Halloween Birthday in Athens

This post is a little late coming. We had the pleasure of celebrating Patterson's 30th birthday and Halloween in Athens Georgia with our good friends Katie and William. They threw a little party, some more good friends came by, then we went out to enjoy the Halloween festivities in a town that really does it up right!

The theme this year was "The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." Patterson was Miss South Carolina. If you're not familiar with her, you can watch the classic video clip here.

I was running Forrest Gump.

Katie was Joan of Arc (she had some fire on those legs not shown in this photo).

William was John Belushi from his classic SNL skit Little Chocolate Donuts.

Rob and Faith were a matador and bull.

Cristyn was Bride of Frankenstein and Andy was the Tooth Fairy.

Saturday Courtney and Sophia came to visit we enjoyed seeing them. It was a fun weekend that went way too fast. We really appreciated William and Katie having us at their house and throwing the party!

Backwoods Jam

PJ and I broke away from the grind in mid October to go camping in the Cherokee National Forest for a night. It was a great opportunity for us both to meditate on being new fathers while playing guitar and scaring off wildlife by singing out of key.

We printed off a bunch of Dillon, Petty, and Counting Crows and I brought along my library of Dead tabs. It was a heck of a good time that didn't last nearly long enough.

Hallow's Eve Past

Ahhh, Halloween, my personal favorite of the not-so-serious holidays! I love that there is a dedicated day in the fall where it is perfectly acceptable to dress up in a wacky costume and otherwise go about your usual business. We're planning to spend this upcoming Halloween weekend with our friends Katie and William in Athens, GA, which is always a hoot! In preparation for the event, I was going through past Halloween photos, and thought some of them were worth sharing.

Halloween 2003
Circus Freaks: The Mime & the Human Pretzel

Halloween 2004: Dolly Parton & Willy Nelson

Halloween 2005: And They Came from Outer Space!

My Spock ears were adorable but unfortunately not very comfortable. Brad's ENTIRE costume was made from duck tape, really, it was quite the engineering feat.

Halloween 2006: Portrayal of Weird Al's "White and Nerdy,"
a spoof of Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bon's "Ridin"

If you are wondering what Brad is holding, it's Pi to one thousand places. Riiiight.

The rear view, hahaha

Halloween 2007: Gone Country

You can see I took the more traditional Nashville back-up singer wannabe route, while Brad went for the more specific (but I must say well done) red neck variety.

So because of the Beijing Olympics and the upcoming presidential elections, the theme for this year's Halloween extravaganza is The Thrill of Victory / The Agony of Defeat. I plan to post lots of pictures from the festivities. I've heard rumors that several college friends are planning to make the trip, so it should be a great time!

Groundbreaking for the Ethanol Biorefinery

So for the past year in my position with the Office of Bioenergy Programs at UT, we've been working towards constructing and operating a cellulosic ethanol biorefinery in Vonore, TN. Whereas most ethanol currently comes from corn, our plant will be producing ethanol from switchgrass, corn cobs and other non-food plant material. With the recent increases in food prices, UT's goal is to move toward a renewable and sustainable form of domestic transportation fuel that won't negatively impact our food supply.

The plan has been moving along great, and last week we held the official goundbreaking ceremony for the plant. Due to the large amount of support from the state government ($70 million over 5 years), the governor and many state and federal legislatures were on hand for the event, which made it pretty exciting!

We estimated attendance at around 300

All the VIPs, including Gov. Bredesen, Sen. Bob Corker, Congressmen Zach Wamp and John Duncan, UT President John Peterson and others



Me & Phil

Me & Bob...I thought he'd be taller

I loved the bluegrass band!

So as some may or may not know, my position at UT was 100% grant funded, and the funds have run out. So yesterday was my official last day of work. I was initially bummed, but then realized that with the baby coming in April, this is the perfect opportunity to take some time to be at home and get everything ready. I'm just glad that I got to see the Biofuels Initiative project through to the groundbreaking, since I spent over a year working on it.

12 Week Ultrasound

The ultrasound today allowed us to see the flailing arms and legs of a healthy baby and we are overjoyed. As far as they could tell, everything is perfectly normal! This video turned out much better than the previous one. The little thing is about 2 inches long and has a heart rate of 172. Eight more weeks and we find out the gender from the next ultrasound. That will be a joyous day!

Cute Pic of the Day

So I'm more than willing to admit that I may be a little emotional these days, but when Brad sent me this picture today, I almost started to cry. I mean, really, can something this cute be legal?!
After cruising my hard drive, I also found these adorable gems worth sharing.

Hope you enjoy the cuteness overload!

Prego: It's in there!

We are very pleased to announce that Patterson is pregnant and we are expecting the baby on April 21st WHOOO HOOOOOO!!!! I don't think it is possible for us to be any more excited!

Here is a video of the week 7 ultra sound. There isn't a whole lot of detail there but you can hear that wonderfully strong heartbeat. We have another ultrasound coming up in a couple of weeks (she is 10 weeks along now) and it should be much more revealing!

Little Birdie

We saw this little guy after finishing up the flower bed work several weeks back and I've been meaning to post the pic. He didn't seem to be afraid of the camera at all. I wonder what his story was.

