Gibby's 26th Birthday!

Since Gibby's birthday fell on a Tuesday this year, we had most of the celebrations on the weekend afterward. However, we did manage to go out on birthday dinners almost that entire week! It was during this week that we established a new tradition in our new family: it is officially a person's birthday for the day before, the day of, and the day after the actual birth date. (This was Gibby's idea!)
That weekend we traveled to Pulaski, TN to visit Gibby's mother's side of the family and celebrate his birthday. Gibby's mother, sister, and nephew traveled with us for the weekend. We stayed at his aunt and uncle's home, where we enjoyed fabulous cooking all around!! We went to Gibby's cousin's baseball game and then had a big family get together at his aunt and uncle's house. It was a lot of fun, but I'm afraid our nephew Tucker stole the attention of everyone all weekend!! ;-)

SNOW!!! In March??

On this particular weekend in March, Gibby and I had spent Friday night and Saturday in Troy (where the high was in the 70s). We came home Saturday night so that we could go to church Sunday morning. However, we never made it to church because we woke up to a Winter Wonderland! Taking the advice of the Sheriff on TV, we stayed off of the roads that were freezing over since we go over several bridges on our way to church. Instead, got on our warmest clothes and played in the snow on our balcony and in are backyard. We built a smaller snowman early in the morning from the snow that had gathered on our balcony. We also brought Kali and Mom's dog Jackson, who we were dog-sitting, out onto the balcony to let them experience the snow. When the snow started falling too heavily, we came in for a rest and watched it fall. After it calmed down a bit, we went out onto the grounds to build our GO TROY! snowman! In the end, all of the snow had melted by 2 p.m. that day, but we had a great time playing in it that morning!!

Keener/McDaniel Wedding

In February we attended the wedding of the most unlikely couple from our college friends: Rachel Keener and Bret McDaniel. Keener (as everyone calls her) and Bret never dated in college. They actually only went to school together for 2 years. Some of our friends got together a little over a year ago to hang out and catch up at the bowling alley. Bret and Keener had some mutual friends and ended up hanging out with each other more and more after that night. When they declared their relationship on Facebook (which is where you make things like that official!) on April 1st last year everyone thought that it was a joke! Obviously, it was not a joke since they are now married! Keener, or Rachel as I should call her now, and Bret are a great couple whom we love very much! We pray that God will bless their marriage!
Gibby and I went to the wedding with Adam and Maegan, which was a lot of fun! On the way home we tried to count all of the couples that had come together and married from our friend group in college. We counted over 15 couples! This included ourselves, of course.

Valentine's Day

Gibby and I had actually never had a Valentine's Day together. We always managed to break up before Valentine's Day came around when we were dating. While we were engaged, I was in DC while Gibby was still in AL. So, for our very first Valentine's Day, we decided to make a weekend trip of it and went to Chattanooga. We went to both sections of the Chattanooga aquarium, which was by far Gibby's favorite part of the weekend! For our Valentine's night dinner, we went to the dinner theater where we helped solve a murder that occurred while filming a movie on an airplane. Before we left the city, we made our way to Ruby Falls and Lookout Mountain. It was a clear day, so we were able to see all seven states from the lookout place. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed our first Valentine's Day together.

Jungle Book

We got the immense pleasure of watching Sarah and Rebekah perform in the play "Jungle Book." We were both surprised to see how talented both girls were in their performance. I still can't believe how well Sarah sang!

Our First New Year's!

To welcome in the year 2009, we spent the evening at Adam and Maegan's house. We got a real treat this New Year's! When Maegan spent the summer in Australia for missions, she stayed at a family's house for about one month of that time. Well, that family came to visit her during the week of New Year's! So, for a New Year's Eve dinner, we pulled out all of the stops and made the most southern meal ever. The family absolutely loved it and even took a picture of me making fried green tomatoes! To top it off Maegan made some homemade ice cream. After the meal, he headed to the fireworks stand and to Maegan's parent's house to shoot them off. This was another treat for the Australians as fireworks are banned there. This was the first time they had ever set off their own fireworks! Once we had set off the last one and were thoroughly frozen, we headed back to Adam and Maegan's for fun and games until the ball drop in NYC. It was absolutely a great time!!

Our First Christmas!

Our first Christmas was an adventure! I don't think Gibby has ever been to that many Christmas celebrations in one year! He definitely felt the effects of inheriting a large family at this time of the year. We started off the Christmas season by getting our first Christmas tree! This was another first for Gibby. He had never had a real tree before for Christmas. I was the one that insisted on it because it just doesn't seem like Christmas to me if I don't have a real tree. We had a fun time trying to find a place that sold real trees and then finding a price that was good for us. We eventually bought a tree from the Boy Scouts of Vestavia. Kali even got to join in the festivities as we brought the tree in and decorated it. I just know she always loves the time of year when I put the Santa hat on her and takes pictures! This year she was really cooperative though! :-)

Troy Homecoming 2009

In November, I was able to go to Troy University's Homecoming. Unfortunately, Gibby had to stay in Birmingham to work. I traveled down with Adam and Maegan and stayed with them at Ellis and Becky Bush's house. Ellis is the college minister at Bush Memorial, where I attended church in Troy. He has several acres of land right outside of Troy. During college, we would go out there to fish, hang out, cook out, and play Frisbee golf. Now we always go back when we are in town to do the same. Homecoming was no different. We were able to spend quality time and catch up with a lot of friends from college. The day of the game, we all met at the BCM for lunch before touring the campus (which has changed a lot) and walking to the stadium. It was great to go to the game and see even more people from the college days. I topped off the weekend by going to Bush Memorial on Sunday morning to see all of my favorite church members. Overall, it was a great weekend!! It was hard to be away from Gibby, though, since it was our first weekend away from each other.

