Our 2 Month Celebration!

So, Scott and I had a great weekend together celebrating our 2 month! We had some extra money this month, so we took the whole day Saturday and went to Galveston! It was a blast! We took off around 10:45 with our books and picnic lunch, arrived an hour later, paid $8 to enter Stewart Beach, and had a great lunch/relaxation time until 3:00. Afterward, we changed clothes in the car and drove the The Strand, which is a street filled with stores and little restaurants. The buildings were all renovated old grocery stores, banks, etc. from the mid 1800s, brightly painted and filled with the new trinkets of the present owners. We ended up buying a few little things at the first store we entered, which sold a variety of odds-and-ends from wonderfully patterned paper to French prosthetic eyeballs that looked SO real. We ate dinner at a steak and seafood restaurant called "Willie G's"; we spent $87 and I told Scott that it was harder to look at the restaurant tickets now that we are sharing money and it's not just HIS money, ha.

I worked the morning shift at Taft Street Coffee on Sunday morning, which was CRAZY. Taft is located inside of our church, Ecclesia, and it is funded by the church so the Sunday morning crowd is HUGE. The barista I was working with told me to make the drinks during the 11:00 service to see how I could handle the speed; let's just say that I had drank a cup of coffee and some caffeinated tea RIGHT before and thus my hands were shaking tremendously and my brain was functioning at 10x it's normal processing speed. I made $34 in tips, which is A LOT for this place!

Anyway. That was our weekend. Blessings to all and to all a good week.

Married for two months!

Scott and I have been married for two months today!! I really can't believe it. What a great new faze of life! We have adjusted to married life and shared life very well, despite doing the long-distance thing for so many years. I was warned that the annoying things would worsen with marriage but honestly, they haven't... not yet anyway!! I will continue to bask in my naivety until that changes.

It is such a blessing to be with and deeply loved by my best friend.

Blessings and peace to all.

Oh, Hobby Day!

Hello, all!

Scott and I just enjoyed a nice, relaxing weekend in Houston hanging out with friends new and old and we even took a day to just us. So nice.

Some of you know, others don't, that Scott and I opted to not have cable TV in our apartment. Partly for money saving reasons with me going to graduate school, but mostly because we thought it would force us to spend our down time enjoying each other, the outdoors, and our hobbies. Thus, on Saturday, we had an afternoon devoted to our hobbies that I so dubbed "Hobby Day". Scott has a love and gift for designing and building furniture that he has used to build some planters for his mom, a bookshelf for his college bedroom, and now a bookshelf for our apartment to house Mt. Lots-of-books that has taken root in our 2nd bedroom. The now vacant law office next door to our apartment was cleaning out some old furniture, amongst which were some bookshelves that Scott paid $20 for. He spent Saturday afternoon breaking apart these old shelves for their wood to make our new shelf! It will be a several weekend process, but he already has a really neat design laid out and a good part of the old shelves taken apart. If you know me, you also know that I have a ridiculous amount of hobbies. Painting, drawing, scrapbooking, sewing, cooking, baking, photography, crafts, card-making, etc.! I found a cute idea for some quilted coasters, so that became my Saturday project. I took some scrap fabric from my ever-growing collection and sewed some really cute coasters that match our living room.

I hope that each of you were able to spend some time on your hobbies this past weekend and, if not, I hope that you are now inspired to make time for your talents!

Blessings to all.

With Scott's parents

Graduate School Anxieties

It hit me today that I start graduate school in about 1 month. I have had a glorious 9 month break from classes, lectures, notes, and studying, all of which will come to an all-to-abrupt end in 36 days. Yikes! Am I ready for this?? I received my schedule today, complete with 3 night classes, 2 afternoon classes, and a client that I have to come up with treatment plans for and implement them in therapy twice a week. Am I nervous? Oh heavens, yes! I thought I was ready for grad. school but as it creeps its way into reality I am slowly inching my neck back into my turtle shell.

