Iowa Trip

I know I haven't updated in awhile. Things have been busy around here, and we've had some computer problems lately. But I wanted to share some memories from a long weekend trip Matt and I took with my parents to Iowa to see my brother and sister-in-law a few weeks ago. Since they live so far away, Matt and I hadn't seen my brother since last Christmas, so we were due for a visit. We left Friday morning early and got back late Sunday night.

Rhapsody got to go with us, and this was her first long car trip. She did amazing in the car. Once we got on the interstate she settled down and did this for the rest of the car ride:

I kept thinking, there's no way she's just going to sleep the whole way, but she did, and slept the whole way home too.

We got to Iowa Friday late afternoon and had dinner out at a nice restaurant in Iowa City. Then we introduced Jeremy and Anna to Settlers of Catan and played that for the rest of the night. (I think we have a good idea of what they might be getting for Christmas). Anna beat all of us at her first time playing.
The next morning we went to breakfast and then browsed around a local farmer's market. Afterwards we went out to an apple orchard and bought some apples and had some delicious apple turnovers. Seriously, the best I've ever had.




Rhapsody and Cash played really well together and seemed to get along great. The last time they were together was Rhapsody's first visit to my parent's house. That combined with the excitement and busyness of Christmas which made Cash pretty nervous meant that they didn't really get a chance to play together. This time was much different.

The Cousins posing for a picture.

After our morning at the apple orchard, we went back to Jeremy and Anna's apartment for the afternoon. My brother got the new Beatles Rock Band, so we played that for awhile, and Matt and I watched part of the OSU vs. Houston game (still trying to block that part out of my memory). Anna and my mom made us some yummy apple chili for dinner, and then it was back to the Island of Catan for more game play. I think we played four games that weekend. Who can guess what we'll be doing when we're all together at Christmas again?

Rocking Out

Sunday morning, we met up for brunch at this fabulous restaurant overlooking the river. Afterwards, we started the long drive back to Oklahoma. We had a really fun weekend hanging out with Jeremy and Anna. I wished they lived closer so we could see them more. I spent part of the weekend trying to convince Anna she should get a job at TU or OSU when she graduates :).

Posing for one last picture before brunch

Happy Birthday Rhapsody

Today is Rhapsody's first birthday! We have a few special things planned including a trip to the dog park and Pet Smart to help her celebrate. In honor of her first birthday, I thought I would share the story of how Rhapsody came to be a part of our family, because you see at this time last year, we had no idea that she would be a part of our family.

I had grown up having dogs as pets and had many special memories with dogs being in our family. I had always wanted a dog once I got married. It seemed like the natural order of things, marriage, dog, babies, so soon after Matt and I got married (well, probably even before we got married), I started bringing up the subject of getting a dog one day. We both started grad. school shortly after we got married, and I knew that the hours and work involved during that time didn't really work for getting a dog during that time in our lives, plus we didn't have a fenced in backyard at the time, but I was eagerly anticipating the day when we were more settled and our lives had slowed down enough to accommodate a dog in our lives.

Matt, on the other hand, had not grown up with pets and was skeptical of the idea of having a dog. He mentioned that he didn't think we should get a dog until after we had kids that were old enough to enjoy it. I obviously disagreed and we had lots of discussions about getting a dog throughout our first two years of marriage. Usually we would talk about it when we were out walking because that's usually when I thought about wanting a dog the most. As my graduation got closer and we were in the process of buying a home with a fenced backyard, the conversations got more frequent. Matt always answered in vague terms saying "Maybe we'll get a dog," or "I don't think so." I started to get frustrated because I could never get a clear answer out of him.

Finally, one day in August of 2008 , I approached Matt with a compromise. I said if I drop the subject of getting a dog for two months (since even if we agreed to get a dog, we needed to wait until closer to my graduation), can we have a serious discussion about it in October? He agreed, and we both kept up our ends of the deal. So, in the middle of October, I went up to Matt and said, remember our deal, you said we could have a serious discussion about getting a dog. I was pretty nervous, because I really thought he was going to say no, but this is what he said, "It has to be under 20lbs and be a hypo-allergenic breed." That was it, the extent of the serious conversation. I immediately got extremely excited and was very thankful for the sacrifice he was making because at that time, I still think he wasn't sure about the whole dog thing. I immediately called my mom because I think for as long as I had wanted a puppy, she had wanted to give me one as a graduation gift. The next day we both started researching dogs that fell into the criteria Matt had given me and decided that a Westie was the best fit for us and the cutest! My mom took over from there locating a sweet puppy that would be the perfect gift.

