Wednesday

For quite some time now, I (Becky) have celebrated Wednesday as being 'half way there.' And then the weekend FINALLY comes, and then it seems so short and then suddenly it's Monday morning and I'm back, counting down to Friday again. And the cycle repeats itself.

My job is an interesting one. Rarely dull. I talk to people who want to buy houses. And then we do everything we can to get them into one. Some of them are nice, some are far from it. Some are very grateful, some feel entitled. Some really deserve it, and others... well. The thing is that it's a pretty emotional process for them, so sometimes that is transferred to me. Thus the stress.

So today I have resolved to have a thoroughly enjoyable Wednesday, whether the numerous people I talk to on the phone are pleasant or not. Whether I am able to meet some of their ridiculously high expectations or not. And tonight we will go to church and I will see my 10th grade girls and I will have forgotten about work by the time I get there and it will be great. I am determined.

On another note... you know how Chase does those promotions where if you open a checking account with them you get $100? Well, we got one of those promotions before Christmas, and we just got too busy, and by the time we looked at it in January the promotion was over. The plan was to put the money we are saving for a house in there and have money direct deposited into it from our pay checks and eventually buy a house! But we weren't in much of a hurry once we realized the promotion was over. Well... now they have a new one! And it's more money. Yay. Bring on the house fund.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far!

Taggied by Jeni!

Tag rules:

1. Go to where you store your digital photo folders. Open the fourth folder.

2. Go to the fourth picture and post it.

3. Explain the picture.

4. Tag 4 people.

I have two places where I have pictures, so I am posting two.



This is one of my favorite pictures. It's from my Ring Dance. College was almost over for me, and we went out this night with my friends and had a really good time. We're at Autumn and Ashley's house. Doesn't Patrick look handsome?


And this one...
Haha. Patrick took this picture of himself in my room at my parents house while I was living there last year. It was after I got my new computer. Nice.

I am tagging: Claire, Courtney (Roberts), Chelsea (Wichert), and Patrick.

Randomness

Well, I did it. I saw Kate Gosselin. In person. The speaking was really good. (I was especially impressed with Lysa Turkeurst.) And Kate looked gorgeous. And my mom bought me dinner. It was good times.

In other news, today, my Uncle Mark graduated from Wilmington University. He also received one of two awards given out at the ceremony. His was for outstanding service to fellow students, to Wilmington University and to the community. And he's in his 60's. Pretty cool, huh?

Did anyone watch the Duggar wedding on TV? That poor girl. I mean it's a beautiful sentiment and the families were both really sweet about it. But the poor girl and the broadcasting of the discussion of the wedding night. That's all I have to say.

If you have never tried the crab and shrimp penne pasta from Costco, you are SERIOUSLY missing out. (Yep, this is Becky writing a food post.) It's amazing. I normally refuse to eat anything with what someone claims to be 'crab' in it unless I am within the confines of Maryland. But this stuff is so good. We also found some fresh lump crab meat at this enormous new HEB we have, so Patrick intends to attempt making crab cakes at some point. It will have to be for a special occasion though because fresh crab meat is somewhat pricy.

Today, we visited with the McGowns. We checked out their new church building (www.cypressfamily.org) and then had lunch with them. It was a really good time. The food was so good, and we reminisced about old youth group times. And then we got to hang out with Lisa and the kids some more after Kevin left for an appointment. It was really nice. We are so grateful to the McGowns for their friendship and their encouragement. They are wonderful people and so good to us. And so are their oatmeal cookies. :-)

Well, this week will be super crazy at work. It's the end of the month. Tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment in the medical center, so when I get done Patrick will be getting off of work. We're going to try to meet down there to do something fun for the evening. We'll have to see how work goes. Like I said, crazy week.

I hope everyone has a great week! 20 days to Valentine's Day!

A new countdown!

In case you are new to our blog and didn't hear me say this a bajillion times during the Christmas season, I LOVE holidays!!

