Snapshot Sunday!

It is January 29th and it is 58 degrees outside. Lately it has been in the lower to mid 60's. We have had an extremely mild winter. The meteorologists are calling it the "year without a winter." I believe it. I have not worn half of my winter wardrobe. Here's to hoping that it snows this winter! I absolutely love to play with my camera in the snow! (I know.. I sound like a complete camera nerd!)

A Simple Song

I love that we have memories. Though some memories can be bad and you want to ignore them and close them up so you can’t remember them – others can be fun, special, funny and bring a smile to your face. For me, I can hear a song and a flood of memories will return. The song will trigger a memory that will take me back to a certain event, location, thoughts, smells and it is like I am back in the exact moment once again. It is as if time has stood still for those brief three minutes. Today I had my ipod on the shuffle setting and Chris Tomlin’s, “God of This City” came through my headphones. A smile immediately came to my face. I had a flashback to January 1, 2007 when I attended the Passion Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. I attended Passion with fifteen friends from ECU. Passion wasn’t just a small three-day conference in Atlanta. It was attended by 24,000 college students. We overtook the city! College students covered the sidewalks on the treks from the various hotels in downtown Atlanta to Philips Arena and Georgia World Congress Center. Everyday the CNN Center Food Court ran out of food. There were college students everywhere – overtaking the sidewalks, stopping traffic, eating downtown completely out of food and learning about God. Our group shared a lot of fun laughs, memories and “inside jokes.” Our first night in Atlanta was New Year’s Eve and we didn’t have a hotel reservation. So all fifteen of us crashed on the living room floor of my brother’s condo. We were lined up shoulder-to-shoulder like sardines. I still can’t believe he trusted fifteen college students in his condo!

15 Pirates loose in Atlanta!

Passion students flooding the streets of Atlanta!

Snapshot Sunday!

This was a sweet moment I captured on Christmas Eve of my mom with her grandson. I love how it captures some of his first excitements of Christmas.

Snapshot Sunday!

As you have probably figured out.. I love to take pictures! By a lot, I mean.. ALL the time I have a camera with me. I thought it would be fun to share more of these pictures with you on Sundays. I am going to try to share a different picture with you every Sunday. Some of these pictures I find inspiring, motivational, influential, thought-provoking and some that I personally just think are cool. This week I want to share with you a picture I took this summer in Kenya at the Nakuru National Game Park. (This zebra was so close, I hardly zoomed in).

A Farmer's Daughter

For the most part, people know (or assume) what it's like to be a farmer's daughter. However, when I tell people that my father is a pecan farmer. I get a lot of interesting looks. Questions like, "How do pecans grow?", "How do you harvest pecans?" and "What time of year do pecans grow?" I decided a good do a quick "farmer's daughter" version of how the whole process works. Of course, if you ask my dad the process... his version would be a lot longer and more detailed :)
The pecans begin growing in the spring of the year and are ready for harvest in late October as the pecans fall to the ground. Pecans are everywhere you step!

Sometimes the pecans aren't ready to fall off the trees at the timing my dad wants them to fall. So he will use a piece of machinery called a Shaker, which will shake the tree so the pecans will fall off to the ground so they can be picked up. There are a lot of trees to shake!

Then he drives the tractor and pushes all the pecans that are on the ground into wind rows.

Blowing the leaves and pecans into wind rows.

As you can imagine, dirt and leaves fly everywhere!

Now the pecans get picked up.

And the machinery differentiates the weight between leaves and pecans. The pecans are kept. (You can see them shooting through the machine).

Then you load all the pecans into a big red wagon.

The red wagon full of pecans gets dumped into a big bin in the cleaning plant. The pecans are then picked up by the conveyor belt and processed through the cleaning plant.

After a series of steps in the cleaning plant, he has employees pick out the bad ones. Then the process is repeated.

But really .. the reason my dad is a pecan farmer .... is so we can all have really fun photo shoots ;)

Recap of 2011

2011 was a great year! It was a year full of fun experiences, friends, family and memories. It was also a year of heartache as I sadly attended nine funerals over the course of 2011. More than I've ever attended in my life. Through the sadness, God continued to show his love through many blessings in my life. Here is a quick overview of 2011.

