Beach and baby Luca

I know, I know, these are a few days overdue. But they're finally here, documenting our trip to Myrtle Beach for the S.C. Press Association Awards Dinner two weekends ago. We stayed at the Hilton on the beach, and the dinner was in a banquet hall next door. The weather wasn't great, misty rain and overcast, but it wasn't too bad to prevent a walk on the beach.

One of the highlights of the trip was when we went shopping the day before. I found a shirt and tie for less than $30!! You know, in these tough economic times, you can't let your appearance dip, you've just got to be more creative. The tie, found at Kohls, was $6! I know.

The reason to visit Myrtle was so I could accept an award for our group project, Gofridayfootball.com, in which we won first place in the multimedia category for Best Print and Web Integration. There are five or six of us that contribute to the site, I just wrote the stories, did the Hot Routes coaches show, and organized where everything went. The photographers did all the pictures and most of the video, and our web guy did the behind the scenes stuff.

Last weekend, we went to visit Kristi's new nephew, who is about 10 days old now, Luca Albert Zavitz. We made Paul and Emily (Luca's parents) some Mexican lasagna courtesy of Rachel Ray. It was really yummy. I also had the idea to bring Emily some Girl Scout cookies because I figured if I had just had a baby, having some Girl Scout cookies would be a good start toward recovery. We got good ol' Thin Mints.

In other Uncle Keith news, it has rained almost every day this week, so games I was supposed to cover last night and tonight have been rained out, or, as we used to say at Lyndon, poponed until next week.

I also joined Twitter. For those of you who don't know, Twitter is like a smaller version of Facebook, which basically is only status updates. But the thing I like about it, being a news junkie, is you can "follow" breaking news from all sorts of media outlets and sports teams. It's pretty cool. If any of you join, look for me under my name, or my username, FarnersAlmanac.

'Stars' in our family

A couple of weeks ago, Andy's mom and dad attended a Sunday afternoon event called the 'Soup Bowl' to benefit the Johnson County Habitat for Humanity chapter. It was held at Scott Hall, where our wedding reception was. Sharon is a volunteer for Habitat and Andy & Larry's landscaping business was a named sponsor of the event. Here's a brief description of the 'Soup Bowl', courtesy of Sharon:

Throughout the year soup bowls are collected from local and out of state potters for the Soup Bowl event. For $20 you can pick a bowl out of thousands, have a volunteer wash it and then eat soup until your heart's content. The soup is donated from many of the restaurants in Franklin as well as Indianapolis and surrounding areas. This year we had 12 different soups, along with a few Chef’s, there was also bread, desserts and a beverage and everything was donated. I was one of 60 volunteers, we served around 500 people it’s a huge event. We collected many items from vendors and potters for the silent auction. The money raised is to help build houses for the unfortunate, because everyone should have a HOME. --

Lo and behold, look who showed up in the Indianapolis Star!

http://www2.indystar.com/autofocus/photos/show/227615/1

Happy 1st Birthday Hannah!

Hannah Kay Bridges is one year old! She is a daily ray of sunshine in our lives and while we once wondered how life would be different with two children, we now can't imagine life without her. Over the weekend we had a fun party to celebrate with family and a few friends. Here are the highlights, plus a few pictures that I just like and wanted you all to see:

Our sweet little 'Cupcake.' As you'll see below, cupcakes were the theme of the party. I love this picture because I think it really looks like her. You know? It really looks like she does everyday and that sweet little face and blonde hair and blue eyes just embody cuteness. No, I'm not biased. Why do you ask?

Hannah has frequent conversations with the cat, Bonnie. She calls him "Ack" which we think sounds pretty close to "Cat." For awhile she called him Dog but we've recently cleared up that misunderstanding. She LOVES animals and squeals with excitement when she sees them.

Let the gift opening begin! You can see that Hannah and I had plenty of help.

Dinner was sloppy joes, pork bbq, cauliflower salad (Andy's mom brought), chips and pretzels. Hannah isn't ready for sloppy joes just yet, so she had part of a hot dog and some peas. I love the hair clip but it didn't stay in very well.

The toy that Andy and I got her. She has played with it a lot since the party, much more than I had imagined she would. Naturally, Abby likes it too. So far, no major arguments.

Who would have guessed that the first week in March would bring us 70 degree weather and such a nice day for the kids to play outside?

Cupcakes, decorated with help from my friend Jennifer, an experienced user of rolled fondant. I got some practice and learned a lot. Without her help I never would have attempted this. It was fun though, and I'm sure I'll be doing it again sometime.

