Bye Bye 2009, Hello 2010!

This will be me and Justin's second New Year's together, and our second one in Tennessee! Last year we went to Gatlinburg with our friends the Lobdell's and this year we're going to....



NASHVEGAS!!!

I haven't been to Nashville since I moved from there in August 2008. Oh how I have missed the beautiful city :) Not that I regret moving home at all by any means, I just didn't realize I would miss Nashville as much as I do. Anyway, the whole reason we're going to Nashville is to ring in the New Year with an exchange of "I Do's" between these two wonderful people...



Lillian and Craig are getting married on January 2, 2010. Justin and I are driving up early on New Year's eve so that we can hang out with my old Nashville roomie, Edria, and another girl I danced with at Alabama, Arrah, and her husband. We will have our child in tow, yes, Rob is coming with us :) Rob's parents live in Nashville, so he figured since we were going down that he'd join in. The very first trip Justin and I ever went on together was with Rob and Edria to Gatlinburg. I think about the hilariousness (is that a word?) of that trip and it makes me excited to see what tonight will bring.

As for New Years resolutions...I think I have finally picked mine. I hate resolutions. Most people say things like "workout more" or "take a fun trip". These are things that Justin and I do all the time so it's not something I would ever make my resolution. However, there is one thing I do not do enough that I should do, and that is drink water. I know it seems like a small resolution, but mine is to drink 2-3 bottles of water per day. As of now, I only drink 1 or at most 2 on days that I workout. Maybe if I can actually get use to drinking that much water I can finally start getting off my Diet Mountain Dew :)

Hope everyone has a safe weekend and WONDERFUL start to 2010!!

A Very Merry Christmas

Justin and I both had a very amazing Christmas this year! We started off by exchanging one gift from each of us on Christmas Eve right before bed. I opened a beautiful watch that I somehow managed not to get a picture of and Justin opened a book I gave him.



I knew that as soon as he started reading the book he would have more trips planned for us. Shockingly, we have both done many things that are listed in the book. There is a page dedicated to climbing Kilimanjaro in Africa, which is something we plan to do in 2011 along with a safari in the Serengeti for a week (both on my 101 list). After seeing the spread in the book, Justin got all excited and started looking things up for us to climb the mountain. We aren't sure of the exact dates since the guides don't post them that far in advance, but we know that it will consist of us leaving sometime around December 20th and returning after the New Year. So we will be celebrating Christmas and New Years in Africa, which is pretty awesome! The trip is usually completely booked up 8 months in advance so we've already started saving for it. Justin and I are both hoping to convince his dad to come climb the mountain with us. Anyways, I'll talk more about that in a later blog. For now, back to Christmas...

We went to the 11pm service at church on Christmas Eve night and, as tradition, to waffle house afterwards. The "kids" go to the waffle house by the church on Columbiana and the adults go to the waffle house by the Days Inn on Hwy 31. The next morning we woke up and finished exchanging gifts between the two of us.



Justin got me a new Zune. I had an Ipod before, but I like this much better!!



He also got me the collection of the "old school" Christmas movies along with the funniest movie ever made, The Hangover. I didn't take pictures of my gifts to Justin, but they all were related to the jeep.

After opening gifts from eachother we went to the Morris' house to have Christmas.



The Morris Christmas tree.



My awesome stocking that Debbie made me. She's so talented!



Debbie, Gordon, Jennifer and Aeron all opening gifts. And Gizmo was front and center :)

I got so much from the Morris'! Justin and I both got some Alabama and Auburn ornaments from Debbie and from Jennifer. Jenn and Aeron got me some pretty awesome stationary, a 5 ingrediants or less cookbook (perfect for me), and a few other things. Debbie and Gordon got me some new running shoes (well needed since my current ones are about to have to retire before the half-marathon in April), more of our china, gift cards to the movies, TONS of candy, some storage containers for ornaments (also well needed), a few scuba diving toys, and a bunch of other things too. Justin naturally got a TON of stuff for his jeep. It was basically all he wanted for Christmas.



This was one of my favorite things they got me. It's a Diver's Down beach towel for scuba divers. Love it :)

After eating a wonderful lunch at the Morris', we left to take the Giz home and restock the car with gifts for my mom's family.



Me and my awesome hubby in front of my mom's tree!