We have a new countdown to Valentines! It's 24 days away! And it's on a Saturday this year, which is always nice. Minus the whole crazy crowds everywhere you go thing. I need to get out my Valentines decor to spice up the living room a bit.

Exciting things are going on in the Gilgours' lives. We have TWO (yes two!) wonderful friends who are having babies! Actually, make that THREE (because we found out about the Lands awhile ago but I have been a blog slacker and they didn't get their well-deserved, honorary blog post. Congratulations, Jeni and Brice!) Patrick has been dying to be the cool uncle, but birth order places him in a difficult position to be anyone's uncle any time soon. So he gets to be the cool babysitter. We are excited. I'm sure if he calls himself 'Uncle Patrick' long enough, it will stick. :-)

Patrick is going to Big Bend in February, and Valentine's is also in February, as I mentioned! Then March brings us the Rodeo... we have been trying to decide who to go see. Sadly, the people we would prefer to see are not on the weekends and I am an old person and I am tired and it is not at the top of my list of favorite things to do to spend a ridiculous amount of time in traffic getting to the Rodeo, then riding the bus once we park, then standing in line, etc. after work. I'd much prefer to do it on a weekend. But I may have to cave on this one.

And, just as exciting....

I AM GOING TO SEE KATE GOSSELIN ON THURSDAY NIGHT!

I am ridiculously excited. I LOVE her! In the weird way that you love a person who you have only seen on tv. It's ridiculous, I know. But either way, I am going! Tomorrow! Yay!

Alrighty, that's enough excitement for one day.

Birthday List: Item 1

Apple Scrapple Casserole
Ingredients

* 4 Apples, cored sliced
* 1 lb RAPA Original Scrapple, sliced
* 1/4 cup of melted butter
* 1/2 cup of bread crumbs

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a shallow baking dish put a layer of apple slices.Add crumbs to butter. Mix and sprinkle half over apples. Put a layer of scrapple over crumbs. Add remaining crumbs. Top with a layer of scrapple and apple slices. Bake for 30 minutes.

Friday!!

I am SO excited that it's Friday! It's freezing this morning (feels like it's in the 20's with the wind chill!) but it's beautiful.

That's about it. Just wanted to comment on this BEAUTIFUL day that God gave us! And the wonderful, relaxing weekend ahead.

culinary delights, and crazy times

This weekend was so fun. Friday night we celebrated Patrick's dad's birthday, and we were treated to dinner at Carmelo's. (YUM.) Then we came back to our house for cake; it was the same cake Patrick had made for his groom's cake. We still have some left over.. so so good. His dad got a new backpack for camping, etc. (They are going to Big Bend in February.) He also got binoculars. It was a very nice evening, and lots of good food.

Saturday night, we went to dinner with the Duprees and Stroups to thank them for everything they did for our wedding. (Yep, we were super late.) We went to one of our absolute favorites, Taste of Texas. MMMMMMM. They are crazy... we laughed the whole time. Then we went to the Alleman's to celebrate Lindsay's birthday, and it was also lots of fun and we got to see everyone.

We also got lots of stuff done on Saturday, including our first shopping trip at our new (enormous) HEB. It will take me some time to get used to that place. It's so big and I don't know where anything is yet. But they have quite the selection and it's a really neat store.

Patrick and I also expanded on our culinary skills. We were celebrating Molly's birthday on Sunday, so Saturday I made her an angel food cake (my first attempt) with whipped cream and strawberries on top, and chocolate covered strawberries around the sides. And it turned out perfect! I was very worried that it wouldn't come out of the pan very nicely, but it did. And Patrick made an apple pie basically from scratch, including the crust. It was beautiful! Everyone loved it, and we had fun celebrating Molly's birthday. We also got allll kinds of fun news while we were there! 2009 will be a big year. We can't wait.

Alrighty, a new Jon and Kate Plus 8 is on in 13 minutes! I must go!

How cool is Google?

I know this is the second video embed I've done, but this is just really, really cool.

Google is beyond awesome!

Pledgeheart

If I die before my children are old enough to remember me, tell them this is what their daddy did when he was in school:

Happy 6th monthiversary!

