24

Well, I had a great birthday yesterday! I got lots of cards, texts, phone calls, and facebook messages, so that made my day very special. Travis came home with a big bouquet of flowers from a florist nearby, and I love them. He knows that I don't really like roses, but these are perfect.


He also got me the newest Little Big Town CD and 2 books by Francine Rivers that I've been wanting to read. Yay!!

Last night, someone at church asked me how old I was and then immediately said, "Oh wait, I guess I'm not supposed to ask you that, right?" I laughed and told him that I wasn't to the point where that question bothered me yet. But, then the more I started thinking about it, I hope I'm never to that point! Being 24 means that God has blessed me with 24 years of life! And the same will hold true when/if I get to be 44, 64, or 94, etc. I think it's silly for people to be embarrassed of their age because it's really something you should be thankful for. So, someone please remind me that I said this in 16 years...haha :)

This past weekend was dedicated to Mrs. Cheryl's big birthday celebration. Alisha and Tyler spent the night Friday night, and we had a lot of fun. I made BBQ sandwiches for supper, and we got to spend some time talking with Baugay upstairs too. Saturday was the big party! We spent most of the afternoon at the Copelands' house decorating and getting ready.

Most of the Dvorak cousins :)

The decorated food table!

The hostesses with the mostesses :)

My camera died before the party even started, so I tried taking pictures with my Droid, and they didn't turn out very good. It's probably user error :)

The party was a lot of fun though! She wasn't surprised, but that's ok I guess. It's hard to keep parties a secret when so many people know about it. We had a good turnout and more than enough food leftover.

This weekend, Travis and I are going to Pigeon Forge. Mollie's parents are renting a cabin up there for the weekend, and she invited several people to come stay with them. I didn't realize until recently that Pigeon Forge is so close to Knoxville (where the Bama game is)...it's only 30-45 minutes away! I'm not sure if we'll go to the game or not; we don't have tickets yet, but I'm thinking that they wouldn't be too hard to find once we get there. Either way, it will be a fun time!!!

Well, it's time for me to hit the gym. I biked 15.7 miles yesterday, so I'm really trying to get that mileage in! Right now, I'm in 7th place in the Iron Bowl Walk-A-Thon...woohoo! :)

Hope you are having an awesome week so far!!

An Up and Down Weekend...

...I guess you have to take the good with the bad, right?

Travis and I really enjoyed having some time to ourselves this past weekend. We are usually so busy during the week that we barely see each other or get to talk, except for the occasional supper when I'm not working late. But, this weekend, we were house sitting for Laurie while she and her family were at the beach, and it was a lot of fun. We didn't do too much, but that made it nice. We grilled hamburgers Friday night for supper and steaks for lunch on Saturday. We watched a lot of football on Saturday and entertained Laurie's two dogs, T-Bone and Angie. As a result, I now have "pet fever" along with "house fever". But, the pets will have to wait until we get in a house!! Oh well :)

Alabama lost on Saturday for the first time in 29 regular season games. That's a long streak! I was pretty disappointed, but hopefully we'll rebound this week and play better. The Ole Miss game doesn't start until 8 PM...pretty late!

Speaking of football, Travis and I played each other in fantasy football this weekend. Let's just say I got killed. Before this weekend, I was 3-0 against him, so at least I still have a winning record :)

Anytime Fitness, the gym that we have memberships with, is doing a program right now called the Iron Bowl Walk-A-Thon. Apparently, Bryant Denny Stadium and Jordan Hare Stadium are 160 miles apart, so they are encouraging everyone to try to walk, run, or bike 160 miles by Thanksgiving, the day before the game. They've got a "map" up on the wall where they are tracking how far along everyone is. The person with the most mileage gets a free pair of running shoes, and everyone who goes at least 25 miles gets some sort of prize. I'm not sure I'll make it the whole 160 miles, but I'm going to try! I've probably done about 20 miles so far. It's a good incentive to exercise, at least!

Well, that's it for today. Hope you all are having a wonderful Wednesday!! :)

October = LOTS to do!!!

October means...

*Football games every weekend
*My birthday (I'm turning 24 this year!!)
*Cooler weather outside :)
*The leaves changing colors
*Halloween candy!

This is a crazy week for us. I worked yesterday and today, and I work again on Friday. Travis is off Friday, but has a ton going on at work this week. It's getting pretty stressful from what he's saying. Tomorrow through Sunday, we are house sitting/dog sitting for a nurse that I work with. We did it once before back in June, so we already are familiar with her house. It'll be a nice get-away, but I'm not looking forward to packing for it tomorrow. It's far enough away that I don't want to have to make a bunch of trips back here for stuff, so I need to get everything the first time!

