Texas to Oklahoma to Texas to….Oklahoma to Colorado July 29, 2009

****ANOTHER EDIT****
I fixed the link to the picture albums, sorry.

***Edit***
I really tried to put lots of videos and pictures up, but it was just taking WAY too long, so there will only be one or two pictures on the post, but I’ll link to the rest of them in my online albums.

I took LOTS of photos and recorded some video all along our journey thus far and so I will be posting quite a few of them on here (if you have very slow internet, I apologize).

I will begin with the first leg of our trip: Fort Worth to Denver!

We took two cars to Lawton (we left my old beater with my mom) and so our trip actually began in Fort Worth, but we were in separate cars and the camera was with Aaron. I got a sunburn on the way to Lawton because it was blazing hot and the Corsica doesn’t have A/C so I drove with the windows down. We met up at my mom’s in Lawton and dropped of the car. Then we headed for Denver. We drove west through Oklahoma and into Texas again, then further west and then turned north and proceeded to drive through Oklahoma again (the panhandle) until we finally crossed into Colorado.

It was a long drive, but it was a good one and spirits were high. We got to our friends’ place around 3 or 4 in the morning. We visited for just a couple of minutes before passing out. It had been 2 years since we’d seen Thomas and Debbie and so we were really excited. The kids were so big and they had baby 3 on the way.

Our first day was kind of lazy/relaxing. We didn’t do a whole lot except sleep. We visited some in the evening and had a nice dinner. There was lots of catching up.

Some of our awesome activities while we were there:
-going to the neighborhood pool
-taking a walk in a pretty walking park nearby
-babysitting 🙂
-playing Bananagrams (really fun, Aaron LOVES it)
-walking around downtown Denver
-dinners outside on the patio
-taking the kids to the park
-lots of hanging out and talking
-seeing the mountains (we didn’t actually go, but they looked beautiful)

A couple of my favorite pictures:

The two rivers that converge in downtown Denver

Some pretty flowers from one of our walks

A picture I took while waiting for a train in Memphis, TX (on the road to CO)

More Pictures Here, Here, and Here

Monumental Update…coming soon :) July 27, 2009

We are currently back in Fort Worth, TX for one week. We have been to Lawton, Denver, Lincoln (Nebraska), back to Lawton, and then here. We still have two more stops to make on our trip.

Something to look forward to: pictures! LOTS of pictures from our travels so far and also…video clips (at least one from each time we crossed a state line).

This week will provide us with absolutely no have to’s as well as an awesome internet connection so I will most definitely be updating this baby.

hint: look at the labels for this post and you will get a small idea of what we’ve seen/done so far

okay, so it wouldn’t let me post all of them but here they are (babies, denver, family, food, friends, fun, plans, tejas, travels, vacation, wildlife, okies, corn, badminton, competitive sports, injuries, sleep, driving, night life, cooking, dessert)

-insert celebratory dance here- May 12, 2009

I did it, I am officially finished with my undergraduate degree. I’m seriously excited!

I just got out of my last final exam (which I totally rocked).

Aaron’s graduation ceremony was this past Saturday and mine is this coming Saturday.

Lots to report here, but I’m going to go sell back my books and head home (maybe…depending on what I hear back from my boss about work tonight).

This post is to be continued…..

I’m a Bad Blogger April 15, 2009

Sorry for not posting anything new in about….3 weeks. It’s been crazy around here. I will eventually finish posting about our vacation I swear.

I really want to update everyone (or the 5 people that read this regularly) on how we’re doing.

School:

We had a slight scare that Aaron wasn’t going to be able to walk at his graduation. He found out about 4 weeks into the semester that he is missing a Psychology credit he needs for his degree. To make a VERY long story short: he took the CLEP exam, missed it by one point (according to TCU’s standards, he was well above the college board standards), made an appeal, it was denied, he is now enrolled for a may-mester (3 week mini semester in May) course in general psych. He was told he could not walk at graduation, but appealed and is walking on May 10th with everyone else (if we can pay the summer tuition by the 1st of May).

Other than that school is going well for Aaron. He is very much enjoying his time as a crisis counselor at the high school and is by all accounts doing great there. He finished his honors project for the honors program and presented it on Monday and will present his departmental honors project today/thursday at their research symposium. He just needs to tweak his final paper and submit it by May 5th.

As for me, things are going well. I and a friend were selected by our department as Outstanding Undergraduate Students of the Year, which is pretty cool. We were presented with a certificate and what looks like two ashtrays (but is actually a trinket box/candy dish) at the UNT honors convocation. As a result of my award, I have decided to go ahead and walk at the UNT graduation on May 16th. I’ve got two big projects to finish before the end of the semester (one is due the 30th and the other during finals week). I feel good about them both and am so looking forward to graduation day(s).

Summer:

After graduation, it’s going to be pretty hectic while we pack up/sell our things in preparation to move out of our apartment. We’re going to move our stuff to Aaron’s grandmother’s house. She agreed to let us store our stuff if we clean out the garage and make room (such an awesome deal!). We also need to go to the doctor and dentist to get checkups and have them fill out medical/dental histories for us to present to Camphill so we can get on their insurance. For the month of June we will be working and house sitting in the Fort Worth area.