Whoa! 6 months?! Last night we celebrated 6 months of being married. It was a very nice night. Patrick surprised me with these beautiful flowers, we went to Pei Wei, and he even came back and watched Jon and Kate Plus 8 with me! It was a perfect evening. He was supposed to work late but he didnt' so we got to celebrate the whole night.

Yay for 6 months of marital bliss!

We had a LOT of Christmases!

Our first Christmas celebration was just the two of us. Patrick made us this beautiful dinner that was so yummy. The pictures of that are before I opened my first present (camera!) so they are on his camera. I'll post later. One of the gifts he gave me was this book, stories from couples married 50 years or more. I read a little bit of it last night... so cute.

Patrick got this fleece he really wanted.

He got me this ornament for our first Christmas as a married couple!

We got LOTS of other gifts, but there are some highlights.

The next night was Christmas with his family. Here's his dad opening.

And Meghan (yay Twilight!)

And Michael got tickets to some wrestling thing.

And his mom

And of course Jax.

The next night was the Palmour family Chrstmas. Libby got a new bone.

And I'm not sure why my sister is the only person who got their picture taken. My mom has better ones, though. I got her that bag... cute, huh?

The next day we headed for Baltimore. Here are a very few shots of the many many Christmases we had there.

My cousin Tanner.

My cousin Jamie (one of my flower girls!)

My cousin Liam (one of our ring bearers)

Geemom and Tanner

This was them opening the gifts we got them in Hawaii. :-)

And last but not least, we headed to Lufkin this past weekend for Christmas with the extended Palmour family.

This is a really terrible picture of my Uncle Sid, Aunt Vicki, and GrandDortha.

My mom, Anjela, my cousin Phillip, his wife, and next Christmas Baby Chloe will join us!

My dad and his mom.

Presents!

Phew! Of course I missed some things. Christmas with my mom's college roommate's family, Elijah's visit, Christmas with the Nelsons. But you get the idea. :-)

Christmas Addicts Anonymous

Hi, my name is Patrick and I have a problem. I'm addicted to celebrating Christmas. Now, all of my Christmas celebrations are over and I'm not sure what to do.

Yesterday Becky and I traveled to the Lufkin to do Christmas with the Palmour's. We had a great time. Frist, we went to GrandDortha's apartment at the retirement center and said hello and waited for her uncle Sid's family to arrive. Then we went to Cheddar's, home of the greatest broccoli cheese casserole ever, where I had BCC and ribs. Finally, We moved back to GrandDortha's apartment to open presents and ask questions about how oil leasing works. It was a great day.

Becky and I got some really nice gifts. We met her cousin Phillip's new wife, Kimberly, and hear all about the baby girl their expecting in March. Kimberly is very sweet and was a lot of fun. Her uncle Sid is the epitome of Texas: he's large, wears boots, tips his hat at you, and works with oil and cattle. He also has the mustache I dreamt about.

GrandDortha is such a sweet lady and I'm very glad we got to spend some time with her yesterday. She told me that she was glad I was apart of their family and that meant a lot to me. Funny story: the first time I spent significant time with her was at Thanksgiving in 2005 when we were at South Padre Island. I made her a sandwich and she told me I was as handy as the pocket on a shirt. And she mentions that every time I see her. Like, yesterday after I took the family picture she said, "You're handy! You can make sandwiches and take pictures!" She's a very sweet lady.

Finally, she has an amazing picture of her late husband, Harold. He's on the right side of the frame, sitting on (what appears to be) a leather couch, suit jacket unbuttoned, with his right arm tossed over the couch. It is an amazing picture and I would love to 1) look that cool, 2) have someone take a picture of me looking that cool, and 3) take a picture of someone looking that cool.

