finally finished friday: 2010 edition.

ladies and gentlemen, today is the last day of 2010. lots {and lots} has happened this year. big changes. good changes. a few bad changes, but everything happens for a reason.

and now, i present to you, this year in review.

in january, i was working at sor, back home in virginia. i miss working there so much {i also just miss working}. here's chelsea, me and erica at our holiday party.

in february, austin turned 24. we were supposed to go see motion city soundtrack in north carolina for his birthday, but it snowed. a lot. so we couldn't make it. but i went skiing in my front yard.

in march, my sister turned twenty one. i went down to north carolina to spend her birthday weekend with her.

in april, my julie boo turned five years old. we {meaning me, juliet and sophie} had a little party for her.

in may, austin graduated from utc and began working at life care center.

and my sister threw a wedding shower for me. katie and lindsy surprised me!

lots happened in june.

i moved out of elliston to chattanooga.

my little brother seth graduated from high school {this picture is from last fall at his senior night football game}. now he's attending appalachain state and playing snare in the marching band there.

our friends threw a couple's shower for austin and me with all our friends. and in the same night we met charlie daniels {for real}. here's danielle, me, austin and katie at riverbend watching the charlie daniels band.

i had my bachelorette party with all my girls {don't worry about that birthday sign}.

oh yeah, we got MARRIED on june 26. it was perfection.

and we went to jamaica, austin planned the whole trip without me knowing any details of where we were going.

in july, we celebrated the 4th with rj and lindsy.

in august, rar j graduated from utc and moved to memphis to start grad school.

in september, we celebrated dinger's second birthday. he got presents and a cake {of some seafood mixture}.

in october, we celebrated my twenty-fourth birthday and we went to utc's homecoming game. here's sarah, katie and me at tailgating before the game.

we had our zombie dinner party and halloween.

in november, we went to the cabin in georgia to spend the weekend. juliet loves the outdoors.

we saw motion city soundtrack at variety playhouse in atlanta.

and in december, i did the mainx24fashion show dressed as sally.

joee and copper moved in with us.

and we had lots of christmas, festivus and family fun!

and that's our year in review. i hope you all have had a wonderful year and we wish all the best to you and your's for 2011.

happy new year!

last week of 2010.

i'd say it's been a relatively busy week. and a really good one.

first, i did some crafting. austin and i had wanted to get a christmas ornament to represent this year. obviously, the most important event this year was our wedding. we found some pretty cute ones at the mall, but, because i'm... frugal... {ok, fine, i'm cheap} i didn't want to pay twenty dollars for an ornament. instead, i decided to make some.

i used shrinky dinks to make my ornaments, my mom taught me about the fun of shrinky dinks. she used to make ornaments out of them when she was younger. i only made the second ornament because i had some small scrap pieces of the plastic left over. and i also didn't have a regular hole punch, so even for the ribbon holes i had to use my heart-shaped punch. oh well.

that night, joee and austin wanted to head to this new irish pub that opened up just down the street from our house called mchale's brewhouse. they just opened last week sometime so we stopped by and the boys had a drink.

wednesday was the best day ever because life care gave austin the day off from work! something about new years being a holiday, overtime and what-not. whatever. doesn't matter. because austin and i got to spend the whole day together running errands and shopping! we had some giftcards from christmas and wednesday was the perfect day to use them. my sister, jessie, gave us each thirty dollar gift cards to target so i bought three cute shirts and austin bought a mario game for the wii. austin finally got a hair cut, we grabbed a few things at the store we needed and then we went on a date. :) we got a gift card to outback steakhouse from tim's sister and her husband and we had some free movie tickets, so free dinner and a movie for us!

austin was sooo pumped from the moment we got the gift card about getting steak and king crab legs...

i got some parmesan pasta, it was pretty tasty. and i got cheesecake for dessert. of course. because i'm addicted. then we went to see the tourist, with angelina jolie and johnny depp. it was pretty good {especially since it was free}.

i've been spending lots of quality time with the critters and they never cease to entertain me. i guess copper has seen julie and dinger napping on the top of the couch, so he thought he'd give it a try. he tried spinning and spinning to make the perfect spot, but he just couldn't get it right... but i got a good laugh.

