In case you've wondered about the people to the right of this post...

Let me tell you about them.

Wes Hunter: The hubs. Check out his page if you haven't, he has songs that he's recorded there.
Penny Mann: The BFF. Penny and I met through Winter Park 10 years ago and she's chillin' in Charlotte right now
Montana Tuckers: Ryan and Courtney are our amazing friends from Wilmington/Winter Park. We were in "That's Crap!" (small group) together for three years. They live in Montana now and are starting a church there. Their little girl, Avery is awesome, check out their pics.
Lauren & Garin K: Lauren is one of my great friends from the fabulous NC State University. She and her hubs, Garin are living on the NC coast because he's in the Coast Guard.
Sarah Walden's Baking: Not to be confused with the other two Sarah Walden's, this Sarah is married to one of Wes' best friends, Dan. Sarah loves to bake and she posts recipes that look amazing. I'm going to try one of these one of these days.
Dan Walden: the a fore mentioned Dan goes way back with Wes. He and Sarah are uber-intelligent and working on PhD's at Ole' Miss.
Felony Melanie: This is one of my great friends since I was but a teenager. I first fell in love with this girl on a mission trip to Weaverville, NC in 1997 where she was scarred for life by her roomate/chaperone. Melanie lives in Charlotte now. (Wow, I just realized that, Penny, get up with Felony!)
Melissa & John Partin: Melissa was in my Bible Study that I co-led with Kelly Cutshall at NCSU. She was one of the "LoveLees" and we met every Monday night for 3 years. She and John have an adorable little girl, Meredith.
Ryan & Maria Jessup: Maria was another LoveLee at NCSU who now lives in Winston-Salem with her hubs, Ryan. Maria, Maria does what seems to be awesome things through her career.
Samantha & Clif Sult: More representation from the LoveLees. Samantha is in seminary and she and Clif live near Charlotte.
Jennifer & John Clark: Jennifer was another LoveLee who I had the priviledge to meet with on a weekly basis outside of Bible study. She and John live outside of Raleigh and do engineering stuff there.
Orange Tiger/Red Wolf: Erica & Andy live in Garner, NC with their precious one, Viv. Erica was also a LoveLee and met with Jennifer and me as well. Erica lived with us in Lake Park and we were able to share many El Rodeo and Rock o' la nights together.
Daniel & Mandy Smith: Daniel was one of my best friends in college and now he and his wife have a little boy, Braydon. They live in Raleigh.
David & Katie: Another LoveLee! David and Katie live in Raleigh and have really cool sounding jobs. Despite Katie's 4-year stint with the Mighty, Mighty Wolfpack and living with ME for a summer, she remains a Tarheel fan. David, I feel your pain...I live in a house divided as well.
Brian Harrison: Brian is a fellow Wieucan here in the ATL. Brian plays bass in the reChurch praise band. His wife, Tammy sings as well. They both work for a printing company in Midtown. We enjoy delicious Mexican Food with them.
reChurch: This is basically why we moved to ATL. This is the worship experience at Wieuca that Wes leads music for (and I'm the "stage manager"...:)). It's awesome. If you are in Atlanta on a Sunday, you should come.
Winter Park Baptist Blogs: Different people from WPBC in Wilmington blog about their mission opportunities around the world. It's pretty interesting to read from different people.
Stuff White People Like: The name speaks for itself. If you haven't ventured to this site, you should...it will give you a good laugh.

If you're reading this and you have a blog that I don't know about, let me know!

A shout out: I would have the Strattons on here, but they have a private blog for their lives in Texas. They have one adopted sun from Russia, Kaden and a foster kid, Blue. Trust me, they are presh.

Texas

Sorry for the posting hiatus. I just realized that my last post was in May...that seams like forever ago! I just got back from my first business trip. (Well, I technically went to Greensboro when I worked for Next Media Radio for a night, but that didn't involve flying, my own hotel room or company paid meals). I went to Houston to the ILTA Trade Show (http://www.ilta.org/). I've always thought it would be so official and important and career-like to go to a trade show. My brother-in-law has the opportunities quite often but he works for the surf industry, which is way cooler than the oil industry. It was OK...but better than my predictions, so it was a nice surprise to half-way enjoy myself.

First off, if you don't know (see previous posts), I work for a Honeywell-owned company that manufactures and sells products to oil companies. Yes, I know gas is crazy expensive and I agree that the oil mongols are the most corrupt business people in our country, and no...I can't do anything about that. I still have to pay for gas just like you do, there are no gas discounts at Honeywell. Besides, someone has to provide them with products that blend, inject, prove, gauge and make cleaner the gasoline that we all put in our cars everyday. And I support those involved in Sales and Marketing :).

I was pretty much in charge of our exhibit at this show. It was pretty great because all of the responsibilities were given to me about 5 months ago and my bosses just told me to run with it. I worked with one guy in our Houston office and two people in our Delft, Netherlands office to get everything together and it turned out swimmingly. Our booth looked awesome, we had a ton of traffic through, and I received great kudos from my employers. The Americas VP even said that he was considering sending me to Rio de Janerio to the Rio Oil & Gas show! I'm not holding my breath, but that would be an amazing opportunity.

The best part about this show is that there were people from all over the world there with us. We have 5 folks from the Netherlands (go Holland soccer team!!), one from Venezuela and one from England and I had the most fun with all of them. It is so humbling to be around people from other countries in the States because they always put us in our place. Darren, from the UK could not believe how big our American portions are at restaurants and how much we waste here. I could say nothing because he's spot on; in his words, "it's a bugger that you have so much and waste it". What can you say to that?

But, I was able to learn some Dutch, how much Europeans live, eat and drink soccer and how Holland beat Italy for the first time in 30 years at the Euro Cup. Let's just say there was a Heineken/Amstel Light celebration courtesy of my Dutch friends. I decided that Americans are missing out because we don't use the word "bloody" and "bugger". You should expect me to start using both in everyday vocabulary.

I came back Wednesday night through the terrible storms that passed through Atlanta. We were delayed 2 1/2 hours and then flew through a rain cloud, which was terribly frightening! By the time we finally landed, we taxied for 45 minutes to find a gate and then I took the 50 minute MARTA ride to the 'burbs to be graciously welcomed by Wes and the appropriately named Kiss 'n Ride parking lot at North Springs Transit Station.

I'm glad to be back in the ATL.