it's not dead...yet.

Aaron says the blog is dead (let's be honest he's the one who's been keeping it alive and now he's stopped).

To revive it, I'm putting up pictures from the last few weeks.....It hasn't been too eventful lately, honestly.

It's snowed a couple of more times since we've been back.
nothing sticks to the ground down in the valley but the mountains are always beautiful.

We celebrated 6 years of dating

We watched this guy tell some epic stories...
we couldn't understand a word he said.

And took some pictures around town

taxi

that guy was caught off guard

sneak shot

how we celebrate

This is footage from a Christmas party I attended this Christmas season.  It doesn't seem like Christmas parties in China have changed much since I attended my first one in 2006.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXwYDnqWAho (in case the video below takes a while to load)

carolina style, all the way

Aaron and I celebrate things with hot dogs.  When we got engaged we ate hot dogs.  When Carolina won the national championship we ate hot dogs.  To celebrate vacation in Thailand, we ate hot dogs.

I love this face.

Our fourth anniversary, however falls on Thanksgiving....so this time we'll celebrate with sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce.

I love life with this hot dog loving guy.  These four years have been my favorite four years of life (including college - which was pretty fun).  Aaron adds fun, challenge, growth, patience, grace, laughs, adventure, and a new understanding of Jesus to my life.

He and our four years of marriage is what I'll be saying I'm thankful for, when asked at the thanksgiving table today.

Summer continued: cookouts & the fourth of july

Uncle Chris and Aaron
Chris is literally grilling every type of meat you can imagine

turns out I only took pictures of Eliza and/or Davis
on the fourth

getting the camera set up

got it working....still an awkward angle
friends from Charlotte!  Thanks for the cookout Graham and Seth!

meet the new Mrs. O'Hare

Virginia became a Mrs. and an aunt in the same day.  Welcome to the family!

Golden Birthday review

I turned 29 on the 29th of May.


This is the first birthday where I officially feel old - leaving my twenties in just a year.

To kick off the last year in my twenties, we decided to go big.


I woke up on the morning of my birthday to a collapsing tent under the weight of the snow from the storm the night before.  We kicked the snow off, ate breakfast, then set off for climbing a glacier.  It actually wasn't as hardcore as it sounds - I mean I didn't throw up like I did hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge (which according to our friend Jarred whether or not I am throwing up is his new litmus test for if something is hardcore).

We came back to the city a couple of days later, where Aaron and I got caught in a rain storm heading to one of my favorite restaurants to celebrate my birthday.....only to get there and discover it was closed.....so we had McDonald's for dinner instead.


The next night Aaron took me out on a date to the nice Italian restaurant he took me to for our anniversary.

AND then the next night he surprised me by taking me to the previously closed restaurant for a surprise dinner with some local friends.

It was a good birthday.  I think it's going to be a good year.

Christmas.....finally

It's been so long since Christmas.  I'm a slacker.  At this point, I've lost the desire to write about it.  So hopefully the pictures will show how much fun we had at Christmas.  So here they are. Not many words to share, just pictures and smiles....and thankfully, i didn't wake up to a truck driver like I did last christmas.

Harvey's weekly photo shoot
after a Christmas eve brunch with Josh and Danielle

Josh and Aaron on Christmas eve

the rodgers jersey jarred and shelley gave aaron for christmas
(it's not as huge as this picture makes it look)

aaron and jarred on christmas day
playing with jarred's christmas chopper

playing outside after christmas brunch

aaron and john enjoying leftovers

two of John's (above) kids
they were watching the jungle book

skyping home

we had a second christmas on the 26th when we got back home
and opened the gifts waiting for us sent in packages

aaron getting a butter cream candle
thanks will and krista (you know how much he loves butter cream)

clocks!
i made a time zone wall with these clocks.

lit the last candle

reading all of the christmas cards that came in the mail!
thank you so much for the cards.  I love them.

essentials

at least i'm calling them essentials.

These are the things that have so far made the month of December great:

the milk frother i got from ikea to make coffee
and hot chocolate with frothed milk!

egg nog!  thanks danielle for sharing your recipe

the fireplace in our tv 

the gingko trees turned yellow
fall came at Christmas time this year

homemade pizzas

hanging out with Jackie (Asian Kate's son)

pilgrim days

Thanksgiving was great.  To kick off thanksgiving, Wednesday night we had a simple meal with some friends in the city. We ate bean soup and cornbread, instead of all of the casseroles that we're used to these days on Thanksgiving.  We all played the part of either a pilgrim or an indian.  Aaron revisited his pilgrim days, and I revisited my childhood of playing in the woods and finding arrowheads.

I'm welcoming them to the harvest

it was funny at the time, but now i'm not really sure what was going on in this picture

 Also, I realize that it is considered politically incorrect to call Native Americans, "Indians" AND where we live actual Indians, from India, more readily come to mind when I hear the word "Indians", but for some reason I could not talk about Thanksgiving without saying Indians.  It just kept slipping out.  It's like I was brainwashed as a child.  The mascot for my elementary school was "Indians."  The Waxhaw Indians.  It was awesome.  But not nearly as awesome as my high school mascot - the Rebels.  I think you see where I'm coming from now, and can understand why I can't seem to let go of Indians in the thanksgiving story.  Maybe if I had grown up going to the school of Native Waxhaw Americans, this would not have happened.


Thursday we got together with some of foreign friends in town for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was kind of like the first thanksgiving in that it involved people from different cultures coming together to thank God for our blessings (4 countries represented at our dinner), but this one involved a lot more butter.

pre-thanksgiving video watching

That's right we had football on the slingbox.  Thanksgiving was complete.

carving the turkey

post meal book reading by Victoria

enjoying the meal

Friday after Thanksgiving friends came to town, and we spent the next few days enjoying the western restaurants in our city, watching our friends play football (aaron's shoulder kept him out of the game), making barbecue, and just loving hanging out with them.  We'll get to see them again for Christmas.  They are literally like our family in China, we see them every couple of months and during the holidays.  This Thanksgiving, I am really thankful for them, knowing that these years of us all living in China are sweet years.

unfortunately I don't have pictures of two of the guys that go with these ladies
so the ladies will just have to represent all of them.  Also, look at that cute little guy.

It was a nice sunny day for football.  That's right.  That's the sun.
I took a picture of it, and I'm not blind.  We debated for a long time about
whether that was the sun or the moon.  Also, it's only that yellow in this picture
because i saturated the color when editing it.

the only guy, besides mine to make the pictures.  sorry guys.

"and I pray that someday, I can find me a redneck boy."
that mustache was my "early christmas present."

Christmas decorations!

barbecue!  smoking hickory chips on the grill.

We got a 5 kg pork shoulder for this barbecue.  We realized, a little to late, how important it is to let the butcher know you want the butt end of the shoulder - hence the term boston butt.  Our butcher didn't know american cuts, and I didn't tell him the butt end, so we ended up with the whole shoulder (the curve of the shoulder), taking away some of the meat I was expecting.  Last time we fed like 10 people with 5kgs of meat.  This time 5 kg didn't even satisfactorily feed 6 people.  Fail.  You live, you learn.  And apparently in China, I am learning a lot about butchery.