The Gilgours

Compassion International

2011-11-13T06:28:00.000-08:00

Remember that time I had a blog? I feel like I'm always thinking 'as soon as I get through _____ I'll have time to breathe.' And then whatever I was working on is over and the next thing is right behind it. Thus completely ignoring the blog.

But that's not at all the point of this post. I have been surrounded by Compassion International lately. Our church church is extremely missions-oriented. They partner with Compassion and many, many others. Recently there was a woman who came and spoke at our church that was a Compassion child and now works in social services in Atlanta. It was extremely touching and she just couldn't say enough about how much she valued the people who sponsored her. My mom and sister went to El Salvador over the summer with Compassion and got to meet their Compassion family. The children (and families of the children) who are sponsored through Compassion are SO, so grateful. Our pastor went on one of many trips with them several years back and as soon as he entered the home of one family, they went and showed him an old microwave that they had painted and were using as storage in their house, and it was the place where they kept their letters from their Compassion sponsors. It was the first thing they showed him when he arrived, their most prized possession. The woman who spoke at our church said the same thing. She lived for letters from her sponsors.

This is Sterline.

Patrick and I have sponsored her for years now. We try to do a good job of writing her fairly regularly, but I really want to do a better job of writing more often. (Especially since Compassion now lets you send emails and upload pictures online to send to your sponsored child. I really have absolutely no excuse not to do it.) Sterline lives in Haiti, near Port Au Prince. Luckily, she lived through all the destruction in her area. Well ok, we know it's not luck, but we won't go there right now. That, again, is not the point of this. The things that gets me about Sterline is the things that she writes to us. When I look at our lives compared to hers, the difference is honestly ridiculous. When we think of things that are going on with us to write her about, if we think about it in the same way we would be sending an email to a friend, it's typically things like a vacation we recently went on, or updates we're making to our house, or Patrick is training for a marathon, or whatever. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things.

However, on our honeymoon, we sent her a postcard from Maui because we were thinking of her. She loved it and said it was beautiful. And that she had never seen the beach. Y'all. She lives in Haiti, which is an island. Not far from Port Au Prince, which is ON the water. And she has never seen the beach. She has never left her little village. She ended her letter by stating that her parents were having trouble getting work and then asked 'is there poverty in your country?'

Here's the thing. I don't think there's anything wrong with us telling her about our lives, the way they really are. I don't think that we're flaunting how wonderful our lives are to her, and I don't think she's ever felt that we are. I think she likes to hear about the things we do. I don't think she was trying to be rude when she ended a letter about our vacation asking if there was poverty in our country. She was 9. But of course she wonders that... of course she wonders how in the world there could be poverty in a country full of Americans who can afford to sponsor Compassion children and go on vacations. Of course she wonders that... when we give her money at Christmas, she uses it to buy rice. When I get gift cards or money of any kind, it's a given that it won't be used on a necessity. It's a gift. In my world, gifts are for luxuries. In hers, they are for eating.

Again, I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with us taking vacations or buying things or whatever. I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing things that excite us with our Compassion kids. But her description of her life, and her wonder at a vacation, is a sobering reminder of how much they need us. And when we think about how much money to give her for Christmas, or her birthday, or just in general, it's good to remember she's going to use it for food. And when I get an email asking if I'd like to consider visiting my Compassion child, and my first thought is that no, I really have no interest in visiting Haiti, it's a very good reminder that in fact it does not matter one bit whether I'd like to visit Haiti. It matters that I know it would change my life to see Sterline in her life. And the fact that her sponsors would come to Haiti to visit her would hopefully speak to her about how much she really does matter to us. That even though she is one of MANY children living in poverty in Haiti, she matters. In reality, we aren't just sponsoring Sterline. We're feeding her parents as well. When she needs medicine, it comes from Compassion. When she hears about Jesus, it comes from Compassion. She has stated in every last letter we have gotten from her that she is praying for us. We get updates every now and then about Sterline, and sometimes she is a 'below average' student. But she loves Jesus and she prays and that matters a LOT more than being an 'above average' student. I think I have a lot to learn from Sterline.

I know there's not a huge following on this blog, especially since I haven't used it in so long. But in case you stumble upon it, please PLEASE consider sponsoring a child through Compassion. There are so many kids waiting on sponsors. It's not terribly expensive, and many of them literally need it to survive. Everyone who has an experience with Compassion International reaffirms that they are doing amazing things around the world, and they are using their resources in the best way possible. It's a very well-respected organization. Please consider sponsoring, and if you do, please remember to write to your child.

And that is all! Maybe I'll blog again before 2013.

Show Us Your Life- Crockpotapalooza

2011-08-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

I'm not typically one for linking up on here (and by not typically, I mean never), but I love this recipe to such a ridiculous degree, I can't pass up the chance to share. So I'm linking to Kelly's Korner's Crockpotapalooza.

This is my go-to 'someone had a baby' or 'someone got sick' or 'I really like you' dish. It's so, SO easy. And delicious. And I just had cereal for dinner and I am REALLY wishing I had this now!

Crockpot Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
2 tablespoons butter
2 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed cream of chicken soup
A few shakes of onion powder
2 (10 ounce) packages refrigerated biscuit dough, torn into pieces
1 (14 oz) can chicken broth

Directions

Place the chicken, butter, soup, and onion powder in a slow cooker, and cover with chicken broth.
Cover, and cook for 5 to 6 hours on High. About 90 minutes before serving, shred the chicken. Place it back in the slow cooker and add the torn biscuit dough. Cook until the dough is no longer raw in the center.

Don't skip this recipe. I promise.

Happy crockpot cooking!

OBX

2011-07-06T15:49:00.001-07:00

We went on vacation last week with 21 of my family members. Honestly I had some slight concerns that it wouldn't measure up to our Cancun trip last year (LOVED Cancun!) but I have to say I think it did. I love my extended family and wish we could see them more often, so to have them all in one place for 8 days was really, really fun times.

We went to the Outer Banks in North Carolina and I would recommend that place to anyone. It's awesome.

There are about 9234890 pictures to be seen, but here's a pic of the cousins with my grandparents.

Wish I was there right now!

the not-so-million-dollar question

2011-06-13T17:06:00.001-07:00

You know how when you're like in 5th grade, and you're trying to figure out what you wanna be when you grow up, that silly test they have you take asks you 'if money was not an obstacle, what would you want to do?' And typically you wind up being like a stargazer or a trash collect or something?

(Insert quote from The West Wing regarding the importance of trash collectors in society.)

Well if we all started living on monopoly money or it grew on trees or something, I would hang out with teenagers every day. Patrick and I returned from youth camp last night. I. love. camp. Truthfully, there are very few places I would rather be than at youth camp. Returning is the pits. Except of course that it means I don't have to sleep in those terrible beds anymore. Or eat the food. But other than that.

The speaker was really good, the kids responded to him well, and I personally thoroughly enjoyed myself. The thing about youth camp is that when I describe it without being there, it sounds terrible. Tons of time outside in the heat. Bunk beds that are specially created by camps all over the country to be the least comfortable thing imaginable. Tons of fried food for lunch when it's over 100 degrees outside. A camp staff that is less than spectacular and ridiculous rules galore. Having something on my schedule from 7 am to midnight. Never fails, a clogged toilet every single year. (This year's was especially yucky. That's all you need to know.)

I mean it really doesn't sound all that enjoyable. It's a hot, jam-packed, often gross, exhausting time. But throw in some teenagers and some water games and you've got yourself a party. I absolutely love it. My face hurts from laughing so hard by the end of it.

And just because I've been so severely lacking in the picture department, here are two of the reasons I love it so much:

Happy summer, folks! I hope you get to go to camp!

What the heck have we been up to lately?

2011-05-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

Everything. :-)

I went on yet another blogging sabbatical, I know. Life just got crazy here. I didn't want to blog about this before it was over since I figured posting that I was home alone constantly on the world wide web was not a fabulous idea, but we're in the clear now I'm free to blog.

Patrick wound up on a project this year that had him traveling every week. For 16 weeks. You read that right. It has been extremely challenging, and I can't say I handled the situation with grace and patience. I CAN say that it makes me value the time he is home so, so much more. I never would have known how I take that for granted until I couldn't take it for granted anymore. :-) But thanks goodness, it is finally over. We're back in the same city with some fun trips in our future, and I'm excited.

It's graduation season around here also. Our sweet 12th graders that we work with at church are all graduating, so graduation stuff is going on all around us. I'm excited for them, but I can't believe this has actually come. Not sure what I'm going to do with myself next year! I intend to stay in denial until August when they actually leave. Very much my style.

Patrick is wrapping up his Team in Training season and heads to the Grand Canyon next week. I can't believe it's the middle of May already! It seems like every year goes by faster and faster. I'll be joining him in Arizona this year so that should be a good time. I hiked with him yesterday morning for 6 miles and let's just say that I will be feeling that for a good while.

My mom turned 50 a few days ago, so we went to a birthday party for her last night. It was quite fun! And we're headed out next month to vacation with her family at the beach. Hooray for vacation! You know how I love a good beach!

Patrick's grandmother has been in town this past week so we've gotten to spend some time with her. That's been really nice. We definitely wish we could see our extended family more often. We said goodbye to her this morning, but we plan to get up to see her in the next few months and that will be nice.

So life is crazy busy here at the Gilgour household (which seems to be the norm for us at this stage of our lives), but it's (mostly) fun stuff so we'll take it. It seems like every weekend we've got 7 places to be. Today we've made two stops and have two to go. I'm currently relaxing for another hour or so before we hit up stop number three. But really, it's all things we really want to do and places we really want to go, so we can't complain. We have wonderful friends and family that we wouldn't trade for the world.

Sorry that was a totally lame catch up with no pictures, and I am going to make another statement that I plan to blog more often and hope for the best. :-)

Happy Sunday!

A little bit of crud and a lot a bit of goodness

2011-04-03T17:55:00.001-07:00

How did it get to be April already?! I mean, other than March ending. Of course. Seriously, time just goes by faster and faster.

Aside from the fact that I'm currently fighting what I believe to be a sinus infection (and really that's what I'm hoping for, since it's not contagious), I've had a lovely weekend.

Patrick came home from Dallas early on Thursday which was SO wonderful. We spent the whole evening together just hanging out and it was so nice.

Friday I got to meet sweet, sweet Emily June (before I was sick) which was awesome. She is so beautiful. And I got to have lunch with my husband. And then I got to spend the evening with some of my very favorite high school girls at a girls night out (and some of my very favorite my-own-age girls who came too). It was a really fun night.

Saturday I was feeling bad so we just laid low. Patrick and I spent pretty much the whole day and night together and it was wonderful. He's taken great care of me. I sadly had to skip out on church and small group today which I hate. But again, I got to spend the day with my husband. And just hanging out without doing anything for 2 days is really not something we get to do often, so I'm happy to look for the silver lining in that.

One of the very exciting things we did this weekend was book our flights to Arizona for May. I'll be joining him at the Grand Canyon this year which should be interesting. :-) I'm sure it will be fun. I was listening to KSBJ in the car this afternoon (during the 12 seconds I spent out of the house). They were talking about marriage and somehow they got on the topic of how some people have this idea of the perfect person that they want to marry and they think that if they meet someone who doesn't measure up to one of those standards, they'll feel like they settled. I was thinking that if Patrick had sat down to write one of those lists that defined his 'perfect person', she probably would have been someone who loved the outdoors. So it's a really good thing that marriage doesn't so much work like that. (Insert plug for the book Sacred Marriage. It's fabulous.) The truth is that I don't even come to close to a person who loves the outdoors and "adventure." I know you're all absolutely shocked as you read this, what with my extremely adventurous history. And I know this is totally random, but as I listened to that I was thinking about how I'm very glad that Patrick doesn't think he "settled" since I don't so much fit into his "list." Plus, now that I have a husband - he pretty much defines my list. So whatever my list used to look like, now it looks like him. So it's really a moot point.

But anyway, I digress as usual. I need to go find something to do with myself until I fall asleep. Watching the West Wing is out since Mrs. Landingham is about to kick the bucket and those episodes are just too much for me right now.

Happy new week, friends! Hopefully I recover from this crud quickly and get to thoroughly enjoy it!

P&B Fun Day

2011-03-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

Patrick had some vacation time to kill before the end of March, so he was off work this Thursday and Friday. Since we don't really get full days together on the weekends in the spring while he's working with Team in Training, I took off on Friday so we could have a P&B Fun Day. It was great! I really just like spending time with him, so it probably would have been just as great if we were hanging out at home. Our original plan was to go to Galveston, but since it was the last day of Spring Break we figured it would be crazy crazy crowded there. Plus the high in Galveston yesterday was only 70 degrees so the beach wouldn't have been all that warm. So we decided instead to go to College Station. Ohh Aggieland, how I love you.

We got a lovely view of the blue bonnets on the way up. And we borrowed a convertible from the Mengers. Driving with the top down most of the day was lots of fun, but we both got pretty sunburned. We ate at Blue Baker for lunch, walked around campus, drove by the places we used to live.. it was very nice. Of course it was a ghost town since it was spring break so that was kind of weird.

I lived in Midtown while I was in college. Here's a picture I snapped real fast yesterday, in my attempt not to creep out the person that was inside:

Such fabulous memories there.

And this is where Patrick lived, among many, many shady people on Cooner Street:

It was a really nice day. We stopped in Brenham on the way home and did some shopping. Oh and we visited the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum. I'd never really been in there - which is a bummer since you get in free if you're a student. But we went in and looked around everywhere and I found it surprisingly interesting. (Typically museums are not my thing. I just sort of glance around and I'm ready to leave, much to Patrick's dismay. But this was fun.)

So we had a wonderful day yesterday, and now today is only Saturday!

In other news, we are about to have some landscaping work done in our backyard. Since the yard wasn't really maintained by the people who owned it before us (they did, in fact, keep a chicken back there which I highly doubt is in compliance with the HOA) we had some work to do before we could get the landscaping done. The weeds/grass had taken over where there should have been beds around our current landscaping so there were many hours of work to be done to take care of that first. I didn't manage to get a complete 'before' picture, but we've made some serious progress on the right half of the yard. Before, the whole yard looked like this (everything green is a weed, the grass is behind me in this picture):

And now, the right half of the yard looks like this (please ignore the things hanging off the fence, they will soon be gone as well):

It may not look like much, but it's major progress I assure you. The weeds are gone from where there should be flower beds, and in 2 weeks we will have new dirt and new mulch and it might actually look landscaped. Hopefully just in time for things to really start blooming again which will be so lovely!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Happy birthday husband-o-mine!

2011-03-03T11:40:00.000-08:00

(***Pretend I was a little more on top of my game and actually posted this on March 3rd instead of just giving it that date. Sorry babe... yesterday was a little crazy around here.)

March 3rd is Patrick's birthday. In honor of the occasion, here are some interesting facts about him/his birth date:

Patrick is the tallest human structure in the Gilgour household - The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opened after 2.5 years of contruction on 3/3/1997.