Scott was texting me today after I told him about my schedule and he said that it was not going to be a fun change for us as far as seeing each other. He gets off of work at 6 and I will have night classes from 5:30-8:30 three times a week. We will work it out, but right now neither one of us really wants to think about how little time we will actually get to spend together. I am glad that Scott is not taking the "tough-it-up" approach to his way of helping me handle my little anxieties, but the "I'm going to miss you" method he has adopted doesn't really help either, ha ha. It's going to be a difficult adjustment for us and I will certainly miss him, too.

But, despite, as I always do when I start feeling too emotional and overwhelmed, I take a step back and think, "Well, Hannah, take a deep breath and handle this one little bit at a time". (Which is a stolen interpretation from my mother's mantra, "Well, Hannah, how do you eat an elephant? One small bite at a time." You really can't beat parental wisdom.)

Well, friends and family, that is all I have for now! Thank you for your prayers and encouragement; they are truly appreciated and we are praying for you constantly.

Above are a couple of pics of Scott and I since moving to Houston! We love you all.

Blessings.

P.S. I cut 6 inches off of my hair on Friday! Picture to come soon.

WE HAVE THE INTERNET!!!

Hello, friends and family. I am very happily writing to you from the office of Scott and I's apartment! AT&T pulled through!!! We have the internet in our apartment! YAHOO!!! It only took a month, but now I can check my email, write a blog, look at Facebook, all in my own home! I don't know what I am going to do with all of this new internet freedom! (Please note the sarcasm in that last statement.)

Scott and I joked about making bets on whether or not we would actually get the internet today, to which he said, "Babe, I think we are on the same side of that bet. We're not getting the internet tomorrow." I agreed, ha. But, man, what a pleasant surprise! The technician that came out today to fix our line called me after an hour of working on it and I was absolutely expecting him to start the conversation with, "I'm sorry ma'am, but blah blah blah blah", but! he said, "Mrs. Key, you're modem should be up and running." I thanked him so much I probably sounded like I had just received a $1,000,000 bonus from my boss at Christmas.

And... We get the next 3 months of internet... FREE. Yes!

Well, that is all for now. I am going to enjoy this little convenience known as High-Speed Internet because it and I have some catching up to do.

Blessings.

Family

It's the 4th of July! Yet another reason for my huge family to get together, and  I love every second the madness! My Aunt Geana's birthday is on the 3rd and my grandfather's on the 6th, so the 4th of July weekend is a big celebration for my mom's side of the family. We all gather at my parent's home in Belton, TX for a weekend of great food, excellent desserts, and golf. There are 15 people total broken down into 8 adults and 7 grandkids. Not to mention the 9 dogs consisting of 1 albino doberman pincer that is afraid of the ceiling fan; 3 miniature dauschunds, one of which wets himself and whimpers with excitement at the sight of new people, one just a mousy little sweet heart, and the third a ginger colored pup with black eyeliner, which we believe suffers from the dog version of ADHD; 1 rottweiler appropriately named "Bear" because of his bear-like stature and the size of his over-grown pumpkin head; 3 Boston Terriers, notoriously hyper but simultaneously nervous dogs; and one little 5 pound furry rat named Lexi. The whole clan fits in the house much like the trinkets in Mary Poppins bottomless purse. One might wonder how the bunch fits in this house, but one by one we enter and exit with ease. 

The women in my mom's family ALL have this high-pitched chicken giggle laugh, which I too have inherited, and hearing the 5 of us laugh because of a mishap in the kitchen or a story about the men is music to my ears! You will see these women dressed to the nine's in their saggy and baggy cotton pajamas illustrated with various pictures of dogs, fairies, flowers, and rubber ducks until it's time to prepare lunch. We grudgingly rise from the kitchen table ornamented with remnants from breakfast and go our separate ways to transform into elegant beauties. 

The men have a love for teasing the women and upon their success each billows a deep laugh from the bottom of their gut. Golf is a weekend must for these men of ours and despite the 16 years of golf experience, they come home proclaiming their scores of 95, 94, 93, 90, 87, and the champion comes in at an all-time low of 80 (usually carried by my youngest 18-year-old brother, Levi.) 

Scott has come into the Bruner clan gracefully and sadly will never learn to play golf. 

It will be yet another fun and loud weekend filled with billowing laughter and chicken giggles surrounded by the distant chorus of barking dogs.

Blessings and peace to you on this exciting holiday!