April 14th we celebrated Marc's 26th Birthday! Funny enough on Marc's actual birthday there was a WPI alumni event here in Houston so we spent the evening at that and it turned out to be quite fun. The event was at a fancy boutique hotel and included drinks, appetizers, and a short talk on where WPI is now by the VP of Exxon who is an alum himself and now lives in Dallas. Although we couldn't imagine there would be a ton of people here in Houston from WPI we were impressed with the turnout of about 30 people, including many who work for different sections of Exxon around town. We even happened to run into a guy who it turns out was Marc's Uncle Normand's freshman roommate, what a small world! Although I am not an WPI alumni myself I got quite a kick out of being at the event. WPI and St. Olaf are obviously very different schools considering WPI is an engineering school and St. Olaf is a liberal arts school, but hearing the talks it was clear that they are both small undergraduate institutions with very similar ideals. Marc and I both absolutely loved the choices we made in going to small private colleges and it is fun to share those experiences with each other since it is something we both consider very important to us. We have taken trips to visit both campuses together and I hope now that someday there is a St. Olaf alumni event I get to take Marc to. I was getting pretty jealous and remembering how much I miss St. Olaf and wishing there was a Houston St. Olaf alumni event ! It sounds like some of the young kids who graduated in '10 (were getting old and aren't considered the young kids anymore ;)) are hoping to start up some regular WPI alumni activity here in Houston so we are excited to see what turns up :)
After the WPI event we came home and celebrated Marc's birthday with some present opening and a HUGE cake from The Chocolate Bar, which I must say is the best chocolate cake I have ever had. Alll in all I think it was a pretty fun night!
The Sunday after Marc's birthday his work group had some out of town guests and his coworker Melissa decided to have a crawfish boil to welcome the visitors. Crawfish boils are pretty big around here but I had never been to one and it turned out to be a really fun night. They actually brought in the live crawfish and crabs and one of the husbands cooked while we all hung out outside. I only had one bite of crawfish, but it was fun to see how it's done. It was also fun to get to meet all these people Marc works with everyday so I can put faces to the names and Marc and I spent about 3 hours running around with all the kids which was an absolute blast! Here are a few pictures from the event! The kids had a ton of fun with the Crawfish :)
In between all these fun events life has been pretty crazy for me. I have been through quite the interview process with HISD which is the big school district in the center of Houston. This was quite the process with phases where you get scored and must meet the score criteria to move on to the next level. It started with a pretty simple online application that included an essay question about "at risk" students and then moved on to a 5 minute lesson demonstration, and finally on to a structured interview with set questions that you are scored on. Thanks to the help of my mom and some of her teaching friends helping me along the way editing my essays and providing advice for my 5 minute lesson I managed to make it all the way to the 3rd phase and now I am just waiting to hear back about that tomorrow night. Unfortunately this process doesn't get me a job in the district, because districts first have to find positions for all the teachers they already have, but it does put me in an application pool where principals can draw from when they find out if they do need spaces filled in their high need areas which thankfully are math and science so I will see where this takes me :) But for now I am just happy to have gotten through this process which has been quite the experience.
So that is what is happening around here these days. Things have calmed down a little bit now and we are enjoying a relaxing Easter Sunday around the house with our Romo.
Yesterday we spent the evening with our friends/photographers Alyse and Dylan having our engagement pictures taken. Alyse will blog some of her favorite shots later this week on her website and I will post the story and the link to her blog later this week!
Until then have a HAPPY EASTER everyone :)
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