Patrick loves U.S. History - The United States officially adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem on 3/3/1931. (Above is a picture of Patrick's twin on the Korean War memorial in D.C. I've witnessed it people. It looks a lot like him, especially when his hair is longer.)

Patrick likes rock and roll music - Jackie Brenston recorded "Rocket 88", often cited as the first rock and roll record, at Sam Phillips' recording stuidios in Memphis, TN on 3/3/1951. (Above pictures of Patrick at a John Fogerty concert.)

Patrick was born in Missouri - Congress passed the Missouri Compromise on 3/3/1820. (Above is a picture of Patrick in Missouri. Isn't he cute?)

And this is us about to go to a formal my senior year of college. Not related to his birthday. I just like it.

I love you Patrick! Happy birthday!

What do I know of holy?

2011-02-08T06:22:00.000-08:00

Every time I (Becky) hear this song (by Addison Road), the words are so convicting to me:

I made you promises a thousand times
I tried to hear from heaven
But I talked the whole time
I think I made you too small
I never feared you at all
If you touched my face would I know you?
Looked into my eyes could I behold you?

I guess I thought that I had figured You out
I knew all the stores and I leared to talk about
How you were mighty to save
Those were only empty words on a page
Then I caught a glimpse of who You might be
The slightest hint of you brought me down to my knees

That's all. Could you guys please be keeping a few different people and their 'we want to have a baby' situations in your prayers? I don't know any of them personally, but I've gotten lots of second hand stories recently of people who have had adoptions, in vitro, etc fall through.

Hope you have a wonderful week!

Saturday Morning Live: Weekend Update

2011-02-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

Becky and I are huge fans of Seth Meyer's SNL Weekend Update. We're often times too lame to stay up and watch it live, but we're pretty addicted and get our fix on Netflix. That's where the title of this post comes in.

This week has been cold and kind of lazy. We convinced ourselves we didn't have to do anything since it was 35 degrees outside. Jed Bartlett would call us "a bunch of tanned-ass Southerners." I will admit that we are wimps in the cold, but I don't want to hear any whining from those of you north of the Mason-Dixon line when the mercury tops out at 92 degrees.

Becky is a Craigslist fiend. Her spiritual gift is Craigslisting. She once bought a bionic arm from a man in Minnesota passing through town for $13**. It now sits on our coffee table. It was such a quick transaction. It literally went from helping him steer his Malibu to sitting on our coffee table in less than 45 minutes. It's a great conversation piece.

She's really wanted a sleigh bed for about two years now. It kind of got put on the back burner until recently. We bought one on Craigslist two weekends ago for $50. We started its rehab last night. With her keen eye and my pickup truck, we've managed to Craigslist quite a bit of good stuff.

Eventually it will go in our master bedroom. We're really excited to have a real bed for the first time in our marriage (we've been sleeping on a frame). Keep pressuring Becky for finished pictures. Until then, here are some cell phone shots of our progress.

**Portions of this story may or may not be true.

i know, i know... i'm the worst.

2011-01-31T12:02:00.000-08:00

Apparently I much prefer stalking other peoples blogs (which I do religiously, every day) to keeping up with my own. I do apologize to my thousands of faithful readers who have been daily checking in to see when I will grace you with my presence here in the blogosphere again. Oh, wait... :-)

Well, in my last post I mentioned some home improvement things we were doing. And it turns out home improvement things have pretty much consumed our weekends lately. We did some updating in our bathroom and some other fun projects, none of which are 100% complete. But they are (hopefully) very soon to be finally done. Pictures to eventually follow, I promise.

In other news, the days are getting longer around here and you have no idea how happy this makes me. This 'getting dark at 5:00' business is the pitts.

Also... we have a roomie! Yep. Not a baby. A roomie. She's 19, it's been a long year, and she gets the sheer delight of living with us for a little bit. Lucky girl, you say? Agreed. Patrick's take on the whole thing? "Once she moves out, we'll be empty nesters!" We're WAY ahead of you, people. We skipped way past babies to 19 year olds, and we'll let you all know how the empty nest feels. :-)

My goal for 2011 (don't hate me) is to gain 10 pounds. I said don't hate me. I haven't done any consistent physical activity (who are we kidding... any at all) since high school. I've been losing "weight" (really just muscle mass) steadily since then. The pounds haven't really changed all that much, but the, shall we say, "girth" has. Apparently 8 years is too long to go without exercise. Who knew? So step one is going to be exercise more. (Please don't read back to January 2010 where I said I was going to exercise more. I did it once. It was a failed goal. Don't judge.) The rest of the steps I'm not a fan of. Apparently you are supposed to eat more 'hearty' vegetables than 'watery' vegetables. Water veggie number one... cucumbers. :-( How lame, I LOVE LOVE LOVE cucumbers. And I will probably break this rule several times a week for that reason. But no worries, I'm also a fan of (raw) spinach and that's on the hearty list. I'll put them together and be set. Apparently I need more red meat (I pretty much exclusively cook chicken.. another fail). And... get ready for this gem. I am to purchase Carnation instant breakfast powder milk and pretty much dump it on everything I eat. YUM-O! .......... Or not. One more slight issue - I should be drinking whole milk. First of all, I could go the rest of my life without drinking milk of any kind and be a happy camper. Second, I am fairly lactose intolerant. I can just barely handle skim milk, and only in small quantities. Whole milk is definitely off the table. I wonder if they make fatty soy milk? Somehow I really doubt it, but I will look into this. Again, for those out there who are trying to go in the opposite direction (i.e. lose weight) trust me when I say being on this end of it is not pleasant either. In high school my doctor tried to get me to drink some kind of raw egg smoothie for breakfast and let me tell you, those are yuck. But in all complete honesty, I'm trying to be healthier in 2011, and this is one of my goals.

Ok well that was a complete downer, and I apologize. No more complaining for the rest of the post. The good news is I looooove the way my bathroom cabinets turned out, it's a beautiful day today, there's a (very, very slight) chance of snow later this week, work has been very manageable, and I get to spend the evening with my husband watching Big Bang Theory. We also made it a goal to do a better job of Sabbath-ing. So yesterday we went to church, went to lunch, and then just hung out at home. We took naps and read some and just relaxed until small group. We're trying to let Saturday be the 'doing' day and Sunday be the 'resting' day. Our Sundays are going to be busy no matter what to some extent, but we're trying not to cram so much other stuff into the free hours we've got. And it worked out wonderfully.

That was all over the place. But you've come to expect that from me. Or maybe you forgot since it's been so long. But stay tuned for a picture-filled post of my newly painted cabinets and some other things my sweet husband is working on.

Happy Monday!

The month of Thanksgiving

2010-11-07T16:08:00.001-08:00

Ok, I was a failure at the 30 days of home improvement. We have been doing more things at the house, but somehow my camera continues to sit in my bedroom. One day.

The month of Thanksgiving is a really busy one for me at work. And Patrick is having an especially busy time at work right now too. We are both trying hard not to let work completely overshadow everything else, and we are being as diligent as possible at getting most of our work done during normal work hours so that we actually see each other in the evenings and get to keep having lives. So far, so good. We'll see what the end of the month holds. Either way... 2 more full weeks of work before a break for Thanksgiving and I am PUMPED! The only problem with that is the fact that I have done zero Christmas shopping and the stores/malls/etc get CRAZY after Thanksgiving. But you know what, my new motto is 'I can only do what I can do.' I have tried to do it all for too long, it's just not going to happen. The house won't be immaculate every time we have company. The food won't always be homemade. There won't always be dessert (unless it's a bag of Oreos). There may still be a light fixture missing that's been missing for a month now. My Christmas gifts may not be the best ideas known to man. But I'll do what I can and enjoy it and I (hopefully) won't lose my mind trying to do it all. Ahh it's very hard for me to let go of total control like that, but it's time, and I am trying.

On that note, it's the month of Thanksgiving, and today I am very, very grateful for wonderful friends. We spent a lot of time with friends this weekend and I just love it. This week and next weekend promise to hold more of the same. Thank you, God, for authentic friendships.

Happy turkey month!

Christmas card outtakes

2010-10-07T21:35:00.001-07:00

I know I know. You're trying to figure out why in the world we wouldn't choose the second one. Aside from the terrible cheesiness of the pose... it's just missing a little something. Can't quite put my finger on it...

(And for those of you thinking 'Christmas cards?! It's barely October!' Hush, you. I got a deal.)

30 days of home improvement. Or something.

2010-09-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

It was my intention to set a date in October to have a housewarming party. Turns out, I had too much to do before October 2nd, which was my original date. I was stressing myself out. So we're nixing that. I don't have a new date, but my original plan was to work on the house for 30 days, starting the beginning of September. That sorta happened. We painted the stairs (FINALLY!) Oh my goodness. I haven't been so excited about anything in a very long time. Please, take a gander.

Before:

Dark, high gloss, terribleness.

After:

Light, airy, wonderfulness.

(To the right: the largest art niche known to man. No idea what to do with it.)

Project two: doing some TLC to the lovely fruit covered knobs left to us by the previous homeowners. I know... it's a crying shame that I painted over these beauties.

Final product: Honestly, I don't know how I feel about it. I think the black might be too much contrast between the light (which I don't love) cabinets. Either way, it's serious progress from the peaches and grapes. And the pot rack is black so I thought that might make it more cohesive. There are LOTS of different metals in our home. (See Patrick doing dishes? He's the best.)

And "project" (not really) number three:

A chair for Patrick's office! Ahhh, I love craigslist.

Last but not least, the previous homeowners also left us with this gem of a built in bookcase. They did it themselves, and pictures just do not do it justice. It's terrible. Patrick's grandmother got me some cute picture frames while we were in Missouri last weekend and so they are attempting to hide the bookshelf ugliness. And one of them is housing a picture of sweet little Beckett who we got to meet last weekend. So cute!

So there we are! Hopefully lots more to come. I'm just doing little sneak peeks... I'm hoping to do major before and after photos in the near future with a slightly more 'done' house. And you too can revel in the beauty of the things that the Ballards left for us to deal with on Green Castle. Get ready.

138 days until Christmas

2010-08-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

And, per theknot.com, we have been married for 764 days. That is a lot of days. I mean, not in the grand scheme of things I guess, but it seems like a lot when you count in days.

I'm looking for a weekend getaway place in Texas for the fall. Any ideas? Since we vacationed with the fam again this year (not that I'm complaining, it was WONDERFUL), I figure we should do something just the two of us. And (gasp!) I'm not thinking the beach. I'm thinking more along the lines of Fredericksburg maybe. Something where there's nothing on the agenda. Not a big city. A bed and breakfast or a cabin or something. Anyone?

Something like this:

Yeah yeah, I know. That doesn't exactly scream 'Texas'. But a girl can dream.

"Journey" by Patrick Gilgour

2010-07-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

I regret to inform you that this is blurry and terribly done and does not do my husband's Journey belting abilities any justice. And it's sideways and apparently I'm not very youtube-literate. But it's worth it. (Please, watch to the end.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LITWsqQUrv4

Thank you, Matt and Alyssa, for getting married and allowing me to see this. And see all of your fine brothers dancing skillz. And, sadly, not see Jon get to a 'level 6' where apparently he just wants to dance. :-)

Best day of the week: Benday!

2010-07-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we got to babysit sweet Ben. Ohh my goodness, I love that kid. He is precious.

Please see below two of my favorite people in the world:

Activities involved:

Climbing the stairs roughly 893045890348590 times with numerous attempts to nose dive down on his own. Thus giving his babysitter many near-heart attacks. But look at that kid, he wanted to climb the stairs, no chance I was saying no! (Don't worry, I was very careful.)
Taking a nap. Ohhh this was a favorite for me. He fell asleep on my bed with me. Precious.
Cuddle time post-nap
Lots of pointing and saying 'dog'
Lots of trying to share Cheerios with the dog (we were dog sitting also)
Playing with the knobs on the bathtub and being really impressed when the water came out
Baby pool date with friends Landon and Ryan, where the fountain was quite intriguing (My favorite part: the swim diaper was on backwards, so it was too narrow in the back and showed half his little bottom, in a very sumo wrestler fashion.)

You can stay with us any time you want, Ben!

Answer: 'complete mechanical failure'

2010-07-26T15:23:00.001-07:00

Question: The #1 thing you never want to hear your mechanic say about the transmission in your car.

Sigh. The rodeo is no longer with us. Below you will see a picture of Patrick selling my car. The rodeo is now with someone named Raz. Or something like that. Thank you, Raz, for buying a non-functioning car.

Me: "Aw, Patrick, we have so many memories in that car."
Patrick: "We argued a lot in that car."*

:-) It's all about the sentiment with that one, folks.

**Disclaimer: He wasn't talking about, like, last week. More like about 2004. Or something. Maybe not 2004, but that's my way of saying it was not last week.

ANYWAY, my parents bought me that car on August 20th, 2003. Like 3 days or something before it journeyed to College Station with me to begin my life in Aggieland. (whoop) And sat in lot 40 for 99% of it's next year of life. (The good news is that when your car is half a mile from your dorm and therefore never gets driven, it keeps the 'new car smell' for a long time. That's really the only good news.)

So we embark on the 'find a new car' journey. And we are very lucky to embark at a slightly less hectic pace, as we are currently borrowing a car from my dad. (Thanks, Dad!) I would like to add that when someone else is paying for the car, say, your dad, it's really a more enjoyable shopping experience. (Thanks, Dad!) But in fact this time around, what with the purchasing it ourselves, not quite so much bliss. Plus it wasn't really in the plan right now. But that is ok, we are prepared, Patrick has done about 82930489032 hours of research, and we will hopefully be driving a 4runner (the car of choice) home very soon!

Goodbye, Rodeo! I will not miss your severe blind spots. But I already miss your paid-for-ness.

Confession.

2010-07-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

I am a worrier.

I need to say it again just to remind myself how dumb it is. I am a worrier.

We talked about it tonight at church, but the more I think about it, holy moly I am a chronic worrier. How ridiculous. Let's think about my life right now. Two stable incomes. A beautiful house. A really great marriage that I thoroughly enjoy. Wonderful (and I do mean wonderful) friends and family that I can't get enough of. A very, very comfortable lifestyle. What in the world do I have to worry about? If you got in my head, you wouldn't know I have it so good. You wouldn't know that I get plenty of sleep, eat three meals a day, get up to a reasonable commute and work daily with people that I really, really like. Drive my reasonable commute home to a house that I love, see my husband who is my favorite person alive, spend my evenings either relaxing with him or with friends, do a decent amount of traveling to places that are wonderful.

And yet.

