Florida!

We spent the last week in sunny Florida with the Guillemette family enjoying the sun, the pool, Disney World, and family time and it was a blast!!!

7 years ago the Guillemettes started a change collection in a large water jug and last year they came up with the idea to use the now full change jar for a family vacation. So last Christmas the Guillemettes counted and rolled over $1000 worth of change and the plan was set in motion. A vacation home with enough room for all 7 of us was rented with the change jar money and finally last week we got to cash in and hit the road for Florida.

Marc and I decided to make the 16 hour drive from Houston to Orlando so that we could take along Romo for the fun. I absolutely love road trips so I was pumped for it and it turned out to be a fun drive, I had never been through most of the states and it turns out that I absolutely love the scenery in Louisianna, although I will say the last leg was a little painful and it turns out Florida is a very long and very boring state.

Before we left, Romo, the creature of habit that he is, put himself in his invisible kennel after his real kennel had already been packed away in the car. He was quite confused. (Where he is sitting in the picture is where his kennel usually is and he ran there as soon as Marc came home from work because its usually where he goes while we go to the gym when Marc gets home from work)



After the invisible kennel incident and a little bit of fear that we were leaving without him, Romo did awesome and slept the entire way in the back seat that we made into a comfy bed area for him, like the bum he is.





So on Friday night we left in the early afternoon after Marc got home from work. That night we made it to Baton Rouge, Louisianna where we spent the night. It was Romo's first hotel stay and he did great, thoroughly enjoying our free room upgrade to a suite. And by the way if anyone is traveling with a dog ever take a look at bringfido.com when looking for hotels it was awesome for us!



The next morning we were up and ready to tackle the rest of the trip. We passed through Mississippi and Alabama suprisingly quickly, and then we reached Florida and had to make it through the hardest and longest part of the trip. After lots and lots of Florida, and one large detour due to a huge accident we arrived at the vacation home in Davenport, FL to be greeted by the entire Guillemette family!







We were so excited to see everyone and had a huge week ahead of with 5 parks to visit including Epcot, Blizzard Beach, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios and a few surprises Marc and I had cooked up for the last day at the vacation rental!

Due to how much fun we managed to pack into our 7 day vacation I have decided to split the trip up into separate blogs and post one a day! So up tomorrow is Day 1, our first full day in Florida which we spent at Epcot! Here is a little sneak peak...

The Pioneer Woman

Chances are you have heard me mention The Pioneer Woman. She is the wife of a rancher in Oklahoma who went to school in California and then fell in love with a cowboy and gave up her big city life to move to the ranch. A little over a year ago I came across her blog where she writes a blog about her experiences on the ranch, decorating, shopping, cooking, homeschooling, and photography. I was immediately captivated and read her blog daily enjoying her outlook on life, love and cooking. I then purchased her cookbook which is absolutely amazing full of home cooking recipes with step by step photo instructions. I pretty much want to be Pioneer Woman haha :) So last week when I found out she was going to be in Houston I knew I had to be there!

This Friday night I went to my first book signing. I left work early and drove to a random strip mall way out in Katy to get a spot in line at a tiny little hidden book store called Blue Willow Bookshop.



I ended up waiting in line for 4 hours, but luckily the weather was perfect and I lucked out standing behind a group of very entertaining girls. So in the end it was all worth it. The Pioneer Woman was there to sign copies of her new childrens book about her basset hound Charlie but took time to sign as many books as people had, took pictures, and had conversations with everyone. I didn't think I could like Pioneer Woman any more than I already had but she was so nice and personable and I am so glad I waited in line to meet her. She signed a copy of the Children's book, my copy of her love story, and my copy of her cookbook. It was an altogether awesome experience and totally worth it.

Engagement Photo Favorites

As I mentioned before we absolutely adore our photographer Alyse French she is an awesome friend, absolutely amazing photographer and now one more reason I love her, she gets things done! We had our engagement session last Saturday, she had a blog up by Wednesday and, we had a disc of beautiful images in the mail by Saturday! She just keeps getting more awesome!

And so here they are, our favorite images...






















