Jim Brickman Concert

Last Thursday (Dec 22) we attended a Jim Brickman concert at the Tivoli in downtown Chattanooga. He performed with vocalists Anne Cochran, Mike Eldred, and Tracy Sliverman who also had his highly acclaimed 6-string electric violin. It was definitely a hit and was one of the other many highlights of the evening. We were lucky enough to get a "live" video conference with Kermit as he was tied up with Muppet's on Ice. They sang a lovely duo of "The Rainbow Connection" for us. In addition to the music there was a bit of comedy. Among other things he had to explain his unique body moments while he performs, which we won't even try to explain here.

He performed several songs from his new album "The Disney Songbook" along with several of his classics and other Christmas songs, it was his holiday tour after all. Overall, we enjoyed a wonderful evening of music and would highly recommend attending if you get the chance.

Christmas Wishes to All

Welcome friends and family. For those that are visiting us because of our Christmas Card, we want to say welcome. Every week or two we post what is currently happening in our lives so feel free to look around and see what we have been doing.

Mindy is working on her paintings and we update her gallery when new pieces arrive, the next update will be either the 2nd or 3rd of January 2006. Ryan has started a photoblog of pictures present and past that he has taken.

We want to wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Happy Holidays,
Ryan and Mindy

Business as usual

So what have we been doing since Thanksgiving? Pretty much the usual, working during the day and enjoying the evenings at home. The weekend after Thanksgiving we awoke Sunday with no power. There was bad weather Saturday evening and while we don't know the exact cause of the outage, our whole neighborhood was without power. Because of this we visited Amy most of the day and Ryan was able to watch the Carolina versus Atlanta game and Mindy was able to play with Tristan.

Since then, Mindy has continued to work on her portrait portfolio and Ryan was able to complete a redesign of Ridge Rest's website, feel free to have a look. Mindy has also started tutoring of one of her coworkers daughers one night a week.

Currently we don't have plans for Christmas as New Years weekend is when we'll get together with the whole family in NC. We will probably get together with family in the area both nothing has been finalized.

Thanksgiving Surprise

We were woken up Thanksgiving morning with a surprising phone call. Mindy's father was able to make it down as well. We had known he might stop by on Friday, but he was able to make it a day sooner. This was the first time in thirteen years they had all been together-brother, sister, mom, and dad. He was able to eat Thanksgiving dinner with us but had to leave later in the day. It was a wonderful surprise.

While we have taken many pictures, we didn't get a picture of our Thanksgiving meal including the Turkey. I may be a bit biased but I have to say it was a wonderful meal, complments to the chef. It was a treat to remember.

We have uploaded a some pictures of our weekend to the Holiday section of the gallery.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is upon us all, Mindy's mother (Ruth), brother (Kevin), and girlfriend (Trista) will be arriving late Wednesday evening from Indiana and we are excited to see them again. This will be our first holiday we host in our home and we do have to admit we are enjoying not having to travel.

We are busy planning and readying the house. We still have to finish painting the Kitchen although it should be finished this evening (at least we are hopeful). We finished most of the prep work last night and tonight we pull out the paint. Besides the kitchen we have to do the usual cleaning everyone does before guest arrive, we also have to buy the turkey and other food for the extended weekend. Things are going to be pretty busy, but we plan on making time for our extended family in the area, Aunts, Uncles, Sister, Nephew, and other in the area.

We'll try to take plenty of pictures this weekend and share our experiences next week. Till them, have a great Thanksgiving.

More Photos

Been busy today with photos. There are several new pictures in the Family and Friends Album. Whenever we add more photos the newest ones will be first. There are three more photos in our wedding album from our engagement. Finally, there photos from our christmas in NC from 2003, this is in the new holiday album.

Wedding Pictures

It may have taken 2+ years but we now have a few pictures online from our wedding.

More Wallpaper

We finished removing the wallpaper on the lower portion on our kitchen wall last night. We worked a little on Sunday and then finished last evening. We have become quite effecient in removing it the more we go. The process we use is as we listed before. Score the wall, spray with DIF, remove outer layer of paper, wet second layer with water, and then remove it.

We now have to go back and sandpaper the wall, patch any holes, and then paint it.

Babysitting Tristan

Saturday night we had the previlage of watching Tristan, our Nephew, for the night. He is almost a year old (11 months) and it sure has gone by fast. He is just starting to walk; he is a little wobbly but can take several steps. It won't be long before he is running and getting into even more trouble. We are lucky to live in the same town as my sister and so we get to babysit him fairly often. When Amy worked the night shift at the hospitial we got to watch him a lot more. But we are happy to help when we can now.

We have a few pictures of his visit in the gallery.

Removing Wallpaper

Last Sunday we started removing the wallpaper in our kitchen. Neither of us have attempted this before so it's a learning process. We first scored the wall with a special tool (we are using the 'Paper Tiger') being careful not to break the drywall, then we spray it with a product call DIF gel. It sits on the wall for about 20 minutes and it is suppose to make the wall paper come off fairly easily. We don't have anything to compair it to so I guess it works okay. We had problems at first, but after a few sections we were able to get the paper to come off in full sheets instead of small sections. An alternative method is to use a steamer. We haven't decided if we want to go that route or not.

The DIF wallpaper remover seems to make the top layer of wallpaper come off, but leaves the backing. The backing is fairly easy to remove by making it damp with a sponge and then slowing using a straight edge to peel it off. This is where we stopped last weekend. We still have more wallpaper to remove and then we have to sand, clean, and patch the walls. At that point we will get to paint it.

Added Content

The site is almost back to full function. There is still some work in the gallery, getting all the pictures back up. There was trouble converting from the old gallery to the new one, so we will probably just up all new pictures. Some will be the same of course as the old pictures, but I don't remember all the old pictures.

Our new site

As you will notice our site looks a little different. Okay a lot different. We've changed hosting providers and decided to do a little house keeping in the process. Over the next few weeks keep coming back for updates.

The old site is still active. (execpt for the gallery which is down).

Edit: Removed link to old site as the new site has all the old content included.

Happy New Year!

We have started a New Year together and there have been a few changes since our last update. We have a new nephew, Tristan Gauge Hulsey. Ryan's sister Amy had him on Decemeber 30, 2004 at 11:40 AM. You can find pictures in our Gallery section. We also got a dog - Buddy, he is a Beagle mix, about a year old, and quite adorable. Pictures of Buddy can also be found in our Gallery,

We've updated the look of the Gallery which makes it easier for us to update pictures, so hopefully it will be updated a little more frequently.