Well, there's lots
for me to be excited about right now. Since we got here,
life has been a constant struggle to find contentment. We don't have family
here, the weather was pretty miserable for a good long time, we haven't made
close friends, Iowa is seriously THE most boring, lame place I've ever been,
and I see Michael less (even though I'm living with him for the first time) than
I ever have before. We basically had to remind ourselves everyday that this is
going to be the most taxing part of our lives, emotionally, mentally, and
financially, but also that one day it will all be worth it. In my mind, though,
I kept wondering at what point is too much when it comes to planning for the
future...do we sacrifice basically all happiness now to be happy in the future?
I mean, there's really no guarantee that we're both going to be here in 5
years. Yes, ideally, we will be haha, but you really just never know.
After starting my new job though, and seeing all the new
endeavors my friends are engaging in, I've become inspired. I'm 23, I have an
entire life to think about and experience; this is an exciting time! One of my
best friends, Lauren, Just recently left her job at a marketing agency to
persue a full time career in photography. http://www.laurenmoffettphoto.com/ As
you can see from her website, she's amazing! Lauren and I have been best
friends since the 7th grade and I watched her grow from taking senior portraits
in her house for friends to this. I know her business will flourish and she'll
be able to capture people's dreams through her beautiful pictures. My brother
and sister-in-law, Aubra, are also taking on a new adventure! They've wanted to
open up a wedding venue for a long time now and they are now taking the steps
necessary to make it into a reality. Aubra is going to be moving to San Antonio
for the Summer to work at the venue that Michael and I were married at, in
order to learn the wedding planning/catering business. Afterward, they're
moving to Austin, where they'll lay out the floorplans to their dream. Then
there's my other best friend, Bethany, who is just finishing up her school as a radiology technician and has recently landed
a job in a local hospital, where she's actually getting to work with patients
after 5 years of training.
All of these people are huge influences in my life and such
an encouragement to help motivate me to do well while chasing my own dreams.
Their pursuits have really made me examine my own abilities to succeed right
now. I don't necessarily have to wait for everything. Our life isn't just going
to start on the day Michael graduates and we move somewhere else. Life has
already started and this is just part of the journey. Making sure to take full advantage of the
only Summer Michael will have off in his entire podiatry program, we've decided we're
definitely going to go on vacation. The plan is a tropical destination of some
sort with Lauren and Dylan, but we’re not positive yet… I don't know how much
money we'll have or how extravagant it will be, but I'm not waiting for life to
begin anymore. I want to make his very last Summer awesome!
On the phone a couple weeks ago, Bethany started talking
about how free we are, and she's right; we have jobs to support ourselves, no
kids, and enough ambition to fulfill a lifetime of goals. So, I'm realizing now
that just because we're working hard and are definitely limited on our
resources for having fun, to some extent, this is still one of the best times
of our lives. Instead of having the responsibility of taking care of kids, we
can just spend our time imagining how wonderfully perfect and cute they will
be. Instead of dealing with the mortgage of our first house and car payments,
we talk about how massive our kitchen and backyard will be in our dream home,
or how awesome Michael's completely restored '69 Cutlass is gonna be. There's
much to be said about the ability to dream!
Anyway, moving past
my self-motivating rant... Michael and I were able to enjoy a lot of time
together over his Spring Break! Since the weather was actually pretty nice, we
started the break off by feeding the geese at a pond near our house. They
weren’t too interesting, though. We also took Gizmo to the Gray’s Lake almost
every day. It’s really perfect ‘cause it’s so close by and dog friendly. One
day we decided to have a picnic out there and flew one of the kites I bought
Michael back in college. For the picnic, I made Red Lobster copycat cheddar bay
biscuits (which btw, tasted identical to the real thing), salad with olive
garden copycat dressing (which also tasted exactly like the real thing),
antipasto kabobs, strawberry shortcake, and strawberry-wine slushes. It was so
nice to just relax with him anda yummy meal!
Since SB came to an end, Michael has been back to his
typical busy schedule. He spends all night at the library, so I usually see him
just when he comes home to lay down with me until I fall asleep and then
returns to studying. For our first Easter, we weren’t able to do anything too
exciting because Michael’s so busy, but since I was missing my family so much, he
tried to make it as fun as possible and took part the Easter traditions I’m
used to. I had fun dying easter eggs, but Michael didn’t last too long lol.
Usually, every year I have an easter egg dying contest with my cousins and we
spend hours decorating them as elaborately as possible. Michael wasn’t as enthusiastic-
he may have lasted 20 minuts. He put all of his in one color and was basically
through. That’s okay, he tried and I appreciated it haha! We also got each
other Easter baskets. Mine was filled with lots of my favorite easter
candy, but Michael told me he didn’t
need a bunch of junk food, so in his basket he got a new polo to wear to the
church, warhead popsicles, guitar picks, beef jerky, a cookies n cream
chocolate bunny(that’s his fav. Candy bar), jelly bellys, and peeps. I also
tried to make his basket a little more manly and less gay by putting it all in
a spongebob bucket and the plastic eggs that I put the jelly beans in were
shaped like baseballs. Though we missed out on the big family easter egg hunt
and feast that I’m used to, we did go to Cracker Barrel for lunch, so we could
get some good close-to home cooked food. It was a great first Easter!
