this weekend

i discovered some things this weekend...

1. i am related to eric and amanda eaton's sweet little baby banks. how you ask? on friday i went with my mom to see sweet banks in the hospital. i didn't have my camera with me, so i'm going to borrow a picture from bethany hembree's page (sorry bethany). that is eric with his little boy! eric and i have been great friends since high school. he has always been like another brother to me and losing our good friend, patrick, bound us even closer. i couldn't be happier for him and amanda!! sorry...i got sidetracked. while we were visiting them i told eric that my grandfather was on tv. he loves history and i knew he would want to see it. amanda's grandparents were in the room while we were there. all of a sudden her grandfather chimed in and said, "yeah hugh wardlaw." i was so confused and surprised that this man knew my grandfather's name?? he and my mom started talking and apparently we are all related. i don't remember exactly how, but my mom knows all that. i signed my baby present as aunt emily, but in actuality i am cousin emily! i thought it was cool! bethany has more pictures of the cute little family on her blog. why didn't i take pictures??

2. liza sorgenfei is one of the cutest little pregnant moms ever! i went to a shower for her on saturday. i didn't take pictures there either. it was fun to see everyone and she got awesome presents! if someone posts some pictures then i'll "borrow" them too. she is due oct. 21st and it's a girl! i can't wait to see brian dale sorgenfrei raising a girl! for those that don't know brian & liza...she was one of my roommates in college and he is an old friend from high school.

3. i'm more allergic to dust than i ever thought was possible. i was in my mom's house for about 10 minutes on saturday....it just happened to be right after she had been sorting through some of my grandparent's old things. i'm super, super allergic to dust. if i touch it my hand breaks out in a rash. if i turn on one of my fans that hasn't been cleaned i get pink eye from the dust falling in my eye. what 27 yr. old gets pink eye? while i was at my mom's i could feel my throat starting to get scratchy, so i decided to leave. it was too late. i woke up on sunday morning feeling like i had pieces of glass in my throat and sluggish like you do when you have the flu....seriously? from 10 minutes. i hate dust. i feel like the kid who had to sleep with a humidifier in the room....oh wait...that WAS me.

4. i started a new art project this weekend. it's so exciting! i'll have pictures up soon! i've already done a bunch! i also painted some gourds for my table. please don't make fun of me.

5. this didn't happen to me this weekend, but it did happen this weekend. a friend of mine, marty cooper, posted this on her blog and everyone has to go watch this video of this woman. i'm so ashamed that she lives in mississippi! marty pointed out to look at her shirt, so i will too....it figures! click here to go to marty's post.

6. i get to see caroline, reed, dendy b, millie, thom, katy, cailin and annabel next week!!

my granddaddy is cuter than yours...

or at least i think so!
right before gustav hit my grandfather came to town to be interviewed by wlbt for their veteran history project. they aired it last night on the 5 o'clock news and again today at noon. i'm not sure if it will be on tonight at 5, but possibly.
here is the piece they did on him...

Hugh Wardlaw was a senior in high school when he joined the National Guard in 1936. He stayed with the military as he went to college, honing his skills with the ROTC. He started with the 31st Infantry Division. In 1943, he was transferred to the 3rd Infantry and sent to northern Italy. "We broke out of the beach head at Anzio and then we fought in Rome and captured it." From Rome, he went on to France, working to clear out occupational forces. The locals were thrilled to see allied troops. "They welcomed us real well as we were going in." The troops moved north through France, into Germany and eventually Austria. "It was a heavy duty job. We had heavy casualties." As the fight in the European Theater drew to a close, Wardlaw and his fellow soldiers began liberating concentration camps, like the one at Dachau. "It was a terrible place to have to be. It was poor feeding and just a heck of a place to be. It was bad." As horrible as his surroundings were, he knew they were doing important work. "You felt you were really accomplished something at the time." After the war ended, Wardlaw went back to Mississippi State and got his degree in mechanical engineering. He stayed in the Reserves until 1978, when he retired as a colonel.


