Mini Vacation

The last two days have been so great! Let me just start off by saying that Leslie had a rough week last week. It started with a 6 am appointment in Alexandria (which is an hour away from Natchitoches) on Wednesday, and a trip to LSU that afternoon with the baseball team and back late that night. Then back to Alexandria at 8am the next morning. That afternoon they were leaving for San Antonio for the weekend, so when he got home he had just enough time to shower, eat lunch, and pack before getting back on the bus, and when he got home the power was out. Nevertheless, he made it to campus in time to get on the bus and head to San Antonio where they had baseball games Friday, Saturday and Sunday and ate Luby's FIVE times in one weekend. All this time only getting a tiny bit grumpy from the lack of sleep. I felt like I didn't see him all week! In the meantime, I enjoyed my class all day on Friday, my parents came to see me on their way home from Florida Friday night, and we had a baby shower on Saturday for three girls in my Sunday School class!

This is not the point of my post, but since I didn't include it in my last post, here are some cute pictures of our shower decorations!

On Tuesday the rain started and didn't stop! Leslie and I came home to eat some lunch and he found out that he didn't have to work any more for the rest of the day! That was a huge treat! So we relaxed and watched a bunch of SVU and were super lazy until our landlord called and told us we were under a tornado watch. We got in the closet and did some laundry and worked on our Bible studies and played some scrabble. THEN we found out that campus would be closed on Wednesday! We got to sleep in on Wednesday and be lazy some more and eat lunch together before he went to work and I went to volunteer. My night class was canceled, so my group got out of providing dinner for the class for the evening, and Leslie and I had a little date night and went to Hana. It was only a day and a half, but it was so nice just to relax and hang out together :). Here are some pictures from our crazy rain!



Usually a dock- all you could see were the benches!



On campus- none of this is usually water!

Two posts in one week! Maybe I really will start posting more often this time :)

Lately...

Oh my. I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to write a blog, but looks like I have again! Leslie keeps reminding me that I have a blog, but it apparently hasn’t been helping.

Leslie and I have both been SUPER busy this semester. Leslie’s been working with the baseball team, finishing up his thesis, teaching three classes, and working on his internship. Just thinking about his schedule lately makes me tired! The baseball team plays on either Tuesday or Wednesday (or occasionally both) and then every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and they practice every other day of the week. The first time I had to stay home alone when he was out of town I freaked out and couldn’t sleep, but thankfully I’ve gotten over that now.

This semester I have two classes that I go to every week, one “hybrid” class that I went to some Fridays from 9-4 in addition to the online part, and one class that is completely online. I’m also working on my research proposal this semester, and it’s just now getting stressful. Everyone was trying to be nice to make everything due before Spring Break, but it’s making the few weeks before very crazy! My work schedule is the same this semester, and thankfully they’re very flexible as always! I’m going with several classmates and the internship counseling students to teach a suicide prevention curriculum that we wrote at the end of March, and I’m really excited about it!

Aside from school and work, Leslie and I are both in men’s/women’s bible studies that we’re really enjoying. I’m in a Beth Moore study on James that I’m loving! We’re so blessed to have such a wonderful church family! Leslie and I started the process of becoming sponsors for someone at the girls’ home before Christmas, and we finally got assigned to someone at the end of January! She is 17 and a junior in high school. She calls us to talk during the week, comes to church with us on Sunday in the morning and evening, and we tutor her on Monday nights! Now that we’ve gotten to know her a little bit better we’re also able to take her out to do things. Last week we took her to see The Lorax and next weekend if the weather is nice I’m planning to take her to one of the NSU baseball games. We’re really enjoying our time with her and we’re so glad that we decided to become sponsors J

Since Nanny J requested I post about Valentine’s Day, I will include that we had a great first V-Day as a married couple. I got home from work before Leslie did and he had left me pretty flowers hidden around the house with notes that I had to find. When he got home from work we skipped out on our usual eating in and watching sci-fi movie Valentine’s tradition and went out for a yummy steak.

My parents and Leslie’s parents have gotten to visit us since last time I posted! We had lots of fun visiting, watching baseball, eating good food, and shopping!

I feel sure there’s a lot I’ve forgotten, but that’s just going to have to be good enough for now! I’m loving the warm weather and hope it’s here to stay!

Our Christmas Adventure

Leslie and I had quite the eventful Christmas break this year. We did a ton of traveling and lots of visiting with friends and family. Somehow, even with all of the busyness, we got completely off of our normal sleep schedule and enjoyed sleeping in way too late!

After we were both finished with finals, we drove to Texas to spend the night with my parents before we all headed out for part 1 of our adventure. The next morning, we flew to Birmingham and visited with my grandmother.