I'll share more about the day we met Rhapsody for the first time when it gets closer to the anniversary of when she physically became a part of our family. Until then, I'll leave you with the earliest picture we have of Rhapsody (and her brother and sisters) that was taken by the breeder. She's the one on the far left with the floppy ears. She was the runt of the litter.

She's been a great addition to our family, and the whole part about Matt not being a dog person has gone out the window.

Go POKES!

We had a great day in Stillwater on Saturday watching the OSU Cowboys defeat the Georgia Bulldogs. I was pretty nervous at the end of the first quarter, when Georgia appeared to have no problem getting past our defense and also had no problem stopping our offense, but my Cowboys pulled through, thanks to our defense (yes, it appears we actually have a defense this year), with a solid 24-10 win. Before we left, we heard a sports caster say that this game would determine whether the cowboys were national contenders or pretenders. Look out BCS, here we come!!! It was the most exciting victory I had seen live for OSU. Matt still said that OSU's victory over OU in 2002 was bigger, but I didn't get to be at that game. Hopefully this won't be the most exciting home game this season. I have never seen the Cowboys beat Texas ever. Maybe this is the year.

We headed to Stillwater early that day to tailgate with some great friends before the game.

Love these girls!

Here's a look at our gigantic tickets. They wouldn't fit in Matt's wallet. I'm glad the rest of the tickets are normal size.

Our seats are not the greatest (we're in the corner of the end zone), but we would rather be there than at home watching the game. Nothing beats being surrounded by 50,000 of your closest friends, dressed in orange and cheering at the top of their lungs for the Cowboys


Coming out of the new tunnel. This is where I started to get nervous.

Kicking the PAT after we scored our last touchdown. The only touchdown scored on our end of the field.

Celebrating and getting ready to sing the Alma Mater

This was my first OSU home game as a non-student. Matt had graduated before the 2008 season, but since I was still a student, we were both able to get student tickets. This was the first season where we didn't have student tickets. This change brought with it a few firsts.

1. We didn't have to get to the game an hour and a half before it started to make sure we had decent seats.

2. We yelled Power instead of Orange since we were on the other side of the stadium

3. We actually got to see the band members' faces instead of the backs of their heads during the half-time performance

4. We sat down a couple of times during the game.

5. We weren't involved in the debate of "Do we stand on the bleachers in front of us or behind us?"

6. We entered the stadium on the south side for the first time.

7. I didn't dread the end of the game because it meant I had to go back and do homework or work on my creative component

8. No one asked to see our student ID

A lot didn't change though with our new status. We still paid an outrageous price for a bottle of water, we waved the wheat, thought the Cowboys were going to choke a few times during the game, sang the alma mater at the beginning and end of the game, sang along to the fight songs, and were hot, sunburned, and had lost our voices when we left the stadium. We couldn't have asked for a better Saturday and are looking forward to the rest of the season!

Cowboys 4ever

We've learned recently that OSU has a new pregame fight song/video that they are playing before each home game. It was written by a guy from Baylor, and we had heard some terrible things about it before we heard it live Saturday. Yes, unfortunately it lived up to its hype of being terrible, lyrics and music. The video wasn't that bad, well except for the part when they had an OSU football player racing Bullet. However, the song was awful. If you didn't get the chance to be at the game Saturday, here's the new song Cowboys 4ever followed by the lyrics since the words can be hard to understand from the video. And that sound you're hearing, yes that is OSU fans booing the song. We didn't sit in the student section, so we didn't hear the booing until we watched the video on YouTube.