my grandfather received a purple heart, a combat infaltry badge and a silver and bronze star. my mom has been going through all of his old letters that he would send to my grandmother. for his 90th birthday my brother, clint, put them together in a book for everyone. he actually narrated the book and made a dvd for all of us to watch at the birthday party. my mom, clint and brooke worked so hard on this and it looks awesome! i wish you could read the letters....they are so sweet!






















the intro of the book says:
enclosed are pictures and excerpts of letters sent home by this officer and humble gentelman to his wife. as a soldier in the army's 30th regiment of the 3rd infantry division, wardlaw was nicknamed the "ole man" due to his gray hair in his twenties. commanders would know how bad a situation was by asking the radio operator, "has the old man picked up his rifle yet?"

so i guess i get my early gray hair from my granddaddy and i'm ok with that.

here is a picture of my grandmother writing him letters. she has his picture framed on the desk. she worked in the pentagon in the war department when he was in the war.




























there are lots of things i love about the letters he wrote. he didn't want to worry my grandmother, so he tried to talk about his beard and other things besides the war. you could tell how much they loved each other. he used every way possible to tell her how much he loved her! another thing i love is that he wrote out his division's song in one of the letters...

I wouldn't give a bag of beans to be a fancy pants marine I'd rather be a 'dog face' soldier like I am I wouldn't trade my old M1 for all the Navy's great big guns I'd rather be a 'dog face' soldier like I am On all the posters that I see they say the Army builds men So they're tearing me down to build me over again I'm just a 'dog faced' soldier with a rifle on my shoulder and i eat a 'kraut' for breakfast every day So feed me ammunition, keep me in the Third division Your 'dog-faced' soldier boy's ok.

here is the link to the article on wlbt's site... veteran's history project and here is the video they showed... hugh wardlaw

he looks good for 90!

the grove!

oh how i miss oxford and the grove! i went up last weekend for the ole miss/samford game. my sister graduated from samford, so she invited some of her friends to share a tent with us. i went up early on friday to set up the tent. it is way more intense than i ever could imagine! i stayed with a good friend of mine, emily moore. emily is awesome beyond words and agreed to help me with the tent. she should have said no.

emily called some of her friends to figure out the strategy. i don't think people took us seriously that two girls were setting up a tent. we found out that they moved the set-up time to 7 pm instead of the old time of 3 am. i was ecstatic! we heard that people start getting there at 5...we found that out at 4:45. awesome.
we pull up and there were some guys we knew setting up their 16 tents ready to run with them when they got the go-ahead. we unloaded our poor little tent and waited. we had no clue what we were waiting for. the cobra guy told us that when everyone started running that was our cue.
he was right. everyone started running towards the walk of champions and we ran for the spot across from the law school. we were able to get on the edge...probably taking someone's spot, but oh well.
we had a great spot and it was easy for everyone to find the next day. it was so great to be back in the grove in our own tent! i hung some lanterns to try to spruce it up a bit...





















ok...so it's kind of a redneck tent, but we had fun!

not much has changed about the grove except for the police patrolling. don't get me wrong...they patrolled when i was in college, but not to this extent. emily and i got there early enough to watch the police go to unmanned tents and go through all the coolers. if they found a cooler with beer they would drag it over to the garbage, individually open each beer and pour it out. you know that internally they had to have a conflict of interest. here is a pic of them pouring out the beer.




















my sister brought her whole family. her kids were making friends with everyone around. alex would make things with sticks and try to sell them to drunk people....absolutely hilarious to watch! molly would make sure everyone took a picture of her and her siblings. there are probably more than a few people out there who woke up the next morning wondering why there were pictures of small children on their camera! go to my sister's blog...she has cuter pictures of the kids. her is one of them with baby richard. richard is bink's baby...my sister's best friend.

oh this isn't good...

so i sort of have a tendency to be organized. i'm not necessarily a neat freak because my house isn't always clean, but it's always organized. i just discovered this site...
martha's organizing tip of the day
this is not good for me because i can spend hours going through all these tips! it's also not good that she has a
craft of the day and
halloween idea of the day.
i just bookmarked these to my toolbar.
i'm never going to get anything done, but at least my house will be organized!