We had a lot of fun this weekend at the lake house and at the Bama game in Tuscaloosa. Thanks again, Mom and Dad, for letting us go!!! Mom made her awesome meatloaf for Sunday lunch, and we celebrated my birthday early, since we won't see them or Jenn before my birthday in a few weeks. (Thanks, Gran, for the silverware you got me!!! We'll put it to good use!).

The Parade of Homes is this weekend, but I'm afraid we won't have the time or energy to go to any of them. How do you buy a house when you don't even have time to go look at any...haha?

Well, that's all that I can think of right now. My brain is tired from a crazy day at work!

Something I need to remember every day:

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

~Matthew 6:33-34



God will provide!! :)

Lessons Learned (and Re-Learned)

Here are some random things I've learned in the past week:

Lesson #1: NEVER give your phone number to a realtor at an open house, especially when you aren't seriously looking to buy in the next month or two. I made the mistake of giving my number to one who said "I promise not to bug you. I know how that feels, and I hate being harrassed." Ok, so what do 4 emails and 3 phone calls in the past 2 days equal? HARRASSMENT! Oh well, I'll know better for next time :)

Lesson #2: Stressing out about taking a class for your job is pointless. Chances are, they won't fire you if you don't do good. And chances are, it's not going to be nearly as hard as you think it might be. Translation: I got all worked up over taking ACLS last week because I'd heard from several people that you need to study a ton for it and it's really hard. And it wasn't super easy. But it went fine anyway! Always does :)

Lesson #3: "Working life" is just as busy as "college life" is. For some reason, I thought we would have all this free time on our hands to enjoy now that we don't have class, tests, and homework to worry about. Well, I'm not sure where all the time is going, but it's going somewhere! I guess life never slows down...you just have to take advantage of the time you have right now.

Lesson #4: Publix is awesome. Unlike at Wal-Mart or Target, you never have to wait in line more than a minute or so. Last week at Wal-Mart, I waited 20 minutes to check out....literally. Publix is clean, the associates are helpful and nice, and they have an awesome coupon policy that lets me save money! Every time I go to Wal-Mart or Target, it makes me love Publix even more!

Lesson #5: Perspective. It's all about the way you look at things. If you automatically view everything and everyone in a negative light, it can really bring you down. But, if you look for the good in people, chances are you'll have a better day.

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes." ~William James

Hope you all are having a GREAT day!

Busy, busy, busy

This post is going to be short and sweet...I'm sure you're all thinking "yay!"

I worked Monday and yesterday, and tomorrow and Friday I'm taking a class at the hospital called ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support). I've been studying some for it b/c it's supposed to be pretty intense from what I've heard, so hopefully I'll do ok.

This is Travis's 5-day work week, and I worked late the past two nights, so I feel like I've barely seen him all week. He's giving the invitation tonight at church, so he's also been working on that.

Saturday, Nate and Andrew came over to watch the Alabama-Penn State game with us. I made BBQ sandwiches, Rotel dip, and "white trash". It was a great game, and we had a lot of fun. This weekend, Alabama plays Duke at 2:30 PM. Hopefully that will be an easy victory!

Baugay gets back from Ireland Saturday night, and we're supposed to be picking her up from the airport. She's a world traveler! Can't wait to hear all about her trip :)

We went to an open house Sunday afternoon, and it was another failure. I guess we're 0-3. The first open house (that Alisha went with me to several weeks ago) smelled like dog inside...gross. The second open house that Travis and I tried to go to a couple weeks ago wasn't actually open. No one was there to let us in...sigh. And, the one we went to on Sunday smelled like cigarette smoke inside! Do people not realize when they are trying to sell their house that dog smells and cigarette smells are not appealing? Who knows! The frustrating thing about that last house is that I really really liked it....except for the nasty cigarette smell. Oh well....I guess we'll find something eventually.

Well, I guess it's time to get back to studying. I only thought I was done with that when I graduated :)

Fall = Football, Family, Friends, and Fun!

We had an awesome Labor Day weekend. To start the weekend, I got off a little earlier than normal on Friday (around 5:30 PM), which was nice. I hurried home, and we ate supper, packed, and hit the road for Trussville. We spent time with my parents (and the pets!) Friday night and Saturday morning before it was time to hit the road again for Tuscaloosa.