I can talk myself into a panic attack at any moment. Isn't that RIDICULOUS?! I can talk myself into it. And I do. Oh but it gets better! Once I talk myself into it, I can't talk myself out of it! The mind... it's crazy. I realize my life won't always be like this. I realize this is a season. I can assure you, I've had my share of seasons. I've had my share of days where I wasn't overcome with things that are wonderful about my life. And here is the worst part of my confession: the times when something is seriously wrong are the times that I worry the least. My mind focuses on something real, and I deal with it, and somehow I block out all the worthless worrying over things that don't matter. (You should all probably step away from your computers now, lest the lightning bolt that will soon strike me somehow to get to you; I'm pretty sure saying things like 'I live best when some major crisis is taking place' is an open invitation for God to test me. I take it back. Really.) Trust me, I don't desire a crisis. I just desire not to worry. Not to have any anxiety. Ugh.

On a happier note... I get to do a little babysitting this weekend and you KNOW how I love to sit on a good baby! Ha... I know. That's a terrible joke. But I really do love babies, so I'm all over it. Maybe I'll get in a picture or two.

Love to all! Feel free to just scroll through my posts in your google readers. They have been of little use to you lately.

One of my more lame posts

2010-07-12T18:56:00.001-07:00

I'm exhausted. Two weeks of whirlwind vacationing. So wonderful, so worn out.

We got to go to Baltimore this past weekend to see my wonderful family. It's one of my favorite places to be. They are such great people. We had to cram everything into a pretty short time, but I think we did it. We had snowballs and crabs and lots of family time. And we came home with Berger Cookies so all is well in our world.

This is my first full week of work in quite some time now. Blah. The great news is that I now get to work normal hours again! YAY!! Oh it feels so so so good to come home in the daylight. And have time to do something other than eat and sleep in the evening.

Ok that's all I have right now, there's a couple pictures of Baltimore to come but I'm too lazy to get up and do all the plugging in that it takes to upload them right now. :-)

Have a great week!

Happy 2nd anniversary to my fantastic husband!

2010-07-05T19:27:00.000-07:00

I don't know how 2 years flies by so quickly but it does! We spent the day today sleeping in, unpacking and cleaning up some, doing a little shopping and going out to dinner. We'll end the evening with some Big Bang Theory season 1 I'm sure. :-) Sounds perfect to me.

Happy anniversary, Patrick! I love you!

CANCUN!

2010-07-05T18:52:00.000-07:00

What's that? You're all friends with me on facebook and you've already seen these? Oh well! I'm far too proud of myself for actually having pictures to post to let that stop me. Blogger is being a little weird today so I'm in a strange order with these. I also didn't manage to get a single picture of Patrick's family but I promise they were there! Ok, confession. I took all of these in a span of like 3 hours. That's the only 3 hours I remembered my camera. The rest of the time I was far too ~~busy~~ lazy to take pictures.

Us getting ready for dinner! Of course, we were going to have someone take our picture at dinner, with both of us in it, but it seems I'm a failure in the picture taking department and I forgot. And I'm going to spare you our attempts at taking this one of us together ourselves. It's rough.

Beach!! Ohh I love it.

I'm fairly certain that I actually value the infinity pool OVER sliced bread, so I'll go ahead and let that cliche rest.

Patrick spent every waking moment in the pool. Not kidding.

:-) I like this one.

"Take a picture of me doing a cartwheel!" This caused a girl down the beach from us to ask her significant other to take a picture of her doing a cartwheel. And Patrick was a little worried that he would need a redo because her legs might be straighter than his, but no worries! Apparently she's not much of a gymnast and her legs were bent so we only had to take one.

Our resort. Westin Lagunamar. It was really nice.

Seriously. This is the life. I could do this forever.

View of the hot tub and beach from the pool.

At the pool. Loving every minute of it.

Vacation is my favorite thing on earth. Hands down.

The one where I confess that I'm a Spicy Pickle-aholic

2010-06-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well... my countdown has been altered a bit. The reason I was counting down to the end of June was because everyone who had gotten the $8000 tax credit for purchasing a new home had to close by then. But it appears that will be extended. Ugh. That's all I'm going to say about that. However, I'm going to continue to pretend like things will get substantially better in July, and here are the things I intend to start working on when that time comes. (After two vacations, that is!)

1. A little more house fixing-upping (I've bought some furniture on Craigslist that needs a little work, but so far, no time to do it.)
2. Plan a housewarming party! We reeeeeally want to have everyone over to see the house, and we haven't done a whole lot of entertaining since we bought it since I haven't been home much at all. So that's up there on the priority list.
3. Get to work earlier and leave earlier. I seriously say this ALL the time, but I'm really going to try to do it this summer.
4. Do a much better job keeping my house clean. I figure if I'm actually here some, this should be easier, right? I hope so. I did a much better job of it before we moved into this house. Granted, the townhouse was about half the size of this one. But still.
5. Cook dinner again! I actually like to cook these days, but I just don't have time. So I intend to make meals and sit down with my husband (and others!) and eat them. Good times.
6. Please no one (including you, Patrick!) remind me that this is a resolution I consistently make and then decide I don't particularly want to do: get a little physical activity in. Ugh, this does not sound fun to me. I'm not a fan of working out/running, etc and there are so many other things I'd rather be doing with my time. But it seems that a person should take care of themselves some, so I'm saying I intend to try. A little.
7. Find some slightly more healthy recipes. All the things I love to cook are terrible for you. And honestly, that really doesn't bother me at all, I'm not a healthy food person in any way. But my husband is, and I continue to douse him with heavily buttered foods, so so I'm putting this on the list.
8. Get back on a better budget. I was SO good about this when we first got married. But with the work thing, getting to the grocery store has been challenging, and I'm just tired. So we eat out wayyyyy more than we used to and that needs to stop very soon. The good news is that I get overtime when I work like this. But I'd rather be saving it, say, to replace the carpet I despise than on eating out. And that's a major confession for me, because I would typically get on a soapbox about eating out so much, but I am very guilty in this department here lately. Mostly because there's this place across the street from where I work called the Spicy Pickle and I LOVE it. I mean, love.

Ok. I also plan to put pictures on here. Add that to my list. My blogs have been very boring lately and I do apologize. This was really more for me than anyone. But at least I'm still counting down to vacation!! (Side note: I am going to see a doctor on Wednesday to see if there is anything they can give me for the severe motion sickness I've been having before I go on our trip. Just in case there's something I'd like to do while we're there that involves, you know, something other than sitting still. So pray for that!)

Back to cleaning!

This one's for you, Kelly.

2010-06-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

(See the bottom of the screen. Don't say I never did anything for ya. :-) )

2010-05-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

Just for my own sanity, I'm going to update my countdowns:

Cancun: 28 days!
2nd anniversary: 35 days!
Baltimore: 38 days!
Missouri: 84 days!

Wedding season is upon us. Our schedule is quickly filling with weddings and showers. I do love wedding season.

My birthday weekend was wonderful. I took Friday off (I know, I've mentioned that a lot of times now. It's necessary.) and it was lots of fun. We slept in, had breakfast, went to the pool. Then I went and met several of my friends who are stay at home moms and their babies at the splash pad. At which point I made the terrible decision not to wear sunscreen. I never, EVER don't wear sunscreen. I am a sunscreen stickler. But I didn't think I was going to be there very long, and I was wet the whole time so I couldn't really tell I was getting hot. Typically, when I get some sun, I can't really tell until after I go home and shower. This time, I got to the parking lot and could tell my shoulders were very, very red. Bad sign. So it hurt very badly and then I got some sun poisoning which really stinks. I had a fever and I felt awful. But anyway, despite all that, it was a great weekend. And another reason learned as to why I need to always wear sunscreen.

The upcoming weeks of work will probably be the most difficult I've had in 3 years. I'm not sure we've ever been this busy as a company, and while there is an end in sight, it's kind of hard to see. So these weeks will be very challenging, as I'm already kind of burnt out from the long hours we've been working the last couple of months. But that's ok, we will get through it, and we will do so with lots of overtime! :-)

In other news, season 4 of the West Wing so far hasn't lived up to the first three. Let's hope it starts going uphill soon!

I need to find something to make for lunch. I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend!

Oh, and a major, major praise: I've had a headache on and off for about a week now, and this morning I woke up feeling great! Woo hoo! Could be that my wonderful husband fixed the one set of blinds that wasn't up in our bedroom so the sun no longer shines in my eyes and I no longer wake up squinting. Either way, hooray for good days.

It's my birthday and I'll cry stay home from work if I want to!

2010-05-21T06:46:00.000-07:00

I'm not working today. I can't remember the last time I was this excited. I love the people I work with but this has been a rough stretch.

Have a fabulous day, blog world! I hope the clouds go away soon so I can get some pool time in!

countdown season is upon us!

2010-05-16T19:34:00.001-07:00

You know how I love a good countdown. I'll get to that in a minute.

So this year, although I am now three years out of college (seriously?! how did this happen?!), I am mourning the days of finishing finals and going home. Or staying for summer school, or going on a study abroad, or doing an internship, or whatever. I'm mourning having a summer for some reason very badly this year. It really seems like it was yesterday. Maybe I'm just really in need of a visit to College Station. We haven't gone back in way too long now. Anyway. Sigh.

I also need to confess that I am only blogging to distract myself from watching the West Wing. I am almost a full season ahead of Patrick and I feel like I shouldn't watch anymore because it's going to take so long for him to catch up and I really prefer watching WITH him. But anyway.

Back to the countdowns! Here are the exciting things coming up that I get to count down to:

My birthday, which I plan to take off of work and I am beside myself with excitement because it's been so so crazy: 5 days! Weather permitting, I intend to sit by the pool and do absolutely nothing that day. Preferably with a pina colada. I'm pretty sure our neighborhood pool doesn't have a pool boy, or a tiki bar I can swim up to (although they should really consider adding that and taking out the giant slide all the kids use) so I may have to save that part for my backyard but that's ok. Patrick is off too, it will be fabulous. I. can't. wait. Honestly. Can't wait. I think my blood pressure is rising as I type out 'I can't wait' over and over out of sheer excitement.

Memorial Day, which constitutes yet another fabulous day of no work: 15 days!

Cancun: 43 days!
Oh how I love my beach vacations. They seriously get me through the year. Here is a little taste of what I'll be doing in 43 days. Do you see that infinity pool?! Heaven. I'm certain they did it right and have someone ready to bring me a pina colada AND I bet theirs even have those little umbrellas in them. Mmmm the beach.

2nd anniversary to my wonderful hubby: 50 days! Again, I don't really understand how time goes by that fast. It can't have possibly been that long. Surely I should still be wedding planning. Except I'd really rather not. I mean, it's fun and all. But marriage is better.

Baltimore: 53 days! Baltimore in the summer has got to be one of my favorite things ever. I mean I also love Baltimore at Christmas so it's tough competition. But there are snowballs in the summer. And crab feasts. And I just love the summer anyway, so throw in some family, and you've got yourself a good time! Pretty much any excuse to not wear shoes, I'm in. Summer allows that. Not everywhere though. I wear shoes to restaurants and work and stuff.

Last day of the madness that has been work for at least two months now: 45 days! (Yeah, it happens while I'm in Cancun. But it should be fine, all the prep work will have to be done before then anyway.) THANK YOU LORD. This stretch of work has been insane. This countdown is the one that's most constantly on my mind. Can you believe that? Over the beach?! What has my life come to? Oh yeah... I'd just like to remember what it's like to see daylight on a weekday. And not bring work home on the weekends. Blah. But anyway, an end is in sight and I can't wait!

Missouri: 99 days! (Seems far away, but it's Labor Day weekend so it's still the summer and it counts.) I haven't ever been there in the summer so I'm pumped. The weather should be a step above the blizzard they had last year when we visited. Although to be honest, I thought that was fabulous because I sat inside with Patrick's grandmother all day, under blankets, reading several years worth of Martha Stewart magazines. It was really quite nice and relaxing and the blizzard really made everything beautiful.

And just because I can: 222 days until Christmas. :-) I won't make that a regular countdown until probably October. But there's a website where you can look it up that I've been using for a couple of years now and I figured their hits are pretty low this time of year and I wanted them to know their work is appreciated. So I visited them and posted for you fine people. Better start shopping!

Well. I'm 99% sure I'm not going to be able to avoid watching The West Wing tonight. That's ok, for my birthday, I'll ask him to catch up. It's just so suspenseful! Plus we don't have cable. So it's really my only option.

5 days, people!

she blogs, she blogs!

2010-05-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. I'm ridiculously behind. And I'm lacking the pictures are cute new house so deserves. And the family members are getting annoyed. :-)

Well let's see. I haven't been on here since mid-March. We closed on the house at the end of March, and spent the next several weeks driving 30 minutes over here after work to get started painting and doing some minor fixing up. I'd say on average we stayed around until midnight or 1 am, and Saturdays were very, very, very long days. BUT of course it's all worth it. The place looks good. There's still so much to do, and I really wanted to post some 'after' pictures that looked completed. But I may just have to let you see how my life is really going and not just a fancied-up blog showing. Ha!

We still don't have cable, so Patrick and I entertain ourselves by watching seasons of the West Wing. If you haven't watched them, you are SERIOUSLY missing out. We're in love. It's fabulous. It's fast-paced and witty and... we're in love. Oh, I said that already? Hm.

The world is exploding with babies around us! I got to meet Beau and Dax yesterday. Holy moly. So adorable. Plus a super cute nursery and a fantastic looking mommy. Good times all around. There's another set of twins to be met in the future, so that will be tons of fun for us come the fall. (No, NOT ours! I'll go ahead and mention here that I get questions about 4 times a day about when we'll be having children. I'm sure it's because literally everyone we know has them. I'm not exaggerating, I never do that. Ok that's a lie, but seriously. We get lots of questions. Which really doesn't bother me, but you, my blogging followers, will stay informed. I promise. Don't expect an update in this area any time soon. Sorry.) And then we get to meet Baby Hokie after that, and there are more babies coming at work, and I'm certain I'm leaving someone out because seriously, I think everyone I know is having babies and I love it! (And Leslie, you can no longer be the one that says 'we're not!' :-) Which in itself, is quite exciting.)

Anyway, that was a very long parenthetical aside there, and then another one. That's terrible grammar I'm sure. Oh see, I did leave one out. Courtney! Get ready for more parentheses. (by the way, Courtney, my husband is the one that noticed you were having a baby on facebook and got all excited and called me into the office to look which I found very humorous because I believe the extent of his interaction with you before that was him suggesting where you should get pie. But congrats!!!)

Ok, really. I need to quit that. The parentheses.

Patrick leaves for Arizona on Saturday. He'll be hiking the Grand Canyon for Team in Training to raise money for Leukemia and Lymphoma. I've said that before, but there's another shoutout. He's pretty pumped. I think it's great, though I'm not so pumped about staying in this new, big house by myself. We'll see how that goes.

Oh, and Patrick's Grandmother visited this past weekend! That was fun. She was our first out of town guest. I mean, she didn't spend the night here in our house, but she came over for dinner so it counts. It was very nice to see her. Hopefully we can get a trip to Missouri planned in the not-so-distant future.

