Archive for November, 2011

Thanksies: Because Every Word Has “ies” on the End of It Now

Posted by brittanydyan on November 28, 2011

Thank you God for speedy travels on highway 95 today. Will and I set our expectations about as low as possible for our Thanksgiving road trip with almost 11-month-old Nola. You see, our girl is a city baby. She loves a stroller ride, tolerates a car ride across town, but gets antsy (read: whining, crying, general discontent) after 20 minutes in the back seat of the ol’ Solara. But, to our surprise, she did really well. Remember, our expectations were quite low. We made great travel time and Nola held it together for most of the 5 to 6 hour trips to and from Durham, North Carolina.

I have much more to be thankful for, of course. I took some time off this week and had the opportunity to focus on the many wonderful gifts in my life. This was pretty refreshing since I’ve spent much of the last few months being anxious about things that I want to happen. So here goes; a short list for you.

I’m thankful for my husband, Will who is a great partner and father. I’m thankful for a healthy child who brings me joy that I could not have imagined this time last year. I’m thankful for family members who provide a network of support for the three of us. I’m thankful for time with friends that lifts me up out of some tough places. I’m thankful for a church that is for fallen people and encourages me in my faith journey. I’m thankful for a God who created me and loves me.

Here are some pictures from the week. It was a lot of fun.

David carefully and quietly formulates a game plan for his first Thanksgiving plate.

Our Thanksgiving meal consisted of mostly the traditional with a pinch of the creative.

Nola is not too impressed that green beans is a holiday staple.

Visits with Gigi normally include new books and toys.

It's not a Bramlett get-together without some laughs and good conversation.

Nola begins her day with a book.

Brittany hopes to catch Coach K's eye with her perfect jump shot in front of his Escalade.

Nola gets all Three Stooges on Papa Dan. Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!

Little girl, big man.

Brittany happily agrees that any college football field with a surrounding track should never be taken too seriously.

I concur ... This is pretty sound construction.

A quiet moment in Duke Chapel.

Baby steps around the Bryan Center.

Comments on this post | Published in Baby Bram, Photos, Travel

Scattershot

Posted by Will on November 23, 2011

As I touched on earlier this year, it has become increasingly difficult to find the motivation to keep this blog updated. As our loyal reader(s) can tell, the time between posts has been growing as the months have gone by.

Creating updates, which entails editing photos, optimizing them for the web, coming up with content, writing posts (which normally range from 500 – 1,00 words), editing the posts (which takes even longer as I’m prone to grammatical mistakes that would make your English teacher blush), re-editing the posts, publishing the post then correcting my spelling mistakes, etc. takes a lot of time and effort. I’m happy to do it but in terms of my priorities, it is very, very low on my totem pole right now. For Brittany, blogging is a nonexistent entity right now and for the foreseeable future. Nola? She likes to type but I’m afraid what she taps out doesn’t quite make enough sense.

So, lately, I have been pondering two things. The first would be to shutdown blogging completely. In terms of personal internet presence, this blog has played second fiddle to my social media memberships but has been above my other blogging expeditions. One by one, my blogs have slowly gone by the wayside (I’m looking at you ACG and Capital Type). There are reasons being a blogger for some people is a full-time job … it’s a lot of work and requires research, creativity, and good writing acumen.

Oh yes, the second option. That would be to point the content more to a photo heavy experience … which it already skews towards. I love to write when I have a topic to cover but I haven’t really thought much about anything particular in awhile. I’m also always itching to redesign my websites as my coding and writing is always improving and changing.

So, we’ll see where this goes. If it’s over, it’s been a great ride and I’ll have an archive to look over a certain point of our life. That’s something I love to do occasionally, pour over old entries and relive some fun memories.

If it’s not over, well, then I’m ready to start crafting some code.

Until then, enjoy a few photos from the past month.