juliet some how got a hold on the toy that had been torn up by copper {i meant to sew it back up, but forgot} and she destroyed it the rest of the way. it was a massacre, but she had a really good time {sorry these pictures are blurry, but she was having so much fun playing with the fluff she wouldn't sit still}.

fortunately, she doesn't eat the fluff, just tears it up {kinda like how she shreds paper}. she also ripped the nose off her christmas hedgehog and carried that around for a while. it was pretty cute.

and i've got big news!

wait for it...

i've got a job! last week, i met with the owner of a corporate wellness company about some openings within his company. and then this week, i went to one of their exercise classes to see how they're done. and yesterday, we set up when i would be coming in to the office to fill out paperwork and set up the schedule! the only downside to the job will be the drive, it will be about an hour trip each way, but i've done that before so we'll see how it goes.

i guess that's about it for the week. :)

happy holidays from the heards.

{since i only gave a sneak peek of our holiday card before, i wanted to share them in their entirety for everyone to see}

i hope you all got everything you wanted from santa and enjoyed your time with family and friends!

happiest holidays!

from rikki, austin, juliet, schrodinger and guinevere

there's no place like home for the holidays.

even though we were slightly concerned with the weather forecast, austin and i loaded up the car and the dog and headed for virginia early friday morning. after the six hour trip with surprisingly little traffic, we made it to mom and timmy's.

christmas eve we did dinner at tim's sister's house with all of tim's family. we had a delicious meal of green beans, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, corn pudding, ham, rolls, sweet potatoes, and deviled eggs. ok, so i only ate the beans, mac and cheese, and potatoes. and of course, i had plenty of dessert.

my dad's family also does their christmas gathering on christmas eve, so we headed over there after we played some wii at tim's sister's house.

here's my sister, jessie, and my brother, seth, opening their gifts from austin and me. {poor jessie was sick and feeling terrible. her littleeye was all red and swollen, too}.

we got them red-hat-tee-shirts {i made them, actually}. the red-hat-tee-shirts is a long standing inside joke kind of thing between the four of us, but at this point nobody can remember what exactly was so funny about it, just that it's funny. jessie and seth said they were so close to getting us the same thing, but changed their minds last minute. how funny would it have been if all four of us would have opened the same present?

seth decided to rock the red-hat-tee-shirt for the rest of the night.

austin and i gave dad and robin a gift basket filled with organic pastas, pasta sauces, and other things.

the pups sat quietly while gifts were exchanged.

christmas morning, austin and i slept in waaaay late, since we had done so much running around the day before. when we finally got up, it was a white christmas for sure.

since my brother and sister-in-law planned to bring both of their dogs, timmy decided to keep the christmas tree outside {the boxer likes to steal ornaments off the tree}. it's a little charlie brown like, but that's ok. :)

mom and timmy got austin the coffee maker he's been wanting since we got married. it's one of those fancy ones that makes one cup of the specialty coffees {and it makes hot chocolate, too!}.

i got a new emergency preparedness kit for my car {mine was stolen a few years ago} and some fix-a-flat!

and we gave mom and timmy a gift basket of some wine-themed things, complete with wine, of course.

after we opened gifts, we went up the road to mom's parent's house for our usual brunch-like meal. my uncle lewis came in {only getting stuck in the snow in a few spots} and we all just hung out for a little bit.

juliet got to play in the snow.

our last christmas day stop was at robin's parent's house. austin and i braved the continued snow to head up the mountain to see the rest of the family for a few hours. it didn't stop snowing, so we couldn't really stay too long...

yesterday morning, austin and i packed up the car and headed down the road back to tennessee. the roads were still a little bit rough, but we made it.

it was great seeing all of my family. i only wish that i could have stayed longer, because i miss them all so much. hopefully i'll be able to head back to virginia sometime soon to visit again. and i think austin and i are going to try to organize a little ski trip with the trumps in boone to visit seth.

i hope everyone had a wonderful christmas with your family and friends!