Blogger Rule Breaker

OK, so I have been a little behind on my blogging (obviously) and I probably just broke every rule in the book on blogging since the purpose is to update as you have news to share, but I've had a hard time getting motivated to sit down and blog. I mean seriously, after working hard all day staring at a computer the last thing I want to do is come home and stare at another computer even longer. Bad excuse? Probably, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, I have finally drawn up enough motivation and inspiration to finally update the blog. There's a lot here so brace yourself. Some of this is dating back to October 2010. Yes, a blog sin, I know. Anyhow, I hope you all enjoy all the posts and I can't make any promises that I'll become a better blogger....

Day at the Dog Park

In Pensacola, there are a couple of dog parks, but one of them happens to be on a bay. Matthew was able to take Norman to the dog park when I was out of town at a work conference recently. Because Matthew said Norman had such a great time, we went back this past weekend. Norman had such a great time! He was running around like crazy playing with any dog who would pay any attention to him. He made friends with a chocolate lab, a weimaraner and a host of other dogs. While we were at the dog park watching Norman interact with the other dogs, we realized that Norman is “that dog” – the kind of socially awkward one who wants to be a part of every activity going on and all the other dogs simply tolerate him. Despite his social awkwardness, he had a complete blast and was worn slick by the time we got him home. It was a fun day and we will definitely be taking Norman back!

Unexpected Superbowl Surprise

Around 4:30 on the day of the Superbowl, Matthew mentioned that his stomach was bothering him. Neither one of us thought too much of it until later in the evening. I noticed that as the evening progressed, Matthew was disappearing from the party at long periods of time. To jump to the crux of the story, at around 10:30pm that night, I took Matthew to the ER because he was complaining of stabbing pains in his stomach. We got back into a room at the ER, they ran some tests on him and around 2am Monday morning, they came in and told us that they believed Matthew had appendicitis. They recommended that we wait for the new round of surgeons in the morning to complete his surgery. So around 9am Monday morning, Matthew had an appendectomy. Everything went extremely well and very smoothly. They kept him overnight and discharged him Tuesday morning. It was definitely an unexpected emergency, but I am very thankful that he’s OK and his surgery went well!

Superbowl Party

Matthew and I are blessed to be a part of a great Sunday School class of newlyweds. The class is still fairly new and everyone is still getting to know one another so Matthew and I thought it would be a fun idea to have everyone out for the Superbowl to allow some time for all of us to get to know each other outside of the church setting. We had a ton of food and I had a great time setting up the decorations for the table. The evening was off to a good start until (if you’re reading this in non-chronological order, then you already know what happened, if you’re reading this in order, please move along to the next post…)

Norman

We love our dog and think he’s pretty darn cute. Because we are such proud parents, I thought I’d share some pictures of Norman that we think are pretty cute!

Christmas 2011 in Oklahoma

This year Matthew and I were able to travel back to Oklahoma for Christmas. We decided to drive to Oklahoma and take Norman with us. When we told people here in Florida that we were making the drive with a Golden Retriever, I think people thought we were nuts. While it may have been a little bit of a crazy idea, it was nothing that a few pills of Dramamine couldn’t solve.  Norman did great on the drive and we finally made it to Oklahoma.

It was such a great trip back spending time with family and friends. It was nice to be back in some familiar places for a little bit. We had such a wonderful time and were so thankful for the chance to be with family again!

A Christmas Tradition

Growing up my family went to cut down a Christmas tree for as long as I can remember. It’s one of my favorite things to do and really means the beginning of the Christmas season for me. So of course when Matthew and I got married, I wanted us to get a real Christmas tree. We weren’t able to for our first Christmas since we moved to Florida in December. So I was SUPER excited to go look for a tree this past Christmas. Matthew, being the great husband that he is, did some research for us and found a Christmas tree farm for us to go to. I was really excited and geared up to go. We had decided to take Norman with us and thought it would be a fun outing for him. So we load Norman up in the car and make the half hour trek out to the tree farm.

Once we finally arrived, we were completely confused as to how the “system” worked at the tree farm, but just finally decided to do our own thing and walk around the field and look for our tree. We went to several lots on the acreage and were extremely disappointed with the selection. There weren’t trees there over 6 feet tall. Ugh! I was so bummed. Seriously, the tree farm looked like it specialized in Charlie Brown Christmas trees. So we left the tree farm very disappointed. On our way back we took a different way home. As we were driving along the main road, we saw some Christmas trees in the parking lot of a Big Lots. We thought we might as well check it out, so we pulled in.