I got to start off the year by celebrating New Year's Eve in Charlotte with three of my dear friends from childhood (Leigh, Alana and Margaret). We all grew up dancing and teaching dance together.

In April I got to fly over my family's pecan orchard in south Georgia in a private airplane. What an amazing experience to see the farm from this view!

(Whoever planted the pecan trees sure did a good job planting them in a straight line!)

The week after Easter, Susan (my clinical teacher from when I did my student teaching in college) and her husband Tom came to visit my family at the farm. We made a day trip to Savannah and got to see the sights of the historic town.
This spring I made my first, "big girl" purchase. I bought a new car. After eight years of driving jeeps I sold my silver 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee and purchased a white 2011 Toyota Highlander. It was a sad day to see my Jeep go away, but I love my Highlander! (I've already put 17,000 miles on it!)

This April, my former teacher, role model, mentor and friend passed away. Coach D was the Athletic Director of Salem Middle School and was the Women's Soccer Coach at Apex High School. There was a candlelight vigil at the high school after his death and the stadium was full. ESPN did an article on his life and published my picture with the article.

In May, my grandmother, Elva Alice Anderson Belcher passed away. She was almost 103 years old. She lived a long, healthy life. Full of love, blessings and joy. This picture was taken at Christmas when she was 99 years old.

This summer I traveled to Kenya for a 10 day mission trip with my church, First Baptist Cary. We built two houses, attended schools and orphanges. We got to share God's love as well as experience the true wildlife of Kenya.

While in Kenya, I got to stand on the Equator!! Sadly there was not a line drawn on the ground like there are on maps. Here I am standing with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one foot in the southern hemisphere.

In October I went with my childhood friend to the NC Hot Air Balloon Festival in Statesville, NC. We enjoyed the full day of seeing hot air balloon contests, mass ascenions and a twilight glow.

Throughout the year I performed with my tap company, Footnotes Tap Ensemble, at nine different performances throughout the Triangle area. We performed at places like UNC Children's Hospital, Sparkcon, the SECU House at UNC Hospital, the Burning Coal Theatre and the Carolina Inn.

I ended 2011 with New Year's Eve 2012 in Charlotte, NC with my friends Leigh and Alana. Sadly, Margaret did not join us this year,but we continued to carry on the tradition of dancing the night away!

Here's to 2012. May it be full of love, happiness, blessings and memories to cherish.

Christmas on the Farm 2011

Christmas has come and gone. We had another wonderful family Christmas at the Belcher Farm and the Lanier Farm. The Christmas tradition continued of gathering at my mother's family home near Statesboro, Georgia. By "near" I mean the family home is 10 miles away from the nearest gas station and in the middle of the country. There is hardly any cell phone service and we don't have internet. All we have is each other, deer hunting and fishing to keep us entertained. Nineteen of us all stay at my grandparents' 100 year old farm house with two bathrooms. This means Santa comes to visit nineteen people Christmas morning. The Christmas tree is always full of Christmas presents, especially when you have nineteen people giving and receiving. The first glimpse of the Christmas tree on Christmas morning is one of my favorite moments of Christmas.

This Christmas, Rundle (my nephew) is 15 months old. He loved getting to play with all of his cousins. One of his cousins, Connor, taught him a trick that turned into his new favorite toy! His new favorite toy was playing with a red Solo cup. He has become very good at balancing the cup on his head and loves handing the cup to others to put on their heads.

The day after Christmas we gathered for our traditional family Christmas with the Lanier family in Metter, Georgia. My grandparents’ house is nestled in the middle of two hundred acres of pecan trees. We are very blessed to gather with 36 family members. Seventeen of these are the third generation. Even though I am a part of the second generation, I'm still allowed to be in all of the "kid" pictures. Below is a picture of all the "children" in the Lanier family.

Of course, Rundle really enjoyed this trip to the farm. He loves doing "boy" things. He enjoyed getting dirty in the middle of the dirt road.
He especially loved getting to ride the tractor with his dad and his Daddy Ray!

This Christmas was full of wonderful memories and I can't wait to be back together again at the two farms that have instilled the importance of love and family tradition in each of our lives.