Hello blogoverse! I wanted to give just a quick update, but since I’m too lazy to upload any real photos from my camera, you’ll have to deal with photos from my iPhone.

Last week I was getting the house ready for my parents’ visit this last weekend…it had been awhile since I had had time to get some real cleaning done! I took Titus to get his nails trimmed (because he must look presentable, you know!) and picked him up a Halloween costume that I found…needless to say he was NOT amused! He stood on the bed shivering for 20 minutes until Brad came home and liberated him from such torture!

Get it off!

The cats thought it was pretty amusing though…I think…who can tell with cats really?

We are very amused. Really.

My parents and brother got here on Friday of last week and we had a great visit! It was ACU’s homecoming weekend, and even though we didn’t make it to the game, we took my parents up to the campus so that they could see the new Welcome Center and do a little shopping at the bookstore. My mom’s camera battery died right as she was wanting to take a picture by the fountain, so I whipped out my phone to take a picture for her.

Happy Homecoming!

And finally, this week, if you’ve been looking for Brad, I can tell you where he’s been hiding. Here is an image from the video game that he’s been playing every evening (and some mornings before work!) ALL WEEK! Lol, I think he’s a bit obsessed!

Look, I'm a knight!

So ends my post of iPhone photos! I hope everyone is having a great week!

I just wanted to post a quick update, I am still alive.

Most of you know from my Facebook that our little nephew has been diagnosed with stage four cance – a neuroblastoma. Cooper started his chemo treaments yesterday. I’ve started a website for him, so that the family can keep friends and relatives updated with his status. If you would like to know more, you can visit CooperTroopers.com

I’m sure there is much more for me to update, but as you can imagine, Cooper’s situation has had us a bit preocupied. I did just want to check in and let my few readers know that I’m still around! I hope to have a more extensive post up soon.

Well, as much as I hate to admit it, we’re back from vacation! Technically we’ve been back for a few days, but being in denial and getting caught up with work can delay a blog post!

Anywho, rather than drag out my posts into a day-by-day encounter, I’m doing my best do sum up our wonderful vacation in this one (picture laden!) post, so let’s do it!

First, Brad and I dropped Titus off at my parents’ house in Fort Worth. Then headed down to Galveston on Saturday night, and on Sunday we had planned to check out Moody Gardens Aquarium, as well as a place called SeaWolf Park, where there was an old restored WWII Submarine and Destroyer Escort ship that you could walk around in. Before we started our Galveston treks though, Brad woke me up and asked if I wanted to walk along the beach early on Sunday morning. Usually I’m not much of a morning person, but I got up and we watched what was left of the sun rise. It was there on the beach where Brad gave me a new ring! It was so romantic, and I’ll spare you all the gooey stuff, but trust me it was wonderful. He then pulled out a new wedding band for him that he had bought…I don’t know if you remember that he had lost his back on the last cruise?

Our New Rings

I took a picture of our footprints in the sand that morning…

We've come a LONG way in 10 years...

Later that day, we went to Moody Gardens, they have a really cool aquarium there that we really enjoyed:

A Smiling Stingray

Some scuba divers started cleaning the tank as we walked through

After the aquarium, we headed to the submarine and destroyer museum. It was very cool!

Brad standing behind a torpedo with the USS Cavalla behind him

I liked this sign...

For some reason I really liked these colorful knobs! (I'm such a nerd)

The Stewart - a DE class battleship

The next morning we got up and had lunch and then boarded the ship! It was the Carnival Ecstasy again, I might have mentioned that before, and it was the cruise we were SUPPOSED to go on before the swine flu diverted us last may. I will say that even though we had a great time, I would definitely like to go on another ship next time! On the one hand it was great knowing where everything was, but it got a little boring after a couple of days – all the entertainment shows were the same, as well as the dinner menu! Hehe, we’re already talking about wanting to cruise again! But I digress…here is a micro tour through our vacation:

The first night Brad had flowers delivered to our room – 10 roses for 10 years!

Beautiful flowers!

