Santa, I Know Him!!!

As always, my pictures are coming in late!!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends!!  I know I did.  Here are some pictures of our Christmas in Oklahoma!

Later after Christmas dinner we all went outside and played a competitive game of Bocce!!  My brother, Chandler won!  Notice the athletic picture of mom as she lobs her Bocce ball!!  And me with my new scarf that Jared gave me for Christmas!!  

In the picture above my dad is holding our trusty companion, Sadie.  She was lucky she didn't get hit with any flying Bocce balls!  Jared did manage to peg my brother in the head accidently.  He has a pretty large goose-bump on top of his noggin...

We will stay in Oklahoma for a few more days and then we will begin our trek to Alabama to have a late Christmas with Jared's side of the family!!  I hope everyone had a great Christmas!! 

Catching Up

Whew!!!  How behind am I on posting pictures and blogging??  Too behind!  Here are all the fun shots that I haven't had time to post.  The first grouping are pictures of mine and Jared's Christmas decorations.  It's not much because we're just starting out.  Most of the stuff we have has been handed down from Mom and Pop Gott.  We did not purchase a real Christmas tree this year, but Mom Gott came through with letting us have the Christmas tree pictured below.  She was going to all pencil trees in her house and needed to get rid of this one.  It found a home with us and I think it made a beautiful little tree.  Hopefully we can resume our tradition of cutting down our Christmas tree next year.  It's one of my favorite things to do at Christmas time!!

Below are pictures of my trip to Oklahoma.  I flew out there to surprise Momma for her birthday!  It was so fun!!  She was so happy she nearly cried.  I had a lot of fun out there seeing my mom and dad.  Below are pictures of us and the Oklahoma Christmas tree.  This is before we put the ornaments on because Daddy was fixing to go to bed... hee hee.  Notice that little bitty blue bow at the top of the tree.  It looks pretty sad, doesn't it?  If you say "no it looks fine", you are just being nice!  I wanted to make Momma a beautiful blue bow to go on her tree because she likes the blue and silver Christmas decor.  I didn't get enough ribbon though and so it turned out to be way too little!!  Being a mother, she liked it and stuck it up on the tree anyway!

Above are some shots of Mom's birthday celebration.  Except for the picture of her making the snowman necklace.  That was taken from when we spent the afternoon at the beading store!  Which I must say has started a new hobby for me!!  More to come about that later.  (We'll see what Santa brings me for Christmas first.)  Notice what message Daddy wrote on her birthday cake!!  The thing on her back is what her best friend, Mrs. Hill gave her.  It is a camelback that is used for bikers to drink water and hold stuff in while they're cycling.  Mom's new exercise has been bicycling and she can go pretty far!!!  It's really impressive to me because I'd probably fall off the bike.  I don't even know if I still remember how to ride one!!  Anyway, I had a great time spending mother/daughter time with my best friend (besides my hubby).  Love you Momma!!

Beach Bums

Here are the rest of our beach pictures that I couldn't post because the internet in our beach house went out.  Notice my super crabbers in the center picture above.  These are what I wore to go sand crab hunting at night!!  Thanks for letting me borrow your shoes, Kara!!

Above are pictures Eric took of Me and Jared in front of their family Christmas tree!!  I'm excited because tonight Jared and I are going to decorate our house for Christmas!! YEAH!!

blue angels...no bites today...where's the ship?

Jared and I woke up to fly overs this morning!  I went out to see what was going on and saw four planes in a diamond formation going over the house.  Pop Gott went outside too and said it was the "Blue Angels" flying over and that they were probably doing winter training from Pensacola.  They flew over off and on all day and I was able to get some shots of them practicing.

I've been fascinated with fighting planes for awhile. Always when Daddy would hear them coming, he would go on the porch to look at them and I'd always try to make it out there with him before they flew out of my sight.  Daddy can usually identify the planes and I think that's always really cool.

After eating we went to Fort Morgan's pier to go fishing and crabbing.  Sadly we didn't catch anything but a hermit crab.  But I did get some good pictures of us fishing.  I've had to be a little more choosy in posting pics because it's taking longer than usual to post.  The below picture is my favorite one of Jared and I fishing today.  It's actually taken at the beach later this afternoon.

Believe it or not, the picture below is part of a ship that washed up on shore during Gustav.  The ship beneath the sand was supposed to be an old Cival War ship.  When we arrived we were quite disappointed that the city had covered the ship with sand.  We had seen such cool pictures on the internet! It turned out that having a washed up ship with metal things sticking out of it was dangerous.... thus the burial.  Our thought is 100 years from now some kid will dig it up and they'll make a big deal about finding an old ship in the sand! HA!

