I Tip my Hat to 2012

I did a blog similar to this last year where I featured a special memory from each month in 2011. You can see that here. So here goes this year...

January

I started my new job/career here in Tulsa as a 6th Grade Math teacher. It definitely had its good days and its bad, but I absolutely love working there. When I started it was the middle of the year so it was a bit challenging to begin with, but I definitely caught on quick. One memory I will never forget is, a few days before school started I got an ear infection, so my first day with the students was horrible because I felt awful. Well the next 3 days I was so sick I couldn't go to work...so I'm sure the students thought they scared me off after the first day of school! ;)

February

Valentine's day! Some years we make a big deal out of V-day and others we just relax. Trevor decided to take me to Flemings. I had never been there and had been talking about wanting to go for several years. It was definitely delicious!

 

March

Busy season got over with for Trevor right at the end of February, so for my birthday in March we had a little get away trip! Trevor booked a room at a Bed and Breakfast! We have never stayed in one and had heard they were fun, so we wanted to try it out! We went to Dallas to shop at IKEA and hang out with friends and the first night we stayed here. It was the "Lodge Theme Room" if you can't tell by the pictures! The second night we were in Dallas we stayed at the hotel where we got engaged at a few years back. It was a great birthday weekend!!

 

April

Two special weddings occurred in April. Our brother and sister in-laws wedding was April 14 and our cousin Brittany and her fiance Kurt got married April 28th. I sang in both of their weddings and I was so honored to be a part of their special day!

 

May

 

On May 24th we closed on our house!!!! I realize this isn't the best picture, but for some reason this is the only one I have taken of the outside of our house! This was probably the biggest moment in our lives this year!! We absolutely LOVE our home and could not be more pleased with how everything turned out!

 

June

June was a big month apparently...the first great memory in June was celebrating our Anniversary. To be honest, we just had a good relaxing time. We made dinner in our new home (stuffed bell peppers and bacon wrapped asparagus) and then we purchased a dart board, so we played some games on that. It was a perfect evening after all the hustle and bustle of getting in our new home!! 

 We went to the lake a few times and camped out! 

 We got new (larger) tires put on my Jeep! (This was my Anniversary gift) Also, since we finally had a place to store the Jeep top, I was able to drive around with the top off most of the summer! I only got rained on once! ;)

The Saloon girls were featured on a billboard!!! It was put up in March, but I didn't get to see it until the end of June!

 

July

Two fun things happened in July, the first being, I got the opportunity to sing the National Anthem in Tulsa before the fireworks show on the 4th of July!

Secondly, we were able to go to Michigan this year for our family reunion!

 

August

 A group of about 10 of us went to the Gary Allan concert at the The Joint - Hard Rock Hotel and Casino

 School officially started back up!

 

September

We got to see our sweet new puppy for the first time! He was officially born on August 28th, and we went to see him quite a few times in September!!

 

October

We finally got to bring Whiskey home! - aren't they the cutest!!!! We have had so much fun with him and he is just getting so big!! He is a little over 35 pounds now!

 

November

 November was a busy month...first up, my great friend Sarah Neafus had her bachelorette party in Dallas, TX. The theme was "Wiggin' Out." Trevor went to her fiances bachelor party in Oklahoma City!

 Then came their wedding on November 10th! It was absolutely perfect!!

 We had a Friendsgiving at my house with the girls!! We all made side dishes and desserts! YUM!

Trevor had a great November because he got to go to North Dakota for a 10 day hunting trip! These were a couple of his favorite photos from the trip!

 

December

The best part about December was just decorating our new house for Christmas and spending time with family and friends!

 

I am excited to bring in the new year with my wonderful husband!!

2013 brings a caribbean cruise, 7 weddings (that we know of so far), turning 25, a second anniversary, hopefully lots of vacations and great memories!!

 

Have a wonderful and safe NYE!!!

Christmas Time!

We have had a busy busy December. Trevor has been busy with work all month and I have been trying to wrap up the semester with my students, plus add Christmas shopping and lots of traffic! Our first hint of Christmas came when we went to Trevor's work Holiday party. It was held at the Gilcrease Museum which is absolutely beautiful! Here are a couple pictures from the evening.

Winston's birthday was on December 17th...I really didn't have much to give him for his birthday, so I ended up giving him an early Christmas present, and of course, this is what happened to it....

It is like a game to him to get all the stuffing and the squeaker out of it! And he did all this in about 10 minutes!

On December 19th we decided to have a friends Christmas...