The prairie wind touches our skin
Another maverick morning begins
Wild west eyes rise before the sun
We are young guns on the runHang ‘em high, pistols to the sky
We ride, we ride, ‘cross the line

It’s in our veins
The feel of the reins
.45s, chaps, bandannas and spurs
We are cowboys forever

Stay here today, gone tomorrow
The open range is our home
All that we own lives inside our soul
We are cowboy to the bone
Hang ‘em high, pistols to the sky
We ride, we ride, ‘cross the line

It is in our veins
The feel of the reins
.45s, chaps, bandannas and spurs
We are cowboys forever

Riding Bullet across the plains
To avenge our kin’s blood and name
In bedlam we will rise and stand
With strength and honor to defend our land
Hang ‘em high, pistols to the sky
We ride, we ride, ‘cross the line

It’s in our veins
The feel of the reins
.45s, chaps, bandannas and spurs
We are cowboys forever

We are, we are
Cowboys forever

Some friends told us about this YouTube video making fun of the song. Here's the link: Cowboys 4ever Downfall WARNING, there is some bad language in it. That's why I didn't just put the video on here. Matt and I were out of breath laughing so hard when we heard it. You probably have to have some knowledge of OSU football to understand the jokes.

It's a Good Day to be a COWBOY

GO POKES!!!

Busy, Busy

It seems that in the last couple of weeks, life has gone from being pretty boring, to being totally crazy.

One of the crazy aspects of my life lately has been my job. I can't complain because my work days have been flying by, but they have been crammed full of lots of different things. Last week I spent my mornings at my old school, meeting with my clients and telling them goodbye, and then heading over to my new school in the afternoons for training. Saying goodbye to my kids and their parents was a lot harder than I was expecting. Part of it was that I probably told 30 people individually that I was leaving which is wearing for anyone. The looks on some of my kids faces when I told them I was leaving were hard to take. It was like a mixture of shock and disappointment. At the end of one session, a girl told me, "there's just not enough time with you." Some kids have had to switch counselors 3 or 4 times before me, and that's hard for me to know that I'm just another counselor that left. I'm going to miss a lot of my kids at the school, but hard goodbyes mean that our relationship mattered and had an influence on their life, and that's the important part. The one good thing about the goodbyes is that I got to leave all of my clients with positive messages about them, and that was fun. I know a lot of those kids probably had never heard anyone brag on them, and the looks on those faces when I told them how great I thought they were usually made up for the disappointed faces. I felt really sad leaving, but Matt reminded me that I'll build relationships with students at my new school and I just have to be patient.
So after emotional mornings of telling countless people I was leaving them, I spent my afternoons soaking up new information about the new school, teachers, counselors, staff, and job responsibilities. I've been exhausted leaving in the afternoons, but I know transitions are stressful and that eventually things will settle into a new routine.

Life outside of work has also been pretty busy. Last week I went to Stillwater one evening to visit friends, Matt had friends from work over another night, AWANA started again filling up another evening, and we were gone all weekend in Weatherford with our families. We started going to a couple's small group a couple of weeks ago that meets on Sunday evenings. We also started our date nights up again after a sporadic summer. Hopefully we can get in a routine again. On Tuesday we went to dinner at a steakhouse that is only a couple miles from our house and then headed to the mall to find Matt a new OSU shirt for the game on Saturday.

I don't know where all our down time in the evenings went, but Rhapsody hasn't gotten a walk in the last few days because we've been so busy with other things. We'll have to make it up to her with a trip to the dog park soon. Things don't look like they are going to slow down any time soon either. Next weekend we're headed to Iowa to visit my brother and sister-in-law and the rest of the Saturdays in September include a trip to Stillwater for a football game. Good thing I like being busy. We have absolutely nothing planned on Monday for Labor Day and are looking forward to a lazy day.

Celebration

In order to celebrate my new job, Matt decided to take me to the Melting Pot, one of my favorite restaurants, but one we only go to on special occasions. My parents called us on Saturday and wanted to celebrate with us, and asked us if we wanted to go to OKC and eat with them. So we left Saturday afternoon and drove to Oklahoma City. We met my parents at Celebration Station and played a round of Putt Putt before dinner. I actually tied with Matt, if you can believe it. It was a pretty easy course though. Afterwards we headed to the Melting Pot for dinner. Of course it was great food and great company.

I think I want to try and find another job, just to get to eat this again :)

We enjoyed getting a chance to visit with my parents and are looking forward to seeing them again next weekend for my mom's 50th birthday. We have lots of things to celebrate this month!