Married for 1,001 Days

November 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

<span class= Since my last update in June in 2008, when were were at the half-way point, we’ve made some great progress on our 101 Things in 1,001 Days of our marriage. We didn’t get them all done, but certainly had a ton of fun trying new things on our 101 List & learning during the first 1,001 days of our marriage.   

 

7- The biggie this year as our trip to Brazil & Argentina for our anniversary (February 2008)

 

9- Attend 2 Plays: Phantom of the Opera & Mauritius

 

10- We started our garden! (April 2008) & will did it again this year

 

11- Music library is really coming together on my iMac with iTunes & our new living room stereo system (Dec 2008)

 

12- Decorate H’s office (all of 2008)

 

14- H to start a 401(K)

 

16- Start a journal ( blogging )

 

18- Build a substantial savings

 

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20- Subscribe to a magazine (Newsweek)

 

21- Visit the dentist 22- Install a Sprinkler System (Jan 2009)

 

 

23- Join the University of Houston Alumni (January 2009)

 

26- Clean the carpet

 

30- Plant some flowerbeds (definitely this spring)

 

31- Fondue with friends (done twice)

 

34- Read a fiction novel (You can see that I’ve done that several times over)

 

40- Take a photography class (June 2007)

 

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44- SCUBA certification (completed July 2008)

 

46- We went to the New Orleans Jazz Fest (April 2008)

 

47- Run everyday for a month (did this, but might do it again)

 

50- Write and publish a technical paper (presented it in Detroit)

 

51- Get Professional Engineering License (studied & I passed!)

 

52- Finish home entertainment system (January 2009)

 

 

57- Subscribe to a travel magazine (we loved Budget Travel)

 

60-Bake a Cheesecake (1st attempt in November 2008, will try again!)

 

62- Visit Alabama (Trip for Thanksgiving 2007)

 

65- Go to an art exhibit (saw Da Vinci) & went to the Art Festival several times

 

67- Girls weekend (Labor Day 2008 in Colorado with Stephanie & Wine Weekend in 2009)

 

F-036064 by you.

 

69 -Austin City Limits Festival (Oct 2009) 72- New grillfor the house 75- Organize garage (officially done January 2009) 76- See Dave Matthews Band in Concert (and did this again!) 68- Redecorate our bedroom 71- Give blood 72- Pay off debt 76- Cut Christmas Tree (completed in 2008)

 

BG-7553 by you.

81- Fly a Kite (Feb 2008)

83- Go to a Houston Dynamo Game (July 2008)

84- Rent 10 classic movies

87- Go on a picnic (several times)

88- Couples Massage was awesome (October 2008)

89- Watch a Parade (Houston Rodeo Parade Nov 2008)

94- Try new ethnic restaurants (Mediterranean, Vietnamese & Spanish)

97- Ice Skating (did this with his cousins, but might go again)

100- Visit the Messina Hof Winery (Harvest & Stomp in July 2008)

ON GOING ITEMS

41- Cook 1 new meal a week (I’ve done a few & plan on doing a few more)

48- Visit grandparents every week (I’ve been better, but not great about this)

90- Review monthly budget (we’re been pretty good about this)

101- Go to the driving range together (we’ve been a few times)

COMING SOON

13- Hot Air Ballon Ride- it’s booked for our trip to New Zealand

27- Go fishing with my dad (Hopefullly this Spring)

45- Camp at 3 New Parks (our 3rd will be this weekend)

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Headed out to South Dakota today for work.
Filed Under: Life Menu of Awesome, Married Life

2008 Review

January 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Oh what a great year! I can’t believe how much stuff we packed in & how different our life is this December than it was last December. I’m a big fan of summaries & I love to reminisce, thus the blog! So, here’s my 2008 year in review.
January
I ran and finished the Houston Marathon in mid-January.
Visited Denver & kicked off our tour of the cities wine bars.
After some poor planning, I also started studying for my engineering license exam.

February

Probably my favorite month of last year because we were officially on vacation for more than half of it in Brazil & Argentina! I spent at least a month blogging all the fantastic picture from Buenos Aires, Iguazu Falls, Parati & Rio de Janerio.

Shortly after returning from our trip, Zoe had to have surgery to remove some mast cell tumors & she’s been having skin problems ever since. It appears she has developed some type of food allergy.

