My new project!

I won't go into too much detail since you can read about it in my opening post. But here is the link to my new project that I'm holding very near and dear to my heart. It'll be a collection of my pictures that I've taken and was sort of a New Year's Resolution/Reason to become more obsessed with my new "professional" camera. Hope you like and it check back often as this particular site will be updated with new photos regularly. I also have a link on the right-hand side of this blog, so the most recent post from my photo blog will automatically appear. I started it up a few days ago, so go back to the opening post and work your way back :)

Click here to check it out!

Holiday fun

Finally getting around to recapping our holidays. They were busy, but really nice! We went over to Jupiter to spend Christmas with the Calcotes. We drove over on the 23rd and my sister and I worked on our annual gingerbread house. We don't like to make normal gingerbread houses because that's no fun. We always have to have some sort of theme (to our mother's dismay), but we have a good time and it's become a fun tradition. Last year, our theme was "Jersey Shore" (it was pretty awesome. Not gonna lie). This year, we went with one of my sister's favorite shows, "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Behold, Paddy's Pub in all it's sugar-filled glory:

On Christmas Eve, we did our usual Calcote tradition. Church at 4:30, followed by a seafood dinner (we follow the tradition of the "Feast of the 7 Fishes"- an Italian custom of not eating meat on Christmas Eve). After dinner, we get in our pajamas, dad makes eggnog and we watch "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." I can't even count how many years we've been doing this, but I love it!

Christmas morning was fun, as always. We were in the living room opening presents until around 11:00, and then we had a late breakfast and headed over to my aunt and uncle's house for Christmas dinner. Penny was spoiled, of course.

My mom always does a killer job on her tree!

So festive in her Christmas dress!

Penny got to meet her cousin, Foxy.

The following day, we went down to Miami to visit some close friends of ours. My friend Kim had triplets last year, and it had been awhile since we've seen them. They're getting so big and so cute!

Jacob

Jackson

Lydia

After we left their house, we drove by the neighborhood we lived in for 17 years (where I grew up). We got very nostalgic visiting the old park in the neighborhood where we used to play :)

I used to call this the "swiss cheese wall."

Mike even got in on the fun.

Love this place. Brought back such memories!

It was a great weekend and I can't believe the holidays already came and gone! Since Mike was in Georgia for most of December and we didn't throw our annual Christmas party, I just put up a small, fake tree instead of getting a real one. It was perfect, though :) I did decorate, as I love to do.

Penny's first ornament!

The "wedding" section of our tree :)

On the 30th, we went to Michelle's house to celebrate Christmas with the Goreckis and had a wonderful time with the family! It was great to be all together.

Penny was spoiled yet again!

Gorecki family Christmas picture.

Of course, we can't be normal :)

Since we had to forego our annual Christmas party, we hosted a New Year's Eve party which was great! We had a lot of people over and had a great time. It was good to celebrate with close friends. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and here's to a fabulous 2012!

Who's your daddy?

I'll get to my Christmas and NYE re-cap later on. Still have a boatload of pictures to upload from my fabulous new Canon Rebel T3 (my Christmas present from Mike and my parents and the beginning of a new project for me. More on that to come as well...).

In the meantime, we did receive a cool little present right around Christmas time - Penny's DNA results! When we got her from the Humane Society, we were told that she was a basenji/beagle mix. There was absolutely no doubt she's a basenji of some sort. Her markings and characteristics are VERY basenji. At one point, we thought she might be full-breed but a dwarf basenji since the only real characteristics that strayed from the typical basenji is that she's a little smaller and has shorter legs. Here's what a full-breed basenji looks like:

Completely Penny, right? We saw NO signs of beagle in her whatsoever. At first, we thought she might be part dachshund because she has a slightly longer body. As she grew, we saw a little Jack Rusell since her ears started to flop down a  little and she has a lot of terrier traits. To kill the curiosity, we bought a DNA kit. These things are starting to become quite popular among mixed-breed dog owners. Our local newspaper did a story about it, followed by one of our local news channels. The company is called WisdomPanel Insights and you can buy their kits online, at PetSmart and now our local Humane Society sells them (where I got our kit from). It's pretty easy. All you do is fill out your info followed by the dog's sex, birthday and name. Then you swab the inside of their cheek with the 2 provided swabs, seal them back up and send it out. That's it. No descriptions, pictures, etc. are given, so they have no clue what your dog looks like. About 2-3 weeks later, you get a detailed report with a breakdown of the DNA they found in the dog, tracing back to the dog's great-grandparents. A friend of ours did it for her dog that she found on the street, and was completely surprised at what it came back with. It was pretty neat. About 2 weeks later, we got Penny's results back and would have never in a million years have guessed what else she was mixed with...

