Camping in November

Rex crawled right in between us the next morning...he was so happy we were on his level and not up in the bed.

Dan and Rex...enjoying the fire!

Took 20 times to get a pic with Dan's eyes open :)

Me and Rex and his pretty fleece Mama D and Papa Ross got him for Christmas last year

Enjoying his soup

My boys

Our ghetto rigged tent :) We forgot the cover that goes on top so we put towels and blankets over the mesh to keep the cool air from getting in. It worked!

Rex sure is eyeing that food! He was sitting and being good hoping he would get some

We survived our camping trip! :) We left out Friday afternoon. We got to our site and set everything up and we plugged in the heater for our tent that Mamma sent and the electricity was out!!! We were not happy b/c that meant we would really really freeze. So we called the office and got them to switch us to a site that the electricity was working and everything was much better. By the time we got settled and everything set up it was dark and time to get the fire going. We were so bundled up we could barely function. Dan got a good fire going and I don't think I left the fire the rest of the night unless it was to go get more mallows or go to the bathroom. Mom had made some white chicken chili and we heated it up over the fire and had that for dinner and then I, of course, had to make me some smores. They were the best! We sat around the fire for several hours (a lot later than we normally stay up) and just talked and laughed so hard. It was a blast! We moved to the tent where we had heated it up with our handy dandy little heater. Once Rex got settled in the tent he didn't move until the birds started crowing in the morning. He wore himself out stressing about where we were all night. We slept pretty good...never got cold...just not always easy to sleep on the ground. When morning came Rex woke us both up by licking our faces. IT was the happiest day of his life to wake up with us in the floor with him. He crawled right in between us and laid his head on us. It was so funny. We got up and fixed some eggs and bacon over the fire...yummo! We were going to go hiking and stay another night but we had both already hiked all the trails around there so we went for a scenic drive after breakfast and came back and sat around the camp fire for a couple more hours. Then we packed up and came home cuz we wanted to get a good night's sleep. Once we got back to the house we unpacked, took showers, and laid on the couch and slept for 3 hours straight. It was the best nap ever!

We had so much fun and are so glad we went despite cutting the trip short. Dan is back to work today and I am going to get the house clean and finish up some homework before Thanksgiving. We are so ready for Wednesday to be here!

Have a great week!

God Bless!

6 months!

The top picture is Thanksgiving last year, we were celebrating the engagement of me and Dan, Val and Ben, and Jonathan and Rachel. I can't believe it has already been a year since then. The bottom picture is our family in 06 at Thanksgiving. Good times, Good times!

Hey hey!

Dan and I celebrated our 6 month anniversary yesterday. Cheesey, I know, but we had fun. :) We went to Searcy Sunday to watch Landon, our nephew, play in the all-star football tournament. They got 2nd place! Woowoo! We stayed in Searcy so Dan wouldn't have to drive back and forth more than he has to. On Monday I was working on homework all day and taking care of Rex and Libby. I went for a run and on my way back Dan was driving down the street. He picked me up and I went with him to get some lunch and then came back to his parents house and he had surprised me with 6 red roses and a card! :) Isn't he the sweetest? Last night we came back to Conway and had leftovers and we busted out the top of our wedding cake. I know you are supposed to save that for the one year anniversary but we couldn't wait. It was actually pretty good still. Then we ended the night with a good episode of Dancing with the Stars!

Besides celebrating our 6 month anniversary we have decided to stay in Conway. We looked at houses for a while and just weren't finding anything. I kept praying that if the Lord really wanted us to move that He would open the doors somewhere but if He didn't that we would both know it and be willing to stay in Conway for now. Not a week or so after I started praying that Dan asked me if I would be ok with staying in Conway b/c he really felt like that's what we needed to do right now. The Lord is so good! He was working in both our hearts in the same way and we didn't even know it. So, needless to say, we are going to fix this house up in Conway (re-do the kitchen and the floors and paint some, etc.) and when I finish school (if that ever happens) and get settled in a job, then we will talk further about moving. We are at complete peace about the decision. Daniel will still be driving, but with gas prices going down a little bit that has helped a lot.