Our first stop in t-town was at the Johnsons' house. We visited with Mrs. Kathy, Elizabeth, and Trenton for a little while, and Elizabeth "fixed" my awful haircut that I got a couple of weeks ago. It looks much better now! Then, we headed to campus for the game. It felt so great to be back! I think I missed Tuscaloosa more than I realized. We parked and started walking toward Jason's tailgate to see everyone that we hadn't seen in forever. On our way, we passed by this:


Anyone recognize what this is? Sadly, it's where Presidential used to be. Our "first home" as a married couple, and they tore it down! We knew before we left in May that they were going to do that, but it was still weird to see it as just a dirt pile now. I'm glad that we got a picture in front of Wyman (our building), and I took plenty of pictures of our apartment, so we'll remember what it looked like.

We saw a lot of our friends at Jason's tailgate, but not too long after we got there, they all had to leave to go stake out their seats in the student section. That is one nice thing about not having a student ticket...you can wait til right before kickoff and still have your seat waiting on you. We were using Mom and Dad's tickets for the game, and they turned out to be really great seats! We had a blast! And the final score didn't hurt either....48-3 :)


One not-so-nice thing about not being a student anymore is the traffic leaving Tuscaloosa after the game. I don't think I'd want to do that every weekend, that's for sure. We finally got home Saturday night around 11:30 PM.

Sunday, Uncle Bill, Aunt Gale, and Jenn all got into town. Yay! That afternoon we visited Gran and Dadaw at GreenBriar, and then after church Sunday night we went to Granny's to eat pizza with the Palmers and her. It was great to have everyone together...first time in a while! I told Travis that it felt like the Fripp trip condensed down into 2 days...haha :)

Monday, everyone came over for lunch and we had BBQ. Then, we played a game, and before we knew it, it was time for Jenn and Kathleen to head back to Auburn, the parents to head to the lake, and us to come back to Baugay's. Overall, we had a lot of fun.

Fantasy football starts tonight, and I'm planning to keep up my winning streak against Travis. Right now I'm 3-0 against him...as I'm sure he wanted you all to know :)

Saturday night, we're having a few friends over for the Penn State game. Should be a fun time and a good game too!

Time to get busy....I've got lots to do today! Hope you're having a great week :)

Summer is winding down...

This summer went by so fast! Now it's time for fall weather and football season to start. We had a great time at the bed and breakfast last weekend. The day before we left, last Wednesday, Travis got sick, so I was afraid our trip would be ruined...but he slept the whole way there on Thursday and felt better by the time we got there. Yay! For our first time at a B&B, we definitely picked a good one! We didn't really know what to expect, but Pat and Phil (the owners) were really great. They were friendly but also gave us our space too. Ashley and Seth came along with us, so we got to hang out with them while we were there. Ashley has gotten big into couponing, so she brought along a gift certificate from restaurant.com to use at Shane's Rib Shack about 20 minutes away. The four of us ended up eating supper that night for about $15 total! Way to go, Ashley! Both mornings we ate a 3-course breakfast which was fantastic! I would go back just for the breakfast alone.


On Friday, we went to Amicalola Falls State Park and hiked up to the falls. Amicalola Falls is apparently the highest waterfall east of the Mississippi. It was a good way to burn off some of that breakfast. We definitely got a good workout in because my calves were sore for the next three days! The waterfall was really pretty, and the view was the top was as well.


Friday night, we ate dinner at Charlie's, an Italian restaurant in Ellijay. It was awesome! I'd say it was better than Olive Garden, and I really like Olive Garden :)

Saturday, after another big breakfast, we packed up and headed the outlet mall in Calhoun, GA. It wasn't anything special, but Ashley did find some clothes for work, and I think Seth got a shirt, so we'll consider it a success. Overall, we had a great trip, and we're definitely planning to go back!

This week has been super busy so far. We had a short gospel meeting at KSR that ended Tuesday night, then we had Andrew over for supper last night before church, and then tonight we're going to the Copelands' for supper. One night, it would be nice to stay home and do nothing, but I guess that'll have to wait until next week! Kinda related...Travis said what I cooked last night was one of the best meals I'd made in a long time! We had BBQ sandwiches, okra, steamed squash, baked beans, and apple pie a la mode. It was the first pie I think I've made since we've been married, and it turned out pretty good. We've got about 3/4 of it leftover, so I'm bringing it this weekend, Mom!

Speaking of this weekend, we're hitting the road again. Friday night after work, we're going to Trussville. Then, Saturday, we're going to the Alabama game in t-town (Roll Tide!) and then back to Trussville that night. We're planning to come back up here sometime Monday. Should be a fun weekend! Aunt Gale and Uncle Bill are coming from Richmond, and Jenn will be home too!