Life in London

So I realize that I have taken a 2 year hiatus from blogging.  But since we are living in London for the next 1-2 years I wanted to document our time here. I decided to start up the old blog again and will try my best to keep up with it! I thought this would be a good way to share photos and stories with our friends and family while we are here.

Just to backtrack; Matt started his positon here at the Blackbaud London office 

on 1/13/14. Although the weather is not great we have really been enjoying the city, people and food here! Here are some pictures from London from our first month here.

The London Eye

Tower Bridge

Trafalger Square

Produce Stand at Borough Market

Oxo Rooftop Bar

Mountain Weekend

The weekend of February 10th -12th we planned a couples mountain weekend getaway at my Grandparents mountain house in Highlands, NC. It was so nice to get away for the weekend. We went with 2 other couples (The Masters and soon to be Pratts ) and we all had a great time! It snowed a lot while we were there too! It didn’t stick, but I think it is safe to say it was the most snow we will see in NC this winter. On Friday night, we relaxed by the fire and played some drinking games. On Saturday the guys played golf (yes in the snow- hah!) and poker and the girls went to downtown to go shopping, it was a VERY successful trip (maybe too successful!)

Saturday night we went and had a good dinner at Cypress then went and had some drinks at the Ugly Dog.

It was an awesome weekend! I can’t wait to go back when it’s a little warmer, we are already planning our next trip there.

Mary Tyler Bolt

This past weekend I got to go and meet my new niece! Marion (Mary) Tyler Bolt was born on 2/16 at 12:06 AM, 7.13 pounds and 20 inches.
She was just so beautiful, sweet and cuddly, I could have held her all day! I got to see her Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I just could not get enough, I am so in love with her. She looks so much like Britt when she was a baby, I am so excited to see her grow up. Brittney and Matt are doing great and I know they will both be wonderful parents! Here are some pictures from the weekend…

While in Greenville, we got to spend some time with the in-laws (and Abby!). Matt’s Dad and Katie had a get together on Saturday night due to the fact that they are moving to Louisville this week. We will be very sad to not have them so close by but it is only a temporary 2 year move for his job and then they will be back. It was so great to see them and spend some time with sweet Abby, she is getting so big!

Look at her looking at the camera, what a ham! :)

So precious!

As you can see Matt and I had a very baby filled weekend! We are so blessed with beautiful, sweet and adorable baby girls in our family!

2011 Recap

Ok so I must confess, sometimes it is really hard for me to motivate myself to keep this blog alive. Not to mention I am not even sure if anyone reads it anymore-haha! But I do love having the documentation…At the end of 2011 I was looking back at my posts from the year and it is a great way to remember all of the highlights.

However, it was a reminder that I did not do so well at keeping my resolutions for 2011. So this year I am not going to post them and we will see if that helps with my follow through!

2011 was a great year for us! As I did last year in 2010, here is a summary of all of the great things I experienced and new places I saw throughout the year:

2011 Highlights:

• January- New Years in New Orleans!
• February- Weekend trips to Charleston for Valentines day and ATL for Courts B-day
• March- Matt and I went to Vegas!
• April-I became an Aunt to my beautiful niece Grace Austen Rowland!
• May- Turning 26 (but let’s face it, nothing too exciting about that…)
• June- Work trip to Papagayo in Costa Rica, Kingsmore Beach Week and Loadholdt Beach Week (or weekend in our case :p) both in Charleston!
• July- Matt and I had the best 10 day vacation ever: Amalfi Coast, Italy (Sorrento), Rome, Santorini, Greece and Athens! Totally a once in a lifetime bucket list trip that I will never forget!
• August- OUR ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! Work Trip to Italy (Florence and Rome), Chicago for Andrew and Christine’s Wedding and Jess and Adams wedding in Charlotte
• September- I think our whole month of September was dedicated to Clemson Football!
• October- work trip to Vegas, small college reunion for the Clemson/UNC game and Becca and Kyles wedding in Spartanburg
• November- Charleston for Cam and Heathers Wedding
• December- My beautiful sister in law Abigail Katherine Kern was born! Clemson Tigers won the ACC Championship and I got a new car!

We rung in the new year at Snowshoe, WV with Maggie, Neil, Becca and Kyle. We had a great time, although I discovered my skiing has not improved but has in fact only gotten worse. Nonetheless it was a fun time with great friends! Here are some pictures from our trip of us bringing in the New Year.

2012 has already started out great so far with our New Years Ski Trip and a belated Incentive Travel Solutions “Work Christmas Party” aka weekend getaway for us and a guest in Charleston! I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for us!

Christmas Recap

Ok so as ALWAYS I have A LOT to catch you up on.

First and Foremost is Abigail Katherine Kern! Matt’s dad and his step mom are the proud parents of beautiful Abigail! She was born on 12/19/11 weighing 7 pounds and 5 ounces, just in time for Christmas! We got to spend time with her over the Holidays and she was just SO sweet!

Proud brother!

me with my new sister in law!

Speaking of Christmas…we had such a wonderful Christmas this year! Christmas is just such a great reminder of how blessed we are. We got to spend time with all of our families and of course got some great presents!