Here is the family picture I took yesterday:

I have a working computer

I have a working computer again!! Well, let me explain. I bought a MacBook in August of 2006 (at the beginning of my Junior year of college). When I bought the MacBook, I bought what I could afford (I didn't finance the MacBook, thankfully). The Mac was a perfect computer for me during school and served all my needs dutifully. However, towards the end of my senior year of college I was really lacking in hard drive space, as I only had a 60GB hard drive, which had been enough on my PC. However, when I got the Mac, I was able to edit videos and pictures, download lots of podcasts, and do other hard-drive occupying activities.

So for Christmas I asked for a new hard drive. My mother-in-law got me the new hard drive I asked for. Then, while in Baltimore, my father-in-law upgraded my grandma-in-law's computer to 2GB of RAM for like $25. So I figured, I might as well do the same. I seached on newegg.com and ordered 2GB of RAM for < $20 shipped.

To make an even longer story shorter, my great friend Chris let me use a license of his Leopard family pack to install that on the new hard drive.

Now I have an uber computer running the greatest OS on a 320GB hard drive with 2GB of RAM.

It's pretty exciting.

Reminiscing

It was about this time in 2008 that it started to hit me what a ridiculous amount of wedding planning I had left. The first half of 2008 was CRAZY. I did wedding stuff all the time, searched for a place to live, alternated weekends in College Station, etc. In March, we went to Baltimore to have a wedding shower there. In May, Patrick graduated from college at the greatest university of all time. In June, we had an unplanned visit to Baltimore when my uncle passed away from cancer. June was also full of Lindsay's fun wedding things. And July was full of ours, and our honeymoon, Patrick's first day of work, and two other weddings. In August, we took a weekend trip to San Antonio. October was full of Halloween festivities. We had two Thanksgivings in November. We've had a total of at least 8 Christmases since mid December. All of this was done as we tried to adjust to living together and figuring out what our new life would look like. 2008 was very, very good to us. And also very hard at times.

I was thinking about people's differing reactions to the New Year. Last Christmas, we spent one of our Christmases at my aunt and uncle's house, the same uncle who passed away this past June. That day, he was doing very well. He had tried some experimental treatment that was working, he had gained some weight back, and he was pretty healthy. There were no guarantees of course; it was all so up in the air. He had also just broken his arm, their dog had needed surgery, and his boat stopped working. I remember on that day, my aunt said 'We are so ready for 2008.' And I look back at that and think what a bold statement that was. They didn't know what 2008 would bring. And I know it certainly didn't bring what they had hoped for, or what any of us had hoped for. But she was optimistic, and ready to take on a new year and put the rough year behind her.

So I can say, I am ready for 2009. Not that I want to put 2008 behind me. It was a good year. But it's time for 2009, and I usually go into a new year dreading the post-Christmas down time. The lights come down, the season is over. The weather is still all over the place. I have to go back to work, no vacation for awhile. But if a person faced with the reality of how uncertain the future is can face the new year head on, so can I. So look out 2009! I will do whatever is in my power to spend time with friends and family, do a better job of letting go of work when I get home, working on our resolutions, and enjoying our life. I won't be under the impression that if I think happy thoughts, nothing bad will happen in 2009. But either way, here I come. I am excited to see what is in store.

2009!

Happy new year! Patrick and I watched the sun set on 2008 from the plane on the way home from Baltimore. We are back in Houston, enjoying our days off before Monday takes us back to work.

We are making resolutions. Everyone does that, I know, and never follows through after January. We have resolved to do the following:

-Make better use of lists
-Do all tasks that take no more than 2 minutes immediately
-Take lots of fun trips
-Be slightly less connected to our cell phones/email/blackberry/etc.

I also plan to try to be somewhat more physically active. This is not a lofty goal... I currently do absolutely nothing. :-)

Tomorrow we head to Lufkin to spend time with my dad's family for Christmas. That's always a good time. We are also in the market for a new TV which I know Patrick is pretty excited about. The TV we have right now is not really ours, so we are going to use some Christmas money to get a new one. Lots of fun things going on in the Gilgour household. Oh, and we got LOTS of Christmas cards!! They have taken up a shelf and a Christmas card holder.

Well, I hope you all have a happy New Year! Happy 2009!