically!). So I should be back to my old picture-taking ways in no time!

Until then enjoy Thanksgiving!

Christmas/1 Year Anniv. Pictures

This past weekend, Will and I had a wonderful trip to Charlotte! We had so much fun catching up with everyone. God was very gracious to make the trip feel very long and full! Sometimes I feel like we are just arriving and then turning around and coming back, but not this time. On Saturday, wonderful Liz Shea tolk some pictures for Will and I that will be on our Christmas cards as well as marking (almost) our 1 year anniversary. I think they turned out really well and I love them! Here are some of my favorites! I guess the Christmas cards won't be much of a surprise! Oh well...

We got a little silly midway through the pictures and decided to take our very best "model" shots :-) I don't think anyone could accuse us of looking like real models, but we still had lots of fun!

If someone happens to be reading this who doesn't know, the other couple in these pictures is my sister, Anne, and her husband, David.

Boring Life or just Lazy Girl?

I'm pretty sure I don't know have boring life, so I guess the latter is true! I haven't taken many interesting pictures recently and that has slowed down my desire to post. Not too many notable things have been happening in the Kittrell home. We have rearranged a lot of our furniture and I love our new design. I will try to remember to post pictures of it soon. Will's Fall Break is this weekend and we are going to be taking a trip to Charlotte. I am VERY excited and can't wait to head out on Friday. It is so wonderful to take a trip home. Since Dave and Anne are currently living with Mom and Dad we will all get to sleep together under the same roof. That hasn't happened in a very long time! I will write up a longer and better post when we return from Charlotte and maybe even sooner if inspiration strikes! Until then, enjoy all this beautiful Fall weather!!!

One more picture of London!

She is just too cute!!!

Welcome London Fiora Oldacre!!!

Congratulations to Jonathan and Melanie (our Care Group Leaders)!! London was born yesterday at 1:25pm. She was 7 pounds 1 ounce and 20 inches long. I think she looks a whole lot like Melanie. I can't wait to see her in person!

Wedding!

This girl is getting married and I am so honored and excited about being in her wedding!!!

Mark your calendars for January 5, 2008.

Pictures from the Weekend

As I already said, Will and I had such a wonderful time together in Chattanooga! How I love my William :-) Here is a photo-tour of our weekend:

This was Sunday night after we arrived. We ate at a Italian restaurant in the art district. It was an older, really cool building and we got to eat on the 2nd floor which was sort of fun and out of the ordinary. From this picture, my food looks really gross, but it was actually delicious! Here I am on Monday morning standing outside of our hotel. I felt pretty funny standing there with my hand held up in the air waiting for Will to take the picture (I looked like I was making an oath) but I think the end result really looks like I am waving which was the goal :-)
Here I am in the aquarium! As we were driving home, Will said that this was his favorite part of the trip because I didn't realize that there was a top on this display and I wacked my head on it!
Here are a ton of trout. Someday perhaps I will catch one like this!
Thanks to Melanie, we made it a goal to find Candyland. We took a break from the aquarium in the middle of the day and made our way to bulk candy heaven! I LOVE bulk candy and have yet to find a really good place to get it here in Knoxville. We sat on a bench, drinking lemonade, and eating candy and nachos. A great mid-afternoon snack.

My favorite part of the aquarium...the SHARK TANK!!! I took almost 10 pictures of the sharks, but in most of them the sharks are either turned away or the picture is of only a portion of the shark...my shark photography skills are somewhat lacking :-)

Here we are in front of the shark tank.

A sea turtle.

This was in the butterfly garden. It was so cool because there were butterflies flying around everywhere and they were pretty tame! I had a couple land on my dress. I think they liked the color. Leaving the aquarium.
We walked around downtown for a while and came upon this wonderful old/used bookstore! Will bought me a little book to remember our trip!

We had been looking for Clumpies Ice Cream the whole day and finally found it! It was across the river on the other side of Chattanooga. Totally worth the walk!

After we ate our ice cream we walked back to the hotel where our car was parked and drove home. I am so grateful to have a husband who loves me so much and is so generous with his time and money and affection! As I have already told him, I would far rather spend one day with Will in Chattanooga than a whole month anywhere else without him. How great to be married to your best friend!

