Blast From the Past!

Yearbook yourself guys!! It's hilarious!

Kyle's 25th Birthday Weekend!

We had such a great weekend! Let me start from when we started celebrating, which was Thursday! Thursday night, Kyle came home to the smell of Chicken Parm! It's his favorite meal (he makes it easy for me!) so I had that all made, plus had the house decorated with balloons. Kyle opened one of his presents, which was a t-shirt from the Salty Dog Cafe in Hilton Head. I then handed him a pin! He had this confused look on his face, but then I explained how his next present was in one of the balloons around our house. I had blown up 26 balloons total. 25 of them hand little pieces of paper inside with a reason why I love him on them. The 26th balloon had his present inside. So he went on a "popping spree" and then got to his present... which is a brand new driver for golf (I just wrote it on a sheet b/c he has to go get fitted for one next week!).
Friday (Kyle's actual birthday) I ended up taking a half day from work, and drove up to Red Top Mountain to reserve a camping spot for us! We actually got a great spot, big enough for our 2 tents and room to move around! 2 tents you ask? One for Kyle & I and one for Molly & Marshal! They drove down to help us celebrate Kyle's birthday, which was SO nice of them! So I reserved the spot, and ended up pitching our tent BY MYSELF, then drove to the house to meet Kyle. I ended up waiting a couple hours, b/c Kyle's line review went later than expected.

The second I sat down this is what happens.... (yes these are my cats)

Anyways as soon as Kyle got home we packed the car and headed up to the camp ground. We ate some dinner, got the fire started, set up Molly & Marshals tent (Kyle's had brought it with him from the white water rafting trip... planned ahead!) and put up the hammocks. We are so thankful that M&M introduced us to these... they are just amazing. I started to get tired around 9:00, so Kyle put my sleeping bag in the hammock. MAN it was so comfortable and I was asleep in 2 minutes! It's so peaceful staring up into the trees, I just can't explain it!

Here I am in Kyle's hammock, right before taking my nap!

Molly & Marshal arrived at the campground around 10:30 and we stayed up till 1 am just talking by the fire and eating smores. The guys had tons of stories from the White Water Rafting trip that we enjoyed listening to.
Right before going to bed we all walked up to the bathrooms, which are not far away! We all were so cute in our headlamps.... WELL I was until I flushed mine down the toilet. I had my toothbrush, toothpaste, and headlamp balancing on the back of the toilet. I flushed, picked everything up, turned to open the door and down my headlamp went into the toilet (which was flushing!). Molly almost spit out all of her toothpaste she was laughing so hard! It just so happens that I did this exact same thing with Kyle's jeep keys our freshman year of college, like the week after we had started dating. Some people drop their phones on the ground, I like to drop things in the toilet.... poe-tay-toe poe-tah-toe.

Some pics of our site:

Saturday morning we woke up and had toasted bagels (put them on the grate by the fire!) & cream cheese! Then we all went on a 4 mile hike, on some mountain bike trails in the park. The dogs loved swimming in the lake and playing together all weekend.

Tupelo & Tyson- 4ever.

After our hike we came back and played cards while stuffing our faces with potato chips and smores. The guys took naps in their hammocks, while Molly and I had some girl talk. It was such a relaxed day and we all had the best time. Around 3:00 we started to pack up and head back to our house to take showers and get ready for the concert!! We went to La Parilla, where we all ordered the exact same thing (did we mention that we are twins?!) then headed to Verizon Wireless Amphitheater to go hear Matt Wertz (my fav!) open for O.A.R.! At this arena there is a "general admission/floor area" where it's standing only, and those are the only tickets that we could buy. It was awesome, b/c we were so close to the stage! Everyone at this concert was so nice and just loved dancing to the music! Molly & I gave the guys their tickets as part of their birthday presents, and it was so fun getting to celebrate together!

Matt Wertz:
O.A.R.:
Marsh & Ky:
Molly & I:
Funny Faces:
This is our favorite picture of the night.... Go Marshal Go with that $100 smile!
Kyle & I:
Molly & Marshal:

None of us knew exactly what the weather was going to do, so we all brought our rain jackets... luckily Marshal knows the old "cool" trick of tying it around his waste... hey and it's even so cool you can hold your empty cup with it!
Midway through O.A.R. we walked up to some empty seats and sat to hear the rest. Molly & I were about to fall asleep standing up, so we left a couple songs early to head back to the house for bed!
Sunday morning everyone woke up to the smell of MONKEY BREAD! That's right I woke up early and baked it b/c what's a celebration in the Baker house without a Monkey Bread? Kyle thoroughly enjoyed it, and we sang him happy birthday!
Kyle & Marshal then went on a hunt for gas, so M&M could make it back to Charlotte. They also skated up to Walgreens to get some medicine, since all of us seem to have colds! Thanks you two for coming down and celebrating Ky's birthday. We had such a great time! (Thanks also to everyone who called, emailed or sent letters... he loved them all!)

Got Gas?