new art blog

i figured it would be easiest if i had a separate blog for my artwork..."keep it separated" (that line is for you, sissy).
here is the link to the new blog...
www.emgart.blogspot.com
i couldn't decide if it should be titled "off the wall" or "on the wall"....let me know what you think.
there are some pictures of some canvases that i did for my nieces in texas. my sister has already put in an order for 3 "magical trees" for her 3 girls.
there are also some previews of the ones i'm doing right now. when they are finished i'll take them outside to photograph, so there won't be a glare. sorry.

totally random

the name, emily guthrie, is strangely common. there is another emily guthrie from jackson. went to FPDS and prep, but is at state now. i used to get her mail all the time. i thought it would stop when she went to state, but then another emily guthrie emerged. she went to auburn with some friends of mine. for the past few weeks i have been getting these forwards from this one email address. i finally asked the person if i knew them, and the guy said that we met in south carolina in august. not me! i was getting the auburn emily guthrie's emails.

it happened again tonight. i got an email saying that the things i had ordered would be delivered to me. it seemed like a legit email, and i was worried that someone had stolen my credit card or something. i responded to the email wondering had been purchased. the girl said that i had been to patty's house on friday and bought some things...again...not me! apparently there is another emily guthrie in new jersey! what in the world?? the girl that sent the email was really nice and works for a christian company sort of like southern living home.

i went to her website to look at the things and there are some cute things on there. i, of course, was drawn to these.


















mason jar salt and pepper shakers!

if you know me at all you know that i hate glasses. i hate when they chip and when they get that funky residue from the dishwasher. i drink out of mason jars. they don't chip. they don't have weird residue after the dishwasher. they come in all sorts of sizes and they are so cheap!! you can get a whole set for nothing!
anyway, i've never heard of this company, but they have some cute things.
here is the main page of the website.... at home america.

i promise i'll upload my pictures from oxford soon...it was an entertaining trip!

for melissa caroline...

caroline ridgway hogan recently posted pictures from their trip to chuck e. cheese's. i commented on the story reminding her of the time that a group of us went to chuck e. cheese's in high school. it was one of those had-to-be-there moments, so i won't bore you with all of the details of the night. i did, however, promise ridg that i would post a picture if i found one....and i did.



















i also found a picture of me at chuck e. cheese's when i was a kid. apparently chuck didn't scare me back then like he does now.



















i also promised ridg that i would post a picture from wednesday night church when we were in the 4th grade. all i can say is wow, my pencil matches my shirt. knowing me back then...it probably wasn't just coincidence. wow. yes, that's annie with us. i'm pretty sure that we were skipping a "magee & me" movie when this was taken.

finished pig

here is the pig in his new home at logan farms. you still can't really tell how big it is, but i had fun painting it! now everyone needs to go to logan farms...get a sandwich and sit under the pig!
i've decided that i have to do 3 paintings a day in order to have enough for my shows coming up. i decided that two days ago and i've only finished 2. oops. i think i might have to ground myself tomorrow because i'm going to the ole miss game this weekend.

annoying flies 0...em g 2

so you know how i recently got a new grill for my birthday. let me back up a few months to explain fully why this outdoor grill was a good idea. right before the kidney transplant surgeries clint and gang came to town. i had everyone over to my house for the fourth of july. clint cooked hamburgers on my indoor grill. a grill that is really meant for cooking 2 patties....not 12. the smoke decectors did not go off b/c they were not propery reset from the last time clint grilled in my kitchen.
we opened all the doors to let the smoke out. my dad showed me his method of cleaning the grill...by covering it with aluminum foil and then turning the burners on. maybe this is a common sense thing...again...i'm new to grilling.
there was all sorts of smoke when we did that. ...so again the doors were open.

don't get me wrong...i love when my doors are open. i love when it is cool enough outside to turn off the air and just have the doors open. but i hate flies. hate them.
for some reason gluckstadt has a bijillion flies that take residence in my house when the doors are left open.
i have tried everything possible to get rid of the flies. i heard that you can put a ziploc bag of water by the door and they won't come in the house, but that does nothing for the ones already in my house.

