A Peek at Life as a Natic

Don’t forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of Football with the Guys here

SOME of the guys

Thanksgiving evening the guys in the family took a ride over to Sharon Springs Park in Cumming.  It is right around the corner from Edwin and Geni’s so it was perfect.  When we got there we found that it was a fully artificial turf field and was completely numbered!!  It was AWESOME!  Ever since that night I had been itching to play some more football with the guys.  It was a great time and was a great way to keep active.  My legs were SHOT after playing.

So last weekend I organized for a lot of the guys to get together and play and nice game of two hand touch / flag football.  While we played the ladies planned to get together at our house as well.  We had a great turnout of 17 guys!  A huge turnout even though the weather was in the low 30’s as a HIGH.  It was VERY cold but we all dressed warm and showed up to play a great game of football.  It was such a blast again!  We had some great highlights and just an all around great time.  Everyone got along very well and we had no injuries.  A total success!  I was sore for like 4 days after playing.  That sprinting over and over again really beats the hell out of inactive legs. 

After the game we all headed over to Taco Mac for some food.  The ladies and kiddos came up there as well to meet up with us.  We had TERRIBLE service (always do at 141!!!) but ohh well… we still had a good time.

Shirt Lin and Kara bought

After Taco Mac everyone kinda did their own thing.  We headed back home to hang out with Andrea and Ryan (and the kids).  We all just hung out and talked until about 11:00 or so and then they took the trek back to D-Vegas (Douglasville).

We had such a great Saturday.  Man did I have a great time playing football.  It was awesome!  We are hoping to get the guys together every other Saturday to play.  Hopefully we can make it happen!

The shirt that is on Preston is quite a funny story.  A while back Kara and Lin came over to watch a football game.  Lin and I were in the living room watching the game and Alisha and Kara were in the kitchen.  So Alisha must have caught a glimpse of two linemen pushing and shoving at the line and said, look at those two guys fighting at the hut-hut line LOL!!!!!!!!!  She was referring to the line of scrimage but did not know any better.  She will NEVER live that down.  When Preston was born Kara and Lin got him a shirt that says future member of the hut-hut line  on the front and Natic with a number on the back.  It was a perfect gift!

Last Sunday we decided to spend the day picking up the additional things that we needed for Preston so we are prepared when he is born.  We went down to Babies R Us and printed off our registry and started shopping away.  We know that if you wait until closer to our due date that we would get a coupon for 10% off of our registry, so I decided to do some online searching to match it.  I found a few other coupons but was sure to bring the 10% off your total purchase to be sure that we got the same savings we would have if we waited a few more weeks. 

Well it is a damn good thing we brought that little coupon with us because we sure spent a bunch.  We still needed a bunch of stuff including bottles, sheets, and many other day one things and we are glad to have all of that checked off of the list of things to buy.  One of the major items was the video monitor which was like $200 but Iknew for a fact that I could find that online somewhere cheaper… yeah.. .great idea.  I picked it up for $117 shipped on ebay.  Daaaaamn riiiiight!

After shopping we headed to lunch at Qdoba on Windward pkwy (after finding out that Amandos Caribe had closed permenantly ) and then headed to the house.  Once we got there Phil and Krystle stopped by to drop off a gift (thanks so much guys) and hang out for a little bit.

It was a relaxing and rather uneventful Sunday and we are so glad to have everything that we need for Preston!

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of the Stone Mountain Laser Show at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.

Us minus Phil at Stone Mountain

Last Saturday afternoon we headed from Andrea and Ryan’s house over to Stone Mountain to meet Aubree, Mike, Krystle, and Phil for some food and the laser show.  We stopped by Publix on the way and continued over to grab a spot on the lawn.  Soon after everyone else showed up.  We ate a nice sub dinner and got ready for the laser show to start.  I had spent a ton of time playing with our camera to get it to grab pictures of the laser show.  The lighting for the show is very poor (for a camera) so it was tricky getting the right ISO, aperture, and most importantly shutter speed setting.  You had to leave the shutter open longer to catch the light but beware of creating blurry images due to you holding the camera in your unsteady hands.  Taking pictures in auto came back with absolutely black images. 

Spooning at Stone Mountain

I had not been to the laser show in years but as always it was a great show.  Afterwards we spent time just talking and having a great time.  Before leaving we had noticed that one couple had been underneath the covers for a little longer than you would expect.  After a little bit of staring at them, we quickly found out that they were having sex in the middle of Stone Mountain!!!  Really?!?!  You could not take that to the house..especially since there are so many people around including many children?  People never cease to amaze me.

