Christmas is not off to a good start

In my family Christmas has many traditions. Too many to sit here and write out and explain. The fall holidays were big in my family no only for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but for all the birthdays in the family we celebrated in the holiday season. I always wanted to bring my traditions with me into my new family. Apparently, things that are important to me are not innately important to my new husband. So today I bought a tree by myself, put it up by myself, and decorated pretty much by myself, after my husband pushed his dinner plate away when he was done and said "alright let's get this thing over with" (referring to the decorating of the tree). That was a moment killer if anything was. When I put the tree up in the afternoon, I only put the lights on it, foolishly thinking my husband would want to share the decorating of it with me, being our first married Christmas together. I am filled with such dissappointment and sadness. It may seem silly to others, but this was really important to me, something I look forward to and enjoy each and every year. I feel like he shit all over it. It ruined the entire experience for me. I wish I would have just done it myself this afternoon.

Thus begins the Christmas holiday season in our home. Well here's a pic anyway.

I passed!!!

Hey all! I am officially a Ph D Candidate! Yeah! It was by far the most stressful anxiety-filled experience in my entire life!....thus far...

I came home after and took the most well deserved nap ever! I woke up a few hours later and got some pizza with my friends to celebrate. Today I'm just taking it easy. I officially changed over my drivers license today, so now I just have to change my passport and i'm all done!

I think I'm going to take buddy for a walk. He seems a little depressed. He hasn't gotten too much attention lately with everything that has been going on.

Hope everyone is well!
Ttyl!

Quals SUCK

The last two weeks I have been taking my written qualifying exams. I found two of them to be hard, and two of them to be LONG. So now I have just my advisor's left and to study for my oral exam which is a FREE FOR ALL! I am so worried about it!

I have some other stressful things on my mind too, all together the stress of life is messing with my sleep, my health and my emotions. I just can't wait for it to be OVER. I hope I don't fail. At this point doing well is a long-shot, I hope I don't fail. If I fail I'm gonna drop out school and get a job and make babies or something!

Grace and John came over last night for some cake and coffee. They brought little dolly with them who took a nice drooly nap while we ate our cake. She's so cute and cuddly. I just love to hug her and smell her hair.

Buddy has been keeping me company through my stressful two weeks. He lays at my feet while I'm on the computer and gives me kisses every morning (kind of gross, but hey he loves me!). F is as supportive of the stess as he can be. I don't think he knows exactly what I am going through, but he tries to be empathetic to my stress and leave me alone when I'm doing work. One more week until this is all over!

Finally Halloween is Over!

Halloween is a fun holiday and all but I'm kind of happy it's over. F and I had 3 different Halloween parties to go to in the last week. We are so sick or being the flight attendant and the pilot! We had fun at all of them though. Nicole and Josh's was fun cause it was in a cool haunted like house and we did ouija board, which was a laugh. Dana's party was fun cause there were so many people with awesome costumes! She had fun food and everyone had a good time, her house is so cute. Tina's party was really fun too, she had karaoke and awesome snackies too. Also very exciting....Tina and here boyfriend Ben got ENGAGED!!!!!!! They told everyone at the party, I was so happy for them I almost cried. They seemed a little shy about it, but I guess I was too when people got excited for me. I never really had the fairytale engagment like most girls dream about. F and I joked around so much about getting married and faking each other out by asking all the time, then one day we just had my ring made from diamonds from my grandmothers, then that was it, we set a date and we were engaged.

The weekend weather was so nice, we took a nice walk with buddylicious on saturday. He got to pee all over the neighborhood, and was pretty happy. I have a cold, but it was so sunny, I pushed through the walk anyway!

So now that halloween is gone, bring on the turkey and candy canes! I'm ready! I've been scoping out lights for the house and thinking about having a nice christmas party this year.

15 more days until my qualifying exam, kind of scary. Hopefully I do well. I'm a little worried myself.

F is on a business trip for the next two three days so i'm all alone :-( It's so weird to sleep in the house by myself knowing he's not going to come home at some point in the night. I let buddy come in and sleep on the rug in our room to make me feel better.

Gypsy and Katie and I went out to collect training samples today for our Remote Sensing Class. I think we underestimated the time committent and day light savings time ending because it was pretty dark when we got done!

I'll post some pictures from the weekend, including gypsy, katie and I breaking into a cow pasture to get and agricultural pixel!

Happy Halloween!

