Bahama Vacation!

The end of April Zach and I took a wonderful cruise to the Bahamas! It was kind of a late graduation celebration, an early anniversary celebration, and one last vacation before our big move! We drove all the way to Florida...which was our first long road trip with just the two of us. The 24 hour straight through drive to Utah with 6 people and 2 dogs in one car is not something we like to think about!

We left from Port Canaveral, Florida and stayed in a great place there the night before with free parking and shuttle that took us to the cruise terminal...defintaley the way to go to avoid $20 a day parking at the terminal!

Since we took a Carnival cruise for our honeymoon and I had been on some previously...we were both past cruisers and had our gold card instead of the normal blue one, so we felt special from the start.

After playing around on the ship the first day, we went to Freeport. The weather looked like it might rain on us at first but it ended up being a great day!

We drank out of coconuts...mango, passion fruit, and all kinds of yummy island fruits!

Technically the island are British...so there were a few phone booths that brought back memories of my time in England!

I made a sweet new friend on one of the piers...I always love seeing cats and dogs in other countries. They are always the same, but I still like seeing them. So sweet Bahama kitty was sunbathing! One of the many ladies that was harrassing me about getting my hair braided...they wanted to braid everybody's hair...took a picture of us by the beach. One of the few with both of us that is not a self portrait!

Self portrait on the beach in the wind!

We bought a new camera before the trip...like a real nice camera because ours got stolen by plumbers who were in our apartment! That is a whole other story! But I was still trying to learn how to really use it and it takes pretty flower pictures! Hopefully my photography skills will improve if I can ever read through the whole manual on it!

Attempting to be artistic with the camera. I like taking pictures when Zach doesn't know I am taking them!

There were lots of very tall palm trees and a beautiful blue sky as a background!

Back on the ship leaving Freeport...headed to Nassau!!!

Towel animals every night after meals where we ate way too much! I love cruise food!

Docked in Nassau we could see the amazing Atlantis Resort...let me just say if you ever want to go to a nice resort and spend a lot of money....this is the place to do it. We went over there in the afternoon and it was one of the nicest places either of us had ever been to! Maybe after med school we can take our family there!

We spent our morning in Nassau at the beach getting our tan on! We didn't want to take our new camera, so we took an old one which it not cooperating with me. Just wanted to make it known that we did enjoy time at the beach on our tropical vacation!

I could totally live on this little island. Maybe I could take up jewlery making and hair braiding!

Cute Zachary getting ready to get off the ship to wander around the town!

The town was very clean and the people were really nice!

More flowers!

At Atlantis

They have a huge amazing aquarium with pretty much every kind of fish you could imagine, but the pictures don't do it justice.

This is on top of the all the aquariums.

We were docked in Nassau until about 5 a.m. It was cool to be in port somewhere at night!

We loved the cruise just wish it could have been longer! Once we got off the ship and back to our car we were headed to Mobile, Alabama to stay the night but not without making lots of fun pit stops.

Zach loves college campuses for some reason and loves the Florida Gators. So we got this picture at the stadium and he got a hat and shirt.

After our night in Mobile, where we were both experiencing bad sea legs, our second day of driving brought us to outlet malls in Mississippi for me and LSU in Baton Rouge for Zach!

We then spent a few days in Beaumont with my dad to wrap up our week of no work!

Then we stopped in Conroe at my mom's to get our little Chico who we had missed so much! Mom loves to babysit her granddog!

It was a great trip and we wish could do a tropical vacation every month!!

Engageversary!

I realize that is not even close to a real word, but it makes sense to me. Today is the 2 year Anniversary of our engagement. I can't believe it has already been two years!! I wanted to post a little something about the fabulous proposal my husband had for me two years ago on December 15, 2006. It was wonderful, romantic, amazing, and memorable...definitely a good story for the kids! (By the way there are no kids on the way or anything!)

So here is the story of our engagement night.......
Zach and I decided to go out to dinner. We drove by Cheddars...it was packed and so was Olive Garden. Not wanting to wait to eat, we ended up going to Fudrucker's...which is exactly what we did on our first date. I took that as a rare coincidence. After a dinner, with a very calm Zach...we got in the car and he said, "I want to take you somewhere, but first you have to wear this." He blindfolded me and my stomach started with the butterflies...we had already been talking marriage, so then I totally knew what was coming!