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of our night at Uncle Shucks at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.

Foggy Uncle Shucks!

Friday night we got together with Bobby, Phil, Krystle, Kara and Lin to have some dinner and head to Uncle Shucks Corn Maze.  We love the fall so this is the beginning of our normal fall festivities!

We all met for dinner at a place right next to Gold’s Gym in cumming.  It is not a fancy place but had good food and good service so it works.  There were a lot of people there so it must be pretty good.  We had a great Mexican dinner and drinks and then headed out to Dawsonville to go to Uncle Shucks Corn Maze.  It was a nice chilly night and it got even better when it got extrememly foggy!  It was so cool to see the fog all over the corn maze as wel pulled up.

Uncle Shucks is a huge corn maze located off of hwy 53 in Dawsonville GA.  They have different designs every year and it is a blast to go to.  Not only do you have to find your way through the maze but you are supposed to punch your map with each of the 12 punches at each checkpoint.  It is great for families!  They have the two main mazes, a haunted maze, a kiddie maze and a hay ride.  It is an absolute blast.  Every year we take a picture with Uncle Shuck.  This year he had the ladies sit on pumpkins in front of the ”Do Not Sit on Pumpkins Sign” lol. 

If you have never been there, you need to.  It is a great time and perfect for the season!  We cant wait to continue our normal fall festivities throughout the rest of this month!

On Friday night we got together with Hector, Reagan, and Bobby to head out to dinner at a new place in town.  We had not seen Hector and Reagan in a week or even longer so we figured that we would get together and catch up.

We met up at the restaurant and man were we shocked.  This place was P-A-C-K-E-D!!!  I have not seen a place this busy in a long, long time.  The parking lot was full, the dirt space beside it was totally full and people were parking on side of the road across the street.  We were thinking that the wait would be insane, but fortunately it was only like an hour long wait.

We had a great time chatting, eating dinner, and having a few drinks at the new digs.  The service was a little slow, but it was absolutely slammed!  You cant expect the best when they are that busy.  I found the food to be average but again they were really busy.  Will I return?  Yeah probably – but I am going to expect more when I do and if I dont get it, it will most likely be my last visit.

If you are in the area, check it out…. let me know what you think when you do.  Maybe you will have a better experience than I did and end up loving it.  I hope that you do!

After eating at Cookoo’s nest, Bobby and I decided we were not quite ready to call it a night.  We tried to get Alisha to tag along, but she said no way and told us to go by ourselves LOL.  You guessed it!  TACO MAC!!  We got there and had a few beers and called it a night.  It was great.  We sat with one of our favorite waitresses, Lindsay and just chilled.  While we were there a few friends from high school showed up including Drew, Krystle and Phil as they came back from a high school football game.  It was great to see everyone again and we had a great time.

Another solid Friday night!!

Last Friday we headed over to Alisha’s parents house to eat dinner and have dessert for Tiffany’s birthday.  We chilled out there for a while before heading over to Cinco’s to celebrate Ashley’s birthday.  We met up at Cincos with about 25 other people to enjoy the night.  They had a DJ and all of our friends which led to a great time.

Happy birthday Tiff and Ash!

Friday night was a big night for everyone.  We celebrated Spence’s birthday by enjoying some dinner and then headed downtown to celebrate Grant’s upcoming wedding.

Spencer had originally wanted to go to a new bar in the Cumming area but unfortunately they did not get their liquor license in time to be open for the weekend.  Because of this, Spence decided to move the party to Taco Mac – you wont hear me complain!  Alisha was a little less thrilled but came out to spend time with good friends.  We had a nice sized group of almost 20 and had a great time just BS’ing and eating / drinking.  We didnt have the best service (okay maybe the worst ever) but we made the best of it!

After dinner, the guys headed downtown to spend time in Buckhead, the Highlands, and then back to Buckhead.  We started out in a bar that turned out to be the visiting football team’s bar of choice.  We had to get the HELL out of there!  We headed out to the highlands and had a few drinks at a few bars there before heading over towards East Andrews in Buckhead.  They still wanted a cover charge even though they were closing in about 30 minutes, so we decided to head out of there.  On the way home we grabbed food at IHOP before making it to the house.  It was a long night of fun and we made it back to the house at about 2:30 or so.