March


March was serious crunch time for studying, but we did mange to get to the famous Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo where we saw Rascal Flatts. I met my blogging friend Amanda from New York, giving her a horrible Houston tour, but still hitting the wine bar & some great Mexican food.
April

We started our garden in earnest in our bathroom in early April, much did we have to learn our first growing season. Even though we lost most of it during Hurricane Ike, we were still picking some tomatoes in December.
After a nerve wracking PE Exam , H & I flew up to Detroit so I could present a paper I co-authored. We had lots of fun at Motown, the Henry Ford Museum, checking out the abandoned buildings & the baseball park.
We celebrated my birthday & H’s birthday with a joint crawfish boil.
May

We took a road trip to New Orleans for the Jazz Fest as one of the things on our 101 List.


For Memorial Day, we visited my best friend Stephanie outside of Tampa. We caught a Tampa Bay baseball game, hang out on Siesta Key beach, had a mini-pub crawl, visited downtown Sarasota, visited MOAT, and .
We also met our new Vizsla friend Ruby, and had a play date at the park.
June
We visited the University of Houston campus, H’s alma mater, before watching an exciting Dynamo game.

July

We visited some friends in Austin for the 4th.

Remodeled my office from pink to turquoise with new floors & furniture.
We took our long anticipated trip to a local vineyard, Messina Hof, where we harvested and stomped some grapes. We visited the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library & I also spent an evening at the Museum with gorgeous rocks and incredible jewelry.
August
I received my SCUBA certification to do some diving, and have been waiting ever since to go somewhere worth diving!
For Labor Day weekend, I met my best friend Stephanie in Colorado Springs to drink wine, ride trains, hike insane trails, and worship in the Garden of the Gods.
September

Due to Hurricane Ike, I missed my photography workshop in Banff.
H & my step-dad did mange to visit New York & Boston to watch some baseball.
My sister Haley celebrated her 13th Birthday with friends and family.
October
I had some fun travel for work, including downtown Denver & the capitol and Joshua Tree National Park.
We added to our small art collection at the Bayou City Art Festival.

November

We partied on election night as Obama became the President-elect.

I did some more mile-high photography on the way to LA and Boston.
I convinced H that it would be good marathon training to run a 15 mile trail run, and I was wrong. His knee still hurts, so I’ll be running the Houston marathon solo again in January.
I planned a super-fun trip to San Francisco that just wasn’t to be.
We had an awesome Thanksgiving Feast with our friends & family.
We took the boys out for a day on the farm, including slides & rides.
We bought a new car for H!
December

We cut down our first Christmas Tree & watched my brother wrestle on the varsity team.
Round 1 (with family), Round 2, Round 3 & Round 4 of Christmas! Plus we had a blowout party downtown to ring in the New Year.
I really do think that 2008 might go down as the best year of my life so far! We’ve had so many blessings & opportunities this past year that I can barely believe how much fun we’ve had together.
GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: We’re starting work on our sprinkler system today.
Filed Under: blogging, Married Life, review

1 Year with My Camera

June 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment

It may sound silly, but I think getting a *real* camera (DSLR) changed my life. I’ve always been a picture nut, but it suddenly dawned on me that I could get a better camera than a point and shot (even though I do love mine). I borrowed one of the work cameras and signed up for a Saturday afternoon class. The rest is history, all documented with the 13,465 photos I’ve taken in the last year.
This is the first photo I ever took with my Nikon D80, 1 year ago today. Still probably one of the things most photographed by my camera.
My initial motivation for getting the camera was our trip to Colorado. This was my 1,000th photo- on the side of the hill in Breckenridge. I quickly learned the joys of Lightroom while processing my photos, but I’m still pretty clueless with photoshop.
My 5,000th photo just happened to be my favorite subject at her favorite place. I started out with my all-purpose 18-200 lens, which it’s great for almost any occasion. For Christmas, I received 2 fabulous lenses. I’ve been having a ball lately using the macro on our garden.
My 9,999th photo with my camera, and I was very glad to be back in the United States after our (mis)adventure in Canada.

This technically would have been my 10,000th photo, but the counter rolls over and we were back to 1. It was of my favorite abandoned building in Detroit.
I’m so excited to keep playing with it, keep learning, keep documenting my daily life.
GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I’ve got a super-awesome photo session coming up after-hours at the museum in 2 weeks.
Filed Under: photography

101 Update

June 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

We’ve been very busy on our 101 List in 1001 Days since my last update in January. We are officially 500 days into our first 1001 days of marital bliss. We have until November 9, 2009 to finish our list.

