Thanksgiving Extravaganza!

We had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday. We had two dinners Thursday, went to the Carolina Craftsmen's Christmas Classic at the coliseum on Friday, and ate more food on Saturday.

Thursday we had lunch at my mom's house with Aunt Becky. I coaxed everyone into taking some pics. I think they turned out great!

We then proceeded to Adam's parents' house to eat some more. Mark, Amy and the boys were there with their three little puppies. As you can see, I didn't get too many family pics.

Adam drew a "tattoo" on Jonathan's back for our Christmas music video (coming soon!), and of course Gavin and Colby wanted tattoos, too!

Saturday was our annual Daniels' Family Reunion (of sorts.) We had a great turn out this year.

I hope you all had a great holiday!! Christmas is just around the corner!

Bryce Kelly Lewis

I'm a new aunt! Sabrina gave birth to Bryce Kelly Lewis on Tuesday, November 20. The little booger was six weeks early! He weighed in at 4 pounds 10 ounces and was almost 17 inches long. He's such a little guy, but he's doing very well. He has to stay in the ICU until he gains some weight, and then it's off to home sweet home. He has all sorts of IVs in him, poor fella. I haven't met him yet, but Adam and I can't wait to do so!

Congratulations to the new parents, Jason and Sabrina!

Chili Cookoff and Pinewood Derby

Last Friday, Nov. 9, our ward had a chili cookoff and pinewood derby race. Adam participated in both. The pinewood derby had no rules. For those of you who are familiar with pinewood derbies, no rules sounds like a bunch of fun! Adam immediately started coming up with all sorts of ideas. He decided to make the wheels out of pizza cutters and weigh it down with coins - probably 3 pounds worth. The first version didn't turn out too well (see picture below), but he eventually made it work. We were afraid it wasn't going to finish at all because of its weight. Adam tried it out when we got to church, and it worked great! It ended up winning a few times, but it lost twice. Since it was double-elimination, he was out. He won the chili cookoff again, though. Woohoo!

The ward activity was a little chaotic, but it was a lot of fun. I suppose it sort of makes up for the lack of a Trunk-or-Treat.

Version 1: way too tall and awkward.

Version 2

Here's one of Adam's winning races. A kid kept calling Adam's car "Cookie Cutter!"

Good job!

There was this cute setup on the stage for family photos. Great idea!

Oh Kitty Cat

Happy Halloween!

It's a shame it didn't feel like Halloween this year. Our ward cancelled our Trunk-or-Treat! It was originally scheduled for tonight, but apparently there were complaints about having it on Halloween night. So instead of rescheduling it for the Friday or Saturday before, it was just cancelled! Adam and I are very disappointed. He was going to be Lion-O, and I was going to be Cheetara. They're from the Thundercats in case you were wondering. Luckily I didn't buy anything for my costume before the activity was cancelled. However, Adam made a sword out of wood and everything! I suppose there's always next year, but I think I'll want to be something else by then.

We did carve pumpkin, though. Actually, we just carved one. We bought the fake pumpkins from Michaels to see how they worked. Since they aren't ones you have to throw away, we decided to carve our faces. Adam found a great pic of me to use as a stencil, but he couldn't find one for him. So he just carved mine for me. Now we have a whole year to get a good stencil pic of him. I think mine turned out great! Thanks babydoll!

See! It really is a pumpkin!

Crazy and Sad Month

How do you like my new blog template? I think it's the greatest!

This week at work was quite crazy. I was busy every second of every day. Unfortunately, that means there were a lot of deaths this week. I hope we were able to serve all of the families and meet their needs without making any mistakes. It's hard when there's so much going on. I need to remember that each family has lost a loved one and not think of each new addition as more work for me. Sometimes I catch myself doing the latter.

I am glad it's Friday, though, and I can sleep as long as I want to in the morning.

There were some very sad stories this week. Over the weekend, we had quadruplets at the funeral home. They were premature and couldn't survive. I can't imagine what their parents are going through. The same thing happend to Adam's cousin Kristin on Monday. Her little girl Lily died. She was also premature. Lily lived for a few days. She certainly was a fighter. I have to keep thinking that the little ones fulfilled their purpose on this earth by gaining a body...even if it was for a short time. Now they're back home with their Heavenly Father.

Working at a funeral home, I constantly see how fragile our lives are and how quickly a life can end. We had a young man who died in a car accident this week. Two weeks ago we had a young man who died in a motorcycle accident. We also had a teenager who died in a work-related accident. One minute they're here, and the next minute they're gone. How devastating to their families and friends.