The closest picture I ever got of a sunset...it was cloudy each evening!

The first day at sea was much like last time, we checked out the country dance show that night and got to know our dining partners!

Then it was off to Progresso, Mexico. We had signed up for another beach party, since we enjoyed the one in Montego Bay so much…this one wasn’t as great. The beach was just a partitioned part of a public beach, and it was a bit dirtier than the other one…and the most annoying thing? Mexican vendors crawling all over the place wanting you to buy stuff! Lol, we still had fun but I have to say that nothing beats Irie Mon!

One of the few pics of us where I'm not holding the camera!

The Ecstasy's sister ship, the Fantasy, pulled up beside us for a day in Progresso

The beach!

A great day for hanging on the beach...

And all the crazy people that were on the beach!

The next day was our day in Cozumel. We were very excited because we had signed up to go scuba diving again here. We had a great time with scuba and got to stay and go snorkeling afterward. Before our bus left for scuba though, we hung around in the little plaza by the pier, which had a lot of goofy places for you to take your picture!

Surprise! It's me!

King Brad takes his throne

And he's willing to defend his title!

Sitting in front of an Aztec-inspired fountain

This was the place where we entered the water to scuba dive

Brad took a picture of me snorkeling

After our day on Cozumel was done, we headed back to the ship (where the Fantasy was docked next to us again!), and we looked down and noticed that the water by the pier was incredibly blue! I snapped this photo to show that you could see lower levels of the ship beneath the water line:

The bluest water I've ever seen!

Before we knew it, it was the last day on the ship! The last day at the sea as we traveled back to Galveston. Brad and I decided to do a few of the silly things that we didn’t get a chance to do last time. We played a round of mini-golf on the sun deck, and then played a game of Chess using these large playing pieces.

Brad making his move!

We both contemplate the other's demise

Unfortunately for Brad…I kicked his butt!

That night, I finally got a good picture of the moon! The moon had been close to full the whole trip, and when the clouds would part I thought the reflection of the moon on the water was so pretty. I finally figured out a setting on my camera that so of did it justice:

Moonlit waters

And then…Brad crashed while I packed.

Vacationed Out!

Oh and I almost forgot! We were of course visited nightly by little towel creatures! I’ve made a little collage of them…

Our little towel friends...so creepy...especially that red-headed one...

And then we woke up in Galveston! Here’s our last picture on the ship:

Back to the real world!

And that was our trip in a nutshell!

Obviously I skimmed over a bit…not to mention the 240+ pictures that I took in total! But, I think I showed the good bits!

If you’re really interested (or really bored!), you can check out all the pictures that I took on Flickr.

I’m so ready to be on vacation next week that I think my brain is shutting down, and that time is simultaneously slowing down to a crawl.

It’s like waiting for Christmas for a 5 year old!

Unfortunately, that’s all I really have to blog about, there’s nothing much going on in my universe besides my brain saying “vacation, vacation, vacation, vacation…”

Someone send me a hibernating machine! I’ll just sleep until it’s time to go!

So last night Brad and I went to the gym. We’re now doing the program our trainers created for us on our own, we’re officially done with the training. For anyone in A-town who might be wanting some training, allow me to plug them here. Anyway, so after we did the weight training, we moved on to cardio. I was having the best treadmill workout that I’ve ever done! Doing mad-skills running…when suddenly I started to feel a pain in my left foot. More accurately, in my Achilles tendon area. So of course, right when I was getting to the best training, now I’m stuck with not being able to hardly walk!

So of course I couldn’t help thinking, I bet Sailor Moon never had Achilles tendon problems!

In the name of the Moon...I will punish all Achilles Tendons!

I’m beginning to go slightly mad with excitement that we’re going on a cruise in only 11 days! Of course I have NOTHING ready yet! I plan to spend the weekend doing some packing and shopping…for some smaller clothes! The fact that work is a bit slow (since we’re in between semesters) doesn’t really help my impatience! Luckily I randomly (very randomly) ran across an old Sailor Moon clip on the inter-webs yesterday, and consequently found this site, where I can stream old Sailor Moon episodes to my heart’s content – lol, sad I know! But, we’re all allowed to relieve old high school interests every once and awhile, right?

