What's new?

I feel the need to blog, but I haven't got much exciting news to blog about. We're in the process of figuring out the holiday plans. One thing we know for sure is that we're going to our roomie Jessica's wedding in Deerfield Beach on the 27th of December, which means we're headed to the good ole' fort for Christmas.

I just finished up editing a massive quantity of photos including some for Dan & Sereen, whose wedding was in August. I always tend to beat myself up about not having finished things soon enough, and then when I'm done I realize, hey, it's only been two months, which is faster than I expected, so not bad...

David and I are still plugging away at our jobs, nothing too exciting there save some office drama for me and David doing way more work than one person should as usual. I guess something of interest is that David recently crashed his bike, his wonderful beautiful, long-awaited bike. So he's riding along, crossing three lanes of highway and going as fast as possible while shifting his bad mamma jamma shifters that are meant for racing and just such a purpose and whoopsie, his chain fell off. So David ended up head over bike over head over ... slam and sliiiide on the asphalt and ouch!

So I took off work that morning and we went to the ER, where the nurse did an excellent job cleaning David up. Unfortunately her bedside approach was to describe every thing she was doing, "Ok, so now I'm going scrub your deep abrasion with burning liquid on a spongey..." I did my best wife move, and told David to tell me about our prospects against LSU (it was THAT weekend! we missed out on the game - too many elbows close by to bonk David's) and that got him to a better place... ahhh football land. ;-)

He's healing up just fine, after a few weeks of soreness and changing dressings then graduating to band-aids and now just scabs! Since David was smart enough to insure his bicycle, we filed a claim and he's going to be able to get a new bike - so that's a bonus! Speaking of new bikes, I just got one myself and will be selling my old one. The new one works so much nicer and fits me! When we got it last weekend, I put it together myself, with a little help from David & Gary at Spin Cycle. I have ridden it a few times so far. I rode it home from work today in the freezing 50-something degree weather (and I want to move to Colorado?)and Northern winds and it didn't even bother me much because the gearing is so much mo' bettah!

David and I were very ambitious about doing weekly self-portraits a month or two ago, and so far we have done it three times. Oh well, at least we're still trying :-) It's been fun. Something we can do together that gets us to be silly, fun, and creative. Just what the Jemma ordered! ;-) Here are some from our latest "shoot".













Until the next urge hits me, adios amigos!

house pics

ok family & friends, i've finally had the chance to get our photos of the house online for you to see! so check it out.

For a description - check our old post here. I put a link to the gallery within this post as well.

Love Jemma

p.s. now come visit!

BFF baby here!

**Update** Her name is Abigail. :-)


Heather's water broke at about 4:30am yesterday morning. She was having contractions all day yesterday and after I got off from work and had gotten some dinner & a minute with David, I stopped by the hospital. Despite all Heather's contractions, there wasn't much progress in dilation. I went home to get some sleep & told them I'd come back when it got closer. I got a call this morning about 4:25am that she was at 10cm and would be starting to push soon! I got up, grabbed a Dew and a CLIF bar and headed to the hospital. I got there in plenty of time to watch Heather & Justin welcome their baby girl into the "outside". :-) They haven't settled on a name just yet, but we've all settled on the fact that she's here and is a keeper for sure. Here are a few shots of the sweet girl!

self-portraits again. check out the photoblog for more often updates!

Jocy got married!

Soooo, we just got back from Colorado and are sooper pooped! Here is one pic to tease!



check the photoblog for more updates & photos of the weddings & portraits we shoot.

Love, Jemma

Lately :-)

So things have been busy in the Coleman household. We've finally gotten things mostly settled in our new place - it's nice that I don't look at each weekend or day off as time to tackle some other house project. At our new place, we've got three bedrooms; the brodie blue one is ours with a connecting bathroom in bright sherbet. Jessica, our awesome roomie lives in the room at the end of the hall. The last bedroom is an interesting shade of tan/brown and houses all of my crafty stuff! The other bathroom is turquoise and has an awesome shower curtain that David picked out. We've got sort of two living rooms, a big big kitchen, and a nice dining room. The cherries on top are the awesome back porch & yard plus a 2 car garage! We really love it here. Here are some pics!

On the job front, I just got a new job in Gainesville which means that I don't have to commute 50 miles each way to work! My new commute is 8.5 miles and it still takes me about an hour including changing clothes and freshening up, but it's all worth it since I am riding my bike to work!! WOohoooOOoooO! I'm very excited about this exercise opportunity! I rode in today for supervision this morning and then rode all the way back home. There were times when I had to psyche myself back into the riding on some of the longer hills, but I made it and I'm very proud of myself. :-P David does this every single day, so I have a lot to live up to!