After a long blindfolded walk, we stopped and he took the blindfold off. We were at the George Bush Presidential Library. We had been there before and spent time talking and enjoying the serenity of the place. There is a beautiful pond and gazebo with arches leading up to it. On the arches leading to the gazebo there were 3 red banners with gold letters that said "I <3 U".

We walked into the candle filled gazebo and sat down. His hands were shaking and he picked up a big metal tool box. There was a lock on it. He explained that the combination was the date of our first kiss. I thought about it and with shaky hands, turned the 3 dials to the date. It opened. Inside was a smaller wooden box, decorated by my future fiance. It also had a lock...this date was the day we first said I love you. I opened this one to find a ring box. Zach said, "I guess I will take over from here." He got out the ring box, got on one knee, and through a few tears expressed his feelings and asked me to marry him. Through my tears I said yes!

Ashley, my sister, and some wonderful friends were out hiding in the woods. They had helped his whole plan and idea work and were also there to take some great pictures! We have since been back to the gazebo and you can still see wax on the stone pillars. It is nice to have a left a mark on our spot!! Happy Anniversary Zachary...I love you and wish you were home with me tonight instead of at the station! See you in the morning!!This is my favorite picture of the whole night because his smile says that he made the right decision in asking me to marry him! I will always have this to remind him of that...even when I might drive him crazy!

The verdict is in and it's not good.

The beach neighbors got a helicopter and flew in to the beach on Sunday. They sent my dad some pictures of the house...and it is bad. Like, made me cry, bad.

My dad was able to talk his way down there yesterday in his truck and said it was the "most surreal thing" he had ever seen. The town is like a war zone. An the front side of the house didn't fare nearly as well as the back. The front walls are gone as well as about half of the floors in the house. Dad was able to take a ladder up and salvage quite a bit of stuff that was in the back portion of the house.

I will post some pictures that he took once he gets them uploaded and sent to me. These pictures are some that the neighbor took from the ground.

Our place on the left and the neighbors to the right.

No more deck or walls or floor

Again...you can see the kitchen is still there at the very back!

Even the foundation was washed out from under.

Looking up into the great room from the ground

Looking up where the master bedroom was into the master bathroom.

All of this is still very hard to fathom. Like I said I will post more once I get them. The ones my dad took should be really good since he climbed up there. My dad suggested having a goodbye party at the beach to tell the house bye...I will let you know!!

Crystal Beach...

I know that everybody has already heard all they can stand about the recent hurricane...and I have cried all I can over it. My dad lives primarily in Crystal Beach. He has a beach front home there, as well as a rental house, and his branch of Chicago Title. Ike wasn't too kind to the Bolivar Peninsula and no one has been allowed to go down there yet to survey their homes.

On Monday, I was able to find an updated satellite images site that confirmed to us that dad's house was still standing!!

This site had all of us feeling very blessed. Our neighbors...to the left on this image...have absolutely nothing left of their house! I still can't fathom how random the damage can be! We were able to see a picture of another house on the front row just down from dad's and it didn't look so good from the beach side.It is amazing to see that the slab is cracked and the sand is gone from under it. The front of the house has literally been pulled off. Only time will tell what the front side of our home looks like.


This picture is the once green and beautiful neighborhood. From this photo, we were able to see that the beautiful front deck (that is shown in my header) is gone. But for the most part the rest of the house looks good from the back...my dad's design held up well.

Dad's rental house is now non-existent and his office has been hollowed out. The windows, furniture, documents, and offices are gone...but the building is still standing. Hopefully everyone on the peninsula is given to opportunity to rebuild!


While we are glad to see that our house is still standing and overjoyed to think that we will be able to go and retrieve items and memories from inside the house, we are devastated at the damage that has been done to the wonderful community of Crystal Beach. My dad has many friends who have lost everything. We also know that some people lost their lives. It is hard to fathom that in the course of one storm entire neighborhoods can be gone...And that one storm can cause such great damage to a place that so many from Southeast Texas have enjoyed for decades.

My dad went to a meeting yesterday in Winnie for residents of the peninsula and they were told that in the next 10-14 days that would be escorting residents in for a short period of time to salvage what they could and secure what is left. Hopefully in the days and weeks to come more information will come out and more can be known about the future of the peninsula. Keep the residents and their families in your prayers and pray especially that those who are missing will be located.