A month ago, my friend April in Ohio lost her one and only sister, Amy. Amy went missing in Washington state one Saturday evening. Her story was all over the news and papers there and in Dayton, OH. Amy was very depressed and ended up taking her own life. A hunter found her body in the woods near a farm 19 miles from her apartment. It's so crazy to me. I can't imagine what her family is going through.

Sorry for all the depressing stories. I guess I just needed to share them.

Pilot Mountain

If you read the post below this one, you'll find we unsuccessfully tried to go camping at Stone Mountain on Friday, Oct. 12.

We finally were able to go camping Sunday night (Oct. 14) at Pilot Mountain. I had a really great time! I definitely want to go again. Usually I hate the smell of a campfire, but I didn't mind it so much this time. I didn't even wear any makeup! Shocker, huh?! The weather was nice, and it didn't get too cold at night. We made some foil dinners of chicken thighs, marinade, and bacon bits. It was pretty good! We toasted marshmallows on the fire and had hot apple cider and hot chocolate. It would've been nice to have more family with us, but at the same time I'm glad it was just the two of us.

There was only one drawback from that evening: I got three bug bites on my forehead!

Monday morning we hiked to the knob. I've been to Pilot Mountain a few times as a kid, but I don't recall ever hiking to the knob before. It was really cool! There are some crazy rock formations, and we got lots of great pics. I can't keep that boy off of those rocks!

All in all, we had a great weekend. I definitely want to do it again sometime!

The Knob

Fuzzy Adam way up high

Waiting on our chicken to cook.

I love how the sunlight sifts through the trees.

I'll post more pics soon. Blogger is not cooperating and giving me a headache!

Stone Mountain

Adam had fall break last week, so I decided to take some time off of work. We made plans to go camping Friday night at Stone Mountain in Roaring Gap, NC. It's about two hours away. I'm not sure what the reasoning was, but we assumed there would be plenty of campsites available. Once we got there, we drove straight to the camping area. The first sign I saw said "No Vacancy." For some reason I didn't really believe it. So we pulled over by the camping office, and sure enough the lady said there weren't any campsites available that night. Now we had all this camping stuff in our car and no place to camp.

We decided to drive to the hiking area and take a little hike to the "stone" of Stone Mountain. As we drove to the area, we came upon a crazy amount of deer! There were deer everywhere! I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I've never seen so many deer all at once. Anywho, we parked and "hiked" to the stone. I'm not much of a hiker, so any little hill is enough to do me in. I came out victorious, though.

We got the Homestead, and the views were beautiful. We also climbed some rocks, which I don't think we were supposed to do. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we had to drive back home since there weren't any campsites left. We drove by Pilot Mountain just for kicks, but the gate had already closed for the night. Sagebrush in Kernersville ended up being our dinner destination, and Adam went ahead to work that night. Since I had Monday off of work, too, we decided to camp at Pilot Mountain on Sunday night.

Stay tuned to see all the fun we had there!

The Homestead

Stone Mountain...there she blows!

Adam and his crazy climbing antics

Me and my not-so-crazy climbing antics

Crazy Amount of Deer!

Adam got this idea from an episode of South Park. Sorry Steve Irwin!

Jonathan's B-Day

Happy birthday, Jonathan! He turned 17 on October 8th...sorry it's a little late posting this. Adam made Jonathan a Bizarro Superman cake and got him some cool presents. His parents were also in town this year. Usually Jonathan's birthday is during UNCG's fall break, and his parents have gone out of town. Not so this year! I hope he had a great birthday!

"Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law" DVD and poster

Kipper, Zorro, and Brownie

Meet the new additions to the Terrell family.

I know the puppy was hiding his face in this pic, but I thought it was so cute!

Ode to Rocky

Rocky, my nephew Keaton's little pomeranian, got hit by a car last Friday. He escaped from the back screened-in porch and made his way to the busy road. Keaton was at school at the time. He and his brothers were devastated. So last Saturday they had a little graveside service....and went out and bought three new puppies! They're 9-week-old rat terriers....so cute! Amy and the boys brought them over last Sunday. I didn't hear one word about Rocky come from their lips....poor Rocky. I don't know...I suppose it's better to heal quickly?

Below are some pics I took of Rocky throughout his short little life.

Poor little Rocky...he had such a long life ahead of him.