I just had to go back and catch a ton of spelling errors. Which means it's time for bed because I am typically a champion speller. Have I ever told you about how I was THIS close to winning the school spelling bee in the third grade? It's true. Deborah beat me and it was completely unfair. I got vacuum and she got marshmallow. Anyway, it was dramatic. A story for another time.

Night!

Kind of a bummer

2010-03-13T17:14:00.001-08:00

So this has been kind of a bummer of a week. We found out a relative has cancer... I won't go into it here but ugh. Turns out, I probably will not be joining Patrick in Arizona this summer as planned. The cost to do so would be somewhat outrageous. And I haven't been feeling so hot kind of off and on, so that's getting old. Oh, and work got ridiculously crazy busy and probably won't get under control again until July. Sigh.

Well... at least we'll close on the house in a couple weeks.

Oh yeah... we're buying a house. :-)

2010-03-06T09:39:00.000-08:00

Oops. As I mentioned... I've been quite the blogging slacker. We're buying a house. :-) We close March 25th. Our lease isn't up until June so we have time to paint and do a little bit of fixing up before we have to move, but of course we'd like to get in asap!

What's that? You'd like to see pictures? Well ok! The only ones I have are from the house staged with other people's furniture, and to be honest, they're a tiny big deceiving. There is some work to be done. Nothing major, it's definitely a nice house. But the paint colors look a whole lot better in the pictures than in person and the paint job isn't fantastic so that will go first and foremost. But here you go! (Ahh! There's a front porch!)

That's the entry way/view into the dining room. Love the stained glass.

View of the staircase.. we love all the moulding.

Living room (fireplace!)

Kitchen

Master bedroom. While those built ins right in the middle where the tv is look nice, they actually are not. And since the room is not huge, we are getting rid of them, as they stick out quite a bit into the room.

Bedroom two. Probably the pink and Disney will have to go. :-)

Bedroom 3. I LOVED Madeline as a kid!
"To the tigers in the zoo, Madeline said 'Pooh Pooh' " Anyone??
There are several murals... sadly, they go as well.

Office

Back yard

More pictures to come once we actually live there and you can see OUR stuff in it! Yay!

Patrick is 24!

2010-03-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

I have been remiss in blogging, and even worse, taking pictures!

Patrick's birthday was Wednesday. Birthday week was great. We hung out with Patrick's family. We stayed in a bed and breakfast which was super fun with REALLY delicious breakfast. We spent a day at Brazos Bend State Park. We've had several fun meals. We saw the Breens and Hokansons last night for some yummy food at Fadi's. It's been great.

And, of course, he got new Chacos AND a little memoir of his old ones. And some other fun stuff.

And I have zero pictures to show for it. Sigh.

Happy birthday week, Patrick! Thanks for being the best husband! I love you!!

Sometimes I really like The Message

2010-02-13T19:11:00.000-08:00

I love the way The Message translates Psalm 30:11-12, but especially 11.

^11-12 You did it: you changed my wild lament
into whirling dance;
You ripped off my black mourning band
and decked me with wildflowers.
I'm about to burst with song;
I can't keep quiet about you.
God, my God,
I can't thank you enough.

That's all.

new years resolutions have clauses

2010-01-30T11:04:00.001-08:00

Conversation that ensued this morning:

I say something (don't remember what) to Patrick at 8:45 am.

Patrick: Not now, I have 15 more minutes before I have to wake up for my New Year's resolution!
Me: What New Year's resolution?
Patrick: I have a New Year's resolution to wake up by 9:00 am every Saturday.
Me: I didn't know that. And you've already broken it before.
Patrick: No, we were cuddling, there's a clause for that.
Me: I didn't know there were clauses for resolutions.

His alarm goes off at 9:00 am

Patrick: Ugggggh, put your head on my shoulder so I don't have to get out of bed.

I couldn't make this stuff up, kids.

here and there

2010-01-24T17:45:00.000-08:00

Patrick has been working some long hours here lately.
He's been (hopefully) wrapping up a project.
He's really good at his job. He gets a lot of affirmation about this.

Things have been changing at work some for me.
I don't do well with change.

Patrick is coaching a hike for Team in Training to the Grand Canyon.
It raises money for cancer research.
It's a big time commitment. I'm proud of him.

I've been in need of a pedicure for months now.
Hopefully Leslie and I will remedy that this week.

I'm trying to branch out in my cooking skills.
I love crockpot meals.
I pretty much only cook chicken still.
The 'branching' is still a work in progress.

Patrick's birthday is in 6 weeks(ish).
He has an ever-growing birthday list.
Yep. That's typical.

We still haven't made any decisions about the house.
It's a lot of money to consider.
I wish Houston wasn't quite so huge.
I wish we could put everyone we knew and our jobs in one neighborhood.

Our small group is switching to Thursday nights.
I'm undecided on this.
So far, it's worked out ok. It's only been one week.
I don't know what to do with myself on Sunday nights.

Patrick's mom joined facebook.

I've been halfway through the laundry all weekend.
It's still laying all over the floor.
It will probably still be there tomorrow.

Tomorrow night is date night.
Is it terrible that sometimes we are tired on date night and stay home?
I don't think so. It's still 'us' night.

Every week I decide to go to work earlier so I can come home earlier.
Every week I don't.

Baby Witt is having a rough time.
It's really REALLY hard stuff. Much prayer is appreciated.

We still don't know how Sterline is.
Patrick is still fasting from pie.
He didn't eat it on National Pie Day.
I was impressed.

That's all for now.

Homeowners to be? Who knows.

2010-01-19T16:34:00.001-08:00

For those of you who don't know, Patrick and I have been in the midst of home buying discussions for sometime now. I'll be honest. Arguments have ensued. We just don't completely agree on a lot of things home-related. Like location. Or cost. Or single family versus townhome. Or fixer upper versus completely redone. Or when. :-) Those are small things in the decision making process, right?

Apparently not, thus the slight tension. But that's ok. We're in it together. We'll figure it out. It's exciting, even with the unknowns.

One major goal of mine that is hopefully a result of our pending move: I want to have company more often. So if you know me, come over. Please.

Happy Tuesday!

Haiti

2010-01-14T10:31:00.000-08:00

Good morning bloggers! I know... I have majorly dropped the ball on blogging. It's pretty terrible. I'm still not going to do much to rectify the situation. But here are some of my my thoughts for the day.

Our Compassion child is Sterline Zephir. She lives in Haiti. She has some crazy pigtails. :-) As you know, Haiti suffered serious damage from the recent earthquake. We have not heard yet how Sterline was affected by the earthquake... we are told by Compassion that they are working on getting in touch with their partners in Haiti and will let us know as soon as they hear something regarding our child. We covet your prayers for Sterline and her family.

Here's some information about her:

Family Duties

Washing clothes
Cleaning
Carries water
Buying/Selling in the marketplace
Kitchen help

Hobbies and Sports

Dolls
Group games
Hide-and-Seek
Art/Drawing

She also loves to draw us pictures. I should share some of them with you all sometime.

But for now, we rest in this:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor.
Isaiah 61:1-3

Dear November, I am so glad you are over!

2009-12-05T13:41:00.000-08:00

Phew. I can breathe again! November was an insane month for us at work. December will be busy, but I am so glad November is over.

I don't have much to say, except that I have totally dropped the ball on a Christmas countdown this year. So instead I will let you see some pictures of the Houston snow! Enjoy!

(If the pictures are big enough, you can see how hard it was snowing when I took these.)

August 8, 2002 was a looooong time ago.

2009-11-12T16:20:00.000-08:00

The other night, Patrick and said something about Meghan (his sister) being too young for something. And I said 'Well you were just a year older than her when we started dating.' Holy cow... she's in 10th grade. So actually, he was less than a year older than her. It was the summer after 10th grade for him (11th for me) when we started dating the first time. August 8, 2002. It didn't last very long the first time, and a year later we started dating again, August 9, 2003. That one lasted. (For the most part... there were certainly some ups and downs.) Can you believe that? 2002. It seems like so long ago. And it was... we're certainly completely different people today than we were 7 years ago. Hopefully everyone is somewhat different than they were at 16. Care to hear the story? Well, ok!

(This memory of our conversation a couple days ago and now the blog post was inspired by Courtney's post, and you should really read hers because it's better written and a slightly more grown-up story. :-) )

In May/June of 2002, I had recently broken up with someone I had been dating for a long time. (Yeah, I was 17. I don't strongly recommend having dated someone for a few years when you're 17. At least not the way I did it... it was a little too intense for my age and I knew the whole time it wasn't someone I should marry.) Anyway, it was sort of a weird time for me after we broke up because I was so used to being around that person all the time, SO I made what turned out to be a fantastic decision. I started spending every waking moment at church. Turns out, Patrick decided that summer to do the same. Which meant we spent every waking moment together. At first it was nothing... we just happened to both be up there, with mutual friends, spending a lot of unplanned time together. Then, we started doing things together, just the two of us, and by the end of the summer it had sort of turned into dating. (I'll let you in on a little secret... dating for us didn't mean much at that time. We went shopping together for some nice clothes we needed for a student leadership trip we were going on together, etc. But we started CALLING it dating, so it counts.)

I can't skip telling this story as I recall the first times we did stuff just the two of us. We were on the aforementioned shopping trip. It was raining. Patrick locked his keys in his car. (Managed to grab his palm pilot though. He loved that thing back then.) He called his mom to see if she would bring him an extra set of keys. (He drove a white Saturn at the time... it wasn't his favorite. Looking back it wasn't a bad car at all. Mine was. Anyway, that's a different story.) She just happened to be at the mall also, and so she met up with us to do some shopping. He was not at all excited she was doing this, just for the record. It was our first "date." :-) I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing... you'll see why. So she met up with us, and we went into a department store to look at dress pants for him. He went in and tried some on and came back, out, and she sort of pulled on the waistband and said 'Is there enough room in the crotch?' Ohhh it was so funny. I thought he would die of embarrassment. There are a string of embarrassing stories regarding our first initial 'dates' but I will spare him the rest of them. And yes, I did check with him before sharing that with the blogosphere.

I want to make it known that he was a perfect gentleman the entire time. He was incredibly sweet, always opening doors and getting me little gifts. If we got to one of our houses and our parents weren't home, he wouldn't even go inside. Isn't that sweet? Very un-sixteen-year-old-boy-like. He has said that it's very strange to think that we both, unknowingly, went on our last 'first' date at 17 years old. Weird that a decision that we made SO young would impact our lives so far down the road. But it's been good.

And on top of being a fantastic 16 year old boyfriend, he's an even better husband. I am a very, very lucky girl.

Patrick's Pie Shop

2009-11-09T20:06:00.000-08:00

(The babies were gingerbread men to go with the theme. Is that amazing or what? And do you see the CUTEST little hot dog ever?!)

Yeah. We have the best small group. Of all time.

Ramblings

2009-10-25T18:56:00.000-07:00

Well the holiday season is upon us and you know what that means... our weekends are filling up rapidly.

This has been another crazy weekend. We went to the Derek Webb concert last night. I should warn you, since graduating from college, my days of staying up past midnight are pretty much over. I realize that makes me sound lame and old... so be it. The website said that the doors opened at 7 and the concert started at 8. Wellllll not so much. By the time we went to Denny's after the concert, we got home around 2 am. I won't be a downer, as I am a fan of Derek Webb and I do think he did a good job, but from now on I will probably limit myself to somewhat earlier/more low key concerts so as not to put a damper on Patrick's love of late night concerts and U2-esque fans. But anyway, I am not good at staying on topic here.

So we had Derek Webb late into the night and then a very full day today. Have I mentioned that I LOVE babies? (That belong to others.) Cuz I do. And I got to hold Justus tonight, who is such a stud. And Patrick is working hard on his Halloween costume/set up for Trunk or Treat. For those of you in the blog world and not here in our daily lives in person, I will go ahead and leave you in suspense of exactly what he's doing. Let's just say, in true Patrick fashion, it will be over the top. We also have started looking at houses (well in advance, no moves for us in the immediate future). Would you like to know where? I bet you would! I'll save that for another day also. Mostly because no decisions have been made.

Ok well that's enough non-information for one day. Tomorrow promises to be yet another insane day at work, so I need to go get some sleep here pretty soon.

Hope all is well with all of you!!

What ends world hunger? Llamas do.

2009-10-21T11:38:00.000-07:00

Reason number 32849 why I like being married:

(Conversation had on the phone with Patrick when I came home for lunch today.)

Me: You got a Christmas magazine from Heifer International in the mail today.
Patrick: Who?
Me: Heifer International. Apparently you could end world hunger.
Patrick: Oh yeah? How?
Me: Well, for one, you could buy a llama.
Patrick: Seriously? A llama?
Me: Yep. For $150. Or you could buy (get this) a share of llama for $20.
Patrick: I would never buy a share of llama. Only a whole llama.
Me: But that's not the only option. You could also purchase honeybees for $30 or a goat, or sheep, etc.
Patrick: Nope. My heart's set on the llama.

And that's my life, folks. In all seriousness, we will be purchasing a llama for those in need in Latin America.

By the way, the conversation started with my attempt to discuss purchasing Christmas gifts that we need to buy a little earlier this year so we can spread out our spending a little bit. We never got past the llamas.

Hope everyone is having a fabulous week!

Caleb Elijah Greene

2009-10-21T11:35:00.001-07:00

I'm a little late... but here's the latest. Sweet Caleb. Seriously. 4 baby boys. I love them all!

My life is full of sweet baby boys!!

2009-09-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

Doesn't the mommy look fabulous?! What a sweet happy family!

Justus Cade Loucks.

8 lb 9 oz.

another (not quite so) little man!

2009-09-16T07:58:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the world Ryan Thomas Menger!

He's a cute little chunky thing isn't he?!

Congratulations Mengers!!

Today I wait...

2009-09-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

... in great suspense for Ryan Thomas Menger to enter the world. I have been checking their blog a little more than I probably should!

Can't wait!

flu season scares the crap out of me.

2009-09-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

Not because I have an irrational fear of sickness. Which, I do. But not of flu-like sickness. Of stomach-virus-like sickness.

Nope. The reason that I fear flu season is VERY rational... I have had the flu. Many people claim to have had the flu. They will call the common cold 'the flu.' Oh how very wrong they are. I got the flu last January (2008) and I have never, ever been so sick in my life.

Sidenote: Elijah was visiting College Station, where Patrick was living at the time, and so my sweet fiance couldn't tear himself away from his beloved city to come to Houston and tend to the flu. :-) No hard feelings. I believe he was finding out, that particular weekend, that his friends planned to take him to the Grand Canyon. And lets be honest, that's more fun than your flu-ridden fiance. Plus he did come eventually. 20 points for him even being near me at that time.