I'm so pumped about the bike-riding that I often forget to talk about the new job. I guess part of the reason is that it isn't too much of a change. Same agency, different location, slightly different role. Instead of counseling children and going into the schools during the year and doing summer camp when school's out, I will be doing intakes half the week and the other half will be for seeing a small caseload of clients. Intake is the first appointment you go to with a therapist and at Meridian it isn't always with the therapist you will continue on with, but it is an important role as you are often the person who will represent Meridian to them on the front lines, so to speak. I'm looking forward to working with adults again & working on my skills with kids some more as well.

You probably figured out from of my photography posts that one of my best friends, Jocelyn is getting married to the wonderful Jeremy in September. It will be in Lyons, CO which is one of the best places to visit. I am going to be a bridesmaid, singing a little, and doing some photography with the best helper ever, the David. The wedding is going to rock and so will the party afterward! We're pretty excited as this will be our third wedding. I am also shooting one in August for the beautiful Sereen & talented Dan here in Gainesville. We just did our first wedding with Clinton & Felicia in May. They are the brave souls who gave me my first paid portrait session and now the first wedding. We just presented their photos to them last weekend and next is creating and designing their photo album! Exciting!

So, the photography business is trickling along, which is kind of perfect for us right now. My dream is to be able to get my license for counseling and have developed a decent part-time stint in photography by May 2010. It's so crazy to think about that being a year. Will I say "twenty-ten" or "two thousand ten"? It would also be sweet if I had time to get a hair-cutting and coloring permit by then too. I have this idea that I could be a stay-at-home-mom-slash-photographer-slash-therapist-slash-hair-didder and get the best of all worlds, plus cheap haircuts for the fam. Wouldn't that be sweet? We'll see what God says.

Speaking of God, we have been trying out a new church this summer. We've been going the The Family Church (TFC) in Gainesville and so far so good. We just finished up a Love & Respect class which focused on our marriage relationship. It was pretty enlightening and all that jazz. We learned some good stuff to practice. Next on our agenda is finding a family group to attend. We've been really blessed this summer with fellowship with our roommate and a few other friends like Jackie & Elijah, Renee, and Matt & Rebecca, so it has been easy to stay in that comfort zone.

I think that about sums up most of our life besides our trip to Colorado in May which I still need to edit photos for... David is going to post about that later I think. Thanks for checking in with us. Until next time...

just a heads up that you should definitely check out the photoblog for exciting pics of Jemma's first wedding assignment plus some more engagement pics featuring Jocelyn & Jeremy! yay!

thanksgiving 2007 photos

This past holiday, when my Dad went into the hospital in early November, our Thanksgiving plans changed and we ended up going to Live Oak to meet up with my brothers Jacob and Jon and my mum. I couldn't find these photos for a while, but now that I have, here they are!

A few of my faves are below...

Vera very excited and fast!


Coach having a jolly good time himself!


And of course the very fast Killian


Down the path they go.


David caught this really bright grasshopper!


Jacob


Jon


This is Jon doing one of Dad's favorite 90's photo poses. But where are the short shorts Jon?


We have a lot of cool vegetation to hide in at our house.


Mum loves Coach. She wanted to keep him, but I say no no no!


Vera likes to be upside down.


Very cool.


This just about captures my family.


My fave pic.


Our little snakey friend.

Our Trip to Holland...er....Helen (and Atlanta too!)

Our first vacation of the year was a long weekend last month, and so the challenge was to find something fun and cheap to do. After searching the Georgia State Parks website, I found a cool place called Unicoi State park. I had heard of Helen, but I couldn't remember from where. We decided to drive to Atlanta after work on Thursday and then drive the rest of the way up Friday morning. Good idea, but when it's midnight and you're still not at your hotel and you've been up since 5am, it seems like a really dumb idea. After some NOS energy drink we made it to the hotel (which didn't have a king size bed like it was supposed to, and midget pillows instead of normal ones).

We got up and decided to find out something to do around Woodstock where the hotel was. According to Google on our phones, the coolest sounding thing was Tanglewood Farm. The attraction of a petting zoo full of miniature animals was pretty high, so we made the trek out to Canton on the way to Helen. From tiny head butting goats,



that had an escape plan...


but we caught them...


to tiny but loud donkeys,


big oinkin' pigs,


and mini jersey cows,


we had a pretty fun time feeding them bread and getting assaulted in the process.