Anderson was super excited about his Batman ATV from me and Justin. He's all into Batman these days!



My mom gave me a nativity scene which I was NOT expecting. I absolutely LOVE it!!! I was seriously telling Justin on the way to my mom's that next year I needed to buy a nativity because we didn't have one. I had never even mentioned it to my mom. Thanks momma!!!

After leaving my mom's we met back up with Justin's family for their tradition of movie night on Christmas night. We all went to see It's Complicated with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. It was cute, but I expected it to be funnier than it was.

I hope everyone had as awesome of a Christmas as we had. Happy Birthday Jesus!

New Book

I actually have more to blog about, but this will do for now. I just bought the book Manhunt by James L. Swanson. Bonnie's future husband told me about this book while we were all in Washington D.C. and I have been meaning to buy it ever since. I got sidetracked when I started reading The Lovely Bones (which comes out in theaters everywhere in January) but now that I am done reading that book, it's time to start another one. I was at Barnes and Noble getting a last minute Christmas gift for Justin and saw the book. Naturally I bought it :) It is about the 12 day "manhunt" for John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's murderer. He ran from Ford's Theater all the way to a farmhouse in Virgina. I can't wait to read it!!

The Amelia Strauss Challenge

An interesting thing happened yesterday. My friend and wedding photographer, Amelia Strauss, whose name is obviously no stranger to this blog as I constantly rave about her all the time, has presented herself with a challenge. You can read about it here. Basically, Amelia has set a goal that for one month, starting yesterday, she would blog every time I blog. This all started because Amelia knows how much I LOVE reading her blog. She puts up pictures from her sessions whether they are weddings, engagement sessions, children, etc. I love looking at her pictures because she is just so darn talented! Lately though, she has been a "blog slacker" as she calls it. She recently moved to Los Angeles (sad, I know) so I imagine she hasn't had a lot of free time to keep the rest of us blog stalkers updated.

Anyway, Amelia's goal is to make a blog post every time I make one from yesterday through January 21, 2010. First off, as soon as I told Justin this, his response was "you need to make this as hard as possible for her" (jokingly of course). My response to Amelia was that I saw multiple posts in a day in my future. Truth be told, Amelia may get pretty lucky with this one. After the new year starts, so does my busy season and I won't have as much free time, so blogging in January may be a little hard. The only time I ever actually sit down and update my blog is when I have a few free minutes at work. I rarely do it when I'm at home. That free time will soon be nonexistent. However, I will be updating as much as possible for the sole purpose of getting Amelia to update as much as possible with the work she's been doing. So basically what I am saying is this...you'll have to pardon me for 30 days, because I may get annoying with the blog posts.

Amelia, I have a request. I made this post early today so you would have all day to come up with a post. I request to see more pictures of the couple in the 4th and 7th picture on your blog post from yesterday. I heart her facial expression when she laughs!

May the blogging war begin friend.

Best of 2009....in pictures!

Since 2009 is almost over and, I must admit, since it was the BEST and busiest year of my life, I figured I would share my most cherished memories of 2009, in pictures. Enjoy!



Starting in January, one of my biggest memories was when Justin proposed on January 16, 2009 in front of St. Louis Cathedral after a carriage ride in the French Quarter of New Orleans.



Next up would be the wicked awesome snow day we got in early 2009, I think it was March sometime.



Tiffany's bachelorette party was one of the most fun girl nights I have had in 2009!



On April 18, 2009, two of our very best friends, Tiffany and Trevor, got married. Awesome and VERY emotional day! This was one of the days in 2009 (out of five TOPS) that I cried.



Also in April, I had my very first wedding shower. It was a kitchen shower (because everyone knew how desperately we needed kitchen stuff) hosted by Mrs. Lindsey Limbaugh, Mrs. Lauren Kelly, Mrs. Kelly Owens, and Mrs. Lissa Hines (not pictured). This was probably my favorite shower that I had. It was filled with people I have known forever and it was small and intimate, just how I like it!



In May 2009, Justin and I had our engagement photos done by Amelia Strauss. These are some of the best photos Justin and I have and we had so much fun that day!



On May 30, my best friend of almost 14 years got married to the love of her life. The wedding was beautiful and I just LOVED her reception!



The very next day I had my bridal tea hosted by some amazing women at our church. I didn't know them very well then, but I've gotten to know several of them now and I cannot begin to explain how much I love our church and its members.