My dad and my grandmother at dad's favorite place... Golden Rule BBQ

We spent the night in Birmingham and woke up early to drive to Chattanooga where my aunt, uncle, and other grandmother live. My grandmother was recently moved to a nursing home, so we went to celebrate an early Christmas with her. It was so much fun having nearly the whole family together!

The next day we woke up early again and drove to Murfreesboro, TN to visit my birth mom, Marsha, and her family! We got a tour of Murfreesboro, went to their yummy frozen yogurt place, and went back to Marsha and Kevin's for a yummy dinner with a bunch of their friends and family.

With Mark- On our tour!

With the lucky MTSU horseshoe!

Got to join in the annual cousin picture! 

It was so great getting to spend time with them and getting to meet lots of people that were there to meet me when I was born!

The next day we were super lazy and hung out at Marsha's house most of the morning. Then my parents, Marsha and Mark, & Leslie and I drove to Franklin, TN where I lived for 12 years! It was so fun going back to see what had changed and what was still there.

We all went to our FAVORITE Mexican restaurant, Pancho's, and the guy working there actually remembered us after 10 years!

We also got to drive by our old house and saw my brick in the park I used to play in and our bricks in downtown Franklin.

Our old house!

My brick at the park

Mom & Dad's brick downtown

My brick downtown!

Then we went and checked in to the Opryland Hotel where we spent the night! They had to redo a good portion of it after the flood in Nashville, but it was just as beautiful as I remembered it!

View from our room :) Thanks mom and dad! Haha

We had some time to explore and had plenty of picture taking opportunities!

With Pop Pop!

Not sure who ended up with the family pictures-- obviously not me!

After exploring, we met up with Marsha, Mark, Kevin, and Nanny J and went to see the Rockettes perform! It was really great!

The next morning we ate brunch at the hotel and then headed to Birmingham to fly back to Dallas!

We stayed in Texas for Christmas and got to spend time with some of my favorite girls (minus Kati :( )!

With my BFF Katie before the Candlelight service!

We went to church at 11pm on Christmas Eve, opened presents with my parents on Christmas morning, and went with my family and Katie to see We Bought a Zoo before going to dinner at Katie's family's house!

 A few days after Christmas we made the trek to Tuscaloosa to visit Leslie's family! We spent time with lots of Leslie's family and enjoyed some down time. On New Year's Eve we got to see our beautiful friend Fernanda get married at Calvary. It was great seeing old friends and celebrating with them. (Unfortunately during this part of the break my picture taking motivation left me)

Whew. Just typing all this makes me tired all over again. We were so thankful to be able to spend Christmas break with so many friends and with family, but it is nice to finally be home!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

As promised, here is Christmas post #1.

 One weekend when my parents came to visit they bought us a Christmas tree!

 I was soo excited to put it up I almost didn’t make it until after Thanksgiving, but thanks to Leslie I did. We successfully put up our tree and hung our pretty ornaments on it! My parents brought some of our “special” ornaments and I was excited to add them to the tree, as well.

One thing I’ve learned since moving to Louisiana is that people in Natchitoches love all things Christmas. The downtown area is covered in Christmas lights and every weekend from the end of November until the New Year there are Christmas events and an impressive firework show (yes, EVERY weekend!).

 The first weekend of December is the BIG Christmas festival and my parents came to venture into the madness with Leslie and myself. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as people said it would be, but perhaps it was because of the rainy weather. There were several parades, a craft show, and of course, a huge fireworks show (coordinated with Christmas music).

An alligator pulling Santa!

Parade!

They're riding IN a duck! So cool.

The Christmas excitement continued with several Christmas parties! Our Sunday School class had a party at a restaurant that we had to ourselves. We played Dirty Santa, chatted amongst ourselves, ate some good food, and ended the night with a game of Cranium. Leslie and I have been very blessed by the sweet people in our class and have made some very good friends J. The members of my counseling skills class also grew very close this semester and our professor had us over to her house for a Christmas party! We snacked and played games and just enjoyed each other’s company. Skills was by far my favorite class! We got to practice all of the counseling skills we were learning on our classmates in class and in the school’s counseling rooms.

I’ve also been blessed to volunteer with a fantastic group of ladies this semester. We had a little Christmas get-together as well (Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take pictures during much of this Christmas excitement). We had a cookie/baked good exchange, played several new-to-me Christmas games, and enjoyed catching up with everyone. There are a bunch of ladies that volunteer, but each of us only works one day a week. That means it’s only during get-togethers like this one, or during meetings that we’re all together. I’m still getting to know everyone, and I’m the youngest one working there, but I really enjoy being around these ladies!

We have quite the Christmas adventure coming up, and I will hopefully have lots of pictures to share at the end of it!   