Back from Chattanooga!!!

You know I must be a true Tennessee girl when I can spell Chattanooga correctly! Will and I had the best time together. We were only gone for a little over 24 hours, but it felt a lot longer than that. It was so refreshing and fun! I will post a better update with lots of pictures tonight or tomorrow, but I just wanted to sign on and say we had a great time!

here we are in the aquarium with the city in the background. Sorry the picture is pretty dark.

Back to work and the "real world"...

Home (away from Home)

There are many sad things about moving away from home, but one of the good things is that you end up with TWO homes! I know that no matter how long I live in Knoxville there will always be a home and a room for me in Charlotte. Will and I had a great visit this past weekend. It always seems way to short when it is time to leave, but short visits are much better than no visits at all. Here are pictures from our time together:

I was very excited to see Dave and Anne's new house! I can't wait for it to be finished!

Mom, Anne, and I went out for lunch and shopping on Saturday while the boys played golf.

What precious times when we are all together!

The happy brothers-in-law
Saturday night we went to one of our family's favorite ice cream places, Carolina Cones
Mike, Dave, and Anne cheesing it up

On Sunday, Will and I are leaving for Chattanooga for a little get-away! I am very, very excited about it! I haven't been able to spend half as much time with Will now that school has started again. He has to leave at 7:20 every morning and some days doesn't get back until 7 at night! I will post about our trip on Tuesday when I am back.

Sanibel Island, 2007

It has been almost a week since we made it home from our Kittrell family vacation to Sanibel Isalnd, FL. We had a wonderful time! It was great to spend so much time with Will and the family as well as being able to relax without an agenda and without feeling like the clock was quickly ticking towards Monday morning (which is what happends on the weekends!). Vacation was filled with many adventures, mostly fun, but some that were not so fun. On Thursday morning (the day we got there) I came down with a UTI that over the weekend started making its way up into my kidneys (which means weird lower back pain, fevers, and general bad feelings). Will and I went to an urgent care on Monday (which happened to be located in the same building with a gas station!) and I got some serious antibotics to kill everything inside me. Unfortunately, the antibotics were SO serious that they made me feel really nauseous. All this went on until the following Thursday giving me another day to enjoy the beach before packing up and heading home! It wasn't exactly my plan for vacation, but I was reminded again and again that what I deserve is HELL so being able to be in Florida with a wonderful husband and watched over by a loving God is MUCH, MUCH better that what I deserve! That will give you a fresh prespective like nothing else! Tucked between those sick days, God still gave us plenty of time to have lots and lots of fun! We played Kittrell family putt-putt, Kittrell family poker, watched movies, floated in the pool, read books, fished, saw a real alligator, went shopping, swam in the ocean, went out to eat, Daniel caught a shark, we ate the best milkshakes ever, and much more! About mid-vacation I began to have the onset of post-vacation withdraw. I was in the midst of hoping that vacation would go on forever, when I realized "just a second, I love my life at home too!" So to wrap up my thoughts about vacation, I LOVE vacation and Ihad a wonderful time and I can't wait till next year, BUT I also love home and love the day to day things that make up everyday living! I'm grateful to God for the gift of both! Most people probaby don't care about the previous 3 paragraphs (I know who you are!), so here are the PICTURES from vacation!

Lauren, Will, Daniel, and Brient

Will and I on our last beach day (these are all out of order)
Will and I going out on a date. We are standing on the deck coming off our room.
The putt-putt course had a castle theme, so here are Will and I in the stocks.
This was on the way home! Everyone made fun of me for getting a burger at this hot dog place!
BEAUTIFUL Sunset! This picture is courtesy of Will.
This is the view from the back of our house.
Will and Dan each caught a much sought after "Snook"
The Kittrell Men...I love 'um
My FAVORITE Kittrell Man

Brient checking out the local birds
ALLIGATOR!!!
In front of a map of the island

I'm REALLY looking forward to being in Charlotte this weekend! Those pictures will be my next post.