As we were walking through, the parking lot Christmas Tree lot had a great selection of trees. We ended up finding this great tree that was around 9.5 feet. It was great and I loved it! Although I was really disappointed we weren’t able to cut down our own tree, we ended up finding a great one for our holiday season. We had a great time decorating our tree and getting it set up in our new home. Although this Christmas tradition didn’t start the exactly how I expected it, it was a good memory and it was something that Matthew and I got to do together, and when it comes down to it, that’s what’s more important to me anyway.

House: Part II

We’ve completed a lot of painting and have done a lot of work to our house. These are the two latest rooms we have finished painting (but not yet finished decorating). The “piano room” as we refer to it is painted in Moody Blue (I love it!) and the dining room is Basket Beige. I’m glad to have the painting done! Now if we can just find some things to hang on the wall…

A Thanksgiving Miracle

Matthew and I had the opportunity to host our very first Thanksgiving together. And I’m happy to report that it was a huge success. Matthew’s sister, brother-in-law and niece came down along with my college roommate Whitney McLean. This was my very first time to cook a turkey and I was super nervous. I called on my mom, who is an excellent cook, for advice as well as did some internet research (I know, I’m kind of a nerd, but the turkey is the main dish of the meal. I kept having visions of the Griswald Christmas Turkey – we cut into it and it’s burnt to a crisp). So needless to say I did a lot of reading up on how to cook a turkey. Well after a frantic call to my mom the morning of about how slow the turkey was cooking (apparently it does that at the beginning and then really starts speeding up the longer it cooks), the turkey turned out great! We had a delicious meal and I was really happy with the way things turned out.

Other than eating we had a great time spending time together and playing games. We also got to break out our china for the first time, so that was a lot of fun. All in all our first official holiday to host turned out to be a great success and a lot of fun. Can’t wait for the next one!

War Eagle

As many of you know Matthew is a graduate of Auburn University therefore I am an Auburn fan by marriage. When we lived in Oklahoma, Matthew got his fill of OU football games along with the tradiations and pre-game festivities. So, it was about time for me to experience my first Auburn football game. Matthew and I drove up for the Auburn-Georgia game and it was SO much fun! We stayed with one of Matthew's friends, Carlton who was extremely hospitable! On game day, we got to walk around campus. Since Carlton lives very close to campus he took us around to show us all the new construction (since so much had changed since Matthew had been there). I have to confess that I'm probably a little biased and snotty when it comes to college campus because I think OU has one of the most beautiful campuses and I typically don't think most others even come close to being on the same level as OU. However, the Auburn campus was beautiful! I was highly impressed with the residence halls (for those of you who don't work in Higher Education that means dorms), the new acadmic buildings and their new basketball arena they just built. It was all very pretty! After spending time on campus and buying all sorts of Auburn attire (I actually ended up having more Auburn than OU attire by the end of that trip!), we finally made our way to the game. It was fun and interesting to watch the pre-game festivities of another large university. Their eagle, SPRIT, flew around the stadium.........The game was intense, but ended up in a win! A fun tradition that Auburn has is after every win, they go down to Toomer's Corner (similar to a campus corner for my OU friends) and "roll" (aka: toilet paper) the giant Oak Trees down there. We went down after the game and got to see the "rolled" Oak Trees. It was a really neat experience and a lot of fun!

1 Year Anniversary Celebration

While Matthew and I acknowledged our 1 year anniversary on October 24, 2010, we actually didn't celebrate it until the first weekend in November. I decided to plan a small surprise weekend trip for Matthew. I did a little research and got recommendations from other people and decided to book our little weekend getaway in a little town in Alabama called Fairhope. It was so cute, quaint and adorable! We stayed at this little Bed and Breakfast which was cozy and had a cottage/log cabin feel to it. It was right off the bay, so we had a view of the water when we ate our breakfasts. We spent the weekend relaxing, eating and shopping. We got to take in a lot of the local flavor as it had a very strong art district and great local restaurants. We ate food ranging from casual seafood to a fancy steakhouse (at least as fancy as you can get in Fairhope, AL). We did some good shopping and found a few good treats for both of us. One really fun thing I did for Matthew was have a local baker recreate his grooms cake. Of course, it wasn't exactly identical to the original one, but it was still a lot of fun to have and munch on throughout the weekend! All in all it was a wonderful weekend for us to get away, relax and just focus on each other.