What a week!

Jaryn finally made it back to Tennessee on Sunday after spending a week and a half in New York with her family. What was supposed to be a weekend trip to attend cousins' bridal showers turned into a week and a half while her Grandma Ruth was in the hospital! Thankfully, Grandma Ruth is home and doing well, and Jaryn had a good time visiting with friends that she didn't think she was going to be able to see. Pictures soon!

Whew!

Our life has been anything but lazy lately! This past weekend was spent in Nashville with the youth group from our church at a youth event called Acquire the Fire. It was awesome, but exhausting! Pictures will be posted soon.

This coming weekend Jaryn will be flying to New York for Abbie's and Jesyca's (both are cousins) bridal showers, which are both on Saturday. That makes it nice and convenient for the out of towners! Nic will be hanging out in TN with friends. Kyle, a friend from college who lives in Georgia is going to be coming up to keep him company!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NIC!!

Nic's 23rd Birthday was Friday, March 6th. We had a fun-filled weekend with friends to celebrate! The first few pictures are from our small group on Tuesday night celebrating both Nic and our friend Scott's birthday. Then on Friday night we had some friends over and we hung out in the Clubhouse of our apartment complex (where we had Thanksgiving with Jaryn's family). On Saturday, we had a delicious birthday lunch at PF Changs! mmm!



A look at the birthday cake from small group on Tuesday! It was delicious!


Singing happy birthday to Scott and Nic!

The set up! I made artichoke dip, stuffed mushrooms and pumpernickel bread dip! We also had an assortment of fruit, veggies & dip, and cheese & crackers.

Tracy, Nic and Dave

Scott, Todd and Matt hanging out by the food

Krystal and Ariel playing pool.


Grace and Micah playing ping-pong!


Blowing out the non-existent candles on his birthday cookie cake! Note the beer glasses on the table that were a present from friends!


Finally, on Saturday, we used up a PF Chang's gift card on a birthday lunch and did some shopping at the mall to use up an assortment of gift cards from Christmas and his birthday!

A Dinning Room Table AT LAST!

Here it is!! Our beautiful dinning room table! I thought it would be a long time before we had anything to sit at when we had people over, and I was sick of having to borrow tables and chairs from the apartment complex when we were having company. We could NOT believe it when, out of nowhere, people from church wanted to buy us a table and chairs! It even has a leaf so that it expands!








This was the first meal we made for company. We had our friend Chris over and had deluxe burgers with sweet potato fries and macaroni salad. It was a pretty delicious meal! Of course I had to take a picture of the table all set up! It was a pretty exciting night, that is for sure.
:-)

Luke's Visit!

Luke came to visit during a break from school and one of the first things we did was go to our friend Mark's house that is way out in the boondocks and shoot guns. This is probably the most redneck thing we have ever done!

Nic shooting the .22

Luke shooting the handgun

My turn! Shooting the 12 gauge.

We decided to make some s'mores in the fireplace!



The s'mores were delicious!

Luke trying to be cool.

Luke and Jaryn went to The Carter House in Franklin, TN. This is the site of a major Civil War battle that literally happened on the lawn of this family's home. You should all look up the Battle of Franklin, it is pretty interesting.

This picture was taken from where the Union trenches actually were. The marks on the building are from the Confederate soldiers shooting at them during the battle.

The basement where the family hid out during the battle.

Luke in the car, texting Marissa while Jaryn's aunt takes us on a driving tour of Nashville on Luke's last day in TN :-(

Pictures from Christmas

Getting off the plane in Chicago to get a connecting plane to Buffalo on our way to NY... It was FREEZING and snowing. This trip was a nightmare! We were supposed to get in to Buffalo around midnight, but we didn't end up getting in until 3am, and left the airport at 4am because it took so long to get off the plane and get our luggage! Ultimately we were just thankful to have made it home at all because there were a lot of people in O'Hare that probably weren't going to make it out of the airport before Christmas.