Best girl trip EVER. My bachelorette party in June 2009 was to Atlanta where my girls and I enjoyed a fun day at Six Flags (such a "me" bachelorette party, I know) and a couple of nights on the town.



The absolute biggest and best day of 2009, and even our entire lives until Justin and I have children, was the day of our wedding. I am speechless about this day. I cried. I know that seems like a no-brainer that a bride is suppose to cry on her wedding day, but you don't know me if you think nothing of it. I am not talented at showing emotion and on this day, I cried like a BABY! The people I work with were completely shocked. A girl that I'm close to at work literally said "oh my God is Marcie crying...seriously??"



This one still gets categorized with wedding related things, but something I definitely cherish from 2009 is meeting my photographer, Amelia Strauss. I worked closely with her from hiring her in February all the way to getting the album finalized in August. Amelia was a huge part of my 2009 and a huge part of my amazing wedding. I heart her :)



I am seriously not joking when I say that one of our favorite memories of the honeymoon was the flight over there. We were able to get a direct flight to Honolulu from Atlanta so it was 9 straight hours in these INCREDIBLE first class seats.



Of the TONS of things we did on our honeymoon in Hawaii, I can narrow it down to four things that I will certainly never in my life forget. One was the kayaking and snorkeling tour. The view was insane and the water was absolutely perfect. Fish were everywhere and we got to see a white tip reef shark AND several manta rays up close and personal. Awesome awesome day.



The second was going to the summit of the highest mountain in Hawaii, Mauna Kea.



The third was watching the sun rise at the summit of Haleakala Crater on Maui and then biking down the mountain. The views were out of this world and no picture could possibly do any of it justice.



And finally, the horseback riding. Justin and I had so much fun doing this. Part of it was probably because we got two of the four horses that ran at full speed. We were both in mass amounts of pain the next day!



On the 25th of September, I returned to New Orleans when Lillian had her bachelorette party. I didn't know these girls ahead of time, but after meeting them, I LOVE THEM! They were all so much fun and I can't wait to see them again on Lillian and Craig's wedding day which is 12 DAYS AWAY!!!



At the beginning of October, Justin and I along with our friends Bonnie and Andrew went to Washington DC for a wedding. This isn't exactly the best picture of our trip, but I thought it was the funniest. I love my husband and his wacky craziness.



Also in October, we went on a cruise to Cozumel out of New Orleans (I had never been to New Orleans before 2009 and I went three times in 2009) with some of our best friends, the Lobdell's and the Morris' (no relation).



And rolling on into December, this is Justin and I at my firm Christmas Party at the Wynfrey. So much fun!

And that my friends is my Best of 2009. It's gonna be a pretty hard year to top :)

Office Pranks

This is SO blog worthy! Me and a girl I work with, Melanie, decided to pull a prank on another co-worker, Mark. Melanie and Mark constantly pull pranks on eachother all the time, but they hadn't done anything to eachother in a while, so we thought it was the perfect time. He was out of the office doing an inventory, so we took advantage and did a little something to his office. Pictures will sum it all up..











It was a good day :)

Tacky Christmas Party

This weekend, Justin and I along with our friends Tiffany and Trevor Lobdell hosted a small Tacky Christmas Party for our friends. We had so much fun and everyone was very interestingly dressed to say the least! Pictures will sum it all up...



These are all the girls. Our outfits are rockin aren't they? For the girls, I would have to say that Robin Ennis wins the tacky award with that wicked awesome vest!



My cupcakes turned out pretty good! Now if I could just learn to cook real food and not desserts, I might make a half decent wife :)



Justin's outfit turned out pretty darn good! He picked it out himself! Well, actually Tiffany picked out the Santa "Believe" shirt, but Justin got the rest.



This is Robin, Ashley, Allyson and myself. Ashley and Allyson and I use to live together when we were in college at Alabama. Some of my greatest memories are with them in those days :)



How sweet are Tiffany and Trevor??? They got this building for my Christmas village as a gift for Justin and I. It's a scuba diving shop!!! So cool!

We had so much fun that night! Not to mention a certain Alabama player received the Heisman!!! It was a great night to say the least!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!

