Tender Tennessee Christmas

This year, Jon and I and my parents headed out to Nashville to visit my sister Kristin for Christmas. We had a fantastic time in the beautiful state of Tennessee. It was a great time enjoying family and being somewhere other than Orange County. Jon and I definitely needed the break after the crazy Christmas season we had just been through at work. Thanks K, for letting us invade your house and come visit for Christmas! We had a wonderful time!


The first morning, we headed to the famous Pancake Pantry and then went on a hike around Radner Lake. Absolutely beautiful! We even saw deer jumping around.




Kristin also was able to get us tickets to the Titans football game. Great game... REALLY cold!


Here we are before going out to a nice steak dinner at the Stoney River. Mom and Dad's treat! Probably the best steak I've ever had! Thanks M&D! Overall, it was a great trip and a much needed vacation!

Girls Christmas Dinner

I have such amazing friends. There are a group of 7 of us girls that have been friends since high school and earlier. Each year, we get together to celebrate Christmas. This year, we gave up the gifts for a nice dinner at Savannah. What a great time we had! We were short one this year, as she was home in her last month of pregnancy. We missed you Liss!


Our private table at Savannah


Our photo shoot after dinner

The Green Machine # 2

For our Christmas present to each other, Jon and I decided to go big this year... literally!



The boys at Switchback Cyclery put this one together for us!



We absolutely love it! It's so much fun to be able to ride together, and Jon is a fantastic captain! Here we are out on our first ride.



Good times to follow!

The White Elephant

Each year, Jon and I host a white elephant gift exchange for a group of our mountain bike friends. This year was year number 5! There were about 30 people in our little condo. We had so much fun getting together to catch up, eat, drink, and open some crazy gifts! Some of the gifts included a white trash cookbook, the "grandma got ran over by a reindeer" doll with music, the "club", and lots of ugly ceramics. This party is always especially great for Jon and I. We love being able to see all of our friends that we have not seen in a while because of how busy we are at work this time of year. Thank you all for coming and making it such a great tradition for us!


Lots of presents and crazy footwear!





Great friends and fun!


Whoever did this to our new bike is on my permanent BAD list! Who knew that a good hiding place for the lock key would be our key ring!

O Christmas Tree

Jon and I always get our Christmas tree the week after Thanksgiving. This year we did something we have never done before. We walked into the Christmas tree lot at Home Depot and started looking at all the trees. There weren't many opened up yet and all the ones that were open, seemed to have something wrong with them. So we ended up just grabbing one that was still wrapped up and taking it home with us without looking at it. We had our fingers crossed that it would be OK. It is more than OK, it is probably the best tree we've ever had! The guy at Home Depot said we would go up on the boards as the first people to ever buy a tree without looking at it first.


When I was decorating the tree, I pulled out a box of ornaments that I had completely forgotten about. They were some big red ones from Crate & Barrel that I had got last year after Christmas on half price. I was so excited for my new ornaments! Our tree is all in red, silver, and white this year!