Sometime in Early March

Blessed. Overjoyed. In Awe of our God.

Also, a little tired and hungry, but otherwise happy and healthy. :)

This young lady and I feel the same way about turning 30.

This is going to be our best year yet.

Seriously.

Sneak Peak: NYC

My man sent me to NYC on a girls' trip for my BIG birthday!
Aunt Julie, me, Mom, and Aunt Sheri on the Empire State Building Observation Deck.

Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard...

On the afternoon of July 16, 2005, my hometown experienced light rain showers as a product of Hurricane Emily. Ironic, as this was the day my husband would marry me those five years ago. The past five years have been full of wonderful highs and not-so-great lows, but no matter what, we're in all of it together. We know that our foundation is not in ourselves, but in Christ.

I would go on and write very flowery sentiments to my husband on this page, but he's not big on public declarations and such. I will say one thing--I'm glad he's all mine!

To celebrate, we took The Company Plane to sunny (at times) California for a nice long weekend. Our accommodations were in Santa Monica at the beautiful Fairmont Miramar, right across Ocean Dr. from the beach and about two blocks from the Santa Monica Pier.

We were surprised to find that the temps were right about 70 degrees. Definitely not what we expected, but a wonderful surprise nonetheless (and let's face it, a perfect excuse to shop as I had packed for warmer weather.) Luckily, we were also a block from the Third Street Promenade which had a ton of my favorites (H&M, Anthro, Zara, J. Crew, etc.)

In-N-Out = Not all that, but not bad.
I was pretty lame on the photography front. From the looks of what we're wearing, I took pics on exactly one day.

One evening we drove up Highway 1 a few miles to Malibu for seafood. A couple of days we toured around LA and visited the Kodak Theater, saw the Walk of Fame, and all the other tourist places. This was our ride!

So fun and relaxing. We had no agenda, just slept in late, took naps when we wanted to, and played when we wanted to. I highly recommend Santa Monica. It's located near so many things, but has a good night life when you want to park at your hotel and walk close by.

Here's to many, many more years with the one I love!

July Celebration

I finally got around to downloading the pictures from the month of July off of my camera. To start the month off, my cousin got engaged right before the 4th! so of course we threw a family fiesta to celebrate.

For 20 years I was the only granddaughter on my mother's side of the family before my youngest cousin was born. We are so excited to welcome another girl into the family, especially this one. She's very sweet, and I hope they will be so happy together.


Cute couple!

Couch and Compromise

My beloved red floral couch broke at some point back in September of last year. That set of living room furniture was my first grown-up non-secondhand purchase of furniture. I shopped for approximately 1 minute for them as my mom had seen the set in a store window in my hometown and was convinced I would love them. She was correct.

During our engagement, when the time came to decide whose stuff would stay and whose would go, Brad begrudgingly agreed that we would keep my living room set and store his beige couch until such a time that we had room for it again. (I also talked him into giving up one of those poofy La-z-boy recliners. Thank goodness!) I heard more comments about my beautiful and girly floral couches in that first year of marriage--enough that I would not have been shocked had they mysteriously broken in that duration. But after a while, he conformed.

And since I loved them, I didn't really pay much attention.

When it broke, I was in the middle of a project at work and had little time to shop for a replacement. We would occasionally stop into a furniture store and look around, but I found nothing that did it for me. Also, I had something very specific in mind, so that didn't help matters much. (Picky? Me? Never!)

Finally life calmed down a little in April, and I picked a "New Couch or Bust" weekend for us to finally pick out a new one. We finally decided that since we couldn't find a ready-made one we'd just have one custom made (which I was surprised to find is close in price to a ready-made one.) We walked into a store with over 300 fabrics to choose from, which was a recipe for disaster with too many choices and none that were what either of us had in mind. We walked out of that place, calmed down a bit, and drove to the next place where they had exactly the fabric I wanted, and exactly the style I was looking for--houndstooth and a traditional camelback.

So while I still haven't gotten around to downloading our vacation pictures, I did find some pictures of our new couch on my hard drive. It really changed up the living area. I love them, and Brad is satisfied with their comfort.

In my book, that's a win-win.

Oh, Summer.

I know I'm not alone in feeling that with each passing year, the summertime flies just a little faster. I'm not entirely sure how it is already July, but I'm pretty confident that it has something to do with spending a week at camp with our students back in mid-June. We headed to Roach, Missouri on three charter buses to spend a week at Camp Windermere on the Lake of the Ozarks. It was a huge blessing to spend time with the Lord, hang out with high school students, be off work, and soak up some Vitamin D on the lake. {Although, I think I am still catching up on my sleep 4 weeks later.}

A few weekends ago, I was so happy to spend part of my weekend in College Station catching up with some college girlfriends and their babies. It was such a sweet time with lots and lots of little girls. It's so fun to visit College Station with them living there--it's such a different dynamic than when we were going to school. I love it.

This week I'm wiped out from a visit to Santa Monica celebrating our wedding anniversary, and hopefully at some point I will recover enough to upload pics. Pacific time always gets me that way.

When we haven't been traveling, we've been working quite a bit which has prolonged my updates. I'll leave you with one picture I snagged of my dear Mr. Gentry from Facebook. Someone had a good time at camp! His rec team was the Underdogs, and you should notice the precisely engineered duct tape "U" on his shirt. That's my man.