The place was really clean and cute, highly recommended if you're in the area.

After we left there we made our way to the campsite at Unicoi. Driving up into the mountains through the winding roads, crossing little streams and bigger rivers, it was really picturesque. When we arrived at the lodge to check in, we pretty much had the run of any of the campsites, as out of season there aren't many people there. We picked a good location, and set the tent up,


unpacked our stuff and used some of our great new camping gear, thanks Kasey!


then went to the trading post

to get stuff we forgot (matches, lighter, fire wood, paper towels, etc) before it got dark. At the trading post they advised us that the ranger was doing a free s'mores thing at the lodge that night, so once we ate we headed up there to check it out. There we met Smith, an Interpretive Ranger. I'm not sure what he interpreted, but he was our buddy for the weekend. We were the only people at s'mores (remember, out of season, nobody is at the park).

So our first night of camping wasn't too cold. We had two blankets on the bottom (Jemma had a foam roll on her side), then two Coleman sleeping bags zipped together, and then we had our own sleeping bags inside that. Probably overkill for 40F, but we were prepared for sure. That morning, Saturday we got up and figured we'd go to NOC, as I was under the impression it was only about 30 minutes away. Not only was it closer to 2 hours away, but it was closed for the season. Good thing Jemma figured that out before we went out there. So instead we went to Anna Ruby Falls, the highest falls east of the Mississippi!


They were really pretty on a cold February morning, it was just very serene. As serene as a waterfall can be I guess. Too bad we didn't have on our best hiking shoes,


but we still enjoyed the walk.






We got back and were excited to use the fire wood and camp fire for lunch to make some hot dogs which was pretty tasty.



We walked around the park's many miles of trails and took some pictures.






It seems like Unicoi would be awesome if you had a mountain bike, and we probably would have rented some if we were going to be there for more than a couple of days.

At that point we were definitely feeling a nap, so we slept for a couple hours. We got up and checked out the knick knack shop and didn't buy some of this stuff.


Jemma beat me at ping pong.


Since we were some of the only campers in the park, we figured we'd try to go to all of Smith's programs throughout the week. Saturday afternoon was Nature Bingo, which somehow Jemma won all three times.


We figured she was cheating, but she got some sweet prizes anyways. We grabbed dinner at the lodge and a beautiful sunset.


Then, that night we went to the Black Bear informational program. Did you know that Black Bears don't truly hibernate, they only sleep for a week and then come out and eat and hang out, then go back in for a week? Or that Black Bears in South Carolina commonly have a white blaze on their chest? Me neither. A few other people showed up halfway through, so it wasn't just Jemma, me and Smith.

Once we were done learning about Black Bears and eating the good grub at the lodge, we made it back to our campsite to discover some new neighbors. At the end of the row we were on, about 100 yards away, somebody had set up a camper sometime during the day. These are the people who set up the direct TV outside their camper so the don't miss the latest episode of Top Model or whatever other garbage is on TV these days. Unfortunately, they felt it was good to play loud music after 8pm when we arrived back at the campsite. "They'll stop by 11," I say, knowing that's kinda the universal quiet hour for camping. Nope. Try after 2am.

The inconsiderate neighbors, rocky ground under the tent, and few degrees colder weather made the prospect of camping another night not quite as appealing. We had talked about splitting the trip back to Gainesville into chunks by stopping by Atlanta, so we decided to cut the camping portion of the trip a day short and spend the night in Atlanta. I called my cousin who lives in Atlanta with his wife and we stopped by.


They invited us to stay with them, which we graciously accepted. We had a good time with them, playing guitar hero, eating some good pizza at a local restaurant,


and just hanging out. Monday morning we went to IKEA, which was a pretty cool store.


They have breakfast, for super cheap, how cool is that? The girl behind the counter was really, really rude to Jemma when she picked up a plate from the big stack at the front of the line, but otherwise it was a good experience. We saw some really neato ideas for decorating a house (if we had lots of money) and had a pretty good time making fun of ugly/weird stuff.


Then we went to REI, which is a cool outdoor store with all kinds of fun stuff.

After the fun day in Atlanta, we said our good byes to Clay and Elizabeth, grabbed some Starbucks, and got on I75 heading south. It was a fun mini-vacation, everything from campfires to IKEA, got to see some family, overall a good time

check out all of the photos here: www.davidandjemma.com/images/gallery/helenatl

-dc