Leave a commenting telling us which is your favorite! Marc and I have different favorites (both included above) and it's fun to see what everybody likes best :)

It's Official...

Well I technically graduated at the beginning of February but last week I picked up my bound thesis and diploma from Baylor and now it feels so official. Here are a few pictures of my fancy diploma and thesis.




Eventually I will have to get it into a nice frame and I think I have a perfect place to hang it in the office. Right above my dopamine structure. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that my graduate lab focused a lot on seeing as how it plays a huge role in addiction and my mom managed to hunt down this awesome piece of wall art a few years ago for my birthday and I love it.



Done with graduate school and on to the next exciting new phase of life :) Excited to see where life takes me :)

Engagement Photos

One of the most important things for both Marc and I when it came to planning the wedding was photography. So it was one of the first things we wanted to pick. With the number of beautiful wedding blogs I read I have pretty high standards, Marc has an artistic eye and knew what he was looking for in images, I knew we needed somebody who we could be comfortable with because I don't particularly enjoy having my picture taken, but we also have a budget so I went about the huge searching the internet looking at photography blog after photography blog. Once I had the list narrowed down to our budget and blogs I liked, Marc narrowed down the list even more and we set up a few appointments. We only made two appointments to start with and although I had a gut feeling after reading oh so many of her adorable blogs that this Alyse French girl who had just moved here from NY was our girl, I tried to go into the appointments with an open mind.

Our first appointment was a disaster, Marc walked in said hi and proceeded to not say one more word through the rest of the appointment. Although these people could take pretty pictures there was no way we were ever getting comfortable with them.

Then we met Alyse and after introductions I knew I had to have her as a photographer and a friend. And Marc even managed to say a few words during the appointment which was a really good sign.

Needless to say we walked out of only our second meeting with a photographer and we were done. Marc and I are just that kind of people when it comes to knowing what we want and Alyse was just that amazing. She takes beautiful pictures and has a beautiful personality.

Along the way Alyse and her husband Dylan, who works with her sometimes, have become our friends and we are even more excited that they get to be part of our big day.

Last weekend we had scheduled our engagement session and we were all ready to go when we got a phone call from Alyse saying she and Dylan had been in an accident right by their apartment on the way to our house. We were thinking this should be rescheduled for another time while they had time to process what had just happened but after a few discussion between the two of them the troopers decided they wanted to put the accident behind them and just do the shoot. How awesome are they. So with a slight change of plans we picked them up at their place and headed to the Buffalo Bayou for a photoshoot with a country meets the city feel that we had tracked down. And although I was a little nervous to have my picture taken it turned out to be a blast. Alyse, Dylan, and Marc had me laughing the whole time. And we ended the night with some awesome friend time at our favorite pizza spot with them, Piola Pizza.

Yesterday Alyse posted some of her favorite shots of the engagement session on her blog. And I cannot explain to you how talented Alyse and Dylan are, the photos are gorgeous and we can't wait to see the rest that are already in the mail. But for now check out Alyse's blog and her beautiful website....

Alyse French Photography Blog

Alyse French

Birthday, WPI, Crawfish, and Easter

Well we have had quite the busy last couple of weeks around here...

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 :)

March!!!

For as long as I can remember March has been my favorite month and an extremely special time in my life. For me March meant birthdays for me, my sister, and my grandma and that included a whole lot of celebrating. March always included awesome birthday parties thrown by my mom which included all the cute arts and crafts you can think of, horse back riding, hay rides, nail salon parties and of course brownie cakes provided by grandma. Along with my own birthday party on the day of my sister's birthday party I got a day of shopping with Grandma, and then there was always the yearly joint birthday celebration for my sister, my grandma and myself. This was always a huge deal at a fun restaurant and included our many "sets of parents" including my Godparents who were always in town for our birthdays from Colorado, Doug and Pam, sometimes a few others, and it usually included boyfriends or best friends.