Hmm…maybe we shouldn’t! I can’t believe how in to this stuff I was…

So maybe I don’t want to be a Sailor Scout when I grow up, they might not have Achilles problems, but all that transforming has to get tiresome after a while…

(((WARNING: SOUND IS LOUD, TURN YOUR VOLUME DOWN!)))

Ok, so last night I wrote out a long, amusing and finely written post about nothing…just a generalized update…I think I talked about watching TV with the dog and how the workouts are going…but since I was writing all this on my iPhone, using their deceptively handy WordPress application…it was uploaded to no-where. Maybe someday my path with cross with this forgotten post…

On my way to work I had a song come across my radio that I hadn’t heard in a long time. My ipod has like 500+ songs on it, and the other day I decided to just hit random and see what comes along. I heard this song by Edwin McCain that I’ve always loved. I’m not really political when it comes to wars and all, and no one in my immediate family is serving in the military (my grandfather served in the Navy in WWII), but I think we can all relate and feel empathy to what our servicemen/women sacrifice for us, whether or not we support the reasons why. That being said, this song makes me cry, so don’t push play unless you wanna cry, or you have eyes of steal!

A Prayer to Saint Peter
Let them in, Peter
For they are very tired
Give them couches where the angels sleep
And light those fires
Let them wake whole again
To brand new dawns
Fired by the sun
Not war-times bloody guns
May their peace be deep
Remember where the broken bodies lie
God knows how young they were
To have to die

Well God knows how young they were
To have to die

Give them things they like
Let them make some noise
Give dance hall bands, not golden harps
To these our boys
Let them love Peter
For they’ve had no time
They should have bird songs and trees
And hills to climb
The taste of summer
And a ripened pear
And girls as sweet as meadow wind
And flowing hair
And tell them how they are missed
But say not to fear
It’s gonna be all right
With us down here

Let them in, Peter
For they are very tired
Give them couches where the angels sleep
And light those fires
Let them wake whole again
To brand new dawns
Fired by the sun
Not war-times bloody guns
May their peace be deep
Remember where the broken bodies lie
God knows how young they were
To have to die

You know God knows how young they were
To have to die

And tell them how they are missed
But say not to fear
It’s gonna be all right
With us down here

It’s gonna be all right
With us down here

Ok so technically it’s been 10 years + 7 days by the time I’m writing, but who’s counting??

Last Thursday, Brad and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary! How crazy is that? I can’t believe it’s been 10 years of marriage already. And what a crazy 10 years it’s been!

I wanted to scan in a picture of us from our wedding day to show here, but my scanner is being…lost at the moment! O.o I’ll try to get one up for your viewing pleasure soon.

So…what did we do for such a milestone as this? Well, I didn’t really plan anything personally…not all extravagant-like as I had done for his b-day. I thought we had agreed to do stuff at the end of August after we had some time to re-coop from the whirlwind that was July…but Brad had other plans.

On Thursday morning, Brad told me to pack a bag for the day. So…after some strange looks from me, I agreed. I packed a quick bag, and then we left. It turns out that he had planned a one-night getaway to Fredricksburg, Texas. We arrived there about 2.5 hours later, where Brad pulled up to a bed and breakfast place…he made me stay in the car, but I snapped this picture:

Yes I was a nerd and looked up their website while Brad was in there...I'm so nosy!

When Brad came out, he droves us over to a cute bed and breakfast cabin that he had reserved! It was so cute that apparently I forgot to take pictures! The only thing I ended up taking a picture of was this really neat window that I liked…

I want one!