We’re going to a family reunion on July 4th and then on the 6th we’re headed to Colorado to visit some friends we haven’t seen in a of couple years. After that we’ll visit my mom in Oklahoma, a short stop back in Fort Worth, Del Rio to see my dad and Phyllis, Houston to see Aaron’s parents, then a stop back in Louisiana for our one year anniversary (we’re staying at the Oak Alley Plantation B&B), then Alabama to visit my sisters and their families. After that a very long drive up to SW New York to visit my grandmother, then finally to Pennsylvania where we’ll stay with Aaron’s best friend’s family for a couple of days before starting at Camphill Soltane.

It’s going to be a very busy and wonderful summer, I can tell. Lots of time with family and friends. I’m very excited to see my grandmother. I haven’t seen her since I graduated from high school and this will be the first time she and Aaron will meet. I’m also excited to visit Salamanca again (where I lived from age 3-13); from what I saw on google maps street view it hasn’t changed much.

We’ve got a lot going on right now, but I’ll do my best to keep this thing up to date. I’ll get to the vacation stuff eventually (hopefully before I forget what all we did) 🙂

V-A-C-AT-I-O-N Part UNO March 23, 2009

So I was wondering what to title this and that old song by Connie Francis is now stuck in my head (which I’m sure most of the people who read this will have no idea what I’m talking about-google it and educate yourself).

Last week was our Spring Break. Thankfully this year TCU and UNT decided to align their breaks. Last year I skipped a week of school to go to Seattle with our church group. I did end up having two weeks off, but it was difficult to manage.

This year we decided to take a road trip with some of our friends. Our friends Caity, Ed, and Scott drove down to southern Louisiana with us to visit another mutual friend, Austin. Austin was actually our RA (resident assistant) when we all lived in a dorm together. He graduated two years ago and is currently doing Teach for America (an Americorps program) in the New Orleans area. He lives in Laplace, LA which is about 45 minutes from New Orleans. He is also about an hour away from Baton Rouge. We left on the 13th around 7ish and got to his place around 430 AM on the 14th. I drove the entire way (go me)!

We spent Saturday and Sunday lounging around, doing a whole lot of nothing (which was EXCELLENT btw) and catching up with Austin. He’s pretty bad about keeping in touch. We went out for lunch at a nearby restaurant, walked around his neighborhood, and found the absolute BEST snow cones on the planet. It’s called Big Chief’s and if you’re ever in Laplace, LA you should definitely go.

Austin still had class that week so we had to find our own entertainment during the week. On Monday we drove to the Oak Alley Plantation for a tour. It’s really gorgeous and the tour was interesting. Our tour guide looked exactly like a woman that used to work in the office of our dorm. The five of us split a mint julep at 11 AM and decided to blame it on the atmosphere (it was kind of tasty).

Then we drove to New Orleans for the day. We went down to the french quarter and had lunch at the alpine. The food was okay, nothing spectacular. It had drizzled all morning so we got a little bit wet walking around, but it wasn’t too bad. We did A LOT of walking. We walked all around the french quarter, visited shops, got beignets and hot chocolate at cafe du monde, and strolled along the river front. We went to Harrah’s and were completely at a loss as to what we were supposed to do. We decided to hit the penny slots and see who could make the most money with 5 dollars. I won 10 dollars and then gave it all back to break even. Caity won 5, Ed broke even, and Aaron and Scott both lost their 5 bucks (group loss of 5).

We then walked all around the mall to dry off (it had started to rain a little harder on our way to Harrah’s). Our feet were hurting by the time we were done with the shops (and mine were wet because my chucks got soaked) so we sat down and took a little break. After some rest we decided to head back over to the french quarter for some dinner and a little pub crawling. After much walking and deliberation over prices we settled on Yo Ma Ma’s. Their food was SO good. I got a chicken cordon bleu sandwich and everyone else got burgers. We all got baked potatoes dripping with butter, delicious. They also had very good frozen lemonade margaritas.

After dinner, we hit up an awesome karaoke club Cat’s Meow (which I just realized has a 24 hour archive of web cam feed, thankfully we were there over a week ago). I dragged Caity and Ed to sing livin on a prayer and we were just not inebriated nor wild enough to be entertaining I guess. We were lame. Even though we weren’t great, it was wildly entertaining to watch everyone else. Some were pretty good, others completely awful, but they were all more entertaining than us for sure. Caity swears that someone threw ice at us…. We had a couple of drinks (except Aaron who was DD) and then moved on to the Funky Pirate and listened to a live blues band. They were good, especially their guitarist. He was insane. One more drink and then we decided to head home. We kept threatening Aaron that we were all going to get totally wasted and make him drive us home, but really no one was even buzzed. We got home around 12:30 or 1 and hit the sack.

I’ll write our Tuesday adventure another time since this is getting really long.