New Home on the Web

We have decided to move from Blogger (Google) to WordPress for hosting our blog. In my (Jonathan's) opinion, the editing tools in Blogger are too simple and frustrating. WordPress seems to allow for much greater “creative control” and is more user friendly (so far, that is.) Pardon any confusion. Hopefully we’ll be parked here for a while. Here’s the new URL:

http://carolinagrey.wordpress.com/

New Year, New Beginnings

Okay, so we pretty much failed miserably on the blog front for the last two-thirds of 2009. Those who actually were reading our blog are now more than familiar with the details of our vacation last April. :) Sorry about that. I think the problem is that if you let too much time pass, then nothing seems blog-worthy anymore – at least not blog-worthy enough to be the first post back after several months away. Oh well. That was 2009.

But now it’s 2010, and the great thing about a new year is that it provides a chance to start over. So, that’s what we plan to do, at least as far as this blog is concerned. We resolve to post more frequently (even if the contents don’t cause a “this HAS to go on the blog!” kind of feeling).

With that, there’s no way to fully recap the last 8 months, so we’ll simply say that we had a wonderful and busy holiday season shared with family and friends. If we didn’t get to see you and catch up, we hope we can do that sometime soon.

For now we’ll leave you with a picture of us from my (Melinda's) birthday.

P.S. Hopefully we’ve gotten to most of you to tell you this already, but if not, yes that third stocking in the picture has a purpose. We’re having a baby (!) and he/she is due to make his/her arrival in late June. We’re so excited and feel overwhelmingly blessed that God has given us the opportunity to become parents! We’re supposed to find out if it’s a girl or boy this Friday, so stay tuned!

Vacation Time!

Just wanted to share a few pics from our trip to St. John / St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands) a couple weeks ago. We had been looking forward to our Caribbean getaway for a long time and we weren't disappointed. We had such a great time! There was plenty to do and see, but it was also one of our first vacations together where we didn't feel like we had to be going non-stop to see everything. We were really able to relax which was great.

Below is a picture at the Westin - our hotel in St. John.

One of the stops on our island tour. Just taking in the beauty all around.

This is overlooking Trunk Bay on St. John.

The next day, actually on the beach at Trunk Bay.

After Trunk Bay, we took a cab to Caneel Bay. This beach didn't have as good of snorkeling, but was much more private.

After a couple days on St. John, we took the ferry back to St. Thomas. This was the view from our hotel room there.

Shopping in downtown St. Thomas. This one is for Dad :)

We took a lot of video clips while we were there as well. When Jonathan has a chance, he's going to edit them together and post it.

Snow!

We finally got a decent snow storm here in Huntersville. The last one managed to cover Charlotte but only graze us. We still had to go to work of course, but we got to go in a little late at least. Here are a couple of pictures I snapped last night. They're a little blurry b/c I was hand-holding the camera w/ a longer shutter speed since it was dark.

IKEA Comes to Town

This week marked a major milestone for Charlotte (and me)--the opening of our very own IKEA. Yes, I know they are big and evil, but they also do some pretty amazing things when it comes to designing and selling furniture for the masses. If you've never been you should definitely check it out, clearly.

Melinda and I met Joanna and Mom and Dad on Thursday to give it a look-see. Wednesday was the actual grand opening, but it was still pretty lively on Thursday evening. It was also very cold and windy (for Charlotte); we felt great sympathy for the poor parking lot attendants. We managed to get through most of the store in under two hours which is a new record for us. But we skipped some stuff so we'll be back again soon :)

She looks like she's smiling, but she's really thinking, "It's freezing, you idiot--let's go inside!"

The classic Poäng Chair

The Family Table

So I finally finished re-finishing the dining table. For those who haven't seen it in person yet there's Before and After pics below. My parents originally bought the table in 1975 (?) in Georgetown. It was our family dining table for as long as I can remember. So it has hosted more than a few family meals. Sometime in the mid-nineties (?) my mom gave it a trendy multi-layer "distressed" finish. But over the years "distressed" morphed into "tired". So it was time to restore it to it's original glory (whilst retaining the character and imperfections it has gathered over the years.)

We're still here...

We've been a bit absent from the blog world lately. It seems like when other people don't blog for awhile they come back with a super-blog announcing some big life change - new job, new house, pregnancy, etc. Well, we don't have anything that monumental to report, but we just felt like we couldn't end the year without at least some type of update. So here we are 24 hours from the new year with a quick review of the past 2 months.

November:

Melinda's grandmother from Ohio came to Charlotte for a couple weeks over Thanksgiving. We got to show Granny our new house, celebrated Thanksgiving with both our families, and had a combined birthday party for Granny (85), Chris, and Elissa (both 25). As if all the Thanksgiving and birthday celebrations weren't enough for one week, we also decided to buy a Ford Escape that same weekend (it wasn't nearly as spur-of-the-moment as it sounds - we'd been planning it for awhile).


December:

The first weekend in December we went with Jonathan's family to Sparta, NC to get our Christmas tree. This is a Grey family tradition, but was Melinda's first time to participate. We had a lot of fun and it even snowed!


Next up was Melinda's birthday (27th) on the 13th. Chris and Elissa came back to Charlotte and we got together with the Moore family for a birthday lunch at Cheesecake factory. Yum!


All this pretty much led us right into Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with both sets of families and got to visit with some of Jonathan's best friends on the 26th. Amazingly, the Wii made an appearance at all functions. :)



We've had a really great/busy last two months, but one of the most exciting things for us is that we have finally found a new church. It's taken us awhile, but we feel like Life Fellowship is where God is leading us, and we're excited to see how he will grow us and use us in the body there in the coming year.

Happy New Year!