So…Brad and I went to go eat lunch real quick and then headed back to the cabin to look around. Now, I forgot to mention that on the way to Fredericksburg, Brad had given me an envelope. Inside was a paper that looked like one of those old-school flash cards that kids use. It had a picture of a bird, and the work “caw!” on it (the bird was obviously some sort of crow). He told me to set the alarm on my phone for 4 hours and 17 minutes, and at that point I would get another clue. Luckily, after lunch it was finally time to get another clue! So I opened the next one, which had some animals and the word “zoo.” By this point I guessed what he was trying to tell me…he gave me the 3rd picture after I had guessed:

We're going to Cozumel!

So…yeah! Brad and I are going to Cozumel….on another CRUISE! And the kicker? We’re leaving on August 31st! In three weeks! Ironically, we’re going on the exact cruise that we were supposed to go on originally with Mom, Dad and my brother, before we were diverted by the Swine Flu. We’re going on the same ship, the Ecstasy, and will do the 5 day trip to Progresso and Cozumel. I’m so excited! Though I can’t believe that we’re going so soon after having gone back in May…it’s crazy!

The rest of the time in Fredericksburg was spent looking at all the shops, of which we only purchased a grill press! And then we stopped to have a burger at this local brewery:

Das Bier!

We came back the next morning, and basically enjoyed hanging out the rest of the weekend. Brad hadn’t really taken a weekend off since July started, so it was great to have him around for 4 days straight! We did a little shopping (I had bought Brad a gift card for our anniersary…yeah kinda lame compared to a cruise, huh?).

Trying on Glasses...nope, not these!

And then on Saturday, we went to Jackson’s 2nd Birthday party! Jackson looked like he had lots of fun (and just a few fits!), and he got a lot of cool toys! Surprisingly, that day he really seemed to love the trucks that Brad and I gave him…as you can see from this picture that Christi sent me later…

That's a boy who loves his trucks!

Other than that, we just hung out. It was great…and I’m so happy to be married to the best guy on the planet for 10 years and counting!

Sorry for the long wait! But now I bring forth unto you a post worthy of waiting for! Or at least one with a lot of pictures

So, for Brad’s 30th birthday, I had planned a surprise party for him. It took me awhile, but I finally got all the invitations sent out…

The invitation - sent out in a DVD case!

…and heard back from almost everyone that they were coming! So, thank you to everyone who came, first of all, it was so great to see you all and to get us all in one room!

But, of course, Brad had no idea any of this was taking place…so Christi, Brian and I took him to dinner on Friday the 17th, his actual birthday, for a nice, quiet, uneventful birthday.

Brad opening a present from Brian and Christi

Christi had put together a bunch of photos for Brad! So many photos that I had kind of forgotten about! He’s got it in his office now.

Goofy smile...

But of course I think Brad almost liked holding Colin more!

I love Brad's glasses here...looks like a wizened man! lol!

So, after dinner, Brad was all happy because no one made a big fuss over him on his birthday. Little did he know that the next day I would send him on  a scavenger hunt. His tasks included a massage, a hair cut, buying an outfit, changing, and picking up something from the grocery store. I figured this would give me enough time to get everything ready for his party. I had him text me “secret words” after each task so that I could keep track of where he was in relation to how much longer I had!

Set up went great! I was worried that it was just going to be me, but Brad’s old boss, Joel (who graciously donated the bowling alley area at ACU, and who got to come to the party) jumped right in and started helping me. Just a few minutes later, my brother showed up too. They were basically my decorating crew, it was great! They just told me to tell them what I wanted, and they set it all up! I think we were done setting up everything in under an hour!

One of the tables at the party

The view of the room from where Brad would be sitting

I think one of my favorite things about the whole setup was the cake. Christi offered to make the cake(s) for me. We ended up having a huge “3″ and a “0″ and Christi did a GREAT job!

Awesome cake!