DONE

**New since the last update
6- Go to a NY Yankees Game (June 2007)
**7- The biggie this year as our trip to Brazil & Argentina for our anniversary (February 2008)
**12- Decorate H’s office
14- H to start a 401(K)
16- Start a journal ( blogging )
20- Subscribe to a magazine (Newsweek)
**21- Visit the dentist (H finally went in March)
26- Clean the carpet
31- Fondue with friends
34- Read a fiction novel (You can see that I’ve done that several times over)
40- Take a photography class (June 2007)
**46- We went to the New Orleans Jazz Fest (April 2008)
47- Run everyday for a month (did this, but might do it again)
**50- Write and publish a technical paper (presented it in Detroit)
**51- Get Professional Engineering License (studied & I passed!)
54- Go to a small town fair & rodeo
57- Subscribe to a travel magazine
62- Visit Alabama (Trip for Thanksgiving 2007)
**72- New grill for the house
76- See Dave Matthews Band in Concert
68- Redecorate our bedroom
71- Give blood
87- Go on a picnic (several times)
97- Ice Skating (did this with his cousins, but might go again)

IN PROGRESS

1- Run a marathon together (H has started training!)
10- We started our garden! (April 2008)
11- Start a music library (I’ve collected CD’s from most of our concerts)
41- Cook 1 new meal a week (I’ve done a few & did another last night)
45- Camp at 3 New Parks (we did McKinney Falls, so 2 more to go)
48- Visit grandparents every week (I’ve been better, but not great about this)
63- Read a book together
72- Pay off debt
84- Rent 10 classic movies (we’ve rented quite a few, but I have some more on my classics list)
90- Review monthly budget (we’ve been ok on tracking this, but will continue to do better)
94- Try new ethnic restaurants (a few down, a few more to go)
101- Go to the driving range together (we’ve been a few times)

COMING SOON

7- Trip to Big Bend National Park (I’ve just about talked H into going in December)
36- Volunteer for politics (hopefully this fall)
37- Take Zoe to the beach (on our calendar for June)
44- Get SCUBA certification
65- Go to an art exhibit (an awesome Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit is in town)
67- Have a girls weekend (I’m trying to plan a Labor Day weekend party in Colorado with Stephanie)
83- Go to a Houston Dynamo Game (on our calendar for July)
100- Visit the Messina Hof Winery (we’re booked for the Harvest Festival in July)

IF WE’RE LUCKY LIST

22- Install a sprinkler system
27- Go fishing with my dad
30- Plant some flowerbeds
88- Couples Massage

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: My grandparents are finally together again at a nursing home, and they are both doing fairly well.
Filed Under: Life Menu of Awesome

The Henry Ford

April 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Sunday morning in Detroit, we decided to hit up *THE* Henry Ford. It’s actually a museum with a lots of bonus goodies- like an IMAX, a real live factory tour and Greenfield Village. The above photo is most notable for the SNOWFLAKES falling and the high winds to which my husband experienced immediate shock.

The museum part is pretty cool, and old Henry Ford was quite the collector of everything historical and significant. This clock tower is supposedly a replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

It wasn’t JUST about cars, but all type of vehicle imaginable- bicycles and buggies, trains and airplanes, tractors and trucks, and everything else every invented. They did have some super-fun old cars and some really neat historical things. Of course, this Mustang was one of H’s favorites.

They also had the actual car that JFK was riding in when he was killed. Kinda creepy, but I’m accustomed to it with my job. They had a car representing every single presidential vehicle back to the early 1900′s.

Another neat part of the museum was how the automobile changed American life- from gas stations to drive-in movies and drive-thru food. All the recreational uses and military need for automobiles, along with the fun and sillier side of cars too.

They had some HUGE incredibly impressive trains actually inside the museum! We were blown away by their sheer size and enormity. This unusual fellow is from the Canadian Railroad and it’s officially the biggest snow-shovel I’ve ever seen.

There was a special exhibit on the early decades of flight- including lots of history and replicas of early airplanes and pilot daredevils.

I was impressed with how kid-friendly the museum was with numerous exhibits and activity stations setup for the kids to get involved and hands-on the history.

Who knew Ford made airplanes? (*insert your own corny Ford joke here).

The museum had special exhibits on the Decades of American culture and some fascinating old machinery. After the big test though, it all gave me frightful flashbacks to steam engines and pressure vessels and pumping power.

About 4 hours in a museum was all we could handle, but we did drop by Ford World Headquarters for a peek. I was amazed that we could get this close on a public road, but I waved at the company and thanked them for all their business.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I’ve officially got watermelon, cantaloupe, onion, squash, cucumber and peppers into the ground in our new garden outside.
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Filed Under: Married Life, Travels ->