This is our first Halloween as a married couple! How sappy is that? It has been one busy month! This last week and a half I've been taking my qualifying exams which are the most stressful, exhausting and mind challenging thing I've ever gone thru! My head is still above water though!

Today I gave myself a day to just do ME things and not quals things. I had a massage this morning to help get rid of my tension headache, but it's still here. Then I met with one of my advisers at the office. I picked up F from work and we went over to the library and voted early. Whom did I vote for? Won't tell. It's not worth getting into a political discussion over it.

Grace came over today with Dahlia. It's here first Halloween and boy was she cute! I'll post a picture of her in her little bumble be costume.

F and I are going to two halloween parties this weekend. We have our couples costumes which turned out great. I'll post a pic of them too.

Hope all is well with everyone. I'll post later this week!

Full week!

What a crazy week it has been! I've barely had time to do anything since we have returned from our honeymoon!

This week when I was unloading the groceries, I dropped a honeycrisp apple on the tile and buddy scarfed it up and ran to the rug with it before I could even see where it went! Then he couldnt' figure out how to eat it!

I'm beginning to hate my remote sensing class, I can see why people get paid the big buck to do it, IT SUCKS, that's why. Katie and Gypsy keep me going though. Gypsy wasn't feeling well this week, it reminded me it's flu shot time. I'm a supporter of the flu shot for one main reason. Children are vectors for disease! I love children, I may just have some, but they are dirty little vectors waiting to spring the flu on unsuspecting graduate students who are taking their qualifying exams this fall!

Getting back from the wedding was nice. Dana did a great job watching Buddy. He was definitely happy to see us. We got to come home to a room full of presents to open and over 70 thank you cards to write. Me, being the diligent non procrastinator, sat down this week and wrote all of them. F tried to help, but instead he wasted 30 minutes making return address labels on the computer, only to put our wrong address on them. I think he was just dicking around to avoid writing them, cause that's what I would do if I wanted to avoid doing it!

We had a great weekend last weekend, we hung out around the house and woke up early everyday to lattes and walking buddy in the cool foggy mornings. My mom said it snowed today at her house, here in FL, I sweated my toosh off at the bus stop in the blazing sun. I love Florida. We got to use some of our target gift cards to buy some fun odds and ends for the kitchen. I splurged and bought nice cake pans and pie pans. I love baking. I bake when I am stresses, my office loves when I am stressed because I continually bring in baked goods. I tried out one of my Grandma Sally's spice cake recipes, improvised with some raisons, and made my first attempt at my own fluffy icing. I had only ever made icing for sugar cookies our of confectionary sugar and water before. I'll post a pic and the recipe, it was absolutely delicious! I only ate one piece, trying to not have a gut like I just popped out a kid or something. I pawned the diabetic nightmare sweetness off on my labmates and they seemed to enjoy it. I think today I may make a german chocolate cake. I was inspired to in the grocery store. We'll see.

Well this weekend begins the worldwind of halloween parties. We're going as a drunk pilot and a trashy flight atttendent. I'll post pictures of course. We splurged on costumes because we have 3 costume parties to attend, so we figured what the hey.

I played my friend Ryan in tennis monday night, he won....again. But I had 3 games on him! The more weight I lose the faster I can run for his cheap shots he used to beat me!

Hope everyone is getting geared up for the big holiday filled fall! I'm keeping up with my total get fit challenge class so I don't gain weight over the fall holidays! Wish me luck!

CAKE RECIPE *makes 3 layers
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 cups flour
1 1/5 cup warm water
3 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 tsp Salt
1.5 tsp Vanilla
1.5 cups mayo
3/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp ginger
3 tbl molasses

Bake 350 degress for ~30 minutes

ICING RECIPE
3 egg whites
2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/3+1/6 cup water
3 tsp lite corn syrup
1.5 tsp vanilla

combine all except vanilla in doubel boiler, beat w/mixer ~ 7 minutes until you have stiff peaks. Add vanilla. Frost cake!

Mr. and Mrs. were married and went to Italy!

Hello all!

We finally celebrated our wedding on October 5, 2008. After a year of planning and anticipation it happened. We had a beautiful weekend with all or our friends and families. My mother had a beautiful bridal shower for me on Saturday, followed by a group kayaking trip. Sunday we had our wedding with gorgeous weather, and Monday we left for Rome!

What a worldwind week it has been. Now we are back home with a house full of gifts to open, and a weeks worth or work to catch up on and over 100 thank you notes to write! All worth it.

Ciao!