I found one last picture to share of a beautiful Crystal Beach sunset. This is a great juxtaposition of the beauty of the area with the destruction of the storm.
I will try to update more often and post more information as I get it. This has been very humbling for me to see how truly blessed I am to have what I have. I am grateful for my life, my family, and all the wonderful things that we enjoy. I am also so grateful for the many beautiful memories that I have had at this wonderful beach. Dad...thanks for being the most positive person through all of this and yet the most affected...I love you.

This is a good slideshow of the damage.

Woman's 2nd Best Friend

Of course Zach is my best friend...but little Chico comes in at a close second! I am not sure if I have mentioned it before, but I love my little dog! Lately (and probably for the next few years) Zach spends a lot of evening studying. It is so great to have a little companion. I love that he is always more than happy to see me when I come home and that he likes to sit with me when I watch tv. As I type this, Chico is sleeping in my lap. He follows me around, which sometimes can cause me to trip, but I secretly love that he loves me!

Here my little guy is making himself comfortable in my sister, April's jacket!

When Zach and I started dating, Zach didn't really care for Chico much. He was just ambivalent towards him. But as time has passed Zach has gone from tolerating Chico, to playing with him when he thinks I am not around, giving him food when I am not looking, talking to him, letting him sit next to him while he does homework, to now actually admitting that he loves the little guy! It is funny to see my husband, not a dog person, have no shame in taking a 3 pound girly dog with him to check the mail.

He pretends not to like him, but I caught them studying together!!

So if you don't have a pet of your own...you should get one! Or you could just borrow mine for a while...because, as with everything we love, sometimes he drives me crazy!!

Spring Break...I know, I know...FOREVER ago!!

I started this post a long time ago and never posted it! Figured since it was almost ready to go I might as well put it up here...just in case anybody actually looks at my blog!

We spent the start of Spring Break 08 in El Paso visiting my family there! Zach had not met my grandmother yet and only spent a few hours with my aunt and uncle...so we headed out there and spent about 5 days enjoying West Texas. It was awesome and we got a lot of good pictures. We took a day and went to White Sands New Mexico which was a lot of fun! We loved sledding down the sand dunes like little kids!!






It was great to see my family...it would have been great to have everybody together, but we still had a lot of fun!! My aunt and uncle were wonderful hosts and it was super fun to see Grammy, Andrew and Happy dog!

Everybody eating dinner at Aunt Becky's!Our wonderful hosts...Aunt Becky and Uncle Gary!

Becky, myself, and Grammy!!

El Paso was great and we are excited to go back again and maybe venture into the mountains of New Mexico for some skiing!!

Jury Duty

Last week I went to the courthouse for my first tour of jury duty. After a long day, I was picked to be on the jury. They told us it could be all week because it was a murder trial. So everyday last week I was doing my civic duty and can I just say it was much much harder than I ever thought?!? Being a murder case, I knew it would be hard. But by Thursday when we gave our verdict I was emotionally and physically drained.

The deliberating took us almost all day so reaching a verdict was very hard. The hardest part was putting emotions aside and following the letter of the law. I know that our guilty verdict was the right decisions, but after it was read I got SUPER emotional and spent most of the night in tears or on the verge of tears! Poor Zach didn't really know much about what was going on because I was trying my best to not say too much.

This man convicted of murder, was, in my opinion acting in self defense due to prior attacks from the victim. But the night of the murder, the victim had not physically attacking which is where the letter of law says it is not self defense.

Friday, our last day, we were able to hear a bit more testimony and deliver the punishment. That is where many of us were able to feel better about our guilty verdict by, in our opinion, giving a punishment that fit the crime.

I think the hardest part of all of it all was for me to judge this man that I didn't even know. To think that one day the Lord will have to judge me and what I have done, knowing the pain that I felt in judging a stranger really hit me hard. Sometimes we make bad decisions but to think of the repercussions of our decisions on all of those who love us, even the Lord was really hard for me. I know I felt a little taste of how difficult it is for the Lord to punish us with all of the love that he has for us.

I am grateful to be able to feel of the love that the Lord has for me and for the defendant in the trial. I just hope that this man that I was forced to judge is able to know of the love that the Lord has for him despite everything tough that has happened in his life. The trial in general helped me to again see how truly blessed I am in so many aspects of my life.

Sorry to get all deep, but this jury duty experience was really a good one for me even though it was also very hard. I am glad that I had the chance. I just hope there aren't any little green cards in my mail box again anytime soon!!
On another note...we celebrated our one year anniversary this weekend with a much needed trip to the beach and day off! I will post pictures and details soon!!!