As for work…it has been absolutely amazing and really opened
a lot of doors for me! I cannot even begin to explain how much more
confidence it’s given me. For the first time ever, I have an adult job with good
pay, but more than that- I get people’s trust and respect. When I go to a
person’s house for an appointment, they listen to me and acknowledge that I
know what I’m talking about. It’s such an awesome feeling! I really am so
thankful to have a job I love, and I even really like all of my co-workers.
We’ve been out with them a couple times now and had a lot of fun! I'm seriously really excited to go to work everyday; it's a blessing for sure!
As for life as a wife, everything is going great! I still
make basically every one of my meals from pinterest so I can find lots of
dishes Michael and I both like, and I think we’ve enjoyed that. I made greek
chicken gyros for the first time in my life a couple days ago and we both loved
them! They have a sauce made primarily from cucumbers and greek yogurt, so it’s
definitely a different taste from what Michael is used to, but he ended up
really liking him. H'se generally really hard to please when it comes to anything
outside of a basic meat-and-potatoes dish, but this was definitely a big hit!
The tomato and pepper seeds that I mentioned planting grew really well…for a
while. Then the cold weather came back and I had to keep the sprouts inside.
Since we get so little sunlight in the apartment, they all ended up dying. I am
happy to report, though, that the green beans are still growing like crazy!
I’ve also been growing celery from the bottom of some celery that I bought at
the store. I got the idea on pinterest, where else?! I dream of the day we own a house and can plant veggie and flower gardens! I definitely miss having a backyard, where my friends could come over and we could hang out around the firepit. Actually, I just miss being able to be outdoors as all. It's still pretty cold here...yuck!
Outside of school, Michael has picked up another hobby-
biking. He bought a bike a few weeks ago after a couple weeks of shopping
around, and has been riding to school and back. He loves it! He looked like a
kid on Christmas morning, when the bike arrived. He really couldn’t have been
more excited. It’s nice to see him so happy about something since he doesn’t
get much time for anything other than studying! I’ll be getting a bike here in
the near future too. We also are pleased to report that we finally went to eat
at a local place called Fong's Pizza. Everyone I've met since moving here has told
us about this place and we just never made it there, until now. It was
definitely worth the rave! So it’s history is that it was a Chinese restaurant
and when a pizza company bought it out, one of the stipulations of the sale was
that the new owners keep an Asian flair. So now when you go, you can get all
kinds of Asian appetizers and the pizzas are really weird flavors/toppings like
Kung Pow Chicken Pizza! We got the Crab Rangoon Pizza because I’ve been told
about that specific pizza about a million times. Oh my gosh, it was so
delicious and unique!
We're also excited to have my parents, one of my grandmas, and my little cousin, Kristyn, coming to visit at the end of May. At first they were just going to come visit here, but they ended up getting a condo outside of Chicago, so we're going to stay there with them for a few days. So, in preparation for their visit, I'll be doing a few more things to the apartment and we've also had to find a place to board Gizmo... what an ordeal! All the places here book up really fast and are also super expensive (rightfully so, considering half of them are probably nicer than some hotels for humans). Anyway, we finally found a place that was moderately priced, still really nice and allows us to watch him through an online video, but they require a prescreening meeting to make sure he is friendly with other dogs.
When I took him, the lady asked me lots of questions about his temperament and I told her how he loves to play with other dogs, so she brought a wienie dog in the room to meet Gizmo. The dog had barely even stepped into the room when Gizmo jumped off my lap and was growling and snapping at the dog, while cornering it! Omg, I was mortified! The lady told me the wienie dog is usually really dominant and another dog might be better, so she went and got another dog and Gizmo did the exact same thing. Just as I was thinking "where is he going to stay?!", the lady had the idea that maybe he is just being protective of me and she took Gizmo to another room, separate from me, that had a bunch of dogs for him to meet. Turns out he did super great without me and immediately started playing with them all. Just to be sure of his protective instincts, the lady brought Gizmo, and one of the dogs that he was playing with, back into the room with me and he automatically started trying to attack it. It was so wierd! The lady said he would be perfectly fine, since I wouldn't be there with him, and they accepted him, Yay! I guess I didn't realize how much of a little mama's boy I have hehe :)
Other than that, Michael and I have been keeping close tabs on our Spurs and are psyched to get to continue watching them dominate as they enter the playoffs! Watching the Spurs always reminds me of the Summer after my sophmore year of high school (the year they won the championship!), when we watched almost every Spurs game together, along with our TOBC friends. It's so fun to think back to those years, and to the time that Michael first started liking me :) In fact, if we hadn't had the old fashioned soda bar at our wedding, we would have had a Spurs groom cake. Anyway, even though we don't have friends here who we can share in the excitement of the Spurs victories, it's nice to have eachother, along with the memories to remind us of where we came from. that’s all for now! Sorry this post was about a
million words long- it’s been so long since I last posted! I won’t wait so long
next time!