Our Thanksgiving Adventure (a little late)

So I know Thanksgiving was quite a while ago, but I've been meaning to blog about our trip since we got home and it just hasn't happened! To make up for it, I'll write two blogs because we've been having a lot of Christmas fun between Leslie's thesis, both of our work, and both of our final papers and tests! I officially finished with all of that yesterday, so I'm planning to take a few days to relax before even thinking about doing anything productive. Leslie still has to give some finals, do treatments for his baseball players, and take one final himself, BUT his thesis has been approved and he is set to start his research when we return from Christmas break. There is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Back to Thanksgiving! We made the 10 hour trip to Reform, AL on Sunday after church and arrived in time to eat dinner with Leslie's dad and brother at Jack's. Over the next days we were lucky enough to go to Tuscaloosa and spend time with friends who were still in town because of classes. We also got to eat at some of our favorite places!

We spent the week at Leslie's parents' house relaxing and hanging out with his family- and of course this little one, Belle. She's such a cutie, but very vicious as you can tell by the picture of her "wrestling" with Leslie.




 There are lots of kitties that hang out at the house which made me a very happy girl. They are so cute, but I couldn't convince Leslie to let me snatch one!

This one was relaxing on the car when it was time for us to leave...
She didn't even want to get off when we started driving!

We also got to go see the lodge that Leslie's dad works at one day. Leslie has obviously been there a lot, but I'd never gotten to see it before! I thought this guy was pretty cool, but I'm kinda glad he was stuffed!

 And Leslie and his dad had a friendly father-son game of pool in the new game room!

Back at the house, we cut up a tasty pineapple to snack on and learned a very cool trick! You can twist the top off of it!! Who knew? (Okay, so maybe a lot of people because it tells you right on the directions that come on the pineapple, but none of us knew!)

On Thanksgiving day we went to a get-together with Leslie's dad's side of the family for lunch. We had a great time hanging out with them and we stuffed ourselves sufficiently with some delicious food. We hung out there until it was time to stuff ourselves again at dinner with Leslie's mom's side of the family. It was a lot of fun, but I could kick myself for not taking A SINGLE PICTURE on Thanksgiving day! Thankfully, even though it was our first Thanksgiving as a married couple it was not our first Thanksgiving to get to spend together. However, I WILL be taking a lot of pictures on Christmas to make up for it!

And there will hopefully be several Christmas blogs to make up for my lack of blogging lately :)

Fall Fun

October has been super busy for both me and Leslie! Leslie took his comps last week and is working hard on his thesis, and the education department has a National Accreditation team coming in this afternoon that we've been busy preparing for. Hopefully things will slow down for both of us soon!

Even with all our crazyness, we've had time for some fall fun! Pumpkin carving was a must every fall for my family, so I decided Leslie needed some more pumpkin carving experience.

We were quite proud of our little jack-o-lantern!

When we got a cold snap, Leslie made some delicious chili for dinner :)

Mom made two prints of all of our wedding pictures and got albums so she and dad could have one and Leslie and I could have one. Unfortunately, the pictures were all mixed up and most were printed 4 times instead of two! It took a ton of time to get them all sorted, so I decided to take a little break from them before putting them in the albums :)

I finally found some fall-ish flowers that suited me, and two sweet ladies from church brought us some pretty roses when we joined :)

So, overall we're both doing great! I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween!

Fall Break

Last week we had Monday and Tuesday off for Fall Break and it was wonderful! Leslie's mom and grandmother came Friday night and took us to eat at our favorite place in town, Hana :). On Saturday, Leslie had to work most of the day. I went with Leslie's mom and grandmother to Front Street to the "Return to the 50s" classic car show. I'm not much of a car person, but they sure knew a lot! The weather was wonderful and it was fun walking around and looking.

Leslie was able to meet us for lunch and we ate at a place called Papa's downtown. It's attached to Mama's, and it's owned by a husband and wife. They share a kitchen, but Mama's is an oyster house and Papa's is a bit more sandwichy. We love going there for their fried onions and jalapenos!

After lunch, Leslie had to get back to get ready for the football game. Since he had to be at the game, we decided that we would go watch! We ended up losing, but it was a very close game!

We all got to eat dinner together after the game, and they stayed for church and lunch on Sunday.

Baseball decided to take part in the Fall Break, so Leslie didn't have to work AT ALL on Monday and didn't have to go in on Tuesday until the evening! We slept in on Monday and then decided to have a picnic lunch by the river. We were itching to use our adorable picnic basket and blanket that we had gotten from friends for our wedding! The weather was wonderful and we had time to relax and read and feed lots of ducks.

After that, we went to Chili's and to watch Courageous with some sweet friends from our Sunday School class!

It was a great weekend and break, but it went by too fast, as usual!