Anyway, I digress. I got the flu, as in I went to the doctor and tested positive. I couldn't even walk up and down the stairs. (I have a little bit of a beef with the doctor I visited who kept me at her office for a good hour after I tested positive before I finally left with my perscription. But I digress yet again.) I was given said perscription, had an allergic reation to it, broke out in a rash and threw up a lot (remember my insane fear of throw up?! worst. week. ever.), had to stop taking the medicine, and just battled it out with the flu for like 10 days or something. Oh and to add to the madness, when I called this wonderful doctor to inform her of the vomiting that I didn't experience until the medicine kicked in, her nurse told me "That's not possible. The medicine isn't that strong." Really... really?! I must be imagining it then. Then when I eventually broke out in a rash and went back into the doctor, they just told me I had to stop taking it and there was really nothing else I could do. Fabulous.

All of this happened before I had ever had a flu shot in my life. Now, my father swears against the flu shot. The only time he has ever gotten the flu was the only year he got a flu shot. And man did he get the flu... he was out of work for 11 days. And I can't remember another time in my life he took time off for being sick. However, the year that I got the flu, I had never gotten the shot. So I decided this past flu season (late 2008) to get the shot. Turns out I react to the shot also... surprise surprise. And had intense flu-like symptoms for a couple days which, although it's shorter than the actual flu (which I managed to avoid for that flu season), still sucks.

What a dilemma. They are bringing the people who do the flu shots into church in October and I will probably avoid it now that I know the result. I can imagine the call into work. 'Yes, this is Becky Gilgour. I will be out sick on October 5th and 6th. How do I know? Well I'm getting a flu shot on the 4th and my body is just weird.' So come February, I am so hoping to be doing the happy dance that I have managed to avoid the flu all on my own, without the terrible shot.

Phew. What a post about nothing.

On a much, much lighter and entirely more pleasant note, Patrick got me flowers for no apparent reason (other than he's great) on Saturday. And I'm about to go walk into the office and convince him we should go shopping. Hooray for long weekends!

Oh and I think I will probably bust out our fall decorations! Yes, the blazing heat rages outside my window at the moment, but it's September and I want to. Starbucks has brought out their fall stuff... so I basically have to follow suit. Right?

There's a new man in my life...

2009-08-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Paul Neilson. Is he the most handsome thing you've ever seen or what?

The happy Neilson family!

Seriously. He's a stud.

All I Can Say

2009-08-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

And didn't You see me cry'n?
And didn't You hear me call Your name?
Wasn't it You I gave my heart to?
I wish You'd remember
Where you set it down

This is all that I can say right now
This is all that I can give

I didn't notice You were standing here
I didn't know that
That was You holding me
I didn't notice You were cry'n too
I didn't know that
That was You washing my feet

And this is all that I can say right now
And I know it's not much
And this is all that I can give
That's my everything

-All I Can Say, David Crowder Band

Love. It.

Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya...

2009-08-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

... on vacation!!

Patrick and I took a very nice trip last week. We went to Orlando (ish) first to see my grandparents. They actually live in a very nice 55 and up neighborhood outside of Orlando. Then we spent the week at the beach in Gulf Shores, AL with my parents and sister.

It rained the day we had planned on going to this really neat wildlife park, but then there was a pretty rainbow!

This is me and Geemom. (Patrick has more pictures from this part of the trip that I'll post later.)

Our condo at the beach!

The balcony where wet sat and ate breakfast every morning.

View from our balcony

More of the condo grounds

Our room

Patrick went golfing four times while we were on this trip. Here's me driving the cart the one time I joined him.

Such a pro.

Reading on the beach

Patrick was a boogie board champ!

Pool time! This is the fam.

I missed the 'spitting water at you' photo opp. But I got close.

Packed to leave. :-(

We had SUCH a good time, and it was such a relaxing vacation. We're not settled in for long... Patrick leaves on the 16th for Philadelphia to do some training and I will be joining him up there on the 26th (10 days later... ugh) for some fun and extended family time! Have I mentioned I love summer?!

Pray!

2009-07-04T10:46:00.001-07:00

I don't know these people, but they need your prayers badly.

Please watch and pray.

http://bit.ly/dAMli

Seriously Major Congratulations to the Lands!!!

2009-06-26T23:06:00.000-07:00

Brice and Jeni's sweet Baby Ellie has made her entrance into the world.

Isn't she beautiful (mother AND daughter)?

I'm praying for God to scoot Kentucky a little closer to Texas so I can get a better look at her. :-)

Patrick's comment after we were both late to work so we could check out her pictures this morning: "It feels good to be an uncle." :-)

Congratulations, Lands!

PS Jeni has some amazing blogging/picture posting commitment. Pictures of them waiting in the hospital were posted before Ellie came, and pictures of Ellie after she was born came quickly. So exciting for those who are following! We love you!

2009-06-06T22:26:00.001-07:00

Warning: This is going to be one of my girly, rambling posts. Mostly because we watched a girly movie tonight and then I read a girly blog and Patrick is upstairs so I have taken over the entire downstairs level with estrogen and his testosterone is therefore confined to the upstairs leaving me forced to write all things girly. (Insert a comment from my husband about me being "slightly dramatic.")

I find that the older I get, the more I crave "girl time." Not that I DON'T crave husband time, I definitely do. I can't imagine not having that time, but you know the whole living together thing does tend to encourage togetherness. Hooray for that... I love my husband and thoroughly enjoy living with him and being the lucky girl who gets to get up and go to bed with him daily. That being said... the further we go, the more I realize how much God has created in me a need for girls. I think part of it is my desire to feel needed. You know... how it feels nice when someone is going through something and needs someone to be there and they call you. Love to feel needed.

Tonight, we watched a movie and ate Twizzlers and Milk Duds, which takes me to a number of times that I did that with a friend who I no longer have a relationship with. I don't let go of things like that easily. I don't mean that I stay angry for a long time because I really don't... I am terrible at staying mad. I mean that I don't let go well. I really dislike change, and I don't do well letting go of people or places or things or traditions or ways of doing things or really anything at all. That's also not to say that this is something I'm constantly dwelling on; just something that's crossing my mind tonight.

On a completely different note, I'd like to get some outdoor dishes to go with our new (to us) outdoor furniture. I figured this would be primetime for that, but everywhere I've looked doesn't have a full set of anything. Just like 2 plates of one thing, two bowls of another, etc. So if anyone happens to know of a place with cute outdoor dishes that aren't crazy expensive, I'd love to hear about it!

Also, how is it that weekends go by SO fast?! (Thanks to my sweet husband for spending a lot of it running errands with me that I know wouldn't have been his first choice, fully engaged the whole time!)

That's enough for now.

Patrick-FULL week!!

2009-06-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

He's home. :-)

Well ok, he's been home since Saturday (almost a FULL day earlier than expected, super exciting for me!) but it's still nice.

And in celebration of being back to normal, I have cooked the last two nights. Seriously! I know, it doesn't seem like something exciting to those of you cook-ers. But I'm not one of you, and for the most part cooking frustrates me because I get home from work tired and not at all in the mood for making a meal. But I have cooked twice, one incredibly successful, one not too bad.

I turned the always-a-favorite chicken crescent roll-ups into a casserole on Monday night. Patrick hasn't stopped talking about it since. He's got a weird obsession with casseroles, and when I turned his favorite food into a casserole well... he was excited, to say the least. I have to agree, it was good. We just finished it up at lunch today.

Because I know you were dying to hear, my perception of casserole is slightly different. I was discussing this with a friend on Friday night, and casseroles weird me out a bit. I guess if they're my own it's fine because I know what's in them. But a stranger's casserole... there's no telling. I don't love biting into a casserole trying to guess what's in there. Plus, the idea of throwing whatever we have in the pantry in an oven-safe dish and covering it in cheese until it bakes golden on the top and then calling it a meal is something that he is much more comfortable with than I am. But anyway, I digress. (For a humorous casserole blog entry of someone much funnier than I am, click here.)

Speaking of lunch... Patrick's working really close to home right now and he's come home for lunch three days in a row!!! (For those of you who don't know, I live about 2 minutes from where I work so I'm home for lunch fairly often.) The only problem with that is that I get used to it and when he moves projects it's really a bummer that he can't come home anymore. But for now, lunches at home are excellent. Especially when they are yummy leftovers.

I am in baby shower (for other people, NOT myself) whirlwind mode. Baby shower one of five (four of which I am contributing to throwing) is coming up in a couple weeks, and we have a lot done for it. I'm pumped! Everything is so cute and tiny! (Well ok, it's baby shower 2 of 6. But Jeni's came way earlier. Check out her post.. isn't she such a cute, glowing pregnant lady??)

Oh, and I'm a couple days late, but here's a shout out to my sweet cousins/flower girls whose birthday was a few days ago.

Happy birthday Erin and Jamie!!!

(PS They have grown a ton since last year but I couldn't get any new pictures to work. Aren't they cute?!)

Have a fantastic rest of the week!!

Becky

Patrick-less week

2009-05-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

I (Becky) have been on my own this week. Patrick is with his friends on a trip to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, so since Sunday morning I've been doing my own thing. (Somewhat. We have talked a ton!)

What a learning experience. I was unsure what this would be like, as I don't think we've spent a night apart since we got married. First lesson: I have fabulous friends and family who have kept me incredibly busy doing lots of fun things since the moment he left. I had lunch with my mom and sister after church Sunday and then hung out with my fantastic (adult) small group on Sunday night until 11 or so. Monday morning I did some cleaning up from Birthday Week (which was a HUGE success, by the way!) and some laundry, saw Star Trek with my family, then got a pedicure with Denise. Tuesday night the Mengers had me over for dinner and fun conversation. (Super yummy tortilla soup, I might add.) Wednesday was the last week of church for my (teenage) small group. It was a good time. And tonight I get to see some sweet college friends that I have missed OH so much for way too long now. Tomorrow night is another visit with a friend with the possibility of a sleepover, and Saturday I am doing some baby shower planning for some friends and then maybe outlet mall shopping with my mom. PHEW! Then Patrick is back on Saturday night!!!

Work has been a little crazy too which keeps me occupied during the day. And it was a 4 day work week which is always a plus. I am very thankful that he has not traveled for work like we thought he probably would when he took this job. That would be no fun at all. He is going to preteen camp in July, but it's a much shorter trip and much closer to home.

Lesson two: I talk a lot. :-) I'm used to having him around to talk to all the time, so when he calls at night I'm talking his ear off. Isn't there some statistic about the number of words that females need to get in on a daily basis? I think I meet it.

Lesson three: I have gotten pretty much nothing done that I intended to get done while he was gone. The house is not as clean as I intended, and there were lots of errands I have not accomplished. Oh well!

On another note, I used "Kaboom with the power of Oxi" on our shower and it's fantastic but makes my hands feel funny. Note to self: the power of Oxi is strong. Use gloves.

Alrighty, that's enough. I will post a separate Birthday Week post, complete with pictures for your viewing pleasure. Try to hold back your excitement. :-)

Have a wonderful weekend!!

Hubs

2009-05-17T19:06:00.001-07:00

I have to brag on Patrick a little bit. I realize that this is mostly for our sake more than yours, and that's ok. But you should know what a wonderful husband I have.

This is not a huge secret, but when we first got married it was a tiny bit of a rocky start. We could go back even further and say our engagement started with a VERY rocky start, but I'll leave that for another day. We did not give ourselves enough time to find a place to live, so when we moved into the townhouse we live in now in the couple days before the wedding, it needed some help before it was liveable. A "maid" claimed to have cleaned the place. She even left us a list of the things she had "done." It was a load of bologna. The house was filthy. I will not even make you read about it. Just picture filthy and you've got a general idea. In addition, they didn't manage to paint before we moved in. The entire place (considering the dirty-ness) needed to be repainted. Should have happened on our honeymoon but alas, it did not. We came home from our honeymoon to find that they had turned off our electricity, and the house was not painted. So we went and took a nap at my parents and came back "home." It took them some time to paint the whole place, so everything we owned stayed in boxes. We had gotten new couches, and they stayed wrapped in plastic in the middle of our living room. Our bedroom furniture was all pushed to the middle of the room and we lived out of boxes. Let's just say, I didn't handle the whole thing well. I needed to get clothes to wear to work, but I SO did not want to be at "home" that I only got one outfit at a time from my parents house so that I HAD to go back. :-) It gets worse than that, but I'll spare you the details.

Despite the earliest days, I am very blessed with a beautiful, healthy marriage to an incredible husband. He is so sweet to me. I will look up from reading a magazine (usually an issue of Real Simple that he has picked up on his way home to surprise me) and he'll just be smiling at me from across the room. He tells me how beautiful I am constantly, and he tells me I'm a wonderful wife daily, even though it's usually in the face of 27 loads of laundry I've been putting off and two weeks without a REAL homemade meal. (I mean, I make a mean spaghetti, but does that count?) He stays up later than he prefers to talk to me, even though his ideal evening would include getting in bed and immediately being asleep. He delays leaving in the morning as long as possible, and oohs and ahhs over the lunch I've made him (nevermind that it's a turkey sandwich). He's going on a trip to the Tetons next week, and although I know he is beside himself with excitement, he keeps reminding me how much he'll miss me.

Like I said, I know that's sort of a blog post that doesn't do much for the readers, but I just wanted to get it out there how very blessed I am.

Speaking of, I am mid-birthday week. We went shopping on Friday night, which turned out VERY well for me and the owners of Ann Taylor Loft. Then Saturday I got roses and dinner with his family. Which also included gifts from them, including some super cute flip flops that I wore to church today! Today I got grapples. If you don't know what that is, it's an apple with some grape flavor, and it's DELICIOUS. We never buy them because they are insanely overpriced, but I got some today. :-) I also got waffles made from waffle mix from the Gunther House. (If you're ever in San Antonio, you have to go out there. No questions asked.) Tonight we celebrated with our small group, and I got a yummy angel food cake and a sweet card. Then we headed out early for an Andrew Peterson concert. So far, birthday week rocks. This week also rocks because I am leaving work early on Friday. SO many good things going on right now!

Did I mention how blessed I am???

PS 68 days to vacation. :-)

Pictures!

2009-05-12T14:54:00.001-07:00

This one is the crazy flooding. Actually, this is the week before the crazy flooding. Our street just REALLY likes standing water. Lucky us!

This one is Patrick with his mom on Mother's Day eve! We went to the Astros game.

They did fireworks for the occasion. Actually, they kept saying "Tonight we will do a special edition of our Friday night fireworks for Father's Day!" Hm.

That's Patrick's mom opening her gifts.

(Do you love our green paint?? We do!)

Sunday was Mother's Day with my mom, and then yesterday we went to Le Mistral for my mom's birthday. And my dad took some pictures, so I'll have to steal them.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day! This week has been good so far, and tonight I just might get a pedicure. :-)

9 days to my birthday!!

72 days to vacation!!!

Back from blogging sabbatical!

2009-04-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

WOW! So much going on since my last post.

