Happy Birthday Jess!

Just wanted to wish my bff Jess a happy 25th birthday! I hope that you had a wonderful day! You deserve it!

Love you!

Welcoming My BFF's to the Blogging World!

I'm so excited today because in the last 24 my BFF's have joined the blogging world! I think they got so sick of me asking them to start blogging they finally broke down. I am excited because I no longer live in Lafayette with them let alone the same townhouse!

Jessica and Megan are two of the most fun girls you will ever meet. There is never a dull moment when we are all together and I cherish the time that we have when we do get together. All girls need friends like these two. If you get a chance stop by their blogs, they will be sure to entertain you!

Jessica's- www.jessicaandscottgraves.blogspot.com
Megan's- www.megankuszmaulseriesofunusualevents.blogspot.com

I thought I would bring back some old school pictures of the three of us over the years to celebrate their first 24 hours of blogging!


Love you girls! Can't wait to read your 2nd blog updates :0)

An Indiana Christmas.

Nothing says Christmas then being at home with my family and seeing snow on the ground!

I got to spend time with all my friends and family while in Indiana. I have to admit..I think I might have spent more time at the mall than anywhere else! I went shopping with my Mom, Colin's mom and my BFF Jessica. While I didn't buy much, it was so nice to walk around with my favorite people to shop with!

I also got to have dinner with my gymnastics family at our favorite hang out- Pepes! I wish I would have taken pictures of us all, but sadly I didn't. There isn't a dinner with them that I don't almost cry from laughing so hard. It was so good to see Cindy, Renee and my adoptive children! I terribly miss coaching gymnastics at LAGC.

Colin and are I blessed that our parents live literally like 30 seconds from each other. It makes for easy traveling during the holidays. On Christmas Eve we always spend the day with Colin's side of the family. We ate a wonderful meal prepared by Colin, went to candlelight service and then opened presents. After presents we all played the game Loaded Questions, it was a great time! Here is a picture I stole from Lauren's facebook (it was the most normal we all looked).

The on Christmas Day we spent the day with my family. We did our normal Christmas routine. We woke up and opened presents followed by egg casserole (it wouldn't be Christmas morning without it). Colin got the new Super Mario Brothers Wii game and we spent the afternoon playing that. My poor Mom got a migraine and slept most of the afternoon but Dad made a wonderful meal of lobster and fillet.


I was so sad when I had to leave both of my families and friends the morning after Christmas!

We Are PURDUE!

This weekend Matt, Lindsey and I took a little road trip (5 hours) to the University of Alabama to watch the Purdue Boilermakers take on the Roll Tide. Colin wanted to go but he had to work :0( Matt and I both graduated from Purdue, so we were both real excited when we saw they were playing fairly close to us this year. We recruited Z to come along and pretend to be a Boilermaker fan! She played the part perfect! Here we are when we first got to the game.

For most of the game our beloved Boilers were behind but then they fought their way back for a victory! There were about 200 Purdue fans at the game and let me tell you, we were loud! There was even a little Alabama fan who was yelling at us to "shut up" when we were cheering and giving us a thumbs down! Here is a picture of the boys on the court.

Below is the picture of us celebrating after the game! We Are PURDUE! Boiler Up!!

Halloween, a Win and Great Friends!

We had a great weekend here in Clemson! First, it was Clemson's Homecoming weekend and so I went to Tigerama with Kate and Z. We had a great time and it's fun event to kick off the weekend. This year some of the football team preformed to Thriller but remained it Spiller. The crowd went nuts! I also hosted the Tiger Cub Birthday Party on Saturday morning before the game. All you need to know is that I had 250 lil kids and their parents attend the party, enough said!

Our good friends and Colin's old roommate Wes and Kate came to stay with us this weekend. Thanks for coming! We don't get to see the Sweeten's enough and every time we do, its always a blast. We tailgated with Wes's parents before the game and then stood in the pouring rain on the field to watch the Tigers run down the hill. Our Halloween night wasn't very eventful but it was fun. We handed out candy to the little kids in the neighborhood and then went out for some Mexican food.

Wes and Kate have a puppy named Bear that they brought with them. Bella and Bear are officially boyfriend and girlfriend. It was love at first sight and Bella has been looking for Bear all day long!

Today was just a lazy Sunday. After a busy weekend Colin and I napped with all the animals and ran to Target. I better get rested up for a busy week filled with board meetings and hopefully a Tiger win over FSU!

I've been a bad blogger...

I really do have a problem updating my blog. I always get sucked into reading other people's blogs that I forget to update mine. Who knows if anyone even reads mine though :0) So since it has been FOREVER since I have blogged, I will give you a quick update on life in the Leonard household.

1. Colin's family came to visit over fall break. I had a wonderful time with my MIL, and my grandparents-in-law. We did a bunch of antiquing and some shopping. They even stocked our fridge! It was the first time they had seen the house and we were so glad to welcome them. Too bad I didn't take any pictures while they were here!

2. Kari's Bridal Shower was the weekend that my family was in town and Kate and I went to it. It such a nice shower that her sister put on for her. I can't wait for her wedding the first weekend in December.

3. Colin and I have been tailgating with Kari and TC's family after games. We have been having a blast with them and want to thank them for allowing us to hang out with them! Here are a few pictures from past tailgates....P.S. We beat Wake Forest last weekend and Purdue beat Ohio State! It was a good football weekend in the Leonard house!