My FAVORITE present I received was from my sweet husband who TOTALLY surprised me (which I might add is very hard to do!) I had been telling Matt if he was looking for Christmas ideas for me that I really wanted a Michael Kors watch. He had asked me several questions about it so I was not totally surprised when I opened his present on Christmas morning to find this Michael Kors box:

However, I was very surprised when I opened the box and there was no watch, but a note instead...

So you can imagine how surprised I was when I walked outside to the garage and saw this:

I was in total shock!!!!

Just to preface this, Matt’s car lease was up this month so in November and December we had been doing lots of online research looking for cars for him. We were looking at some used SUV’s but we were nowhere close to deciding on anything. Matt’s stepmom had recently gotten a new model of this same Lexus and so he knew that I loved it but we had not been looking at any cars even close to this nice and we certainly were not looking at cars for ME! I had bought a new Camry after college so I was not expecting to be getting a new car to drive for a looooong time. I was so surprised that he could pull something like this off without me having any clue! He is too good to me, it was such a great and sweet surprise and not to mention I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!!!!

Here are some more photos from the Holidays...


9 people deep in the car on the way to see the lights and feed the animals at Hollywild



Matt playing Santa

Christmas Town USA!

C-L-E-M-S-O-N T-I-G-E-RRRRR-S

So I know I have not posted anything about Clemson Football yet...and that's because I went so long without posting I decided to save it all for one long post.
In case you have been living under a rock...here is an up to date record of our football schedule this season. (Sorry it did not copy and paste how I wanted it too)

2011 Clemson Football Schedule
09/03/11 vs. Troy Clemson, SC W, 43-19
09/10/11 vs. Wofford Clemson, SC W, 35-27
09/17/11 vs. Auburn Clemson, SC W, 38-24
09/24/11 vs. Florida State Clemson, SC W, 35-30
10/01/11 at Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA W, 23-3
10/08/11 vs. Boston College Clemson, SC W, 36-14
10/15/11 at Maryland College Park, MD W, 56-45
10/22/11 vs. North Carolina Clemson, SC W, 59-38
10/29/11 at Georgia Tech Atlanta, GA L, 31-17
11/12/11 vs. Wake Forest Clemson, SC W, 31-28
11/19/11 at N.C. State Raleigh, NC L, 37-13
11/26/11 at South Carolina Columbia, SC L, 34-13
12/03/11 vs. Virginia Tech Charlotte, NC W, 38-10
Discover Orange Bowl 01/04/12 vs. West Virginia Miami Gardens, FL 8:30 p.m. ET

Our record so far is 10-3 INCLUDING an ACC Championship win! But this season has been a little bit of a roller coaster. After a less than stellar season in 2010, my expectations were not too high for 2011. Granted, at the start of each new season my hopes are always up for a great season but I could have never imagined we would be as good as we were this season.

We started off with an EIGHT game winning streak and every Clemson fan (myself especially) was on an ultimate high. I, myself thought that the toughest part of our schedule was behind us and we were well on our way to an undefeated season and maybe, just maybe, even a shot at the National Championship (I know, I know, I got WAY ahead of myself).

Then came our first loss to Georgia Tech on Halloween weekend, man that was a rough day of disappointment- but I was still incredibly proud of my Tigers! The next game that followed was Wake Forrest, that game was a nail biter and way too close for comfort, but we pulled through and I started to get my excitement back. Then came the worst part of the season starting with the NC State game, which just plain terrible, followed by the USC game. USC is such a personal game because of the rivalry so it is ALWAYS one we want to win so badly and it is always a huge let down to see us lose that game. We went from, at one point being ranked number 5 in the BCS to moving all the way down to number 20. It was confusing to see a team that was doing SO well and playing so well at the beginning and middle of the season get worse at the end.

Nevertheless, we made it to the ACC Championship, in CHARLOTTE I might add. We were set to play Virginia Tech, who at the time was ranked number 5 while we were number 20. Even though we had already beat them once this season we seemed to be getting worse while they seemed to be getting better. So although I was hopeful, I did not forsee the game going so well, but even though my spirits were down after our last two losses I was still excited for what I knew would be a fun weekend. We had tons of family and friends come to town for this game. We hosted a big tailgate at our house all day on Saturday, I love night games! Boy was I wrong about the game, it was AMAZING! The Tigers played so well and we took home the ACC Championship victory 38-10, which we have not done since 1991. We also secured a spot in the Orange Bowl in Miami! The energy in that game was incredible and I could not have been more proud of my Tigers!!!

I have been a Clemson fan my whole life and have been going to most home games since I was one year old. I have seen a lot of mediocre seasons and have loved and pulled for them regardless. But this season was special, it shows a lot of promise for us with such a young and talented team. I think alot of it has to do with our coach, Dabo. I really love him as a coach and people can say what they want about him, but I think he is very talented, truly believes in our team and will take us great places. This season I have loved Clemson football a little more than ever and I have never been so proud and excited for the future of the team.

Here are some pictures from some of the home games this season...

New friend at the Esso

Right after we got done singing Eye of the Tiger

And some of my favorite ACC Championship pictures...

Giant Jenga!

Post Flip Cup Tournament

Jello Shots!

Post Win!

Go Tigers!!!