I'm so late on posting Christmas decor, but better late than never! This is our first Christmas as a married couple and our first Christmas to get a tree taller than four feet :) We decided to go with a live tree. I was against it at first, but Justin convinced me to give it a shot and I'm so glad I did. It smells SOOOOO good!! Also, getting a real tree was #69 on my list of 101 things to do in 1,001 days.



I have to give props to my friend Tiffany. She made the bow that is on the top of the tree. She's so creative and crafty! Thanks Tiff!

Here's some ornaments I got from the Galleria. There's an ornament shop and they have TONS of awesome ornaments. I couldn't splurge too much so I just got the bride and groom and the scuba divers.





The bride and groom is kind of hard to see, but that is our wedding date on the tux and our names at the bottom of the bridal gown. Love it!

I'm in love with our mantle :) My mom is so good at decorating. She helped out with most of our decorations around the house.



Tomorrow is a busy day for us. My sis-in-law is graduating with a third degree from UAB in the afternoon and we're all going out to dinner to celebrate. After dinner, Justin and I are joining our friends Trevor and Tiffany to get everything set up for our Tacky Christmas Party that we're hosting for friends. I get to make holiday cupcakes out of this....



Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! I'll post pictures from our party sometime next week. They should be good :)

Excuse the lack of progress...

I'm in the process of re-vamping my blog. I like the stretch blogs that cover the whole screen much better because it will allow for larger pictures. I'm still working on the background and a new header but unfortunately, I just don't have enough time in a day to sit down and do it all at once. Hopefully I will have time to do the whole thing soon :) Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday!

Unseen Wedding Pics

This is actually kind of funny. I am friends with a girl at work that is looking for a photographer for her wedding. She likes my photographer a lot, but since Amelia has recently made her permanent move to Los Angeles, that option is out for her. I told her that Amelia brought other photographers with her to do my wedding, one of which is actually out on her own with her own business now. Her name is Melissa Pardi. I had never been to her website, but another friend of mine is using Melissa for her wedding, so I suggested her to my work girlfriend. We looked up her website, which I hate to admit I hadn't done since finding out she was running her own photography business, but as we were looking through her wedding galleries, I noticed pictures she had taken from me and Justin's wedding that I didn't even know existed!! My friend and I got a kick out of it and I thoroughly enjoying seeing them. Melissa is such an awesome photographer and she was so much fun that day. I would definitely suggest her if you're looking for a photographer! She actually went to Hoover High, where I went to high school, but I don't think I was at Hoover anymore when she was there. Anyway, here's the link to the pics on her website:

Melissa Pardi Photography

St. Mark Children's Christmas Play

Last night at church we had the annual Children's Christmas Play. There were about 30 kids total that were involved and it was so much fun to work with them. My sister-in-law and I were the dance teachers and my mother-in-law was one of the sign language teachers.

This is practice right before the performance. You can see Debbie going over the sign language with the kids.

This is right when the curtain opened. Basically, the idea of the play was revolved around gifts. Each child in the play represented a toy in a toy store. When the shop keepers leave for the night, the toys come to life. Sound like a familiar movie (i.e. Toy Story)?


These are the sign language kids. They signed the song "Silent Night".

These cutie-pies are the youngest kids in the choir. That little girl in pink in the middle is so stinkin' adorable! She kept waving to the audience.


One of the main characters was one of our dancers, Karla Turner. She was a bunny that was left in the store because she had a rip and ended up getting put on the discount table. She got a "make-over" and became a Christmas Bunny and sold.


The beautiful little girl (who I must admit is one of my favorite girls) is Madison Todd. She played a kitten and was also one of our dancers.


Another one of our dancers (who is also such a cutie and pleasure to be around), Olivia Martin, portraying a ladybug.


At the end of the play they express that the greatest gift of all is the gift we all got from God, Jesus. This is Elizabeth Baker portraying the virgin Mary. There are actually two angels that are next to Mary that were also dancers, Ashlyn is shown in the picture to Mary's right, but Olivia is not.

I posted the video of the dance section of the play below. These girls worked so hard and they only had 2 weeks to learn this dance, even though its a relatively short routine. And by two weeks, I mean one day in each of those weeks for only 45 minutes per day, so I guess a more accurate way of saying it is an hour and a half. They did such a good job and Jenn and I were both so proud of them. You will probably recognize the song. It's actually the music to "When the Saints Go Marching In", but just with different words.