4. Clemson just hosted Rock the 'John 2009 this past Friday. It is our version of midnight madness and kicks off our basketball season. I have to brag on our event because it was awesome. We totally had the best entrance of any coach in the nation this year. Coach Purnell repelled from the rafters of Littlejohn in Army fatigues. Here is a picture even though it doesn't do it justice! Now we just have to come up with something to top that for next year!

I will leave this post as a promise. I promise that I will try to start blogging more often and keeping everyone updated on our life in the south. If you read this, let me know so that I don't feel as if I am blogging to no one :0)

Rain, Rain Go Away!

It has been raining for the past 4 days here and is supposed to rain for the entire next week.

Friday night we went to dinner with some friends before going to watch Clemson play Michigan State in volleyball. Michigan State is ranked 17th and the Tigers fought hard but lost in the 5th game. Volleyball is my 3rd favorite Clemson sport to watch after football and basketball.

Saturday we played Boston College in football and won....but not after the longest football game in history! We had two weather delays for a total of 2 hours. The game took an entire 5 hours from start to finish. Lets just say...there weren't many Clemson fans in the stadium at the end of the game! The Tigers are 2-1 and we are looking for our third win over TCU this coming Saturday. After the game we went home to watch some more college football.

Sunday was a cold and rainy lazy day. I think the most productive thing I did all day was returning my books to the library and checking out another one. Now I am watching the Emmys, mainly to see what people are wearing.

Since another football weekend passed and I didn't take any pictures (I really need to get better at taking pictures), I will post one from last football season. Too bad the weather this past weekend wasn't like the picture below!

Lazy Weekend

You know how it is when you set all these goals and plan to get a bunch of stuff down around the house...and then you do nothing. That was us this past weekend. We wanted to get the entire garage done so we could sell a few things we have in there and be able to park our cars in there. ALL we did was clean out ONE box! So much for an entire weekend that we both had off!

So instead of cleaning...we watched football....ALL Saturday! I just love college football. You will always find me cheering for Clemson, Purdue, the ACC and Big 10!

Tonight Colin had his 3rd softball game. His team is 3-0! It's fun to go and watch him play. I am the cheerleader wife :0)

I don't have any pictures from the weekend so I will post one from this summer. It's of Kate, Kari and myself from Kari's engagement party...December 5th will come very fast!

I'm Back!

Ok, so I have been MIA in almost a YEAR! I was really bad about updating my blog but I have decided that I need to start blogging again. The reason being is that I read so many other people's blogs, many of whom I do not know and it makes me want to record my life in words. I want to be able to have a place to look back at all the memories in life as I go forward.

So, since it has almost been a year I will try my best to give a quick overview of the past year of the most important highlights.

1. Colin and I bought a house this summer in Liberty, South Carolina!! We LOVE it! We have been here for 3 months now and there is always something else to be done. We have done a lot of painting but have much more to do. We just love knowing that we have somewhere to call home that is truly ours. Below is a picture for those of you who haven't been able to come visit yet. Speaking of visitors...we love visitors! So please come down to see us!

2. We got a PUPPY! Bella is a lab/spitz mix who is 4 months old. We have had her for about 4 weeks now. I'm not sure how we have gotten so lucky with animals (as you know we have 3 of the best cats ever) but Bella is super sweet and really hasn't chewed up too much...yet. Bella loves the cats...the cats put up with Bella. Below is a picture of our sweet Bella girl, I mean how can you not fall in love with those eyes!

3. Jevin came to visit! Jevin came down to visit us Labor Day weekend. It was so great to see him since I hadn't seen him since March. He got to go to the Clemson vs. MTSU game, see our new home, meet Bella and go to Atlanta, GA. In Atlanta we went to the Georgia Aquarium and to the World of Coke Museum. I always love having my brother come to stay with us!

4. My BFF got married in June! Jessica and Scott were married on June 20th and it was such a beautiful wedding. Jess and I have been friends forever and I can't even start to describe how happy I am that she found Scott to spend her life with and how perfect they are for each other. I love them both and I know they will have a wonderful marriage and life together.

Those are just a short overview of some of the bigger moments of this past year. I can't wait to see all that the fall has in store for the Leonard house. I hope more visitors and some great fall weekends celebrating some Clemson football wins!

I promise to become better at this blogging business...stay tuned!

Thanksgiving Weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend spent with friends and family! Thursday we had Thanksgiving dinner with the entire Rickett's family...wonderful food and fun!

Thursday night Julie, Gary and Lauren came to visit for the weekend. We had a great time! Colin worked his 1st Black Friday and....SURVIVED!! He had to be at work at 3:45 AM. Friday I went shopping in Greenville with Lauren and Ju

lie and we survived the mass of shoppers as well. Friday night we cheered on the Tiger basketball team to a victory over PC! 7-0....is a great start to the season!

Saturday concluded the regular season for Clemson Football and what a finish it was! The Tigers are going BOWLING after a great victory over the Chickens! After the game we had some football fun of our own at the apartment. The pictures are from some of our fun!

I heard it was snowing in Lafayette today and that really bummed me out! I can't wait to be home on the 19th for Christmas! I really hope that it snows while we are there!

You are never too old to dress up...

This year for Halloween we decided to get dressed up and go downtown!

Some of the girls that I work with went too! We decided to dress up as different types of music. I decided to be country music, Natalie was hip-hop and Kate was 80's music. We had a great time!

Colin met us out for awhile and came as Magnum PI. His mustache was very legit! The best part of the night was people watching! People get so creative with this costumes!! Some of my favorites included a girl that went as grapes and also a retired Hooters girl!

As I said earlier, I will be doing some backtracking on my blogging to get everyone up to date! Look a wedding post soon!