happy birthday

Today is my sister's 30th birthday! Happy Birthday Laura, I hope you have a great day! Thanks for being a great big sister to me for the past 22 years!

no corkscrew on hand

I'm not usually a fan of unsolicited advice. But one I paid attention to was when people would tell me before I got married that "the first year of marriage is the hardest". I didn't fully grasp what they meant by this until after I got married.

The Hubbs and I had been long distance for about 70% of our dating/engaged relationship and I fully expected that adjusting to being together every day was going to be challenging at times but I wanted nothing more than to FINALLY be in the same state let alone same city and house as him. It has been nearly a month since our wedding day and I can now say that I understand more fully what everyone meant by that wise piece of advice.

No two humans are exactly alike. We all have different interests, personalities, histories, etc. God made us that was for a reason. Just think of how BORING life was if everyone you ever met liked everything you liked and agreed/disagreed with all of the same issues as you did. Differences are what makes the world go round- or at least make it interesting. Marriage like any relationship takes time and effort to make it work. That is what is so beautiful about relationships. Its about compromising and adjusting your own silly habits or ways to accommodate the other person. I like my fruit cold in the fridge- he likes his room temperature on the counter- so we have most of it on the counter. I like orange juice without pulp- he likes a lot of pulp in his juices- we are now drinking OJ with "some pulp". We are both compromising and making life together work.

Last night we had bought a bottle of wine at the grocery store to drink with dinner. When we got home we quickly realized that we did not own any type of corkscrew. Not sure how on our long registry we overlooked asking for a corkscrew. I suggested The Hubbs go ask our neighbor if he had one- unfortunately he did not. Being the cleaver people we are we decided to start brainstorming ways to get this cork out. We tried stabbing a knife into the cork to yank it out- no luck. We tried drilling into the cork with an electric drill- no luck. Finally we tried putting several wall hooks (that have the corkscrew base) into the badly mangled cork and pulling up with a dowel rod. This technique slowly seemed to be working but by the end of it we didn't have enough solid cork to get a grip on opening the bottle of wine. Nearly forty-five minutes later we accepted defeat and pushed the remaining inch of cork down into the bottle of wine and poured glasses (my apologizes to wine lovers everywhere- we are aware this is a big no no). Turns out I'm not a huge wine fan at all and ended up not drinking all of my glass but the Hubbs enjoyed his after tirelessly attempting to remove the cork.

Here is the end results of our bottle and cork. I made a comment afterwards how this was sort of a symbol for what the first year of marriage is like in a way. We don't really know what we are doing and must experience trial and error before things work out. But in the end we get the sweet tasting victory of being married and having each other in our life. I love when God shows me things I'm learning through random and obscure events.

I'm off to go tidy up the apartment and continue searching for a Big Girl Job

with love,

Sarah

a month of changes

Wow it sure had been one crazy month for me. Lets all catch up to speed here.

May 10th- I turned 22. Not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. I had a great day filled with quality time with my dear friend Courtney and an evening of food and drinks at my favorite place in Norman- The Mont. Mother nature was nice enough to put off the tornados for the day (there has been a tornado on my birthday every year I've been in college). All in all it was a successful birthday.

May 14th- I graduated college. Holy moly. I still don't think it has set in that I'm a COLLEGE GRADUATE. I'm guessing that once August rolls around and everyone is going back to class and I'm at my Big Girl Job that it might actually sink in. It still feels like I'm just on Summer Vacation like I have been for the past 16 years of my life. Probably because I'm currently unemployed and do absolutely nothing all day everyday.

Hellooo Red Eyes

May 15th- I packed up and moved out of my apartment in Norman and into my apartment in Austin. Yes thats right folks I wasted no time at all after graduating to get out of town (and move to "enemy territory"). Technically we had packed everything up two days prior thanks to my family and a few dudes I knew in town (thanks Kevin and Daniel!). Regardless, I hope I never have to make that move again. The whole waking up at 6:30- on the road by 7:30- driving 7 hours- to unload everything in the same day is not what I would like to call a good time. Luckily we were greeted in Austin by some of the dudes from Scott (and soon to be my) Community Group, so the process went a whole lot quicker and we were done in about an hour. After some much deserved food as one of my new favorite places in Austin- Doc's- I quickly passed out for the night.

Too.Much.Stuff

May 18th- After a few days helping Scott unpack our soon-to-be home as husband and wife. I headed back to Houston to finish up planning and getting ready for my quickly approaching wedding. First though I made a pit stop at King's Orchard for a day of berry picking with my mom, Curtis, and darling nephew Jack. KO is the home of some of my fondest memories as a kid growing up and I was so excited to be spending the day with my nephew who is now old enough to start appreciating all that is King's Orchard.