i have managed to kill most of them, but there were two left that would not die. i did some research and found my new best friend.
it's really almost too good to be true. it was about $7, and probably the best seven dollars i've ever spent. you just wave the thing where the fly is and it kills it. i sort of feel bad b/c there is often a spark when it hits.
part of the handle disconnects and you just plug it in to charge it....it's that amazing.

i know...i'm pathetic.

logan farms...

ryan and katie gnemi just bought logan farms in maywood mart. they are trying to fix up the store, and asked me to paint a "funky pig" for them. i'm not done with it yet, but i thought i would show you the pig so far.
i still have some more layers to put on, and they have a quote picked out for me to add. the canvas is 4' x 5'.
ryan and katie are awesome, and want me to put other pieces in the store that will be for sale. i just have to build up my inventory.

birthday present

anytime my sister has to give someone a present she puts it in a plain white or plain brown bag. she gets the babies to color on the outside of the bag. i think this is the greatest idea.
pretty much everyone knows that i love children and i love art. it makes sense that i would love children's art.
for my birthday this year i asked my sister to get the kids to draw me a big picture that i could hang in my kitchen.

this is hands down the greatest gift i have ever received!
each one drew a part of it and my sister painted it in.
alex drew the monster, bird, grass, caterpillar, butterfly, balloons and birthday cake. he said that the monster wasn't scary because he is smiling. he also said that he knew i was old and wanted to make sure i had enough candles on my cake.
mimi drew the flying belly-button man on the top left and the hearts near him. she demonstrated to me how a flying belly-button man flies.
annie drew the present to the right of the cake, the flowers on the bottom right and the flying people. one of the flying people has red wings and a green skirt!
molly drew the sun, the people in the top corner and the hearts. she wanted my sun to have z's instead of rays. it's a special sun!

i'm the luckiest aunt ever!!

birthdays past

who doesn't love old pictures? i found these on my computer and couldn't resist posting them...

i think this was my third birthday. kitty mccarty and drew schimmel were there with nette and thom. not sure where clint was, and yes, kitty is wearing a patch on her eye.

emelie elkin, me, carolyn arnold, kitty and genevieve payne

this was a tea party where we brought our dolls. i know carol anne is in the background. natalie irby, genevieve and pam parkinson are the only other ones i can remember. i'm in the pink and for some reason am wearing two watches.

from the same party, but please notice the blue starcraft van in the background. (sissy...i thought you would appreciate that!). caroline ridgway and lindsey herring are on the right.

this was one of my favorite parties. dress like what you will be when you are 33. my mom had one of her friends dress as a fortune-teller. this was during kitty and jennifer o'neals infamous short hair days.

doing the hokey-pokey. i'm sorry, but could my pants be any higher?

cannada and i playing putt-putt. not sure where everyone else is.

a surprise party my mom threw for me...we were in high school and i was completely surprised. i also was really late to it b/c i didn't understand why cannada wanted to leave so quickly...usually she is late!

in high school my dad would take my friends and i to shapley's for my birthday dinner.

a birthday breakfast party. all my friends who have birthdays in september threw one big party.

shapley's again.

my senior year my dad took cannada and i to new york. we went to a salon and got our hair done...it was so much fun, but i'm pretty sure cannada hasn't had her hair that short since then! nor have i had bangs since then!

my first birthday in college was our first football game in the grove. my mom was a trooper doing the grove every game!

trae, harvey, stephen, newman, me and hallie at a john mayer concert for my 21st birthday.

my dad wanting to relive my high school days...took my friends and i out for dinner in oxford for my 21st birthday. cass...that's you at the end of the table next to my dad....you were wearing that birthday hat in style!

one of my favorite birthdays was right after katrina. i stayed with cannada in oxford b/c jackson was crazy. i woke up and we went to bottletree. then i flew down to the beach where my dad and my sister's family were. i spent my birthday in two of my favorite places...oxford and the beach!