Cow Killers

We came across our first Cow Killer of the season and I snapped this barely-in-focus photo of it with my iPhone. These buggers supposedly have one of the most powerful stings of any insect you'll find in the southeast, although luckily I've not been able to verify that. Also known as the Red Velvet Ant, they aren't ants at all but actually wingless ground wasps, well the females are wingless anyway. The males have wings but no stinger.

The interesting thing to me about Cow Killers is the relationship they have with Cicada Killer Wasps. The Cicada Killer Wasp kills a Cicada and drags it back to an underground nest before laying eggs in or around the Cicada so that the larvae can eventually feed on it. The Cow Killer seeks these nests out and lays its eggs there too so that the Cow Killer larvae can feed on the wasp larvae. I'd like to see a battle go down between two adults quite frankly. Here is a better picture and you can read more about them here.

Update: Ok, I found this video on YouTube and just had to share. That is one seriously long stinger!

Stars are born!

So our friends the Mowrers and the Smiths decided to plan, prepare and consume a complete meal that was made only with items that they or someone they knew had hunted, gathered or grown themselves. No grocery stores, no farmers markets, not even Weigel's milk here people.

Typical of the Smiths and the Mowrers, the results are interesting and fun, so much so that they made the FRONT PAGE of the Knoxville News Sentinel website! I'm so proud of them!
You can read the full story here. Rock on guys, what a great read!

Nicky turns 60!

My dad Glen Nichols, often called Nicky, Bubba, G-dawg and a variety of other names, celebrated his 60th birthday at the end of August, so Brad, me, my sister Kerri and her husband Adam all made the haul to Smithville to spend the weekend celebrating with the folks. Brad had the great idea to work some magic with his leet photoshop skills so that we could put dad in some funny situations. The results were hilarious!

The DJ one absolutely cracks me up. The hands look so perfect! I'm laughing even as I post.

Dad loved them and can't wait until his man-cave basement in the new house is finished so that he can display them. Here's a quick shot of him and my mom, Margaret, getting their first peeks.

I heart my folks!

Fun times were had by all! Stay tuned for another post soon about the following weekend, which with spent with Brad's folks in Paris. We've had lots of good family time in the past few weeks. I think my favorite part is all the good home cookin'!

Cicada Killer Wasp Time

It's mid to late August and that means Cicada Killer Wasp season. They are probably the largest most intimidating flying insect you'll see in Tennessee but fortunately they are pretty much harmless. The males aggressively skirt around the yard investigating every flower and flying insect they can find, looking for females but are unable to sting. The larger females very rarely sting humans and are more interested in finding cicadas to take back to their in-ground nests to feed larva for over-winter. You'll sometimes catch them camping an outdoor light fixture at night waiting on a cicada to show up. I was quite terrified of the buggers a few years ago but after reading about them gained much respect for them and enjoy watching them this time of year. You can read more about them here.

Flower Beds – The Final Frontier

A blockbuster to be released this summer! Ok, the title is a bit dramatic, but we are seriously psyched to finally be done with all of our yard transformations for the year. After living in the house for over 7 years, and never having done more than mow and pull the occasional weed, it was time to get serious. Oh, and the three trees that came down and suddenly opened our house up to a street view probably helped to motivate us as well.

We saved the biggest project for last. We have a two-tier bed system in the back yard, where you step down from the first bed into the second one. The dimensions for the two beds together are 28 ft. by 14 ft. So we’re talking bout 392 sq feet of space here. I think the large size and the hodge-podge of various plants that the previous owner had installed served to sufficiently intimidate us for all these years. No more! After cutting our landscaping teeth on smaller beds in the front and back, we set out to tackle these last two a few weeks ago. Please note, all photos were taken with a sweaty iphone, and so are not the best quality.

The Before Pic

That dang ole tamper will get your wrists!

Since we have so much space, we decided to create a stone paver seating area in the lower bed, where we can put chairs or a bench so that we can enjoy sitting out in the garden. This really was the hardest part of the project, because the pavers are heavy and making sure they are all level on top of the sand is tricky. Then you sweep more sand into all the cracks and wet it so that it can solidify.

World's largest jigsaw puzzle

Brad's no stranger to a broom!

Oh, and check out Brad’s super sweet sweatband. *Cue The Eye of the Tiger*
For some reason, we did pick the hottest weekend of the summer for our most strenuous project.

Finished seating area

Woody loves the smell of fresh mulch in the morning

We then used the individual pavers to create a stepping stone path through the top bed down to the seating area.

We’re going to wait until the fall to install all of the plants. Our good friend and, lucky for us, Landscape Architect, William is drawing up some plans for us. He’s going to focus mostly on native plants, and plan them so that we have something blooming spring/summer/fall and some year round color as well. I can’t wait to get them in the ground! We did go ahead and plant two hibiscus plants and put a few day lilies on the tree stumps just to have a bit of color until the fall.

Jill approves

And then lastly, we created a new bed around an existing snowball bush by the deck steps. These broken rocks were fairly cheap castoffs at the landscaping place, so we thought they’d make a nice border. Still haven’t decided what we’re going to put in this bed, maybe annuals.

The final step for our outdoor transformation was the installation of some new outdoor speakers. Brad wired it so that we can easily hook an ipod up to them, paving the way for some fun outdoor shin-digs!