LOL – i have been getting more and more hits to my site that are direct referrals from Google searches of Krystle and Phil.  I am sure that now that parents have found out who their teacher is they are rushing home to make sure their children are in great hands. 

I assure you that your kids are in good hands.  They are two of the best people we know and assure you that you will LOVE them working with your children this year.

But thanks for visiting anyway   LOL

Technology is awesome isnt it!  Don’t think I can’t see you ha ha. 

And for those that I have now scared… I dont know who you are or any info about you because you searched my site… but i can see who gets referred to my site and if they click links while visiting.

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of Brick Store and Sweetwater at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.

The Group

Wow!  What another great Saturday with friends and family!

Phil, Krystle, Hector, Reagan, Bobby, Danielle, and Dan all met at my house in the morning to head down to pick up Amber and Jason before heading to lunch in Decatur.  As you may know, I am in love with Brick Store Pub and this was the perfect opportunity to head down there for drinks and some grub.  We got a table upstairs near the Belgian bar and had a great time talking, laughing, drinking, and eating some great food.  Everyone else seemed to have the same opinion as I as we were leaving.  You have to love that place.  It is excellent.  If you have never been, you HAVE to go.  It is incredible with a great atmosphere, huge beer list, great food, and good prices.  A complete hit!  Check out their site here.  Here is our blog entry of our first time at Brick Store.

Great times with great friends

After Brick Store, we headed up towards Sweetwater Brewery.  As you know I am a huge fan of supporting our local breweries and fortunately we have three great breweries in the Atlanta area that make it easy to support them.  You may have read about Sweetwater Brewery on our blog here and here.  It is an excellent microbrewery with excellent beers but due to some previously tough tour hours, we never made it out to check out the brewery.  After helping out with the blueberries down at Serenbe Farms, we were told about Sweetwater’s new Saturday tour hours from 2:30 – 4:30 beginning today.  They have a live band, excellent atmosphere, great crowd, and of course excellent beer!  For $8 they give you a souvenir glass and 6 tickets to get beer each of which allows you a half pint pour.  They allow you to sample all of their year round beers and whatever seasonal beer is on tap at the time.  We had a blast talking, drinking, and hanging out with great friends.  I highly recommend you make it out to Sweetwater Breweryand encourage you even more to support your local breweries.  Sweetwater as well as the others make it easy to do so by producing beers that are nationally recongized for their excellence. 

At Sweetwater Brewery

After leaving Sweetwaterwe headed back towards the house and had everyone back over to hang out.  Hector brought some games and people played, drank, cooked, and chilled for several hours.  Being that we started the day early, everyone got pretty tired and headed home around 10:30 or so.  It was a great day and a hell of a way to start off the weekend.  If you have never been to Brick Store or Sweetwater GO!  You will not be disappointed.  I don’t get anything for bragging about these great local places.  I love great beer, food, and people and establishments like these keep Atlanta excellent! 

The taps with liquid heaven

We had such a great time today.  Thanks to all that came as well as the guy rapping about “eight ball in my corner pocket” to himself walking around Decatur.  Peace up.  A-Town down homie!  – for our not so urban readers… A-town is Atlanta. LOL

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of Matt and Laura’s Big Day at pictures.neilnatic.com or here

Saturday morning we woke up, got ready and headed out to Roswell for Matt and Laura’s big day!!!!

Matt and Laura got married in Roswell at Founder’s Hall on Saturday afternoon.  It was a gorgeous wedding with their friends and family there to celebrate!  A few of our friends were in the wedding party and many others in attendance.  It was a great wedding.  We are so happy for them and wish them a lifetime of happiness together.

NO - She was not really drinking them LOL

Congrats guys!!!

note:  unfortunately we did not get to take many pictures.  We allowed family to be closest to them for their big day and were further away from most of the action.  If they post pics from their photographers I will edit this post and link back to them.

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of our day at Serenbe at pictures.neilnatic.com or here

Serebe Farms!!

Holy crap… where do I start???  We had such a great morning / afternoon!

In June Alisha read on a friends blog about a place called Serenbe Farms.  It is an all organic community based around the farms.  The pictures she saw looked gorgeous!  She had been asking to find some time to go down there and check it out as it looked like a great time.  Well before we left to PA for vacation I had been playing on Facebook and saw that Sweetwater Brewery was doing a small event at Serenbe Farms.  They are brewing a new one-time brew that they need blueberries for – 750 POUNDS of blueberries that is!  Sounds like a win – win.  I get to pick blueberries for Sweetwater and “contribute” to this one time beer and we get to check out Serenbe Farms like Alisha wanted to do. 