We are both fully recovered from the longest cold ever. Thank goodness. And neither of us have swine flu, AND despite the fact that our street flooded in a major way like I have never seen before during all the rain earlier this week, it did not get in the house, did not get in our cars, and receded nicely for us to get to work on time the next day. (Ok, so the last part's a bummer, but we are very glad we had no damage/flooding to speak of.) I will post pictures of the flooding we had in our street LAST week, and then you can just imagine it being twice as bad this week. Literally. Plus, Chris and Leslie lost power, so Leslie had to come hang out in our air conditioned house and give up her attempts at reading by candlelight. :-) So that was also good times.

Patrick and I are doing some serious vacation planning, and I am beside myself with excitement! Ideally, there will be a trip to Disney/the beach in July, and a trip to Baltimore in August. Patrick has to go to Philadelphia for work at the end of August, and since his plane tickets are paid for, I figured I would tag along to see the family! So excited.

Also, Leslie helped us paint the downstairs of our house. (Pictures to come!) She is amazing. Patrick and I don't love painting, and last time we painted we did not like each other at the end quite as much as we had at the beginning. :-) But this time was painless, and the color (with Leslie's recommendation) looks great. We love it! The next order of business was our bedroom, accomplished sans Leslie this week. Let's just say, the color looks amazing, and next time we will wait on Leslie. :-)

This weekend is Mother's Day and and then my mom's birthday right after that. I pretty much finished everything Mother's Day related today at lunch, which is being very on top of things for me.

Tonight was a date night. We did Panera and then tried out Fresco, a new frozen yogurt place by our semi new HEB. It was SO yummy! Different, but yummy. And not cheap. But yummy. And with really short chairs. But yummy.

I will start a countdown to vacation soon, no worries! Did I mention I can't wait??? Oh, and my birthday is in 14 days. :-) We can go ahead and start that one now.

Time to take a bath, read some Twilight, and then cuddle!

Glorious lack of stuffiness!

2009-04-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

We are FINALLY recovering from this cold Patrick and I have been passing to each other for giong on 2 weeks. Thank goodness.We keep alternating days of one of us feeling better than the other, so at least usually one of us is able to keep the house from being a complete disaster. (As long as a complete disaster doesn't include kleenex strewn all over the house. Well ok, toilet paper. We don't have any kleenex and going to the store hasn't been on my list of priorities since the illness occurred.)

We have quite the weekend upon us. My parents are on a little mini vacation, so they left town this morning and we have my sister until tomorrow when we take her to Disciple Now. So tonight will entail a little bit of shopping that I need to do, going to Lowe's to pick out paint colors (we both absolutely hate painting so that should be good times), finding some dinner, and going to get the dog. (We get the dog for the weekend too.) Then tomorrow is work, get Anjela from school, take her home to do homework, back to work, back home, possible wii time with Levi, taking Anjela to Disciple Now, waiting 2 hours, driving 10th grade girls to the Yaws for Disciple Now, and possibly spending the night at my parents because Libby (dog) doens't do so hot at our house overnight. Saturday is Jeni's baby shower (yay!), possibly painting, more Disciple Now transportation, possible Miller Outdoor Theater. And Sunday we have more Disciple Now transportation, church, maybe more painting, and small group (which is themed kosher/miracle/biblical/Middle Eastern foods including a passover meal). Should be interesting!

I stayed home from work sick on Monday and listened to three of Mark Driscoll's sermons. Mark and I don't quite see eye-to-eye on everything, but in general I enjoyed some of it. I will say he often has an interesting choice of clothes. He's a fan of patchy jeans and the Avril Lavigne wristband/bracelet type things. But anyway. It worked for me laying in bed until 1:30.

The main point of this post is that we are feeling better and really excited!

Happy Easter.

2009-04-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain
Holy, holy is He
Sing a new song to Him Who sits on Heaven's mercy seat

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come
With all creation I sing praise to the King of kings
You are my everything, and I will adore You

Clothed in rainbows of living color
Flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder
Blessing and honor, strength and glory and power be
To You, the only wise King

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come
With all creation I sing praise to the King of kings
You are my everything, and I will adore You

Filled with wonder, awestruck wonder
At the mention of Your Name
Jesus, Your Name is power, breath and living water, such a marvelous mystery

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come
With all creation I sing praise to the King of kings
You are my everything, and I will adore You

-Revelation Song by Gateway Worship
(I strongly strongly suggest you listen to the song if you haven't heard it for yourself.)

**Update: the song is on my playlist now as you can all tell, so the comment about listening to it yourself can be disregarded. I still suggest you listen, but right here is good. :-)

Nappetizer

2009-04-09T16:13:00.001-07:00

I (Patrick) haven't been feeling too great these last two days. That's tough for me to admit.
I came home from work today and crashed. I just got in my recliner and could not keep my eyes open. I took a nap. And woke up to dinner my wife had made. Simply, that was the best nap ever.

I'm such a lucky guy!

Ethan Allen on an Ebay budget

2009-04-08T19:07:00.000-07:00

You know how there are times when you really want something (a tangible something), and you think about it and think you really should have it, and then you see someone who has lost something that REALLY matters and all of a sudden the thing you wanted is meaningless? I (Becky) had one of those moments this week. The details of the story really don't matter, except that I keep reminding myself "In ten years, when I am (hopefully) wiping noses and all that, will I really care if I had ? Nope." "If I found out tomorrow that Patrick had terminal cancer, would I care if we could buy a house with a fireplace? Nope." Phew.

It's Easter week. Tonight in youth, there was a presentation of the time leading up to Jesus' death and what he chose to do with his time, and a point was made that I found really intriguing. If I knew that I had a day to live, I would not choose to go off to a quiet place by myself and pray. I would soak up every remaining moment with my husband and family and friends. I would see life completely differently, of course, but it would not once cross my mind to get away by myself. I would immerse myself in people. How human of me is that?? I don't really have anywhere else to go with that.

If you don't ever listen to Ben Stuart's Breakaway podcasts, I truly believe you are missing out.

I would like to share with you something that God has done for us. I have honestly typed this numerous times and erased it because it feels like bragging. But that's not my intention. Patrick and I, as you all know if you have read our earlier blogs, took the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace class before (and a couple weeks after) we got married. We decided to really try to make wise decisions with our money. Since that decision, God has seriously guarded our money. It is absolutely crazy. One of our first purchases was a kitchen butcher block type thing. We invited our whole small group over, and we absolutely did not have nearly enough counter space to put food for 14 people. So we decided to buy this butcher block, went to the store to buy it, they didn't have it. We didn't have time to shop around, and I was actually really disappointed because people were coming over!!! Then we found the exact same one for half the price, basically unused, on Craigslist.

When we started looking to rent or buy, things miraculously fell into place. I kid you not, miraculously. We intended to look to rent, and then this place to buy fell into our laps. It was this dirt cheap place, needed some fixing up, and we absolutely fell in love with it. We left, took about an hour (yeah... only an hour... dumb.) to think about it, and decided we actually really might want to make an offer. We called our real estate agent, and (you are not going to believe this) the place had been on the market for I think like 8 months. Between the hour that we looked at it and decided to start talking about an offer, a person went in and offered cash and bought the place. Whoa. We were like "ok, I think that's a definite sign" and looking back it was a huge blessing. We did not need that house, and if we had bought it we would be stuck in it right now. Also, when negotiating the rent for the townhouse we live in, we planned to only rent for 6 months and then buy. (I don't know why we were in SUCH a hurry.) So we went through the whole contract with the lady and said 6 months, and then like 3 days before we were supposed to start moving stuff in, she said forget it I'll only do a year. WHAT a blessing! She lowered the price even more to do it for a year, and now that it's been a year we still need more time!

Our most recent example is another blows-me-away type. Patrick has wanted a desk for awhile. He wants a 'man room' and that was our guest bedroom/office. But the sparse furniture in there really didn't quite give off an office vibe. The "desk" was super tiny, so we started looking around. He found one that he wanted at Ikea, and I went and looked at it. He had gone before me with the intention to buy it. I said I really just wasn't comfortable buying it right then, and we left. I found the desk for less than half the price on Craigslist, listed with a bookshelf. Patrick emailed the guy, and he said he would sell it without the bookshelf but wouldn't lower the price. We said no thanks. A few months ago, a friend of our parents had mentioned getting rid of some (very nice, expensive) furniture. We didn't give it much though because we really hadn't budgeted to even spend the Craigslist price of this kind of furniture. We didn't think we could offer them anything close to what the furniture was worth. Well then a couple weeks ago, they said they would give it to us. Yes, you read that right... GIVE it to us. This amazing, beautiful desk... given to us.

It just continues to amaze me that the more patient we are, the more blessed. The more we remind ourselves that we don't really HAVE to have these things, the more we are blessed. Again, I don't want you to read this and think "well woo hoo, lucky you. you have stuff." That's not the point. We are so very thankful for the blessings we have received from being so diligent with our decision to make wise financial choices.

Happy Easter week! I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon and get off work early on Friday so I don't have any more full days of work this week and I am pumped.

Love you! Seriously, though. Love you.

I'm a change hater and a coffee smell lover.

2009-04-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

I (Becky) really wish I liked coffee. I absolutely love the way it smells. Patrick is a coffee-lover, so he always gives me his to smell. I could probably go to Starubucks and sit and smell coffee for a long time.

I have been reading scripture on Bible gateway lately. I used to be somewhat against this for no apparent reason other than I am completely 100% against change of any kind, and Bible gateway scripture reading is not my traditional way of reading scripture, so it must be wrong. Apparently not. (Do you see me as a strict rule-follower? I am. I also refuse to make guesses when it comes to measuring things for cooking. Everything must be measured. Except for milk in macaroni and cheese. I don't know what it is about mac and cheese, but I'm ok with guessing.)

Anyway, today, the reference started in Hebrews 12. The first three verses of Hebrews 12 happen to be some of my absolute favorite.

1Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Let us run witih perseverance the race marked out for us. Hm. This reminds me of another thing I have been pondering lately. I was reading something earlier today that intrigued me. It was a discussion of how when a child obeys without being asked, it is so much more meaningful than after being told what to do a hundred times. And how similar it is with God. When we just walk forward without having to be shown the way over and over, and without the knowledge that everything is going to be ok (the way WE see "ok"), and without constant worry about whether or not a step of faith means we're going to drown. Those times of obedience are so much more meaningful than that times that we labor over whether ot not we are willing to make the decision to follow, more meaningful than the times that we question for hours if God is REALLY going to come through. And I think that obviously the ability to step out in faith comes with practice. And comes with many experiences where we believe without seeing and God prevails.

But we love to worry, don't we? We love to weigh the 'worst case scenario.' I'm sure God loves that. I'm sure he loves that we think "Well I COULD trust God with the decision of whether or not to buy a house and quit worrying about it, but what if that means we totally miss this great opportunity in the market and we miss the great interest rates and we wind up not being able to afford anything because we waited too long and prices went up and now we have to rent until ETERNITY and our children will never have a home or we will have to buy cheap and wind up in a neighborhood that's not a good investment in the long run and therefore we are wasting our money!' Now that's faith, right? How much more meaningful would it be if, immediately upon being faced with the decision of whether to extend our lease, I said "God will take care of this and it will turn out exactly how it's supposed to. We will pray about it and be at peace with a decision." Phew. And how much less stressed I would personally be.

Speaking of wasting "our" money, our pastor has been doing a wonderful financial series lately about "our money" not ever being "ours" anyway. I am not at all a spender. It physically hurts me to spend large amounts of money. Don't get me wrong... I don't have problems with giving money. I love to give. I mostly love to give presents, but I am also very content to give money. We are so very very grateful to be able to give money to our church and several other ministries that we believe in. But I think that I would worry less (do you see a trend here?) about money if I remembered more often that it wasn't my money to begin with. If we gave every penny we had to our church, the rent would somehow get paid. We would still eat and drink. The jars of oil would overflow, and we would be content. I don't know exactly how it would work out, but we would be taken care of. God has actually made some financial decisions without us already up to this point. We have tried to go one direction... he shut the door in our faces... and his door had WAY better things behind it. More of that to come.

Would you think I was a weirdo if I said that I would like to sit in Starbucks, drink vanilla chai (actually I prefer the brownie frappuccino but they don't make those anymore for some ridiculous reason and they keep me up all night no matter what time of day I drink them) and blog for a living? Weirdo or not, I'd take it.

Sorry for the major amount of rambling I have been doing lately. But I love you all.

Blog stalking-inspired soul searching

2009-03-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

Here is where some of my thoughts (Becky again) have been lately:

-Should we buy a house? I am torn in a thousand directions on this. We wanted to have more money saved before we bought, for one. We planned to wait another year, for two. Rates are ridiculously low (and I currently work for a mortgage company), there is an excellent tax credit, and many cheap houses to be had. Plus, Obama says go for it. (That's a joke. Kinda. He really says go for it but I'm really not listening.) We are completely priced out of the area we are in. This is a bummer and leads to more decisions. We love the area because it has everything so close, and it's so so close to I10, and Patrick's commute when he is downtown is pretty easy. But we absolutely can not afford the houses in the area. So where to buy? Further in is (in most places) more expensive and further from church. Further out starts to really stretch it for a commute. We could buy a house further out for so so so cheap and that is so tempting! But does that make sense for us? And do market conditions mean this is the right time to buy FOR US? I don't know! (Side note: We don't plan to buy right now. Hopefully closer to the end of the year, it depends on what we can do with our current lease.)

-Friendships. This is presenting a very new situation for me. The majority of my friends in all areas of my life are having babies. Patrick and I are totally not there right now, and we are on the same page with that. But come July to December-ish, a lot of our friendships will change a lot. I am THRILLED about this! I love babies, I'm just not craving one of my own right now. I love babies I can give back! I'm really excited to see all these new babies and who they will be and how cute they will be and be a part of their lives. But it definitely means a change for us, and a large change in our current small group. So those are changes coming up that we don't really know what they will look like. Exciting but so new and different. (Another side note: I am feeling very lucky that I get to see other people experience the whole pregnancy/birth/baby/toddler/etc. stages before me so I can get a better idea of what that's like before I am ready to go there.) On the other hand, I have three beautiful bridesmaids without babies on the way who are in Houston and rarely seen, and that makes me a slacker of a friend. I need to get on that.

-What are my long-term plans as far as work? I hesitate to even write this because I really don't know who all reads this and I don't want to give off the impression that I am going to up and quit. But in the long run, what do I want to do as far as working full-time? I'm torn on this too. "Taking care" of my family, present and future, seems like it could mean a lot of different things. On the one hand, I'd love to be home more to not just want to crash at the end of the day, to make dinner, to get errands run. On the other hand if/when I do stop working or work less, it means definite sacrifices. The vacation fund will be quite a bit smaller I am sure, for one. And I currently am a chronic counter downer to vacation. And I feel like I would think I had to have everything perfectly taken care of to feel like I was holding up my end of the deal. Which I know myself well, and I know that I would fail at keeping everything together all the time. Probably within about a day. Maybe less.