"Give me strawberries Aunt Sarah!!"

May 25-26th- I like my fair share of DIY projects and to save some loot for the wedding I decided that we should tackle the flower arrangements ourselves instead of paying a professional florist. We found a great site online called Fifty Flowers that sells all sorts of freshly cut flowers at wholesale prices to the general public (read: no tax ID number required!)! I love great customer service and let me tell you FF had some of the best customer service I've seen in my whole life! As soon as the flowers arrived it was time to get to work stripping leaves, cutting stems, making arrangements, and sneezing a bajillion times. Luckily I had the assistance of many friends and family. My sister, Laura, was the mastermind behind the whole wedding flower operation and without her help I think I would still be putting together arrangements. By 2 AM on the 27th all of the arrangements were packed and ready to be delivered Saturday morning. All that was left was to pray that they would survive the two days in my mom's air conditioned garage.

1280 stems of flowers

May 27th- The day before the BIG day was chalked full of luncheons at Houston's great Paulie'srestaurant, nail salon party at Isle PediSpa, swanky hotel rooms, and last minute semi-frantic phone calls from the best man saying the officiant's airplane was delayed an hour- "but not to worry". And that was just the to-do list for the girls- the boys were "busy" picking up tuxes and hanging out (what a hard life). We met up that evening for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner at the always entertaining Dave & Busters. After dinner the "adults" went back to their respective "homes" for the evening and us "kids" stayed and played video games into the late hours of the night. By the time my head hit the pillow at 1 AM I was so exhausted my body went straight to sleep while my mind stayed up all night thinking about things left to do before the wedding that evening.

Just the groomsmen working on their tans

May 28th- WEDDING DAY! While the boys slept in and went to the gun range- us girls were up and ready to go bright and early having breakfast and making hair/ make up appointments. By 3:30 when I arrived at The Gallery so much had already been set up for the wedding I was able to do a quick run through and tweak the different things I saw needed to be changed. 5 PM quickly arrived and it was about time to do the "reveal" and wedding party pictures. We decided to go with a first look before the actual ceremony because lighting wasn't going to be working in our favor once the ceremony was over. I'm actually very glad we did this and recommend it to anyone considering it for their own wedding. The Hubbs and I were able to give each other a few hugs and kisses and say a prayer thanking God for all of the blessings he'd given us thus far in life. Looking back we both agreed that this time calmed our nerves and took the edge off of the whole day. Pretty much from here on out the rest of the evening was a total blur. Some amusing things took place that we will laugh about for years to come, I laughed, I cried, I danced until I could dance no more. It truly was the best day of my whole life thus far.

I love my bible study girls

May 29th- I woke up a little sad. After the past week and even month of intense fast pace life I was starting to get used to always having something to do. But that sadness was quickly overpowered by my excitement to be a MARRIED LADY! After a quick trip to my mom's house for some time with visiting family members The Hubbs and I headed back to Austin to begin our life together. The week following our wedding we opted out of a honeymoon (we're postponing it until we have some more moolah in the bank) and instead stayed inside enjoying life together opening all of the amazing wedding gifts and unpacking all of the boxes left from my move earlier that month.

The weekend after our wedding we drove up to Dallas to celebrate with our good friend's Katie & Andrew in their wedding- after first stopping at IKEA (I always say the name in a high pitch girly voice- The Hubbs just loves it) and then at The Czech Bakery in West, TX for some of their DELICIOUS koloches. It was great going on our first road trip as husband and wife and seeing some of our dear friends take the plunge!

The Babbs!

This past weekend we road tripped again up to Oklahoma to go cheer on my dear friend Alex in the 2011 Miss Oklahoma Pageant. She was absolutely STUNNING and did amazing the whole evening coming out in the Top 5 as 4th Runner Up. Our bible study all got tickets together and were probably the loudest most obnoxious people in the theater that night. We are all so very proud of Alex and all of her accomplishments and to us she is Numero Uno!

Hot Mama!

Fast forward to now. Life has been great. The Hubbs is back at work and I'm taken on the position of Couch Potato. We finally got internet installed (thus explains the super long blog post- promise they won't all be this long) so I'm catching up on some things and beginning the hunt for that Big Girl Job I mentioned earlier. I can't wait to see what God has in store for my life as a wife and college graduate- I'm just so thankful for everything and everyone he has blessed me with thus far in life.

With love,

Sarah