I have actually started working in the Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute one day a week. I work for Dr. Jill James. She is a nutritional biochemist and is doing research on autism and how nutrition is related. Very cool and interesting stuff! I started last week and loved it. I will be working in the lab doing genotyping. Not a very hard task at all but it is getting my foot in the door and I am very excited about that. Everyone in the lab is great and fun to work with too. I am still doing the grant with UAMS for neurodevelopmental disodered children. That is how I got involved at ACHRI. LEND (the program at UAMS) has been great. I have learned lots and gotten some good experience. It has challenged me to step outside my comfort zone and to be confident in that. Daniel has been a HUGE encouragement in that and I am so thankful for it. I have almost completed my first semester of grad school as well. It has been a great semester with having all online classes. Unfortunately, next semester I will more than likely be back in the classroom. I am not looking forward to that but I did it for 4 years, I can do it for a couple more.

For Thanksgiving, Dan and I are going to Little Rock on Wednesday afternoon and will be there the rest of the week. We are going to get to hang out with Lauren and Justin early on in the week and we are so pumped! It has been way too long since we have seen them. We miss our friends! Brian comes in Wednesday and will be there until Saturday. It will be so great to see him too. I have only seen him once or twice this semester and I don't like that. It will just be our immediate family at Thanksgiving and I am so ready. This is one of my favorite holidays. We will be going to the LSU vs. AR game Friday too. Sadly enough, it probably won't be that much of a game, but we will have fun anyways.

This coming weekend Dan and I are going camping at Petit Jean. We are taking Rex for the first time. It will definitely be an adventure. We are going up Friday as soon as Dan gets off work (I am skipping LEND) and will stay through Sunday. We are going to hike and roast mallows! I can't wait! It will be FREEZING, but worth it. Anyways, I am really trying to do better about this updating but it's hard. I don't even know if anyone reads this stuff....so I may just be doing it for my own pleasure :) Oh well!

Have a wonderful week!

God Bless!

No go on the house...

The top pic is Dan and I at the horse races in 2007 and the next one is the night we got engaged we were celebrating with Lauren and Justin at Jerry B's!

This was celebration of Dan's graduation with his family. That is his brother Eric and niece Kelsy.

I thought the next 2 were fun. They are from when we first met and started dating in the Spring of 2006. We both look so different from then. We like to laugh about our round pudgy cheeks in the old pics from when we met.

Well, sadly enough the house deal fell through. We found out last weekend (Oct. 18) that the appraisal might not come back as high as it needed to b/c of what we were paying. On Monday, the appraiser went out to the house and let us know that the house appraised for less than we were paying so we offered the appraisal value to the sellers and they weren't willing to accept. It was pretty dumb on their part if you ask me b/c they are not going to be able to get more than appraisal value out of it but I guess they think they can. We were definitely disappointed b/c we loved that house but realize there are more houses out there and that was just God's way of letting us know that's not where He wanted us. We have looked a couple of times since then and found a house we really like but there are a couple things that would need to be done to it once we move it. It needs a fence in the back and there is carpet in an area of the house that would need to be torn up. We are praying about making an offer on it soon. I love the kitchen in that house. It would be my favorite thing!

Besides house hunting not much is going on. I finished my time at the bank on Oct. 17 and have been busy busy busy with school since then. I spent a couple days in LR last week w/ my mom and then a couple days in Searcy with Dan's family. It was a great. We took Rex for the first time to Searcy and I was so nervous about it b/c Sharon has a toy poodle that is spoiled just as much, if not more, than Rex. We didn't know how jealous they would be of each other or what would happen. PLus, they have a pool with a liner and we couldn't let Rex get in b/c he would tear it up...and being 83 lbs...its hard to control whether or not he dives into the pool w/o going in with him. Well, we got there early Wednesday morning and the first thing Rex did when I took him around back to pee before we went inside was dive into the pool and almost took me in with him. Thankfully he didn't touch the liner so that was good. But anyways, things turned out great. Rex and Libby became fast friends and had so much fun. I think it helped that they were both really spoiled, they had a bond. It was so funny to watch them run around the house together, take naps together, beg for treats together....they are too funny. Needless to say, we are not worried about taking Rex back to Searcy anymore. Thank goodness.

This past weekend we hung out in Conway and relaxed.

My parents are in Cancun for the week and Dan's parents leave Wednesday for India for 10 days. Please pray for both of their safety!