I had sent the contact at Serenbe Farms an email when I read the Facebook post from Sweetwater and reserved our spot on their list.  They claimed that they only had 30 spots so I was really excited about making it in.  As the day grew nearer they asked for a headcount of who was planning to go and warned that there was a limited number of people that could come.  We really wanted to invite all our friends to come down and check out Serenbe and had already mentioned it specifically to Bobby as well as Krystle and Phil.  Once we found out that there was a limited number of people allowed we warned them that they may now not be able to go but told Serenbe that we wanted to bring them with us because we had already told them.  They were equally as excited about going as we were.  On Thursday night I sent the Serenbe contact a message to follow-up and she said that there should be enough room for them as well.

Fireman Phil

Last night Krystle and Phil were talking about this breakfast biscuit place called Mr. Swiss on hwy 9 near downtown Cumming.  They were saying that they had the best biscuits ever and that they were going to pick them up on the way to our house.  We had to leave our house by 7:45 (yes AM) in order to make it to the blueberry patch by 9:00.  It was crazy early to be waking up on a Saturday but it was definitely going to be worth it.  Well, Krystle and Phil were right.  Wow were those biscuits good!  They got Alisha, Bobby and I a bacon egg and cheese biscuit and it was devine!  Okay we each had two but that is besides the point damnit!  We drove out to the farms which is a little South of the city on I-85 and parked at the blueberry patch.  When Phil got out of the car he was rocking Ryan’s red fireman hat.  It was pretty funny LOL.  We then walked over to the lady from the farm and she taught us how to pick the ripe blueberries and gave us basketsreusable bags to put them in while in the fields. 

SWEETWATER BREWERY!

It was a great time.  We got to pick and eat while out there.  The day was perfect.  Sweetwater had a camera man who was there taking pictures for the website and facebook page.  He was hysterical.  He was joking around with all of us the whole time.  He told Alisha to stop whining about being hot that there was beer at the end of this and we said that she was pregnant and he was like “oh.. .i thought you were just fat” LOL  He was very much kidding and kept this same sense of humor throughout the morning.  We picked blueberries for about an hour and half or two hours, before throwing in the towel and heading to the Serenbe marketplace.  On the way out Steve from Sweetwater gave us all some beer, a free admission card for the brewery tours,  and a few Sweetwater pint glasses.  While we were drinking our beers and talking to him, I asked him what it was that he was brewing.  He said that it was a specialty beer that requires 750 pounds of blueberries!  They had professional pickers out there all last week, us this weekend, and then professional pickers again at the beginning of the week.  He also mentioned that they will be doing a release party and that all of us that helped will be emailed to come out to it for a tasting.  He said in their trial batch of this beer the beer has so many blueberries that it actually pours purple!  We cannot wait to taste this beer.  It is going to be freaking great!  In addition, Sweetwater has added a Saturday brewery tour and tasting to their schedule beginning August 1st!

Horses like Sweetwater too!

After picking and talking with Steve, we headed over to the horse stables to see the horses on the farm (not serenbe – the farm with the blueberries on it).  We met the owner of the property who was a great guy and told us a lot about it and how much he loves it!  He was a great guy and was very nice.  Alisha and Krystle had a blast with the horses.  Krystle used to have three of them and loved playing with them.  I had never really touched horses before and was totally astonished that they were so soft!  It was sooo cool!.

We then headed over to the Serenbe marketplace before it closed to check it out.  They had a variety of fruits, vegetables, honey, jams, etc.  It was pretty cool.  The little community is GORGEOUS!  They have housing there that is beautiful and a few restaurants and shops.  It was just indescribeable  I would love to live there.  Just so serene.  We walked around, shopped, grabbed lunch, and then headed home.

mmmmmmm blueberries!

The day was so perfect.  The weather, the blueberries, the town… all of it.  If you have not been to Serenbe Farms, I strongly suggest you take an afternoon and go.  Sundays are great too because there is an inn there that serves a fried chicken dish that is supposed to be the best thing on earth.

Friday night we called around to see who was available to hang out.  Krystle and Phil were down as was Bobby.  Unfortunately, Bobby had to cancel though at the last moment as he had the opportunity to go out with someone that he had been trying to work out for a while.