Her majority is basenji (obviously). She has full-breeds on both sides. Here is how her breakdown works:

Parent A:

Great-grandparents #1A: Basenji, Basenji

Great-grandparents #2A: Newfoundland, mutt

Grandparent #1A: Basenji

Grandparent #2A: Newfoundland mix

Parent A: Basenji/Newfoundland mix

Parent B:

Great-grandparent #1B: Basenji, mutt

Great-grandparent #2B: Basenji, German short-haired pointer

Grandparent #1B: Basenji mix

Grandparent #2B: Basenji/German short-haired pointer 

Parent B: Basenji/German short-haired pointer mix

Crazy, huh?? Since Great-grandparent #2A mated with a mutt and Great-grandparent #1B mated with a mutt, they gave a breakdown of the list of DNA found in those dogs since they were both mixes. Here is what they found:

Clumber Spaniel

Black and tan coonhound

Pyrenean Shepherd

Dachshund (woo-hoo! One correct guess. Sort of)

Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen

No clue what 3 out of 5 of those dogs are, but they sound fancy.

Here's a picture of the main report we got. It was 7 pages so I won't bore you with the whole thing. If you click on it, it'll bring up a larger image.

I'm glad we did the test. It killed the curiosity and also lets us know why she carries so many of the basenji traits. 

Oh yeah - when we were in Jupiter for Christmas, she discovered she can bark. We've had this dog for almost 6 months and never heard anything but a wimper or a pathetic growl. However, since it takes a lot of effort for her to bark, she lets out one or two at a time and that's it for about a week. She's still the world's worst guard dog :)

Hello, Atlanta!

As most of you know, Mike accepted a job in GA about a month ago. It was a risk-taking decision, but so far, so good! He loves what he's doing and really happy with it :) The downside is that he's been there for a few weeks, so I flew up to Atlanta this past weekend to see him and to visit Atlanta for the first time. We had a blast! What a great city Atlanta is!

We stayed at the Renaissance hotel in midtown, which was gorgeous! We had a top floor room with a really great view. I flew in Saturday morning and we went to Coca Cola World (Coke is based in Atlanta). This place was really neat - they had tons of old paraphernalia dating back to the 1800s.

We made a new friend

They also had some cool interactive stuff to play around with.

We got "bubble-ized!"

The famous red couch from American Idol.

Up until last Thursday, the vault with the original recipe for Coca Cola was kept at the SunTrust building downtown. They finally moved it to Coca Cola World in honor of Coke's 125th anniversary. You're only allowed to be in this room for one minute and if you get too close to the vault, an alarm goes off telling you to please move away.

They also had a sampling room with over 60 different kinds of sodas from around the world - all made by the Coca Cola company - and you get unlimited samples. If you've ever been to Epcot and visited the soda sampling room, it's the same concept except WAY bigger. Each kiosk is broken down by region. The Italian soda called Beverly was, by far, the worst one. Way to go, Italians...

After 63 samples...

After we were done, we grabbed lunch and headed to SweetWater Brewery to meet up with Mike's friend Scott and his wife. We love SweetWater beer but unfortunately, it's not that easy to find. They sell them all over GA and have just started branching out to other places. The furthest south you can find it is in Gainesville. The brewery there is great - for $10, you get a pint glass to keep, plus you get 6 tickets to have your glasses filled up with any of the beers they have on tap, along with a brewery tour. It was packed but a cool place to hang out.

After that, we went back to the hotel, went out for dinner and some drinks and then crashed early. We had both been up early that day so we were beat.

The rooftop deck of our hotel.

Someone turned their tree into a snowman. Love it!

Mike and his friend, Scott. Naturally, we can't go anywhere without finding a Gator bar.

On Sunday, we got up and went to brunch and walked around downtown Decatur for a little while. We drove around some of the neighborhoods and then went to Piedmont Park - kind of like a mini Central Park.

Later that night after dinner, Mike took me to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to see their Christmas lights display. It was so pretty and a great way to end the weekend! It felt very festive too :)

Of course, Mike found his orange and blue!

And I found my green and gold!