We don't! Never in the world would I have imagined Kyle & I sitting outside a gas station for over an hour waiting for a pump to open up. After driving around and visiting 6 gas stations, we finally found one that was open... A QT! The QT had all the entrances closed except one and they were trying to be as organized as they could be with guiding people which pump to go to. We were patiently waiting our turn, along with the other cars that lined the breakdown lane and all of a sudden cars just kept jumping in line cutting us all off. Who in their right mind thinks that's okay? I know so many of you are facing the same thing, so I thought I would open our blog up with your comments of frustration... This can be a healing experience for us all :)

Happy 25th Birthday to Kyle!

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to Kyle!
Happy Birthday to you!
He turns 25 today! Last night Kyle and I celebrated just the two of us, with a home cooked Chicken-Parm meal and presents. We have a very fun weekend planned and will blog about it later!

A weekend on the Gauley with the boys...

I took Friday off of work and set off for Charlotte and then to our ultimate destination of West Virginia. I started the trip off with an early birthday lunch with my sister, Rachel and her friend Sarah. We went to Friendly’s and the weekend of eating the unhealthiest food ever (fried chicken sandwich, fries and ice cream) began.

After that I headed up to Cory’s place and we each got a couple of passes in on the wakeboard and Cory’s skills have improved dramatically! When we got back to the marina we found Marshal asleep in his hammock. We loaded his 47 bags in the Uplander (sweet rental minivan) and waited for Nick and Mike to show up. Luckily Nick left Chapel Hill at 11:30, because somehow it took him 5 hours to get to Charlotte…it’s a long story…

At this point 5 out of 6 of us were loaded in the car and headed North. We made one more stop in Elkin to pick up our all-star paddler, Mike Cline, because he was coming from Winston-Salem. Our next stop was junk food stop number 2…between the 6 of us 15 double cheeseburgers, 40 nuggets, a chicken sandwich, a couple gallons of coke, and 6 large fries were consumed…yeah….

We pulled into our campground at about 9pm and checked in for our trip and headed to our campsite. We gathered some firewood, started a fire, played with the glow in the dark Frisbee, hung out, set up tents and then Marshal decided that he was going to sleep in his hammock and since he an Molly got me one for my birthday, I decided I would sleep in mine too. It took a while, but we finally got them rigged up to the mini-van and the only tree in our campsite.

The next morning we packed up camp and headed down to eat a delicious breakfast and get everything set up for the trip. Seeing as how we could see our breath when we woke up in the morning, we all decided to at least rent wet suit jackets (Nick Cory and I got the whole suit and Marsh brought his own gear, because he is official).

After a lot of waiting around we finally got to the river and that is where the real adventure begins. Our trip was a two day, one night trip on the Gauley River through a company called ACE. We rafted the lower Gauley on the first day which is mostly class 3 and 4 rapids with one or two class 5’s and then we were going to camp next to the river in tents that ACE had permanently set up there and they have a shelter to eat dinner, a little beach, fire pit, etc.

Here is Nicky waiting around in his sweet wet suit

The first couple of rapids were pretty uneventful except for the fact that Nick kept falling out of the boat and we thought that it might be because he had not rafted since he was 10 and that was with the cub scouts. It turned out that Nick falling out of the boat had more to do with the fact that he was sitting across from Mikey, who became affectionately known as the wrecking ball. Whenever Mike came out of his seat, there was no stopping him and he usually didn’t end up out of the boat, but whoever was sitting across from him did. Mike effectively took Nick, me, Marshal and Cory out of the boat at one time or another. It got to the point where Nick saw Mike coming and just embraced it and they would go out of the boat together…HILARIOUS…

The Wrecking Ball and Nick

The last stop of the day on the river was a great “surfing” rapid where the water forms a circular motion and you can get the boat stuck in there. We were all wrestling in the boat and finally ended up out of the rapid when so many people fell out of the boat that there was no one left to paddle.

Marsh while we were surfing (He is still in the boat)

That brought us to our campsite where we hung out on the beach for a couple of hours, then we had nachos, steaks, and s’mores and then we just sat around the campfire, played a little beer pong and had a pretty sweet marshmallow war. At the end of the night we all retired to our tents, to get up the next morning and do the REAL river.

We loaded up in the morning for another bus ride up to the Upper Gauley, which starts at this Dam, the second largest earthen dam in the US and they release water out of it every Saturday and Sunday so that people can raft and kayak it.
There was no warm up on the upper Gauley and on the first surfing wave of the day my side of the boat ended up getting sucked under and instead of hanging on, I decided that I would go for a little swim…this turned out to be, what I like to call a “bad decision”. The reason that it was so bad is because 6 inches under the water was the rock that was causing this rapid. Rock…meet my helmet…helmet…meet BIG rock. That meeting proceeded to steal any oxygen that I had managed to grab when I fell out of the boat, but I still wasn’t worried because I fell out plenty of times the day before and popped right up. Well this time I popped up underneath the boat, where there was no oxygen or light…”hmmm… this is a problem” I thought to myself. I proceeded to do exactly what I was told, which was get on your back and feel your way to the edge of the boat…well I had my eyes closed because I didn’t want to lose my contacts and I was getting turned around like I was in a washing machine and the boat was spinning around in circles which made it VERY difficult to find the end of the boat. It got to the point where I had so little air that I almost breathed, even though I was under water…then all of a sudden the rapid let me go and I could breathe…

This is what I saw under the boat (Not sure where this pic actually came from)

The first face that I saw was our guide and he said “Are you okay?” I told him that I was and he said, “Okay we are going to keep surfing this wave!” thanks, Steve!! It was a little bit scary and it completely changed my mindset for the rest of the day!