It is finally getting cold here and I thought I was ready for it...but I AM NOT! (But, Dan LOVES it---one thing we will always disagree on) I do not like this kind of weather. It makes it really hard for me to go out and run but I am trying to be dedicated so I best get going.

I know posts are no fun to read without pics so I'll put a couple up of just random things :)

God Bless!

Major Changes

Alright, well it has been too long since I have posted. Nothing too exciting has been going on in our lives until the last couple of weeks. Since the last update we have been to one Razorback game, and we all know how exciting that is, and the rest of the time we have spent in Conway hanging out or in Cabot looking at houses. I don't really even know where to start telling you the changes that have occurred in the last week or 2.
Jenny got offered an opportunity about 3 1/2 weeks ago to become part of a program at UAMS called Learning and Education in Neurodevelopmental Disorders (LEND). It is a research based graduate program that deals with children who have neurodevelopmental disorders. We meet once a week at UAMS. Throughout the semester we will also be doing some clinical work. The first week we signed up for the ones that interested us the most. Mine don't come up until the beginning of November and they are one time..it is not a continual thing. I am going to be involved with Foster Care Children, High-risk infants, autistic biochemistry research, TLC(sadly I am not even sure what it stands for yet) and one other that I can't think of at the moment. I am really excited and somewhat overwhelmed. Some other projects we are involved with are called Solution-Focused Learning. We interview families of children with a disorder and find out their needs and their struggles and from the interview we take some learning issues and research them and present them to the class. We have met with one family so far and our presentations are next Friday. I am super nervous about this just because I feel very unprepared and like I am the only one that isn't quite sure what is going on. It's ok though. It will be very challenging and good for me. It will hopefully get me some good experience for when I apply to the internship again next year.
All that to say, needing to be off work on Fridays for class did not go over well with my boss at the bank. Fridays are our busy day so it makes it hard when one person is off. I turned in my resignation a few weeks ago and my last day is Friday, October 17. It is kind of a bittersweet feeling. I know I am going to get better experience at the LEND project but I will miss the routine of having a steady job and being around the ladies at the bank. They were fun to work with.
Since I am no longer tied to Conway (all my grad school classes are online) Daniel and I decided to get closer to Searcy so he wasn't driving as far every day. We have been looking for about a month now and last weekend we found a house we both LOVED. We made an offer on Monday and after a few back and forth counter offers we found out last night that they would accept our offer. We are so so so excited. We are closing October 24...which is super soon...and will move in soon after. We thought Cabot would be the best b/c I am more than likely going to end up in Little Rock for work and that way we would split the difference.
It is definitely going to be an adjustment for the whole fam..dogs included. I was just beginning to feel like Conway was home and getting real settled here but change is good. We are going to embrace the change and have fun with it.
God has been so good to us through the whole process. All those times I interviewed and didn't get called back or missed opportunities to get jobs at places related to my field paid off. I knew God had a plan and I just continued to be patient and trust Him and now He has given us more than we ever deserve. We are extremely blessed to have found a house so quickly for such a great price and that needs no repairs or extra work once we move in. He has also placed this LEND opportunity in front of me to really challenge me and grow me. It is definitely out of my comfort zone but I know it will be worth it. He is teaching us so much about His faithfulness and His healing power.
I could keep going on and on about things that have changed in our lives over the last few weeks but that could end up being a super long post. I won't bore anyone with that. But that is the semi-short update on our lives. PRAISE GOD FOR ALL HE HAS DONE AND WILL DO.
As soon as we close and I get pictures of the new home I will post some. We are so excited.
We also need renters for the house we are in now. We have some potentials but no definites. If you know of anyone please call or email me and we would love to let them look at the house.

God Bless!

Hogs vs LA-Monroe

Dan and I during the game and my cute parents tailgating.

We went to the game in LR this past weekend. It wasn't the prettiest thing but they did pull it off. We tailgated with my parents, Mr. Mack and Mrs. Chris, and Julie and Darrell Russell. We got to see Lauren and Justin for a minute and that made me happy...wish it could've been longer but oh well! Only one more weekend till we go to F'ville. Here are the 2 pictures I got with my phone from the weekend....we forgot to take our camera to the game.