Anyway, I think that's about enough life issues for one night! Feel free to voice an opinion or empathize or object.

Tomorrow is FRIDAY! HOORAY for the weekends! (In case you haven't previously noticed, I am also a counter downer to the weekends. So Thursday nights are quite the milestone.)

What's in a name?

2009-03-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

I've (Becky) been doing some serious blog stalking this week. I was on someone's blog that I sorta know, followed a link from theirs to another blog, and from that person's blog to a third person's blog. Third person is an excellent writer with a great story, and I've been blog stalking since I found her. She invites people to blog stalk, so that makes me feel a little less weird.

Am I the only blog stalker? I doubt it. There are a number of people whose blogs I check every now and then that I really barely know who probably don't know that I check.

As weird as this may sound, I plan to change my part of the blog posts some now that I've read hers. Her blog is full of vulnerability, and so I have decided that some of my posts will be a little bit more about who I am than previous ones. Some will just be goofy ones, some just random reports about what we're doing. But some will step it up a notch.

You can expect Patrick to continue blogging about his love of bacon. :-) And rightfully so, as that is actually quite an important part of who he is.

I met a girl at church a couple of weeks ago and she goes 'Is your last name Palmour?' and I said 'Yes it is! Wait.. no. It's not. It used to be.' Can I say that changing your name is just weird? Your name is something you get kinda used to. Somewhat attached to.

It goes to important places with you. My name has a little more history than some. Rebecca Lynn Palmour actually was not given to anyone at birth. My name, Rebecca Lynn Nelson, was given to me, obviously, on May 21, 1985. Then years later, my name followed me and changed a little to Rebecca Lynn Palmour. (Only really lucky Rebecca Lynn Nelson Palmour Gilgour's get two pretty impressive dads!) Then Rebecca Lynn Palmour got accepted into the gifted and talented program in elementary school. It followed me still to the ninth grade were Rebecca Lynn Palmour made the Langham Creek High School cheerleading squad. It stamped itself onto my my first driver's license on my 16th birthday. Rebecca Lynn Palmour's passport let me into Europe for an amazing study abroad while I was in college. It goes to graduation from high school and college, where Rebecca Lynn Palmour walked the stage for two degrees from the greatest university in the world. It goes to my wedding day where Rebecca Lynn Palmour took Patrick Lundy Gilgour to be her wedded husband.

And then one day it changes. (Or if you're me and not very organized, it changes on multiple days as you very slowly change your social security card, license, debit cards, health insurance card, etc. I'm actually still not done with that process.) Anyway, it's weird.

And on a random Sunday morning, Rebecca Lynn Gilgour forgets for a second that's her name, and has to take a second to remember exactly who she is. Isn't that just a crazy phenomenon?

tv talk

2009-03-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

Patrick and I are into SVU. Usually, new ones come on after The Biggest Loser on Tuesday nights. Apparently tonight was some kind of important Biggest Loser because we did not have a new SVU. Bummer.

We are considering getting a tivo. I (Becky) am cheap. I don't like anything that involves extra monthly expenses, even though they are small. We follow several shows, but that's not really the reason for the tivo. The plan is to restrict tv watching to an hour a night, and just watch our specified show (if we have one that day) and spend the rest of the evening being more productive or having more quality time together and/or with others. So we will record the shows we follow and watch them in the designated time and then the tv goes off. I won't lie, sometimes after work I am totally drained and camp out on the couch. So we shall see.

Tivo or no tivo? Your thoughts?

Revisiting/Revising my Resolutions

2009-03-23T16:51:00.000-07:00

I (Becky) revisited my post about New Years resolutions. I said that I wanted to be more physically active (check) make better use of lists (check) and take care of small things instead of putting them off (usually check). I've added a new one. I am going to invest more in relationships. At least that is my goal. It seems like in college that was so much easier. I had roommates, so of course I saw them. And I had scheduled events and meetings weekly where I saw the majority of my friends. But it turns out I'm not very good at maintaining friendships that aren't quite as convenient as they used to be. But that is not my intention! So I am remedy-ing it. Not completely sure what it looks like yet, but I'm on it.

On another note, we have yet another pregnant friend! More to come.

Like a Young Adult at the Deli Counter

2009-03-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

If you know me (Patrick), you know I love to eat (almost) more than anything. My wife doesn't feel the same way, which sometimes becomes a source of tension between us. Becky eats to live, I live to eat. This, obviously, is most present at the grocery store. She goes in with a list and only wants to get those things. I want to walk to all of the counters and see what's going on.

Where this is most present is in our selection of lunch meats. Becky gets the same Hillshire Farms turkey in a box each week. Yes, I did say, "turkey in a box". I know, turkey does not come in a box. I eventually could no longer take this. I started going to the deli counter to get my own cold cuts.

But Patrick, isn't that more expensive? About a year ago, Becky and I read Smart Couple's Finish Rich. In this book, the author makes the argument that you should save wisely and identify several areas in life that are most important to you and spend your money on those things and filter out expenses that don't matter. I mean, that makes sense, right? Well, I've identified eating as one of my favorite things to do.

So it's okay that I spend marginally more money on these things. I spend more time on food, too. I plan vacations and evenings around eating. Some of my greatest moments are sharing meals with great friends.

Last week I got some great black forest ham and this week I chose pastrami.

Mmmmm, boy!

Spring Fake 2009!!

2009-03-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

Obviously, Patrick and I being out of college, we do not have a spring break. However, we have decided that we will pretend we do. So we have implemented Spring Fake 2009. We are doing something fun and out of the ordinary every day, staying up a little bit later than we usually do, planning to try out the pool at our townhouse complex, and I am taking some time off tomorrow to hang out with my mom and sister who are doing real spring break. So far, it has been a success.

Monday night, I had dinner with Michelle and Patrick went to the park. Then we went to Ikea and looked at desks. Then came home and watched Jon and Kate, of course. Then last night we had the Flicks over to play Wii and have some ice cream. (And we wore green all day of course, in honor of Saint Patrick's Day, and Patrick's Irish heritage.) Tonight we don't have church like we normally do since the kids are out of school, so another night open for something random and fun. The week hasn't been too crazy at work for me, so it's actually really worked out well to pretend we have spring break. :-)

Hope everyone who has a real spring break is savoring it. And happy (late) Saint Patrick's Day!

Campers extraordinaire!

2009-03-15T20:58:00.000-07:00

There is something those of you who know Patrick (and his extreme love of camping) well should know. He doesn't camp with me quite the same as during one of his hardcore Grand Canyon-type trips. I know that's surprising, but true. :-) He thinks of EVERYTHING. And it's a slightly more cushy trip. (In case you're not aware, camping is not so much my thing.) We left work early on Friday and headed for Stephen F Austin. It's actually relatively close to our house and a really nice park.

When we got there, Patrick unloaded everything, set up the tent (and hammock!), and started on dinner while I made up the bed.

I found it very amusing that the bed I made was just about identical to his bed in college. That's correct, in college he slept in a sleeping bag under that exact blanket. :-) Also, the yummy dinner on his new stove (thanks, Sid, Vicki, Philip, Kimberly, and Chloe!) includes baked beans in yet another birthday gift... the new camping pots.

And of course, what's a camping trip without s'mores? Stephen F Austin was under an extreme burn ban, so we made them over the stove!

We explored some before we went to bed. I got Patrick some kind of astronomy map of the stars thing that glows in the dark, so we spent a lot of time holding it up to the sky trying to find constellations!

This attempt at camping was far more successful than our last attempt. Last time, there was a very rowdy group of teenagers near us that never went to sleep. This time, the people around us were families and it was very nice.

In the morning, Patrick made us breakfast! Pancakes (he makes the mix before we leave to go camping and keeps it on ice), bacon, eggs, and coffee. (See?! I told you he thinks of everything.)

After breakfast, we did some exploring/hiking. There is a river that runs through the park, so we went down there to check it out.

After hiking, we came back and ate lunch, and then sat in the hammock and relaxed/talked until we had to give up our campsite.

All in all, it was an enjoyable trip. Relaxing, lots of yummy food, and Patrick was REALLY excited that I went and made it the whole time. :-)

Birthday week was a success.

Annnnd we're back!

2009-03-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

We have taken a sabbatical for quite some time now. I apologize. We are back.

Patrick's birthday week was such a whirlwind. I have been waiting for him to do a post about it, but he has been working a whole lot so I am picking up the slack.

As you know, we went to Missouri to visit his extended family and of course... there was pie.

Then on Monday night we did dinner with the Gilgours. (I have to apologize to them because I forgot my camera that night. I have some pictures from the week, but none from the Gilgour dinner. Sorry!) We had a wonderful steak dinner and, of course, pie. Blueberry apple peach, to be exact. Quite the feat. Everything was yummy and it was a very nice evening.

Tuesday was his actual birthday,

and despite my suggestions of a nice dinner out, he opted for Raising Cane's. Aside from the large group of squealing 14 year old girls that drowned out some of our conversation, and the fact that I am a die hard Lane's fan, it was nice. :-) We came home and watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and took a trip to Spec's to find the perfect adult beverage for him to top off the night. He would like it to be noted that he chose a Shiner commemorator.

Wednesday night we took a long walk at Terry Hershey Park. The weather was GREAT. We then tried out a restaurant near us, George's Pastaria. It is quite good actually.

Thursday night was dinner with the Palmours.

I decided Patrick should have some kind of cake for his birthday, so my mom made a gooey butter cake. This is my attempt at making the 23 candles into an apple shape, for obvious reasons.)

Of course the week had to be followed with camping, which I am going to make a post of its own. Camping was Friday night, dinner with Chris, Jon, and Bonnie was Saturday night, and then Sunday afternoon we went to Harris County Smokehouse with my dad and sister at his request. We just missed the breakfast menu which I think he was pretty disappointed about, but their barbeque is also quite delicious.

Quite the week!

Happy 8th monthiversary!

2009-03-05T07:12:00.000-08:00

This has been a big week! Missouri, Patrick's birthday festivities, and now our 8th monthiversary!

Am I a lucky girl or what?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PATRICK!

2009-03-03T06:57:00.000-08:00

What happens in King City, stays in King City

2009-03-01T20:04:00.000-08:00

This weekend we went to Missouri to see my family. My grandparents (dad's parents) live in a small town in northwest Missouri (both my mom's and dad's parents live here). They have a beautiful home that I love going to and never seems to change (follow the link for more).

From White Christmas

Their house covered in Snow, Christmas 2007

View Larger Map
Just how small? See for yourself.

We left after lunch on Thursday, landed in Kansas City, were promptly picked up by my wonderful grandparents, taken out to dinner at Cheddar's, and then shuttled to their house, our retreat for the weekend. We hung out for the rest of the evening and caught up on some news.

Friday morning we ate breakfast and went to visit my Great Grandma in St. Joe. We chatted for a few minutes, went to run some errands, and I somehow managed to con them into taking me out for pie. After pie, we went to see my Aunt Cathy and her cute grandson. That evening we went to my Aunt Kim's house (my mom's sister) for homemade pizza and to see all of them. It was great! I got to see all of my cousin's and their kids and hung out for a couple hours.

It snowed a lot late Friday night/ early Saturday morning, so we spent most of the day in the house. My grandpa (mom's dad) had the flu, so I went out to visit him for a few minutes on his farm in the country. Fun story: since we were only going up for a weekend, Becky and I packed really light. I had one pair of brown "casual shoes" that aren't tennis shoes, but aren't dress shoes, kind of a hybrid of both. So I went out to the farm in a T-shirt and my wool coat, basically was dressed like I was going to the mall. I get out to the farm and my grandpa wants to go close a gate about a mile away. Well, he was too sick to leave the house and I had a pretty good idea of where the gate was (I usually spend a day helping him on the farm when I have more time), so I went off to close the gate on my own. Here I am, walking in 6" of snow, dressed for the mall, heading out to the field to check cows and close gates! Needless to say, I looked like a complete idiot!

I got home Saturday evening and my Grandmother had made fried chicken and a coconut cream pie for dinner and dessert! It was fantastic! I did a little to earn my keep (put in a new showerhead and shoveled some snow), but nothing to deserve a pie that good.

Look at that pie! Mmmmmm

Sunday morning we woke up about 8, I had pie for breakfast (duh...), took a shower, packed, and we headed to Blue Springs to meet my uncles and aunts and cousins(dad's brother's and their wives and children) for lunch at a Chinese buffet. After lunch we went back to my Uncle Richard's house to watch the Missouri and Kansas basketball game. It was not a good day for Missouri. We left their house for the airport, were delayed getting home about an hour, and had an uneventful flight home.

It was a great weekend! I think Becky read about two years worth of my Grandmother's Martha Stewart magazines, so I kind of have my hopes up for a new recipe...

We had a great trip!

And it's not even my birthday yet!

2009-03-01T19:41:00.001-08:00

As Becky mentioned a few days ago, I did get a new toy. We have been in the market for a new TV for quite some time, essentially since we've been married.

Saturday we went to Ikea and got a nice entertainment center. They made a little mistake, I tossed them a line a la Dave Ramsey, and we went back first thing Sunday morning before church and picked up our entertainment center and $20. Thanks Dave! Our friend Abby is an incredible artist, so we are bartering our old entertainment center for some artwork with her and her husband, JT. (The best part of the whole deal is that I never having to move that honker again!)

Adios very large piece of furniture!

A little backstory: When we married in July, my brother was still at home and had not moved out yet. Our plan was to borrow his TV until he left for school. (You can see where this is going...) That didn't happen. We mooched on his TV for way too long.

We had been given some Christmas money and had been saving a bit, so last Sunday we headed off to Costco to make me a happy man. Well, we get to Costco and they didn't have the TV I wanted. I was trying to be bratty, I had my eye on a specific Vizio. They had one floor model left and they weren't going to mark it down, so I passed.

Here we go!

Monday night I drove Michael's TV to him with Chris and met Jon, Daniel, Trent, and Michael at Chicken Oil in Bryan for some greasy cheeseburgers (Oh, how I miss College Station and that place!).

Tuesday I headed straight to Costco after work, this time to decide between the Vizio and another Panasonic. I got there, took a look at them, and discovered this: the Sony next sitting next to them, while a little more expensive, is a much better picture. The Sony was too good a deal to pass up, so I bit. I got a tremendous deal on a discontinued floor-model (approx. 45% off). It looks great, don't you think?

Welcome home!

My dad came over and helped me unload her and stuck around to watch me get her going.

I'm a proud papa...

Nothing like breaking in a new TV with Jinger Duggar!

a big tuesday night!

2009-02-24T20:41:00.000-08:00

We got a new toy. I'll let Patrick tell you about it though because it's really his toy.

It is not good for man to be alone (and hungry)

2009-02-20T20:09:00.000-08:00

I had scrapple, bacon, and eggs for dinner. Becky was busy with some girl stuff, so I was left unattended and hungry.