During college I had quite the time adjusting to March that didn't include non stop birthday celebration, but I made it through ;)

And now that I am here in Houston March is once again my favorite time of year and although its a little bit different than the good old days of extravagant non stop birthday parties, it is once again something I look forward to every year, because here in Houston the entire month of March is dedicated to the Houston Rodeo, which just happens to be held at Reliant Stadium walking distance from our house. The Houston Rodeo has to be my favorite part of living in Houston (well not including meeting Marc here). And not only do I get to go to the rodeo several times during the month of March, EVERYONE comes to visit to go to the rodeo and being a girl who considers home to be in three different states, getting the chance to have my friends and family from all over the country come to visit me is something I truly look forward to.

Here is how the Houston Rodeo works. Outside around the park there is a giant carnival including rides, shopping, and tents and tents of food. Inside the convention area there is livestock, farm machinery, and all the shopping your heart could desire. And let me tell you Cowboys and Cowgirls know how to shop I mean I could spend days walking around wishing I could buy all the cute clothes, boots, and accessories. And then every night and I mean EVERY night in the stadium there is the actual rodeo which includes several amazing events including bronc riding, bare back riding, bull riding, calf wrestling, wagon racing, barrel racing, the calf scramble, and my personal favorite mutton bustin. The calf scramble is where they line a bunch of high school kids up on the floor of the stadium and let calves loose and the kids have to chase them around, catch them, tie them up and drag them into the middle of the floor, it is amazing and usually results in a few kids being dragged instead of the other way around. Mutton bustin is when very small kids are put on to sheep with a helmet and hold on for dear life while the sheep bolts across the pin and whoever holds on longest wins and it is absolutely adorable! And following the rodeo there is a different concert every night. And this happens EVERY night! So if you haven't made it out to Houston in March yet, start making plans!!! We tend to have visitors in our house for every day of the month and it is so worth the exhaustion that hits us at the end of the month every year.

This year our visitors included Marc's sister, Christina, who has been out to Houston before but never for the rodeo, my mom who comes every year, and my best friends from college Annie and Jen who have come out every year since I have been here.

And here come just a few of the countless pictures we took this March...

Christina's Visit
Christina's visit included a night at the rodeo including an AMAZING performance by Sugarland, a Saturday walking around the rodeo checking out all the shopping, food, and livestock, including a close encounter with a very large pig with left me with a very purple foot, new cowgirl boots for Christina, and just some altogether awesome hanging out time.













Annie and Jen's Visit
Having my Minnesota girls in Houston every year is something I look forward to most every year. These girls were my sidekicks in college, are a huge part of my life, and I can never get over how every time they are here it feels like we have never been a part. This year their visit included a girls night out at Ruby Tequilas including some amazing Dos Ritas (this is a giant margarita with a Dos XX upside down in it, it sounds weird, but its amazing and you must try one). Also included in the visit was a night out at the rodeo with my mom including the Miranda Lamber concert (this girl is a spit fire and put on amazing fun show), lots of pool time as always, and lots of play time with Romo.
















My Birthday
It has kind of become a tradition that my birthday revolves around all the rodeo fun. Last year Marc got me a fancy cowgirl belt with cow hair and rhinestones and front row tickets to Brad Paisley (I touched his hand) who puts on an amazing show. And this year he got me a gift card to Cavendars, the real cowboy shop here in Houston, and front row tickets to Keith Urban who puts on amazing show and is my absolute favorite. Have a ever mentioned what a lucky girl I am?










A few of my favorite livestock photos
If anyone needs a picture of a cow let me know, I have a million, I can't get enough of cows!













The carnival, food, and shopping



















A few of my favorite pictures from the actual Rodeo Show
















Thank you to everyone who made March such an amazing month for us. My Houston ladies, Kelli and Steffie, surprised me with cupcakes and flowers for our Monday night get together. Christina, Mommy, Jen and Annie we absolutely loved having every one of you here and hope you come back soon. And to all of you who sent birthday wishes from far away thank you so so much. And we hope you can find a chance to make it out to enjoy the amazing Houston Rodeo with us some year. Walking in the house every day and seeing the sweet birthday cards and flowers from everyone touched my heart! I am truly blessed with such amazing family, friends, family to be, and my loving fiance!