Landon Tucker Lightfoot

On October 13, 2009 our beautiful nephew Tucker was born to Gibby's sister, Brittany, and her husband, Rob. He weighed in at 7 lbs. 5 oz. and was 21 inches long. He had the most beautiful golden hair and the longest feet I've ever seen on an infant! He is the first grandchild on both sides and it showed! Our life was definitely blessed by the birth of Tucker!!

Day Four: Sausalito and Carmel

On our fourth day we decided to take the ferry over to Sausalito. We really wanted to go see the big redwood trees. We had no idea how we were going to get to them, but we took the ferry anyway. We were hoping for some type of public transportation on the other side of the bay. There is definitely not any public transport in Sausalito, but we got a great deal on a rental. It was a great price without a limit on mileage. So, being the roadsters that we are, we decided to drive CA HWY 1 down the coast to Carmel. We stopped first at the redwoods, which were absolutely beautiful! It is impossible to get a good picture of the trees just because they are so enormous. We had a great time hiking through the first part of the forest. After the forest, we found our way to Hwy 1. On our way, we were able to cross over the Golden Gate Bridge, which was a lot of fun! It was an amazing site. Too bad the toll is so high though! ;-) We stopped once along the way to take in the breathtaking view of the cliffs along the Pacific. It was the first time either one of us had seen the Pacific Ocean. We made it to Carmel just as the sun was setting. Unfortunately, it was too foggy to really get a good picture of it. It was a long and great day to end our time in California.

Day Three: San Fran

On our third day, we took the ferry over to Alcatraz Island to take a tour of the prison. We were able to watch a documentary about Alcatraz where we learned about the Native Americans that took over the island at one point and how the families of the warden and prison guards lived in a community on the island. We toured the entire prison with an audio tour guide. We saw the beds and tunnels of the only men who escaped from the island and the mug shots of the famous men imprisoned there. The tour of the prison was definitely one of our favorite parts of the trip.

From the pier of the ferry we hiked our way to the crookedest street in the world, Lombard Street. It was definitely worth the hike!

Go Giants!

One of our goals in life is to go to all the Major League Baseball stadiums in the U.S. Our first baseball park as a married couple was to the San Francisco Giants AT&T Park. We had a great time even though it was a little colder than expected. We were fortunate enough to see the National League Cy Young Award Winner for 2008, Tim Lincecum, pitch his 250th strike out of the year. He ended up having the highest strike out total in the Major Leagues in 2008.



One of my favorite parts of the stadium was the sailboat parking lot in the back of the stadium. We did get to see one of the famous kayakers waiting on a home run ball.

Day Two: San Fran

On our second day, we walked miles to search out every tourist attraction we could find in the city. We started out a few blocks from our hotel at Chinatown and made our way to the top of Coit Tower from there. At one point we walked up a hill that had almost 150 steps! Needless to say we were exhausted after all of our hiking, but we had a great time!


One of the most surprising things about walking to all of the attractions was seeing the classic San Francisco like this old bug with an old CA tag.

Day One: San Francisco

We started off our honeymoon a little later than planned due to a flight cancellation in Dallas, TX. So, our first day in San Fran was spent flying in, checking in, and resting.



That night we took a traditional cable car down to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. Gibby's favorite part watching and laughing at the sea lions on Pier 39. We also ate at a lobster house on the Pier, which had an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge with a sunset background.

09/20/2008

September 20, 2008 - Our wedding day and the only day it rained the entire month! But, we had fun and made the most out of it. Actually, Gibby and I didn't even really notice the rain! :-) We had a great time and loved seeing all of our family and friends together in one place. We were so thankful for everyone who came out in the rain to celebrate our wedding with us. We both wished it could have lasted longer because we were just enjoying ourselves so much.

DC 2008

In May 2008, Gibby came to pick me up from Washington, DC. We were able to stay a few days longer while I said good-bye to friends and Gibby experienced the sites of DC for the first time. The first night Gibby arrived, we quickly parked the car and made our way to the Washington Nationals stadium for a baseball game. This was particularly exciting for Gibby because he knew one of the players on the Nationals team and was able to speak with him during a weird power outage at the stadium. Also, we have a goal to watch a ballgame in every Major League baseball stadium in the U.S., so we got to mark one off of our list.

The second day, we started at Farragut North Metro station, passed by the White House, hiked up the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, went by the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials towards the Washington Monument where we rested while taking in the view of the Capitol building. We eventually made our way through the Air and Space Musuem and National Archives and ended our tour at the Capitol. That night we ate dinner and walked around the city with a few friends of mine from GraceDC. The next day, we got up earlier, packed the car, and headed toward Alabama. We had a LONG drive home, but we had a great time!!

I was so proud to be able to show Gibby the ins and outs of the city I had lived in and grown to love. I hope we get to go back many times over the years!

Granny's Wish

We visited my (Beth) Granny and Pawpaw tonight. We had a fabulous southern dinner with fried chicken, sweet potatoes, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, rolls, sweet tea, and strawberry shortcake. Granny made a batch of my most favorite cookie. I am still convinced to this day that no one can make those cookies better than her.
During our sweet visit she mentioned how much she loved my cousin's blog because she gets to have regular updates of their lives and adventures. So, to add to her internet reading, here is our blog of adventures and every day life......

I hope you enjoy it Granny! ;-)