Jonathan and Rachel's Wedding

The 3 greatest guys on the face of the earth. My husband, dad, and brother.
Mom with her kids...what a blessing we are :)
Me and Dan with the groom...Jonathan
Party at 528...this is by far the greatest picture of the night.
Dancing the night away.

My wonderful fam
My fav. Aunt Linda!
Me and Val
At the reception
Newlyweds

We flew to Lynchburg, VA for Labor Day weekend for my cousin Jonathan and Rachel's wedding. I had to work on Saturday morning so we missed the big dinner Friday at my aunt's house and the fun activities Saturday but we still had a blast.

After work we flew out of LR and went to Charlotte, NC. Our layover was very short and we were very hungry. We grabbed something to eat on the plane real quick and went to board and our flight was delayed for about an hour and a half due to mechanical problems. They kept coming over the loud speaker saying, as soon as we know what the problem is we will fix it and let you know. We'll keep you updated when we know something. That was very comforting. We finally got on the plane and got to Aunt Linda's around 10:30 or so. We were so tired by then that we were not up for partying with the group. All the cousins were staying in a hotel nearby so we loaded up and went to the hotel. Me, Dan, Val, and Ben were staying in a room together but Ben wasn't there the first night so it was Dan and the girls. We had fun.

We woke up Sunday and went to Aunt Linda's for a big lunch and to hang out with family. What we really did was sit around and watch the hurricane on tv all morning. The kids finally got bored with that and went back to the hotel. We drank a bottle of wine and went shopping.

We didn't actually go to the wedding because it was just immediate family. They had their wedding on a dock on a lake across the street from a house called Timberlake Taverns. The reception was at the house. We had a blast at the reception. We drank and danced all night long. At one point fireworks were being shot off too. It was by far the best wedding reception we've been too. After the reception we went back to the hotel and partied some more. I didn't make it as long as everyone else did but it was still great.

We had so much fun with our family and God has blessed us so much to be so close with all of them. I hope that never changes. We wish there were more weddings and more excuses to get together. We are all already planning our next trip together.

We flew home Monday and that was that. Labor Day is over and it's a short week this week. I am happy for that.

We are going to the Razorback game in LR this weekend. Hopefully they'll pull off a win like last weekend. Maybe not so close though.

So long....

Hot Springs

We intended on going into the Arlington Hotel lobby for a drink before dinner but by the time we went back to the condo to check on Rex it and change it started pouring and we didn't want to walk around in the rain.
Me and Rex just watching some Law and Order.

Rex is so happy to be with his dad.
The new Gangster Museum in downtown Hot Springs. IT is actually very neat and interesting.
Another pic outside the museum. Dan with his fellow gangsters :)
Loco Burrito is a little mexican restaurant in downtown Hot Springs that we just decided to walk in and have lunch. It was pretty much the best mexican restaurant I have ever been to. It was a fun discovery.

Dan and I took a trip to Hot Springs this past weekend. We stayed at my parents condo on Lake Hamilton and didn't actually go out on the lake but went into downtown Hot Springs for the day. We got there on Friday night and ordered Pizza Hut on our way in because we were starving and didn't want to wait at a restaurant to eat.

We played dominoes on Friday night after dinner and guess who won...that's right...I did! :) We were supposed to rematch on Saturday but that didn't happen. We slept in Saturday till 9, which is big time for us, and laid around not doing much. We finally got going around 12 and drove into downtown. That's when we discovered Loco Burrito. IT was DELICIOUS! We then toured the Gangster Museum which was very cool. Learned a lot about the history of Hot Springs that I never knew. We just walked around on Central Ave. and bopped in and out of stores all afternoon. We had decided we were going to get a drink at the Arlington and then go eat at a restaurant suggested by my parents called Pompeii. We went back to the condo to let Rex out and change and it started pouring down rain. We looked at each other and were both like we do not want to get back out in the rain. So we called in Outback and they bring it out to your car. I know, that's lazy and impatient, but we were on vaca! :) It was a lot of fun. We ate and watched Law and Order and just hung out.

It was a great weekend to get away and relax and just be together. We had so much fun! And back to the real world we were on Monday.

But, we are blessed to be going to my cousins wedding in VA this weekend. I do have to work Saturday but we are flying out as soon as I get off and will be there until Monday. It's gonna be so fun!