Our Life Now. Our Life with Children.
Our life is pretty normal. We
work Monday through Friday in Atlanta and usually carpool to work
together. Todd is currently traveling for his project –
one night away from home every two weeks, however, this is a
temporary requirement. Candice occasionally travels, but it is
her choice whether to do so or not. Once we adopt a child,
this would certainly change. In fact – Candice is
exploring options to work from home.
We
get together with a variety of friends – and are doing
something social one or two nights of the week. Candice goes to a girl’s night outing
once a month. She
occasionally has a community
service or neighborhood meeting to go to during the week after
work. Also, she goes to yoga after work once a week.
Todd does not regularly participate in after-work activities,
however he may unwind with the cat on the couch or by playing an x-box game once in a while. He goes to
breakfast with a group of guys once every week, as well.
When the weather is nice, Todd may play a game of golf with friends. Some weekends, we both like to go hiking at state parks near our home. Our favorite places to go involve streams and historic ruins (like old brick mills that are built next to streams). There are so many places like that around which are very cool to explore.
To unwind, Candice likes to bake. She has an *outstanding* chocolate peanut butter cookie recipe that she makes for fund-raisers, the neighborhood putt-putt golf event, or to take to work to treat co-workers. She also makes Todd’s mother’s banana cake which gets rave reviews. She also enjoys trying out new recipes for dinner. Some fancy. Some not so much - but likes to find the ones that taste good, are healthy, and are quick to make. She tries to use local / organic foods when possible as well.
We have two indoor cats: Kitty
and Pigg. It’s a funny name for the latter, but he has a
big puffy nose. For some reason the two of them act like
they don’t like one another, but when we come home from work, we
often finding them laying on the couch together.
(posers!) We do not have a dog, but we play with our
neighbor dog – a jack russell terrier, Jack, who is
adorable and loves
belly rubs. (He likes to just hang out with us as
well, as seen here with Todd.) We take him for walks and play with him, but the
neighbors feed him. We get the best end of the deal!
We want to stay true to ourselves and not get “caught up” in what society
says we need to have. We want to focus more on
quality of
life. We previously wanted to
own a second home – a mountain house on a stream. In
the summer of 2007, we decided to
build a stream in the back yard instead of pursuing buying a
house in the mountains. This offered us the opportunity to
enjoy the pond every day instead of only "getting away"
only one or
two weekends a month.
We
tend to watch Netflix movies or ones that we have Tivo-ed rather than go out to theaters.
(An occasional theater outing will occur if there’s a movie with
exceptional CGI that Todd wants to see, though.) We used
to go out to eat more often (and sometimes at pretty nice
restaurants), but are trying to be a little bit healthier and
cook more often at home. The little organic garden in the
back yard is providing a small amount of food; however,
we joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program
where we got fresh organic vegetables every week. This
has been a challenge to use the veggies, but is something that
the two needed to eat more of. When we do go out, it’s to one of
the restaurants on the square that we can walk to or we’ll
drive to Willie’s for a
We are members of the High Museum of
Art in
The weekend days are spent doing
stuff around the house: installing trim around doors &
windows, painting walls, working out in the yard (around the
pond and stream as of late). The renovation work is almost
complete and we look forward to spending more time chilling
out -- and of course -- hanging out with a child. Occasionally, we will take a weekend trip to visit
out-of-town friends or relatives.