We had a good time exchanging gifts and hanging out together! ;)

December 21st was my last day of the semester with my kiddos!..we had a fun day because we did a talent show at the beginning of the day and then did our big reward for the students at the end of the day, which consisted of watching Home Alone in my classroom!

Here is one of the pictures I took of the Talent Show

I ended up surprising the students and at the end of the Talent Show I sang a song for them! They always ask me to sing for them, but I always tell them they have to wait til the end of the year!...so their surprise came a little early!

Slowly but surely we got lots of presents wrapped for our families! (I use the word "we" loosely as we all know that men aren't very good at wrapping presents!)

I would have really liked to send Christmas cards out this year, however, it seems like we just sent "We've Moved" Annoucements, so we decided to forgo Christmas cards. Even though I knew we weren't going to send anything out I still wanted a good Christmas Family Photo...well the dogs weren't really thrilled about the idea and neither was the hubs, so this is as good as it got!

me trying to get Winston in the picture and Trevor trying to get Whiskey to sit up, me at least looking at the camera trying to make it work and Trevor not even paying attention to the camera!...this pretty much sums everything up!

When Christmas finally arrived we literally had 7 Christmas' to go to!!!-this is not an exaggeration.
First up, Trevor and I decided to have a little Christmas to ourselves. We drank some wine that our neighbors got us and opened gifts.

Trevor and his gifts!

I got new Jeep doors!! ..horray for no more duck tape on my window!!!

Next up, Christmas with my family at our house. Trevor and I decided to make stuffed bell peppers and bacon wrapped asparagus for dinner. After dinner we opened gifts and then headed to Kansas to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins!

me and Wes

Ugly Sweater Contest!!

sisters

Cousins!

being goofy!



grandpa and brother

I didn't get any more pictures of the holiday however, when we returned from Kansas we had Christmas with Trevor's dad's side of the family on Christmas Eve. On Christmas day we did Christmas with Trevor's mom/family, then his grandma and after that his great grandma! Overall we had a great time with family and friends! Trevor is now off hunting again this weekend, hence the free time for me to get caught up on blogging!
I hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday...I definitely could have gone for more snow! I was a little disappointed nothing ever came!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Man Cave - Part 2

In honor of the Man Cave, I am excited to say this is officially my 100 post!!! Crazy!!

I did Man Cave - Part 1 on July 8th. Click on the link to check that out if you haven't read it yet!
We have updated and added quite a few things!! As mentioned in the last post, Trevor wanted to cover the bar top with bottle caps. He had some friends do similar things in college with bottle caps, so since about sophomore year he has been collecting bottle caps! So the first thing we wanted to do was lay out all the bottle caps and see if we had enough/wanted to do some sort of design...

pouring the bags out.

Making sure they were all right side up.

Actually placing them side-by-side!

This is all we had!!!! We were shocked we didn't have enough after 3-4 years of collecting!

We guesstimated that we needed about 2,600 bottle caps to cover the bar and we had about 1,500 at the time.

Trevor wanted to spell "Cowboys" through the middle of the bar, so we ended up buying orange bottle caps online. Once those came in, we basically had to move all the bottle caps aside and start over with placing them in the right positions.

Trevor's dad gave us a ton of Bud Select caps, and since those are black we decided to go all around the orange letters with those.

Fun Fact: No two same caps are touching on the table (excluding the orange and bud select caps)
The caps just sat like this for awhile because we were deciding how to go about putting a clear gloss coat over it since the Glaze Coat is really thick. We decided to put polyurethane down first since it is really liquidy and it basically acted as a glue between the caps and the table top. A couple weeks later we put the thicker Glaze Coat over it and it worked perfect because none of the caps moved even though it was really thick.

I think we are going to put one more gallon of the Glaze Coat on it, but we are taking our time and waiting until after the holiday season because one gallon of that stuff is $60! It looks awesome though!

We have added some new additions to the man cave as well

As you can see we still have our dart board (far left) but we now have a Foosball table as well.

 

We finally added some decor! I like the OSU flag and the Man Cave Rules, however, we could probably do without the Animal House poster! Trevor just isn't ready to completely let go of college yet! ;)

Light up signs! (these obviously look better at night!)

Cool OSU chairs from Sam's!

 Our newest addition to this house is this...



A storm door! It was an early Christmas present from Trevor's parents! We absolutely love it!!! As you can see Winston loves looking out and seeing what's going on in the neighborhood.

I hope everyone is having a relaxing Sunday! Trevor actually has to work today, hence why I finally have time to catch up on some blogging!