sweet mary evins

sorry for the delay...
last weekend we went to clinton to see my extended family. my sweet, 90 year-old grandfather came into town. my aunt, uncle and cousins had us over to their house to hang out with him. the picture below is of my grandfather at his 90th birthday party back in january. he really is the cutest thing! (sorry the coloring is so bad).

my cousin russ and his wife, julie, had the most precious baby girl earlier this year. her name is mary evins. evins is my grandfather's name. she is a doll!! we got to hang out with her at my aunt and uncles. she stole the show!! i had to fight my mom and nette off to get to hold her! we miss babies this small!! i had to include cute pictures of annie & emily and one of molly with my uncle gene.

i have cool friends...

i have been staying with my mom in anticipation of gustav. gibby is out of town, so she and i would have been alone. my mom has wireless internet, so i got really excited about downloading some apps last night to my phone. apparently one of the ones i downloaded is not nice and completely froze my phone. i had to come back to my house to restore it. it is downloading all of my old info right now.
while i wait on it i thought i would tell you about some friends of mine that are pretty cool.

i have the greatest friends in the world. i will defend that argument against anyone. i want to tell you about 3 of them.

hallie epperson:

i met hallie in college and we instantly became best friends. you know how people will say that someone lights up a room? well with hallie...it's like someone has turned on 12 flourescent lights. she completely lights up any room. she is one of the funniest people i know. here is a typical hallie story : before she graduated college she went to a hair salon to get her hair done. while she was sitting there she commented on the shoes of the woman sitting next to her. they started talking and at the end of the day hallie had decided to move to germany to be the nanny for this woman's friend. who does that?? hallie.
hallie is from atlanta, but is living in tanzania, africa right now. she is working for cradle of love. she gets to love on these precious babies every day!! to say i am jealous of her getting to hang out with those sweet faces is an understatement! please pray for hallie and her sweet spirit! pray that the Lord would continue to use her to love on these babies. having her as one of my best friends is such a blessing in my life, and it is so amazing to see all these children fall in love with her!
you can click on her blog to the right and read her updates. warning: she has pictures of the babies on there and you just might fall in love with them and move to africa!!




nathan michaels:


i met nathan when i was in high school, but we became good friends in college. ever since i have known him he has always exuded the heart of a servant. from big things to just small things that some people would overlook. i remember in college he came down to seaside for spring break. there was a large group of us down there, and he would cook dinner for everybody! nathan went on a trip to haiti and fell in love with the work and people down there. he is back down there now and loving every minute! please pray for him as he is dealing with gustav coming right through his area. please take a second to read this story and this update on that first story. it is about a little girl, guerline, who nathan found through God's providence. please pray for nathan and his work and safety down there. pray for those who get to experience his servant heart!! (that is hallie and nathan below)








caroline harper:



i told you i have cool friends! and harper is no exception. harper and i have been friends since high school, or maybe before then. she is one year younger than me, and the youngest of 4 girls. when you are with harper you are instantly comforted. you know you are loved and you know that you are in the presence of someone who is going to not only listen to you, but empathize with you. she is such a "real" person. i have a letter harper wrote me when i was on one of my mission trips to peru. she said that she has always looked at me as one of her sisters. what an honor for me!! harper went to ole miss and then just graduated from RTS in marriage and family therapy. she decided to use those things she learned in malawi, africa. she went over with her sister, rachel, to teach at the ABC (african bible college). she is teaching computer in the academy and a counseling course in the college. how cool is that? there is a huge need for counselors over there, and i am so thankful that they get to learn from harper! please pray for harper and her sister as they adjust to teaching and living in africa! you can also find her blog to the right.








i have many other cool friends who minister to so many people, but who may never leave the states. on my mission trips to peru i often found myself looking at such poverty and wanting so desprately to give people everything i could. there was no way i could give them all the material possessions they needed, but i could encourage them to come to the church. there they could find the One who could supply all their needs. when i would return from these trips i wouldn't find myself having that longing to share the gospel with people. you look around here and you see people with everything they need. it was then that i realized that you don't have to see the poverty in a person to see their need for the Saviour.