anniversary...1 year married, 6 years dating

well, this is a little late.  two months late, to be exact.  but hey, things have been happening around here, ok??

oliver and i celebrated our one year marriage anniversary a couple of weeks after our anniversary date. we got married on may 12, 2012 but we waited until memorial day weekend to celebrate.  i had just gotten back from nigeria the weekend before, and the weekend of our anniversary our cousin calyn graduated from TCU...so it made sense to push it back.  (also mothers day! happy mothers day moms!) 

so anyway, we waited until memorial day to celebrate.  i wanted to do something extravagant, but in the sense of saving money, we decided to try to recreate all of our past anniversaries into one weekend.  we both had off on memorial day monday, so we each also took off on the friday before.  

for our previous anniversaries, we have:

-made homemade pizza and did an at home beer tasting (year #1)

-ate fondue (year # 2, i think?)

-toured wineries and got engaged (year #3) 

-concert (#4? not sure) 

-ate amazing steak at killen's (year #5) 

so for our weekend, we tried to do a little of each of those.  on thursday night, we went to the mucky duck to see one of our favorites, bob schnieder, play. oliver surprised me with right-on-top-of-the-stage tickets, and we enjoyed some dinner while bob played.  we bought the CD of the show after..and bob is talking to us in literally almost every song. SUCH a great night!

i wore one of my honeymoon dresses

beer flight at the duck!

see those feet at the bottom left? that's how close we were

on friday morning, we woke up and headed down south to moody gardens galveston.  oliver had gotten a groupon for the MG, so we decided that it would be a great time to take advantage of it.  we walked through the halls, looked at all kinds of creatures, and went into the rainforest pyramid. we also watched a shark 3D movie, in which the kid behind me kicked my chair THE. ENTIRE. TIME.  there were like 6 different school tours there.  figures.

all in all, we had a great time. i think i enjoyed the rainforest pyramid the best. after we toured and had a little lunch, we went to the golf course at moody and played a round of golf.  we are both acutally pretty bad (he is better than me) but it was fun just being goofy and not taking ourselves too seriously.  and there were TONS of bunnies!

 

on saturday, we went to tour karbach brewery in houston. it was so fun! that was our first time to karbach (but not our last) and we just had a blast hanging out, people watching, and drinking rodeo clowns.  that night we made some dinner at home and played super mario.

 for the rest of the weekend, we made fondue and tried various wines (at home) played another round or two of golf, and played super mario. on the last day, we went to see iron man 3 with our good friends kyle and rachael and then ate at emma's mexican food.


all in all, a great anniversary weekend! i love you bubba!

nigeria part 2

wow, it has been forever since i have written on this thing! sorry about that.  once i got back from africa, i hit the ground running at work and have been going like mad since then.

honestly, its been so long since nigeria that this post may be somewhat hard for me to write. but i am going to give it my best shot since i know i will want to remember the trip for the rest of my life.

so in my part 1 post, i talked about how hard it was being there, and how much devastation and poverty was in the world around us. it literally was the hardest thing i have ever done to drive by the saddest, poorest homes and people with literally nothing and leave them knowing i had so much nigerian money in my purse that i would never use.  i struggled with that daily.

but, on the positive side of things....once we got the hang of the trip, the girls and i really started enjoying ourselves.  on the work side of the trip, we were learning how to facilitate and deliver a 6 hour training class. each day, we would have to learn a new section of the training and deliver it to a full class of students the next morning.  it was SUCH a challenge learning that much information so quickly, and fighting fears of talking in front of people, but by the end of the week we had all improved SO much.  it was insane.  now, looking back, i cannot believe how much fear i had that first day of presenting. my voice shook and i was sweaty and nervous. its june now and i have hosted a training class pretty much every week since i got back. my class is mandatory so i usually have between 30-40 people in it.  no biggie!

the nigerian employees were some of the kindest, funniest people i have ever met.  they were so thankful for us being there, so thankful for us to be teaching them, and they were so excited to have a real american (me) in their building.  they would ask us to take pictures with them when the classes were over. we felt famous!

every day, we would wake up at 5am, catch our bus at 6, ride about an hour and 15 minutes to the office, and have coffee and catch up with emails til our classes started about 8:30-9.  then we would teach until lunch time, take an hour for lunch, then teach until about 3pm.  our bus left the office at 5 sharp, then we would go back to the home base, shop in the little commissary, and eat our dinner prepared by the home base chef at 7.  after dinners, we would study and practice for the next days presentations, shower, and go to bed around 10-11.  they were LONG days, and the trip seemed to last forever, but when i got home it seemed like i had just left.  weird how time works like that.

when i got home from the trip, i had a bit of an emotional breakdown.  it was so hard coming home to decent roads, clean water, and easily accessible food when i knew i was leaving so many people in nigeria without those things.  we tend to take for granted how easy we have it here.  sure, its so easy to complain about things and get involved in the petty small stuff, but in reality, there are people in port harcourt who didnt know where their next meal was coming from.  mothers would have 6 or 7 babies in case some of them didnt make it, which is a sad but true thing that happens.  i saw a baby girl getting her daily morning bath at 6 am in a baby pool in front of her shack.  the trip truly made me appreciate my life and taught me that we have so much to celebrate and be thankful for.  it also showed me that the nigerian people are strong, funny, and love to laugh.  the people i met there are seriously some of the kindest, most down to earth people i have ever met.

so thank you nigeria! i loved getting to visit and learn about you, and to learn about myself.