I think when God said it wasn't good for man to be alone, I think it's because he knew we would make every meal like this and die at a young age. Again, I apologize for the cruddy cell phone pictures.

My tool shed

2009-02-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

I have a baby. Let me show her to you:

From Blogger Pictures

Isn't she beautiful?

(Sorry for the cruddy cell phone picture).

This is my tool shed. She is the keeper of my expanding tool collection. You see, when we first moved in, she was nothing more than an outdoor junk closet. The landlady was keeping junk in it. The first thing I did was 1) move the junk worth keeping to the attic and 2) throw the junk not worth keeping to the curb. After that, she was just a shell stripped down to the studs.

My first step was the pegboard. I've always wanted a place to hang my tools on a peg board, so I bought one with some gift cards and put one up.

After that, I just had some stuff accumulate, nothing fancy. Then I took some scrap wood from the butcher block project and made some shelves, which helped get some stuff off the floor. I even made a shelf for some speakers so I can hook up my iPod while I'm outside working! One of tomorrow's projects is to work on the cable management so it looks clean. I also used a hook I got at my tool shower as a way to store my drill!

what a week!

2009-02-19T19:30:00.000-08:00

We've been taking it easy this week. Patrick's been sick until today, and now I am not feeling so hot. :-(

So pretty much we've been relaxing and ignoring the 80% stained coffee table in the living room. The weekend will be spent getting ready as much as we can for Missouri (where we are heading a week from today!) so that I can work a lot next week before we go.

Maybe next week we'll have something exciting going on! Thank goodness it's almost the weekend.

This is hard work! Part One of Three or Four.

2009-02-14T16:54:00.000-08:00

When I was a freshman in college, the guys I lived with in ramp J of T.O. Walton Hall played this game, "Generals: Command and Conquer". You were supposed to try to build an army and defeat the enemy. You could build runways for jets, underground tunnels for troops, and bunkers for artillery. I was never any good, but I watched them play a lot. Your construction guys were basically slave labor and when they had been building for a while they always said, "This is hard work!" It was very robotic-esque and sounded like, "Thees es haurd wurk!" Now, whenever I'm hot, tired, and completely worn out, I say that to myself like the little slaves from Generals: This is hard work!

I tell you that because I said that to myself today. It's a Saturday. I shouldn't be saying things like that! I know, but it's Valentine's Day. In an effort to woo my bride I took it upon myself to try to extend my talents by offering to re-stain our coffee table as a gift. This morning, after Becky made me some excellent bacon and eggs and blueberry muffins, sipping my coffee, and after reading up on Ralph and Nadine McCampbell of Island City, Missouri, we went to Lowe's, yes Lowe's, to pick out our stain and buy the necessary supplies.

Becky picked out a great stain, while I found some 80 grit sandpaper to remove the old stain and some semigloss polyurethane to finish up with. After stopping by Becky's parents to borrow their sander again, we came home and I got to work. I don't have the most ideal working conditions. I do not have an enclosed garage or saw horses. I only have a covered car port, a nickel in my pocket, and a dream. Maybe that's too dramatic.

I got started sanding. It took me about an hour and half to get it where it needed to be to stain. I took a quick break, had Becky give her approval, and started staining the top. I put a coat on, sanding it with some 220, then applied another coat of stain. As of now, it's in our living room with the top stained and the rest sanded down. It looks very cottage-like, so I thought I'd show Becky and give her the option of taking it as is or having me finish staining it.

I think I will finish staining it tomorrow and give it a good sanding. Small group was canceled tomorrow evening, so I may even be able to put on a coat of polyurethane.

Check out some of the pictures below:

We never posted Christmas pictures.

2009-02-13T19:39:00.000-08:00

This was our first married Christmas! Watch the slideshow carefully. On the picture where Becky is really laughing hard, it's because I only wrapped the top half of the box when we ran out of wrapping paper. :-)

We did our VDay-ing a day ahead. Take that Hallmark!

2009-02-13T19:20:00.001-08:00

This is Patrick. Let me say something that may make the world hate me. I have mixed feelings on VDay. I think the whole idea has become over commercialized, much like Christmas and Easter. However, Christmas and Easter are important celebrations central to our faith. On the other hand, Valentine's Day is only central to Hallmark's 1Q financial report.

I don't mean to be cynical, I really don't. In fact, I read a great blog on VDay this morning, making me neutral. I am not opposed to the idea of taking a day to rekindle romance and let someone know how much they mean to you. I am opposed to the current-day chocolate and card obligation with the intention of merely checking off a holiday to-do list.**

I know how much Becky desires to be pursued. After a good Google Chat with Chris, I walked away (rather, signed off) knowing that our wives only want to feel thought of, not robotically Kroger-outdoor-flower-stored.

I digress. After having these mixed feelings for several days, I decided to buck our routine Valentine's Day. Instead of buying her chocolates and taking her out to dinner, I decided to make her a romantic dinner and let her know that I care about her.

I went to Costco on my lunch break, picked out a few fine selections, and got stuck behind some foreigners who made me late back to work. On my way home I stopped and got a few more items. Before Becky got home I had the white table cloth and china out on our table. She was pretty excited. We were both much more excited than our usual Valentine's Day entitlement attitude.

I made a roast, garlic mashed potatoes, some rice, a salad, and I made brownies for dessert! Please enjoy the pictures below.

**Disclaimer: If you take time to get your significant other (s.o.) a nice gift with the intent of woo-ing them, please do.

You can't steam out those wrinkles. Or is that plaid?

2009-02-12T19:42:00.000-08:00

(I failed on that title, sorry.)

Tonight Becky and I listened to a Ben Stewart podcast on marriage. It was good. I'll be honest, I didn't pay attention as well as Becky did because I was making dinner at the same time. Dinner was good, though! (FYI, the creamy tomato-alfredo hybrid isn't all it's hyped up to be.)

After dinner we went to Marshall's. I'll be the first to admit I love Marshall's. It's in my top five favorite stores, behind REI, Costco, Apple Store, and HEB-Central Market. Each time (and each store) is different. Plus, it's just so stinking cheap. It'd be foolish not to shop there. I got two new pairs of cool pants! One pair is to replace my khaki's, which like your tax dollars, got owned by AIG. Well, their chair owned them to be more specific. They frayed the right hip a bit and I haven't found a suitable replacement. (No pun intended.)

The second pair is a really cool Calvin Klein trouser that is black/ gray plaid. Apparently plaid is back in? Evan, my boss, was wearing a pair of plaid pants today and I thought they were cool. So, being female, I went and bought a pair of plaid pants tonight. Maybe I'll take a picture of me wearing them and upload it tomorrow.

We came home and put them in the Dryel dry clean at home bag. Here's the result: . If that looks like nothing, it is. This system isn't very good and, at best, does nothing but leave your clothes smelling like dryer sheet concentrate. It doesn't get the wrinkles out. I should've known that a wet, smelly paper towel imitation couldn't replace the commercial-grade iron and press machine of my preferred neighborhood dry cleaning service. The price: about $10. I think we'll get about 12-14 garments out of this, so it saved about $2.50-3.00, but that doesn't include the time Becky and I spent ironing out the wrinkles it left in. Bottom line: .5 Gillies (of 5 Gillies), for the smell.

Also, Becky is an amazing wife. I give her 5 Gillies and bowl of Blue Bell.

Top 16.5 Moments from the Last 5.5 Years (3 Presidential Terms X 5.5 Years)

2009-02-11T20:08:00.001-08:00

This is a Patrick list, so it will be entirely awesome!

1. Getting married

2. Graduating from Texas A&M University

3. Honeymooning in Maui (and the sunsets)

4. Owning the Grand Canyon

(The following are in no particular order)

5. Aggie Ring

6. Pine Country Pie

7. Wii tennis domination of the world

8. Glacier National Park

9. Going to the Bahamas (with SCUBA diving, moped riding, and yachts)

10. Getting engaged in Central Park, NYC

11. John Fogerty at the Houston Rodeo. Twice. This is a value moment!

12. MacBook/ iPod/ Apple in general

13. Going from being debt free to endebtedness and back to being debt free again

14. Moving into my own place (and then living with Becky)

15. Skiing in Colorado

16. Baltimore, MD (including Berger Cookies, crabcakes, scrapple, and new family)

16.5 My great (and only) tackle in football

Three presidential terms!

2009-02-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

5.5 years ago I was...

A recent high school graduate

Getting ready to move to College Station to attend Texas A&M University (whoop)

Coming back from Maui for a trip my parents took me on

Picking out bedding with my soon-to-be roomie Brooke

Getting REALLY terrible highlights using a new hair stylist who turned my hair orange (for the first day of college. sweet.)

Getting a new (to me) car

And, five and a half years ago, on August 9, 2003 'officially' dating Patrick Gilgour. :-)

Patrick and I have been together now (well, as of two days ago) for 5.5 years. I know, that's the third time I've said that, but whoa! We are on our third presidential term! (Two were the same president, but still.) We used to celebrate our half year anniversaries at the same time as Valentine's. And our year anniversaries came in August. But now our real married half anniversaries come in January and our real married year anniversaries in July. Did you get all that?

Either way, I am told there is a surprise coming on Valentine's Day and I am pumped.

Isn't it crazy how many things happen in 5 years? Since we started dating, he has graduated from high school, we have both started and graduated from college, we have both lost very special family members, I have been to Europe and Patrick has found a love for national parks, we have become totally different people, we got MARRIED, we moved into this townhouse, we have become debt free, we have both started our first jobs... phew.

Happy five and a half years!

Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as he loved himself

2009-02-09T17:52:00.001-08:00

On Sunday, my pastor preached on how love wins in friendship and used the story of Jonathan and David, two best friends, as his illustration. It was a great sermon. I loved hearing how God designed friendship and seeing that present in my life with my friends.

To start, I never thought I'd have the kinds of friends that I do, so I certainly don't take them for granted. I didn't have friends like I do now when I was younger. Sure, I had great friends, but not Jonathan-like friends. And to be fair, I wasn't really a friend like Jonathan was to anyone else.

I wouldn't trade my friends for anything. I love my friends like I love myself and I hurt when they hurt and we share each other's successes and it is good. Our God is good and friendships are good.

From Road Trip of a lifetime

And I'm the worst friend in the world for not having taken a picture with Chris at any point in my life.

From Brazos Bend SP

I'm also friends with Becky, too, but that's a little different....

PSA #1

2009-02-09T17:38:00.000-08:00

If you know Becky, you know she's a huge John and Kate Plus 8 fan. Usually the kids line up and say "on this episode of John and Kate Plus 8" and they go to a bunch of previews for the show. To reduce costs "due to the economic crisis caused by Nancy Pelosi" (for my fellow 30 Rock fans out there), TLC is replacing this dynamic clip with one they can use all season long.

Now, they have all the kids lined up and have them say, in unison, "On every episode of John and Kate Plus 8" and they just cut to their endless supply of clips of Kate screaming at John for something immaterial and insignificant.

Thankful.

2009-02-04T08:57:00.000-08:00

I just put up my March calendar at work! Whoa! (We put up two months at a time.) Our upcoming months are full of exciting things! Patrick's trip to Big Bend is in just a couple of weeks now, and Valentine's Day is next weekend! We are going to Missouri at the end of February also, and then Patrick's birthday is the first week of March! He will be 23. :-) We will be the same age for almost 3 months. I will relish those months when we are older I'm sure.

Lisa McGown gets a birthday week, and considering that I get VERY excited about birthdays/holidays, I have been trying to convince Patrick that I, too, would thoroughly enjoy a birthday week. But I really love everyone's birthdays, so in anticipation of my wonderful husband creating a week of birthday bliss for ME, I am going to have one for HIM! I'm pretty excited about it. Lisa does Friday to Friday, but since Patrick wants to go camping Fri-Sat after his birthday, he will get the previous Saturday to that Saturday. Yay! I have lots of things up my sleeve. :-)

On another note, I watch Good Morning America every morning, and the statistics of how many people have lost their jobs/homes/etc. gets more staggering every day. And we know we haven't hit the bottom yet. (And being in the mortgage industry, I am hit in the face with the dire situation of the economy every day.) I am so thankful for my very stable life at the moment, for our jobs and health and roof over our heads, and plenty of food in the fridge. For our healthy marriage and family that is close by (and lots of wonderful family who are not close by!) For our wonderful friends that we love so much and get to spend so many fun times with. For our church, our Wednesday night youth, and our own grown up small group. For the fact that we can afford to just go to Missouri in a couple weeks to see Patrick's family. For our emergency fund. :-)

And if you read this, I am positive that I'm thankful for you! Happy Friday Eve!

**ps I don't know why this posted on Wednesday; I posted it Thursday, which is why I said Friday eve!**

The Significance of Insignificant Items

2009-02-01T06:50:00.000-08:00

This is Patrick... (as if the random title wouldn't give that away)

I place far too much significance in insignificant items. I'm sort of a pack-rat, albeit an organized one. I save too much stuff, thinking this is important to me. For example, I used to save the tags off of dress shirts if I thought they would somehow influence my life. It's weird, but I've mostly stopped. Mostly.

As January ends and February begins, I'm starting a new Burt's Bees stick today. I love Burt's Bees, almost as much as pie. In fact, Burt's Bees is an untold secret in my life, that only my closest friends know about. If this is the first you've heard of my love of BB, sorry, you're just not quite in that upper tier yet. If you're not a "bestie", then consider yourself warned: I don't really "just do things". I'm an all or nothing kind of guy. If I'm not willing to pledge my life to its causes, then I want nothing to do with it. If I'm not willing to name my first born after its creator, it's meaningless. Digressing, if someone said, "Patrick! You're going to be stranded on an island! And have to pick between 'Bees and Pie," I'd be torn. I'd probably take the 'Bees.

I find this last stick of Burt's Bees really significant. It has been through a lot. I'm a meticulous 'Bees keeper, so it hasn't been washed, frozen, melted, or anything to limit its powers. This particular stick has stood by me (or in my pocket) through the most significant events in my life. She was there when I received my college degree, she has been the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back, she watched a sunset (or six) with me in Maui, she was there (along with my trusty Gerber pocketknife) when I held my bride's hand at the alter on our wedding day, she was the for our first dance, when we moved in together, my first day of work, and when my truck was hit. It may be that my life has just had a lot of great changes lately and I happened to only have one stick of Burt's Bees, but I do think it holds some kind of magical powers.

My 'Bees is a trusty companion. I hope this next stick brings as much adventure, laughter, and joy as this last one has.

Wednesday

2009-01-28T06:48:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-01-26T17:49:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-01-21T15:04:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-21T06:56:00.001-08:00

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!!

2009-01-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-12T17:29:00.001-08:00

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?

2009-01-09T06:28:00.000-08:00

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

Google is beyond awesome!

Pledgeheart

2009-01-06T17:09:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-01-06T13:27:00.001-08:00

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!

2009-01-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-04T12:34:00.000-08:00

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: