Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas!

Christmas has come to an end, but the joy and laughter of being with our families on this wonderful holiday will forever remain. It was so nice getting to spend an entire week with my family. Since I've been in grad school and been busy getting married, I haven't been able to go home as much as I normally would. We had a lot of fun, from watching my dads new obsession (hunting from their back porch) to watching the traditional National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with Nanny and Mel. The night before Christmas Eve we went to Silver Dollar City in the freezing cold and snow to watch A Christmas Carol and have their famous hot chocolate and hot cider. Well, the snow slowed us down and we got their 10 minutes after their last show began, so we basically went for the hot chocolate. It was still fun spending time with family though. On Christmas Eve we spent the morning with Memmie and Papa, Falisha and Michael and their kids. That afternoon we had Christmas at Mom and Dad's with Papa and Marquetta. We spent Christmas morning at Nanny and Mel's and later that night we spent time with Bradley's family for Christmas. Their traditional Dirty Santa game is always hilarious. We packed up our car to head back to our new apartment and we literally looked like the Griswolds. We were showered with gifts as always, but as we laid in bed the night before Christmas I told Bradley how this year I was content with my life and all the amazing things God has blessed me with over this past year. I could honestly say I didn't care about the gifts, I had all I wanted and needed right beside me. 

It is an amazing feeling to be married to the one you love and who you would do anything for. I loved Bradley all through our dating years of course, but I have fallen even more in love with him in these past 4 months. I love him in a completely different way now, like in a grown up way. The little things that used to catch my eye and make my heart flutter have changed into more realistic things now. Just knowing that he works so hard to pay our bills and give me a good life while I'm in school, makes my heart jump with joy and love, so much that it brings tears to my eyes. He is truly an amazing husband and I am thankful for him every single day. I will be even happier in 5 months when I graduate and have all of my school years behind me. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!! 

Turkey Day!

Well Thanksgiving is now over and we ate entirely too much. We spent it with Bradley's family which is always a ton of fun. We ate at Granny's and enjoyed some good conversation, laughter, and feelings of being with family. I don't think that I say it enough but I am so lucky and blessed to have married in to such a wonderful family. We spent the weekend in Conway with his aunt, uncle and little cousin. We got up on Friday morning and decided to go see what kind of Black Friday deals we could find. Everything was pretty much picked over, but we did get my Christmas gift. :) My brother played in a tournament at Tech this weekend so we traveled to Russellville on Friday and Saturday to watch them play. It is always so nice seeing my family as well. We came back to our little tore up apartment (we are in the process of packing) last night and there is just no greater feeling than being in your own house, cuddled up on the couch watching a movie with your hubby. I love those times. As I laid in bed last night thinking about the past couple of days, I realized just how much I have to be thankful for. First and foremost I am so thankful that I serve an Almighty God who always protects and loves us. I am thankful for my amazing hubby who works so hard to provide for us and whom always tries to give me anything I want, even when I don't deserve it. I can't thank God enough for placing him in my life. I am thankful for both of our families who show us love and support everyday. We wouldn't be who we are today if it wasn't for our very best friends who have stood by our sides over the years. We have so much to be thankful for and I hope we never take those things for granted. 

My break is over, unfortunately, and I have to start studying for finals. We will be moving the majority of our stuff to Conway this week...we're so excited to move. 

 

Ready for the Holidays

Once again, I haven't blogged in a while so I have to catch up. A few weeks ago we went to Conway to get everything ready for our new apartment and we wanted to look at the one we were getting. We originally want a 2 bed, 1 bath because it was cheaper and it had a golf course view. If you know me very well, you know I'm a sucker for organization and LOTS of closest space. Well, we walked in our soon to be apartment and I was not very pleased. It was small and did not have near as much closet space as I was hoping for. Since my hubby is the only one with a job right now and he is paying all of our bills by himself (which I appreciate), I definitely couldn't complain. As we were walking out, the lady asked us why we didn't want the 2 bed, 2 bath and we told her that we thought it was too expensive so we didn't even look in to it. She then told us that it was only an $80 difference so we decided to just take a peak at one for kicks. Oh my goodness, it was HUGE and there were sooooo many closets. It felt like a small house because it was so large and had so much room in it and for just an $80 difference it was totally worth it. Bradley could tell that I was in love from all my excitement about the closets and porch haha. We were then in a predicament because he always tries to get me what I want and I kept telling him that it didn't matter to me which one we got because I couldn't help pay for it right now. So being the little nerd he is, he had to crunch the numbers in our Excel spreadsheet he has made for our money. After running the numbers 3 he finally decided that we could afford it and we would get the bigger one. I was sooooooo excited. Now it is Thanksgiving break for me and I get to spend my whole week off, packing and getting my study guides ready for finals. We are so excited to move we can't hardly wait.

It's only 31 days until Christmas...Christmas music is already being played on the radio, I see countless pictures on Instagram and Facebook of people putting up their Christmas trees and decorations and I am starting to get jealous. Christmas time is by far my favorite. It's pretty ridiculous how much I love it and how it automatically puts me in a good mood. I'm not getting all of my stuff out until we move and I'm able to actually put it up. Of course I have been all over Pinterest looking and new and fun decor ideas. I have found so many that I want to try. When I go to the doctor this week I will definitely be making a pit stop at Hobby Lobby to make my crafts. :) This will be our first Christmas married and I am so excited to spend time with him and come up with our own traditions. I have decided to try a silver and gold theme this year. I hope our tree will turn out pretty, but I've never used these colors before so we'll see.

I will post pictures when we get moved and all set up. Until then, have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Fall Fun

Wow!! I didn't know that it has been this long since I've last blogged. School has really picked up in the last month so I have spent the majority of my time studying, doing homework, or going to conventions while he plays his new COD game. Our lives have been pretty uneventful lately because I have been so busy with school but we still have a good time when we can. I'll just talk about some of the things we have been up to. Well as you know, I have had major motivation issues when it comes to school and I did not want to study for my Midterm exams. So Bradley made a deal with me that if I made an A on the test I would get $150 for shopping, $100 for a B, and $75 for a C. I've been wanting to shop for a while because I haven't been in a while so that was definitely motivation. I ended up making an A and he took me to Hobby Lobby (one of my fav. stores) and we got some cute Christmas decor. I just love Christmas!!! It's my favorite time of year and he knows that so he happily participated. :) I have to tell the story about a conversation we had while looking for decor. When we were dating and even now that we're married we just don't think about the fact that we are a biracial couple because our love for each other is strong that it just doesn't matter to us. Well I found a really cute Santa Claus that I wanted but of course it was white. Then we look on down the row and there was a black one. We were like uhhhhhh which one do we get?? Haha some people might not think that it's a funny issue but we do because we know God loves us and He's the one that put us together.

Now that I am older, I have turned into my Mom in so many ways. Especially with her obsession of decorating our house with seasonal decor as the times roll around. Of course I wish we had our own beautiful house that I could decorate instead of these small apartments we bounce around in but that day will come. So I used the rest of my money to buy Fall decor. I was so excited to put it all up and feel like we really are adults. Here is a picture of what our little space looks like for the Fall.

I had a busy schedule on Halloween so I didn't get to get all dressed up. Instead, we stayed at home watching AMC Fear Fest and waiting for kids to come ask for candy....I bought 4 bags of candy and we didn't have one Trick-or-Treater...my teeth have not been liking me very much lately because I rarely eat candy. Bradley, on the other hand, had to dress up for work. They were having a competition with the best dressed teams. He was a skate boarder and his team won!! 

That is basically what has been going on in our lives. We have everything set to move to Conway after finals in December. We seriously can't wait. We love Conway and it will cut down on both of us driving every week and we will get to sleep a little later. I feel like we have really become adults and have grown up in these past 3 months that we have been married and I love it.

Happy Birthday Hubby!!

I'm about two weeks late on this post...oops...but we had a lot of fun on Bradley's birthday this year. I had the hardest time figuring out what I was going to get him and he didn't help me out at all. The only thing he told me he wanted was a new golf club...so that's what he got. Since I usually go all out every birthday and Christmas, I felt bad that I only got him one gift. I had to get creative to make his birthday fun and exciting. So....when he got home from work I had a Nerf gun sitting out on the coffee table and a little note giving him the directions of the game. I hid behind the chair with my Nerf gun and attacked as soon as he picked up his gun....we battled for about 30 minutes and at the end of it we both had whelps and was out of breath, but it was so much fun!! 

He had been begging me for weeks to make a homemade pizza so we did that too! It was not my favorite but he loved it so much he made another one the next night. Haha. We then went out to the driving range so he could test his new golf club out, another thing he had been begging me to do with him. That weekend we drove to Memphis to go to the Nike outlet store that we had been wanting to go back to for a few years now. We got some pretty good deals and he found some really cute golf shirts. Can you tell he is really in to golfing right now??? 

On the way back home I had made up a His/Her question list because we tend to have very quiet car rides. The questions were fun little facts and future expectations. I love talking about the future with my new hubby, but hate when I have to come back down to reality. I can't wait to be where we want to be financially, have our dream jobs (he has accomplished this one and hopefully I will too very soon), own our dream house, have little ones running around, and just growing old together. I am lucky to have found my soul mate and I love him so so so much!! 

I accidentally deleted the individual pictures of his birthday fun but kept the Instagram collage of it. 

I Wanna Grow Old With You

I am writing this blog today with many different thoughts and emotions running through me. For some reason this school year has already gotten me so bitter and unmotivated. Seriously, I get in such a bad mood when I have to get up and go to class or do homework. I don't know if it's the fact that I love being married and all I want to do is stay at home with my husband or what, but I'm struggling with a lot of different things. I find motivation to read my Bible and study God's word but when Sunday rolls around it's hard for me to get up and "want" to go. Thankfully, I have a wonderful man that does his duty and holds me accountable for things like that. One of the only things that I have at least some motivation for is my off-site practicum. I am currently at St. Vincent's Rehabilitation Hospital and it has opened my eyes to a whole new world of Speech-Pathology. Before this off-site began I was not very excited about having to work with adult patients, but we have been in it almost 3 weeks now and I have grown to love it. 

One thing I love about it is getting to see patients that have been married 50+ years and how much love they still have for one another. The other day, there was a patient in the office working on his cognition. He barely spoke or participated in therapy. His wife walked up to the glass window and his face lit up. He was so happy. The therapist asked him "Who's that?" and the man replied "My wife, my sweetheart." In that moment while I was in the middle of a session myself, tears swelled in my eyes. There is something about seasoned love that gets me every time. On another occasion, we were working with man who had status/post stroke leaving him with left side facial weakness. One of his main goals for therapy was to be able to kiss his wife again. With his facial weakness it was hard for him to adequately pucker his lips to achieve a meaningful kiss. As I worked with this patient, I kept thinking, how would I feel if I couldn't kiss Bradley the way I wanted to or I couldn't remember that he was my husband?? I worked extra hard as his therapist, even though I am still a student to help him achieve his goal. On his day of discharge, right before he left, he wanted to show his wife how good he could kiss her. Right before they headed out the door he grabbed her head and planted one of the biggest kisses EVER on her. As she cried with tears of joy, so did I. 

I have thought about that experience everyday and every time I kiss my husband. This placement has strengthened my love and dedication to Bradley in three short weeks. When I think about our future I get so excited to grow old with the man that I love so much. We tend to always think about the positive things, but what happens when something goes wrong? Will you still love that person unconditionally? Will you stand by their side even if they are not the "same" person anymore? All these questions run through my mind daily and I have learned how to cherish and love Bradley more than I ever have before. 

He's my best friend, my soul mate.

Looking into the Future

I haven't blogged in a couple weeks due to my last year of grad school starting. We are entering our third week and it is already hectic. Off-site has started and I <3 my placement. We got some good news since the last time I blogged....Bradley got a job!!! Yayyyyy!!! He tried his best to hold off for the perfect job throughout the summer and he finally got the one that he had been praying for. I am so proud of him even though I was starting to stress about us being married, he was still without a job, and I'm still in school. God answered our prayers at the right time. He starts September 9th. :) We have been working hard to finish up our decorations for our little apartment, but we still have a few more things to finish before I post any pictures.
Married life has been wonderful so far. I love every part of it. Especially when we talk about our future. :) We spent our entire weekend scoping out houses for sale in the Conway area...y'all have no idea how excited this makes me. I absolutely cannot wait to buy our own house and no longer live in tiny apartments. I guess you can say I have been a tad bit obsessed since we have been looking and my "Our Future Home" board on Pinterest has been very active. We both have a few ideas of what we want and even if we can't find exactly that, we will remodel. I have a few pictures of our ideas so far that I will post below. Bradley's birthday is next week and I am having the hardest time finding gifts for him. Ugh, this never happens. I promise to blog more when exciting things start to happen in our lives.

We love the colors of the exterior of this house.

I love the columns on the front porch.

Coolest door EVER!

My complete dream kitchen! The white cabinets and marble are gorgeous.

Of course we have to have a fireplace for Christmas time. :)

Bradley wants a huge backyard that he can play with the future kids in :)

Honeymoonin' in Vegas

Well as most of you know we spent our first week of marriage on our honeymoon in Las Vegas. Let me tell ya, there is definitely a reason they call it Sin City. We definitely don't live that lifestyle so needless to say we were ready to come home fairly early in the week. We stayed at Mandalay Bay, which was the very last hotel on the strip so it took us a while to get to where ever we wanted to go. We spent our first day trying to get everything situated because the hotel was definitely not organized which made my OCD tendencies spike to an all time high. Once we got used to all the chaos we found ourselves having a lot of fun. We realized that it was our first trip together by ourselves and that made us enjoy it so much more. Our first day we walked the strip just to see what all there was to do and see. We watched the water show at the Bellagio, ate at Citizens restaurant in our hotel, and watched the Blue Man Group that night. It was an awesome show and I recommend seeing it if you ever got to Vegas. The second day we slept in and tried to get rid of some jet lag we had. We ordered room service for breakfast which was another first for both of us. We went to the Shark Reef Aquarium in our hotel which was so fascinating. They had divers in the tank with hundreds of sharks, they offered to let us do it for $650 and we thought um betta not!! We ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp for dinner and I loved the actual restaurant. Anything to do with a movie and I am in heaven. It had pictures and quotes of the movie Forrest Gump throughout the whole restaurant and of course I took a ton of pictures. I had to buy a Bubba Gump t-shirt and it has turned in to one of my favs. Bradley knew that I have always wanted to do a Gondola Ride so he reserved a boat after dinner at the Venetian. It was so romantic and I loved every part of it. Our third day we spent some time in the Luxor and walked through their Score Sports Exhibit. It was right up our alley. They had different challenges you could do for every sport and you know Bradley had to do all of them. He shocked the employees because they usually don't see normal individuals get close to Professional athletes records. It was cool and we really enjoyed it. We ate at Rainforest Cafe that night and I had the best chicken strips I've ever tasted. We had planned on seeing the Pirate show at Treasure Island after dinner but the wind had picked up that day and it was too dangerous for them to do the show. I was so bummed because I really love pirates and that was one thing I wanted to see. Our last day we spent some time walking the strip and we went to the Coca Cola and M&M stores. I've never seen so many M&M's in my life. We ate at Hard Rock Cafe and then went to see the Jabbawockeez show before we caught our plane. Jabbawockeez was our favorite and it was seriously legit. The music, the dancing, the humor, all of it was so fun to watch. After the show we packed up and headed to the airport where we flew all night. It was a fun experience but we were both ready to get back to this place that we now call "our home". This is my last week off before I start back to school so we have been trying to get it all decorated and set up. Once we get everything finished I will post pics of our cute little space. 

First Blog as a Wife

Well the wedding has finally come and gone and I have a new last name. Our day was as close to perfect as it could get. Of course we had some minor details go wrong like most weddings do, but in the end I loved everything about it. We are so thankful for all of our family and friends who came out to support us. When brides talk about their wedding day, it seems like they can only remember a few details because it is so chaotic. I tried really hard to be calm and attentive throughout the day, but it's really no joke, weddings are chaotic. I remember a lot but I also remember not getting to speak to everyone like I had originally planned on doing. If you are one of those people that I didn't get to see please accept my apology, it definitely wasn't on purpose. As Bradley and I laid in bed that night, we replayed the day and asked each other what our favorite parts were. We all know that men just are not very detailed so when I asked Bradley what his favorite part was, he said "the ceremony" okay well which part of the ceremony stood out to you "all of it" wow okay. Of course when he asked me I had a whole list; getting ready with my best girls by my side, reading the letters we wrote to one another when we did our first look, walking down the aisle with my dad as a sentimental song played, Andrew Baker making our ceremony one of a kind, Bradley praying with me for the first time before our unity sand, mingling with loved ones at the reception, and walking out through a glow stick tunnel at the end of the night. I'm so excited to start this new life with the love of my life and hope all of you follow our journey of the first year of marriage.