Blowing out her candle! You might think she was totally oblivious to the candle and that Daddy really blew it out, but that wouldn't be true at all...wink, wink!

Getting ready to cut the cakes, please pay no attention to our messy refrigerator in the background. That artwork could really be worth something someday if the artist should ever become famous. The girls' shirts have cupcakes on them, too. I wish you could see them in this picture!

Time to smash the cake! Why do we do this? Who came up with this idea? The baby has no idea what we expect them to do and then the poor child tries to find their way through the mess while we all point and laugh. Oh well, we're just here to take part in family traditions and in our family, the baby smashes a cake. Hannah liked the cake, once she realized that she was supposed to eat it!

That didn't last long, time to take away the sippy and cake and head for the bathtub.

A few first birthday stats: 18.25 pounds, 8 teeth, size 3 feet. Crawling fast and pulling up some. First word, Dada (sometimes Daddy), next was Dog and then the aforementioned Cat/Ack.

Happy Birthday Hannah!!

Weekend in Review

Guess it's my turn! Our weekend began on Friday (Andy's day off) when we went to Southaven, MS (a suburb of Memphis about an hour north of us) to do our monthly shopping trip. We made it to five stores and home in time for dinner! Below, the kids are having fun at Sam's Club. We all feel tiny walking around that store!

On Saturday, Andy built an awesome fire that lasted all day (even using some wet logs)! We mostly stayed inside since it was cold and prepared for Sunday. I practiced piano since I subbed for the church pianist on Sunday. The kids especially enjoyed breaking in their new bean bag chairs that we picked up at Wal-Mart the day before!
And on Sunday morning...we awoke to SNOW!!! We didn't get nearly as much as Keith and Kristi did, but a little dusting still makes us excited! This is our 3rd year in Charleston and each year we've had a snowfall like this one at this time of year--just after the daffodils and pear trees bloom!

And now we're back to Monday which means: reading & writing, stories, legos, dressing up, laundry & ironing, painting...and that was just this morning!

Savannah and snow

It was quite a Georgia weekend. Kristi and I started it off with a business trip to Savannah on Friday, so we could go to a wild game dinner and fundraiser for the Bamboo Farm and Coastal Gardens. We had quail, venesen, and venesen chili. I hadn't had any of those before, so it was interesting. The chili was good. Kristi and her boss attended to talk with some potential donors.
Before the dinner, though, we toured Savannah and the cobblestone downtown streets.
The rest of the weekend turned into a winter wonderland, thanks to six inches of snow falling on Northeast Georgia (and Upstate SC), which closed just about everything on Monday. We made a snowman, and snow angels, and enjoyed the wet snow, which made for perfect snowman ingredients.


A tree in Kristi's patio area.


You better duck!
Sunset over a strawberry patch in Savannah
One of 250 Camellias at the farm.
A personal three-generation Iris collection

Think the Georgia Queen could race the Belle of Louisville?
In downtown Savannah.

Happy Birthday Grandpa Larry!

Sharon, the party planner with a very surprised Larry!

Kyle James and 'My Abigail' cut quite a rug on the dance floor!

They danced and danced, barely stopping to eat.

No one prompted this, these two are quite a pair. They really love playing (and dancing) together and we had a ball watching them!

Hannah and Hailey, one loves to hold, the other loves to be held. A match made in heaven.

The Dynamic Duo ~ Grandma Aggie and Sharon did the majority of the planning, but they had a committee full of helpers. Others who helped the night go off without a hitch: Dawn, Jimmy, Susanna, Andy, me, Sandra and Linda (Sharon's cousins). I'm probably forgetting someone!

Polk and Hannah. Look at those baby blues! Can you believe she'll be one on Wednesday?

Mom and I with Abigail, Hannah and Gavin, three little helpers who needed to be corralled away from the door.

Seven of the Eight grandkids singing Happy Birthday. Mckenzie fearlessly led the singing. Abbs is up there, behind Larry's leg. Hannah is #8 and not quite ready to sing.


We had a great time on Saturday! Over 100 people came and had a wonderful time. The food was yummy, with my all time favorite macaroni and cheese (thank you, Grandma!). Yesterday Sharon and Larry had a lot of fun reading all of the cards that he got. Since several of you have heard about the party throughout the planning stages so I knew you'd want to see how it turned out. Everyone at our house is pretty tired from a very busy weekend. Time to rest up, Saturday it will be Hannah's turn!