So after Christi arrived and we got the cake in there, Jeff and I left to go to the grocery store to pick up the party trays I ordered. Once we got there and were checking out, I got a text from Brad that he was headed to his last task, so we had to book it back to ACU, where everyone had arrive and was waiting! We all got together and hung out in a corner of the room, and once Brad arrived, I sent his best friend Ben up to get him. Of course by the time he had pulled in, he saw everyone’s cars, so he knew what he was in for! We all yelled “Surprise” at him, and I think he was really happy to see everyone. I think one of the first things he said was “everyone’s here…”

So after lunching, we had a small story-time where I opened the floor for anyone who wanted to come up and tell any stories that they had of Brad. I told the story of how the first time I met him involved him throwing me into a Coke machine…

Patricia had many stories to tell about her son's first 30 years...

Mark making sure to tell one of their favorite stories

Ben with yet another favorite...maybe payback for Brad's story at Ben's Wedding?

After we all had Brad good and embarrassed, we made it up to him by singing Happy Birthday and letting him have cake!

Brad with nephew Cooper blowing out the candles

After we all had cake, we all kind of migrated to the bowling alley for the next 2-3 hours. It was so nice to visit with everyone, and to see all their kids! I only was able to take a few photos from then on – too busy visiting!

Christi helping Jackson bowl - I love the way he waits so patiently for the ball to make it to the pins

The Koiners! Rob, Elias, Emma and Mandy

Brad with James Barcroft - a former Devious Duo at the info desk!

Brad with more Barcrofts - Dan and Kara

Brad with Kevin and Emily - aka "Kevily"

And finally, I think this is one of my favorite pictures, it’s basically most of the “old crew” from our church back home, reunited for the first time in what…10 years?

Back Row: Bethany, Ben, Mark, Kathy, Brad | Front Row: Mandy, Amber, Christi, and Me

After the party, most everyone went back home that same night. It ended up with just Brad, Ben, Bryan and Jessica (brother and sister-in-law), Jeff and me. So we all went to dinner, and then promptly fell asleep when we got back, lol!

Again, thanks so much to everyone who came, you made his birthday very special!

Oh, and last but not least, you might have noticed some fun posters on the table at Brad’s birthday party. Since the theme of the party (loosely) was movies, I decided to take some existing movie marquee posters and make Brad the star of each! I’ll leave you with those…I hope you enjoy them!

Well, apparently WordPress doesn’t allow iframes…so you’ll have to go here to see the movie posters!

Hey guys – just wanted you to know that I’m alive and kicking!

I left for a conference in San Antonio on Monday, where I promptly got sick with a bout of allergy-death/summer cold…fun times! Needless to say I haven’t felt up to posting all about Brad’s 30th birthday festivities yet, not to mention the fact that now I’m dreadfully behind in work!

So, just a quick post to let you know that I’m alive, and that I’ll regale you with fun photos soon!

Ok, so that title might be a tad misleading, I don’t really have any great “triumphs” to speak of, but I was going for alliteration, and “terrible Tuesday” just wouldn’t have worked, cause I’m in a pretty good mood!

Which I guess that’s a triumph in an of itself, considering that Brad and I have been having our butts unceremoniously kicked every single morning for the last week or so. Yes, we decided that we really just hate ourselves, so we signed up for a professional torturer trainer at our gym. Lol, yes, can you believe it? Not only are we going to a gym – but we’re spending good money to have someone cause us a LOT of pain.

So here’s Brad while we were at Target the other night finding new water bottles. (We went with the green and black ones, btw!)

I'm ready for Action! (as long as that action requires lots of water!)

But, I can’t really complain, we both lost 7 pounds in 1 week! So, I’m guessing I’ll hang on to the torture for the duration of the 4 weeks.

Work is going good, TSTC continues to be a nice respite after all the craziness of the KRAB. And Brad is loving Elliott-Hamil. (Don’t forget the shamless plug, hint hint!)

Speaking of Brad’s work – I was able to hang out with him for a good part of a day last week, and it happened to be the day that he was telling his little sales peeps about the aforementioned special! So, me being a dork, I took a picture of him as he was giving them a Brad speech:

This deal is Awesome!!

Yes – that’s in the funeral home chapel – so weird to have a meeting there!

Anyway, that’s my quick Tuesday update…I guess I should have found a work that means “fast” that starts with the letter T for my title…any suggestions?