To close out, below is a picture of our beach house and our view off the porch towards the ocean.  You can see the ocean out some of the other windows a little better, but I like sitting on the porch.  It's been another good day.  Oh and since all my friends are blogging about Christmas cards... I made three tonight!  I'll try to post pictures of these later maybe :o)

The picture below is antiqued a little.  I'm trying to learn how to add cool coloring to my pictures.  I need some practice though.. :o)

Lulu's

Tonight we went to Lulu's to eat.  We weren't supposed to go there until Tuesday night, but some of us couldn't wait and we were all plesantly surprised when Pop Gott pulled into the restaurant.  I snapped a few pictures of the event because it was a really cool restaurant.  FYI: Jimmy Buffet's sister (Lulu) owns it.  It definately got a thumbs up from all of us...  We all had excellent food and there was even live music!!  

Afterwards we went to Wal-mart to pick some things up and Jared and I bought our first fishing pole!!  I can't wait to use it.  We are supposed to go crabbing maybe tomorrow and hopefully we'll get to take it out and try it then!  Enjoy the pics.  I'm on Jared's MAC so I don't have photoscape to collage everything this week.  

Below:  I Love Palm Trees!!

Below:  All the Gott siblings and me.

Above:  Me and my sis (Kara) being silly...

Below:  I've picked my souvenior! :o)  Where should I put it?

Surf n Turf

Sunday Afternoon...  Finally able to get out on the beach.  The water is cold, and it is cool outside, but it's very pleasant and we all had fun walking on the beach and looking for shells.  I found a sand crab exoskeleton.  I'll have to try to snap a picture of it later.  These two pictures on this post are from Eric's camera.  By the way, today I got my saltwater fishing license!  Now Jared and I will be able to go crabbing all week.  It's a new law in Alabama that you have to have a salt water license to do ANY kind of fishing.  That stinks because you have to pay for a license...  but I was excited to get a new license to do something!!  It's nice at the beach in November.  We are one of the only ones here at the Heritage Shores houses and it makes for a private beach (almost).  

Last Week

Wow this week has been so busy that I haven't even had time to blog or even look at my friends' blogs. Hopefully over Thanksgiving break I can keep up, but here are the updates I promised last week.

Last Thursday, 11-13-08 was Molly's Birthday. Molly is an admissions counselor like Jared and she is one of our friends. It was really nice to be invited to her sushi birthday party. Below are some pictures of the group that came. I'm missing 3 people that were there an hour or so earlier. I believe we should have groups that go to Sakura and in general hang out more often!! I loved hanging out with these people. The funniest thing that happened while we were there was that after Molly ordered this banana dessert, Sakura gave her a complimentary birthday dessert and it was the same banana stuff she ordered but without the ice cream! Lucky for the rest of us, she was full of that and we all were able to have some!

I also promised to post the pictures of Jared's wicked wreck. This happened during "Rev it Up" on Friday late morning after chapel. Here is before the wreck shots. Jared is very apprehensive about wrecking and hurting himself....

And here are a couple shots of the wreck... "Why worry, wrecking was the best part of the race!"

I really was worried about him. I was in shock at first because I couldn't believe he actually did wreck!! But after I saw him get up he was laughing and I knew he might be sore, but he'd be okay.

Here is a picture we took before the races (sorry it's out of order). The lion is our buddy, Joe Askew!

Saturday morning we drug ourselves out of bed to go see the clubs do "Pep It Up". It was FREEZING outside. Jared promised me a sausage biscuit from Jacks though so I was a little happier about standing outside in the cold.

The top picture above is of XBX. Jared was once President of XBX and now he's a sponser so we try to go to a lot of their activities. I will claim them too because when I was in school it seemed I had more dates with XBX then PKA guys!! Thus, I went to all their banquets and retreats!! Oh yeah, and I married Jared. : )

Below is MY club and family while at Freed. PKA!!

And the winners of Homecoming!!

PHI KAPPA ALPHA!!! YAYYYYY!!

I was happy Phi Kappa Alpha won. But I remember the days when it was really hard to win anything. My hope is that the club won't let winning go to their heads. Stay humble and proud at the same time guys. OTSS!!

The other noteable winner for this blog goes to the best Homecoming Window ever!! Designed by my brother in law and most special friend - Eric of Gott. Whoo-hoo go XBX for winning this!

And saving the best for last... my favorite part of homecoming is seeing friends and family.

Remembering the memories and good times....

Love you guys and all the other wonderful people I saw during homecoming!!

I hope you enjoyed this week's post. Come back next week and I will try to have posts of my Thanksgiving Break to Gulf Shores!! Fun in the Sun!!!

Happy weekend and upcoming Turkey days to all!