Christmas morning at Jaryn's parents' house. We had Christmas morning here, then Jaryn's cousins came over and we did Christmas with her Mom's side of the family (the Coopers). In the afternoon we went to Nic's mom's house. We had Christmas with her side of the family a couple of days later.

Our Christmas present from Justin... Thanks!

Us in our Christmas sweaters, with Zoie!

The most important part of any Cooper family gathering... the food! A delicious assortment of quiches!

Christmas with the Cooper family... Jaryn and Uncle Gary playing Santas

Jaryn's family on Christmas... Nic, Jaryn, Rebekah, Dad w/ Zoie, Mom, Justin, Lauren and Princess.

Nic playing with Carah, on Christmas at his mom's house

Nic's sister Amber with their friend Carah

Mom and dad, out to eat at Little Venice in Binghamton, NY

Jaryn's family at her grandparents' house in Binghamton, NY


Recap: We flew to NY for Christmas to spend time with our families! It was a crazy trip. We packed a lot into a few days and were totally exhausted by the time we got back to Tennessee, but of course it was worth it because we got to see most of our family and a few friends as well.

Pictures from Thanksgiving (Read from the bottom up, haha!)

Everyone outside of RCA Studio B


Here I am sitting at Elvis's piano (the one that he used to record his songs) at RCA Studio B.


Jaryn and Marianne kissing Tim McGraw at the Country Music Hall of Fame


Elvis's golden piano at the Country Music Hall of Fame with Elizabeth, Marianne and Derek


Everyone after the Rockettes show at the Opry. The girl in the pink shirt in front was actually in the show. She is a relative of a friend of Elizabeth's. She wasn't a Rockette.


And we walked around the Opryland Hotel. Here is a picture of us by a "tree" of pointsettias.


On our outing to the Opry, we stopped by Liz's work and she checked Nic's hearing.

Oops! Haha we had a few problems with the dishwasher! Nic spent most of the night trying to clean this up!


After dinner we played Balderdash! It was a lot of fun!


Everyone! Us, Jaryn's parents, her sisters, Aunt Linda, Dick, Debbie, Tricia and Elizabeth!


All the food! It was so delicious!


Here is the picture of the whole set up... we rented out the Rec. Room of our apartment complex so that we would have enough room for everyone. It worked out really well!


Mom and Dad checking the turkey!! mmm!


Ok, so bear with me. I have never done a blog with pictures in it, and I don't think this is turning out so well! haha! But these are just a few pictures from when Jaryn's family came down for Thanksgiving. Her parents and sisters, Aunt Linda (who lives in Nashville) and her boyfriend Dick, and her cousins's Elizabeth (goes to school in Nashville), Tricia and their mom Debbie were all over at our place.

After Thanksgiving, Marianne (Elizabeth and Tricia's sister) and her Fiance Derek came out from Greenville to hang out for the weekend. We went to the Grand Ole Opry to see the Rockets, and to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Quick Update

Ok, we have been living in Tennessee since the end of June 2008. Nic is working as a family counselor for an organization called Youth Villages. It is a pretty intense job at times with the situations he deals with, and the fact that he is basically on call all the time... case in point, he was at the hospital from 1:30am-5am one night a few weeks ago. Jaryn is working as a subsitute teacher, and really only subs at the Middle School across the street from our apartment. It is pretty convenient! I'm generally there at least 3 days a week.

We have had a lot of fun exploring the area. There are a lot of neat historical places around and of course Nashville is a little less than an hour away, and there is always something fun to do there. We've also found a church that we love and have been going to since mid-October. We are involved in a small group there, which has become our "Tennessee family," and we have also been able to get involved with the youth group.

We have some exciting stuff coming up in the next few months and into the summer, so stay posted for updates and pictures!

Howdy!

Hey everyone, this is Jaryn. I decided to create this blog so that people could keep up with us down here in Tennessee and see what we are up to. We have had a few other blogs but Nic was in charge of those. They were all fancy and technical and what not so I had no idea to post to them. Since I have a lot more down time than Nic does, I figured it made more sense for me to be in charge of the blogging. Expect another blog soon with an actual update on our life and pictures and all that fun stuff.