Date Night with my Hubby

After a long and tiresome work week I was so glad to get to spend all of Saturday with my hubby.  We ended the night with a date night to our favorite restaurant in Atlanta; it’s called Two Urban Licks.  It was such a wonderful day and really helped melt the stress of my week away.  

Identity Crisis

The youth group I work with just wrapped up a 10 week series called Identity Crisis.  It was a great series that drilled into how we see ourselves, how we see others/others see us, and how God sees us. 

Recap:

• God defines who we are
• The Father chose us – The Son redeemed us – the Spirit secured us
• We are Saints/Priests vs. Celebrities
• We were DEAD
• Now we are Reconciled to God (Vertical) and to man (horizontal)
• We are new creations in Christ
• We identified with Christ through baptism
• We are imitators of God
• We are identified as the Church
• There are thieves that can steal our identity (Sin, the World, the Evil One)

I enjoyed the conversation we had in our discussion group throughout the series.  The best dialog we had was around judgment and how much we all struggle with loving others as fully as we should.  It was a common struggle for all of us to resist the urge to judge others or be annoyed when people make decisions we disagree with.  We ended the series with writing down ways that we define ourselves including input from our small group members.  Here are a few of our pictures from the final evening.  

Fall Tasting

We are in the process of making this a yearly tradition.  I think it takes at least 3 years in a row to make something a tradition and now we have two years under our belt.  Each mid-October we plan to have a fall tasting.  Kyle, Blair, and Chad round up a wide variety of fall brews and then we spend the afternoon trying them and ranking them based on 5 categories.  At the end of the day we always highlight the top 3-5 favorites and then the favorite from each category. 

This year the top 5 were:

• Red Harvest Stout – Guinness (Stout)
• Pumpkick - New Belgium (Ale)
• The Greater Pumpkin – Heavy Seas (Imperial Ale)
• Mecktoberfest – Olde Mecklenburg (Marzen)
• Oktoberfest – Stoudts (Marzen)

We ended the evening by ordering pizza, building a fort, and watching the Croods on our Apple TV.  It was such a fun afternoon/evening. 

Disclaimer: Drinking all afternoon may result in all your throw pillows and blankets ending up in a big pile and then subsequently constructed into a fort using dining table chairs in the middle of your living room.  It will be so much fun that you won’t care!

Pumpkin Carving

Fall is one of my favorite times a year.  This year we carved pumpkins with our friends Chad & Amanda.  Well Chad, Kyle, and I carved pumpkins while Amanda supervised.  We ended up with a Puking Pumpkin, R2D2, and a monogram pumpkin.  Quite the range but we had a lot of fun and it certainly made us feel more festive.

Montreal: Chihuly Exhibit

In 2004 the Atlanta Botanical Gardens hosted an exhibit by an incredibly talented glass artist named Dale Chihuly.  I have trouble putting into words how beautiful his work is.  It is colorful, ornate, whimsical, and delicate.  He draws a great deal of inspiration from water and nature so his pieces have beautiful movement to the lines even though the pieces are stationary.  The installation in the gardens included hundreds of pieces; several really large installations mimicked plants and natural habitats.  I was in awe.  Even after the exhibit left the gardens kept a few select pieces as permanent exhibit pieces.  I enjoy looking at them every time I go.  So imagine my delight when I saw that the fine arts museum that was just four blocks from our hotel in Montreal was showing a Chihuly exhibit. 

It had been a long day of walking but I couldn't miss a chance to see more of his work.  The exhibit was divided into 5 rooms showcasing various forms of his glass. 

The first was a room with a Persian ceiling.  It was a glass ceiling with hundreds of blown glass pieces being displayed through the clear glass ceilings with light shining through from above.  The juxtaposition of the colored class and the wood beams was really striking.  I would love to mimic the idea in a house one day although it won’t be nearly as magnificent without the Chihuly glass pieces.  It reminded me of a kaleidoscope.  As you moved around the room your view was constantly changing and each view was as beautiful as the one before. 

The second room was dedicated to large scale chandelier pieces.  I was excited to see one my favorites again, the green piece was previously displayed in Atlanta in one of the green houses.  The others were all new to me and really beautiful.  The white one reminded me of the lines that you see when you look at the neck of a swan. 

The third room felt like visiting an undersea reef.  It was a large oval shaped installation that allowed viewers to walk around all sides of it.  It also like the first room offered a different take on the piece from every angle but it was beautiful no matter where you stood in the room.  It felt like Cirque du Soleil meets Finding Nemo and I spent a lot of time walking slowly around the piece in the room, trying to appreciate each vantage point.

The other rooms included large boats filled with blown glass pieces, an electric forest, and a variety of vases.  It was a beautiful and fairly large exhibit.  I enjoyed getting see some of the pieces I loved when I first saw Chihuly and admire new pieces of work as well.  

Montreal: Croissants, Crepes, & Coffee – OH MY!

This post is dedicated just to the amazing breakfast food we consumed while in Montreal. 

Friday: Almond Chocolate Croissant & Latte
Saturday: Nutella Crepe & Iced Mocha
Sunday:  Ham, Cheese, & Egg Crepe

Montreal: Mount Parc du Royal, Notre Dame Cemetery, & Notre Dame Basilica

Sunday began with crepes.  I wish every Sunday began this way!  I kept it simple and had a Nutella crepe and it was divine. 

After our decadent breakfast we headed to Mount Parc du Royal.  It was quite the hike getting to the top which including LOTS of stairs and several breaks to admire the view and catch our breath.  One of my favorite moments during the walk was when we found a prayer tree.  It was so unexpected and I was really touched by it.  It is such a simple act to write a message on a piece of paper and hang it on a tree but it is such a powerful gesture to see the hopefulness of people putting their prayers out into the world and into God’s hands. 

Once we reached the top the view was breathtaking.   After taking in the view we walked around the rest of the park including the lake and several walking trails.  The park was a flurry of activity and it seemed like everyone was enjoying the beautiful weather with their loved ones.  Behind the park is the Notre Dame cemetery.  It is incredibly expansive and has some beautiful monuments.  I get a bit uncomfortable in cemeteries but this one was full of history and was quite beautiful in an eerie way.  We had expected the Notre Dame basilica to be in the cemetery and were disappointed when we realized we were wrong so we finished the afternoon back in old town (we took the train again) and visited the basilica.  It was well worth the trip.  It was so ornate and beautiful on the inside.  It smelled of wood and candles and had a beautiful glow from the rose glass windows in the ceiling.  The woodwork, stained glass, and paintings were incredibly detailed and meticulously maintained.  At the back of the church was an organ with over seven thousand pipes that only a master of the craft could play.  The tour was very interesting and gave a great history about the architect, the materials used, and the history of the basilica. 

We finished our last day at a wonderful restaurant and splurged and tried Iced Cider (a Canadian specialty).  Ice wine and ice cider are made by harvesting and fermenting the fruit at extremely low temperatures (-9 degrees Celsius or lower).  They are served chilled and are really delicious!