I was craving Thai food for some reason and convinced everyone to join me.  We were deciding between Golden Buddah on hwy 9 or Asian Table over by Windmere.  Krystle and Phil had been to Asian Table and I personally think it would be better food so we decided to head that way.

We had a great dinner (well until Krystle tried the sticky rice dessert LOL) and headed back to the house to hang out, talk, and have a few beers (okay … Phil and I had a few beers).  We had a great time as usual with them and headed to bed around 11:30 or so.  Saturday was set to be a great day so we had to be up really early.

Saturday morning I woke up and headed to Publix to pick up some waffle mix as Alisha was really wanting them for breakfast.  I woke her lazy butt up when I got back and we made waffles and ate breakfast together.  They definitely hit the spot for me.  I hadn’t had waffles in forever!  Alisha then got ready and headed out with Kara to do some shopping and run some errands while I edited a picture for Mike and Aubree and played a little Playstation 3. 

Saturday night we had plans to head over to Kevin and Ashley’s pool to celebrate Matt’s birthday.  Laura picked up a keg for everyone (but me – I cant drink that beer ).  We had a nice group of people and were just hanging out.  It was a hot day but was more bareable as the evening went on.  This summer has been more than brutal already!  We will just say that as the evening progressed it was nothing short of a cluster.  Eventually everyone  kinda went their own way.  We decided to go with Mike, Aubree, Krystle, and Phil to IHOP at the outlet malls for a late night snack.  We had a great time just BS’ing and catching up which turned out to be the highlight of the evening. 

Saturday was interesting, but hell, I had a good time…

Alisha Sleeping While Holding Kaitlyn

On Friday evening we headed back over to Mike and Aubree’s house to spend time with them and Kaitlyn.  Shortly after we showed up Krystle and Phil came by too.  We had a great relaxing evening grabbing ice cream from the ice cream truck, grilling out (steak mmmm), having a beer, talking, and watching some tv.  It was a nice way to put an end to a busy week.

We watched some awesome shows as the evening wound down.  We sat Cocaine Nation where they were doing drug busts, talking about how bad people ruin their health and lives on it, and all kinds of facts about it.  After that was some other cool show followed again by Meth Nation!  We watched about half of Meth Nation before watching the Man vs Wild episode with Will Ferrell.  It was actually really funny.  We ended up leaving around midnight to head home and catch a few hours sleep before Saturday’s planned day.  Alisha passed out before then with Kaitlyn as you can see above LOL.

We had a great relaxing time with the Sassos and Lyerlys Friday night.

Saturday was the Dunwoody Beerfest which we all had tickets to but unfortunately the rain was sure to put a slight damper on it.  Alisha went out with Aubree earlier in the morning while I waited for Bobby and Spence to come over to our house to head to the drinking festivities.  They got here at about 12:30 or so and then we headed out towards Alpharetta to go to the homebrew store for supplies for tomorrow’s brew for Dan.  After picking up the ingredients, we headed over to Amber’s apartment to meet up with her and Jason. 

By this time it was absolutely pouring and we were a little worried about how Beerfest was going to turn out for us.  When we got there it was still raining with no sign at all of it letting up at all but we were all convinced that we were going to make the best of it.  Once we got there we met up with Ash, Kev, Matt, and Laura and had a great time enjoying the day (in the rain) and drinking some beer.  The rain let up about an hour into the Beerfest and it actually began to be a nice day.  It was overcast which was nice and really helped to keep the heat away.  After a few hours Jason and Amber found the trivia tent and had a blast with it.  Jason played in two trivia games and Amber played in one as well.  All three times they won pretty easily.  It was a great time!  We spent most of our time laughing and just enjoying being with friends regardless of the weather.

After Beerfest Bobby and I met up with Alisha and Aubree and some friends to hang out for the rest of the evening.  They spent the day over at Krystle and Phil’s house so Bobby and I met them over there to hang out for the evening.  We had some dinner, watched the end of the Braves game, and played Partini until around midnight or so.  As expected ( ) they guys beat the girls in Partini.  It was a great time!  I wish we could have stayed a little while longer as we had a blast, but we were just exausted. 

Saturday turned out to be a great day.  The rain did not put a damper on things at all and we got to spend time with a number of our friends. 

Oh! and just 7 more days until our CRUISE!