Steve-Our Guide

We went through some more really fun rapids and we came to the rapid right before lunch called Sweet’s Falls…At Sweet’s falls there are about 300 people watching and hoping that you flip the boat…we did not disappoint them!

We made it over Sweet’s Falls just fine, but then we went into the spot that Steve said beforehand “We do NOT want to go in there”, I think it was called the “box” of something…I call it the box of carnage because that is what ensued when we ended up in there.

Box of CarnageWe hit that rock at the back and the boat preceded to stand up on it’s side and then within 2 seconds Cory…Nick…Marsh….Mike…and then me and Mike Cline were all swimming and the boat was upside down…

Cory getting sucked out of the boat

After that, we got some lunch, watched some other people flip their boats and got back on the river. There were a couple other rapids that we surfed and dumped some more folks and ourselves on and a rock that we jumped off of and then we were headed in. We decided to end the trip with a “battle royale” of sorts where we were all yanking each other out of the boat and somehow, as usual, everyone but Mike Cline ended up in the water.

Mike Cline...dry...as he was for most of the trip...

We finished the trip up with a shower, watching a video of all of the carnage and another meat of…you guessed it…burgers. Wendy’s this time…8 Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers., 5-5 piece Nuggets, A Baconator (Mike Cline), 3 Biggie Fries, Chili, Caesar Salad (Cory) and I think there were some Frosties in there somewhere too.

The ride home consisted of recapping all of the adventures, quoting each other and Old Gregggg...long story... All in all we had a great time and cant wait to do it again. We have some more group shots and pictures of the camp site and I will upload them as soon as I get them...sorry for the longest blog post in the world!

Sara is Pregnant!!

YEAHHH I can finally put it on my blog :) My best friend, Sara and her husband Joe ARE EXPECTING!!

I have actually known for a while and it was SO hard keeping such big news a secret :) Sara & Joe confessed to Kyle and I early, because Kyle and Joe were going compete in a triathlon together. Well Joe just kept putting it off and we wondered why... WELL they were going to begin trying and the doctor had said no bike! Sara is one of the best liars I know... I mean she can come up with something that makes COMPLETE sense in less than a second(doesn't help that I'm the most gullible person out there)... so I couldn't believe that they confessed to us instead of just making up excuses! But I'm secretly happy that we were able to know before hand! They just went to their first doctors appointment, and are due around May 1st! Can't wait for baby to come... they are just naturals with kids! Please keep them & baby in your prayers! Click HERE to visit her blog!

Kyle and I are so happy for you both, and I am so thankful to get to be a part of this huge life change for you guys!! Sara and I have been in eachothers lives for elementary, middle, and highscool, boyfriends, first kisses, college, marriages, and now BABIES!!! Love you both!

Girls Nights Out!

Well this past week, I had a girls night out every other night! On Tuesday I went with 2 of my work friends, Christina & Andrea to this dance studio downtown called Dance 101 and it is AWESOME! It's all adult classes of all different styles and levels of difficulty. We took a "Pop" class for an hour from a flaming gay man named Peter, it was hilarious and fun pretending like Christina Aguilara's background dancers! Then we took a Conditioning & Stretching class, which I am still sore from!! We had a great time and hopefully will make it a weekly thing!
On Thursday night, the product development & marketing girls went out to a Braves Game! We all work pretty close to one of the M.A.R.T.A. stations so we all just took that into the city (yeah... scarrryyy), bought our $6 nosebleed seats, and got our $1 hotdogs! We had the best time, and all of us get along so well. We all range from 22-28, so we all have a lot in common. We returned safe and sound to our cars around 11:00 or so.

The camera guy took a couple of us:

Jen(marketing traffic coordinator), me, Christina(sr. product designer) & Gina(product traffic coordinator):

Rachel (product development intern), Amanda (product designer), Andrea (marketing analyst & HR assistant), and Lacey (Graphic Designer)

On Friday night, Lacey and I went to Martini's and Imax that is held down in the Furbank Museum downtown. It was AWESOME and I am so glad that we decided to go. Our movie didn't start till 9, but the atmosphere is so cool people normally get there an hour to 2 hours early.
They have live music playing in the main area, which is all underneath HUGE Dinosaur bones. (I wish so much that I had my camera, but Kyle took it with him this weekend- White Water Rafting!) We decided it was a great place to go for a first date!!
So anyways the movie we watched was called "Wild Ocean" all about the circle of life underneath the ocean, particularly in South Africa. It was amazing! I can't wait to bring Kyle to one of these... I think they go until end of October!

It's been fun having girls nights so much this week... I am so glad to have finally found some great girls to get to know here in GA!