The Finished Product!

After many hours of cutting, nailing, sanding, staining, varnishing we now have 2 beautiful bookshelves!

Graduation Video

We had a great time celebrating Allie's graduation earlier this month . . . here is a slide show that Greg and I put together for her party

Charleston, Bookshelves and Haircuts

Despite the lack of posting, there actually has been quite a bit going on at the Ross house recently. I just forget to post =)

Our first anniversary was June 17th. It's really hard to believe that we've been married for a year already! It seems like the time has flown since our wedding but at the same time it's really hard for me to remember what it was like without waking up next to Greg every morning. God has been so good to us this past year.

To celebrate, Greg took me down to Charleston where he proposed to me (exactly 1 1/2 years ago, Dec. 17, 2006) and we had a wonderful recounting the past year as well as what exactly we were doing on our wedding day and the day we got engaged.

We spent the first day we were there at the Isle of Palms

This is the spot were Greg proposed to me!

When we got back we started on our next house project, building bookshelves. I LOVE BOOKS and it shows . . . I have boxes and boxes of books that have been piled (somewhat messily, I admit) in our office. We were blessed to have a built in bookcase at the apartment we rented, but we've needed something for our house. We've looked and looked at yard sales and online for several months so we decided it would be best for us to build them ourselves. This is the biggest carpentry project we've taken on, so we're pretty excited about it. We finished the building part on Monday and we'll be working on the sanding and staining part over the next few weeks.

There will be 2 bookshelves this size when we are done

And since our house was getting a little bit of a makeover, we decided to get little makeovers, too. Kind of. Chelle finished up her haircutting division at the Aveda Institute this past week and needed a male and female hair model to test out. I was super excited to get a long needed haircut, and she did a FANTASTIC job! She will be out on the floor cutting hair in the next month or so . . . I highly recommend her!

Greg getting his buzz cut

Yankee Test

Greg and I took the Yankee test. Greg confirmed that he is truly a yank and I confirmed that I am his southern girl =)

Take the test here.

A reason for excitement

Greg is finally back in Charlotte, and I get to see him in a matter of hours rather than days. He flew in this morning, but still had to put in a day's work at the office. I get to go and pick him up this evening and spend the whole entire weekend together! I'm so excited =)

A week ago tonight, the youngest B graduated from high school. That is also a reason for excitement! I can clearly remember our days of home schooling when Chelle and I would be diligently working at the kitchen table and Allie would distract us by crawling under the table and biting our knees. Who would have thought that 12 years later she would be such a diligent student herself and graduating with honors. She been offered and accepted a volleyball scholarship to Montreat College (a Presbyterian college in the mountains near Asheville). I'll miss her very much while she's away, but it's been so exciting to see God work all of this out and clearly open and close doors to leave no doubt where she is supposed to be.

Hanging Rock

I discovered more pictures that I forgot to post . . . I'll try to get better about this . . . =) These pictures are from our camping trip with Evan and Leah a few weeks ago. We spent the night the with them at their apartment on Friday night and then drove to Hanging Rock State Park on Saturday morning (it's about 45 minutes from their house). We hiked up Hanging Rock and lunch on the mountain and then visited a truly beautiful waterfall that afternoon. The boys got to go fishing twice and took Leah and I out with them on one of the trips.

Besides getting to spend time with our friends, my favorite part about the trip was the campfire. I'm kind of a pyro so open flames a real treat for me =) Plus, everything tastes better when it's cooked out of doors (Leah says it's because we go into survival mode . . . ).

Greg and I had a race to see who could set up the tent faster . . . I set up the one on the right =)













We saw this tree on our way up the mountain


















On the summit













The boys at the falls



























We saw this other weird tree while fishing

Hilton Head

I'm finally remembering to put up pictures of our trip to Hilton Head =) We were able to go up for the weekend of Mother's Day with Greg's family. We had a great time with everyone, and the weather couldn't have been more perfect.

Steve and Carol have a time share condo on the island and this was the first year that we all used it. We spent the days on the beach (with a quick trip to walmart to hair clippers for greg), and then went out for dessert at a frozen custard stand that they had become addicted to during the week. We're looking forward to many more family vacations there!

The drive there



























Some crazy guitarist that was performing one night, he was looping everything and playing 4-5 different parts on his old acoustic guitar

Giving Greg the beach cut

Lizzard Boy

This week Greg's on his first business trip since we've been married. Actually, it's his first business trip ever. He'll be in Orlando, FL for a whole week! It's only been 2 days since he left, but I miss him very much already. I didn't think it would be too hard having him gone since the majority of our pre-marriage relationship (close to 4 years) was spent 750 miles apart; but I was wrong =( I was able to spend a lot of time with my family this weekend and my sisters are each coming over a different night to keep me company.

Greg's seeming to have a fun time in FL, though I can tell he misses me. This morning he sent me this picture . . . some things never change, do they?