Daddy's Home

I think I mentioned before that Adi can hear the garage door open and knows when her Daddy is home. She waits patiently by the back door for him to come in. The other day I took a picture of her waiting because she is so stinking cute!

If you notice, she is wearing her leash. She has been wearing it a lot lately in the house as we work on some training with her. We started a new training class yesterday. And I hate to brag, but she did awesome! This class focusses a lot on loose leash walking. In fact, by the end she will hopefully be able to walk through some cones serpentine style with a completely loose leash...we'll see. In her defense, I think she has a disadvantage since her backside is so far behind her. In our first try her head and shoulders did pretty well but the backside kept bumping the cones!

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas! We had a wonderful Christmas with family this year. The holiday is always too short, but we packed in as much as we could.
Here is a picture of us in front of Mom & Dad's tree in Amarillo on Christmas Eve.

Here's my mom and dad opening presents that morning before we headed to Plainview to see grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Mom just opened her Nook...and I got one too! I am super excited!

Here is a cute picture of me with Mom and Avery.

Here we are in front of the stockings at MeeMee & PaPa's house. The stockings are a sight to see...all 17 of them that MeeMee made. I should have taken a picture of the stockings all by themselves.

Here is Bryan with one of his favorite gifts...an Auburn sweatshirt. He is looking forward to wearing it when they play for the national championship on January 8th. We had a wonderful trip. The best part was definitely spending time with family and catching up. We have so much to be thankful for and are truly blessed to have such wonderful families. Bryan was able to spend a couple of days in Nashville right before Christmas, and that was wonderful, too.

But, it is always nice to come home and see Adi, too! She was so happy to see me when I picked her up at the kennel, and was even more excited when Bryan came home from practice. I love how her ears perk up and her tail wags when she hears him open the garage door. She knows just what it means and she runs to the door to wait for him to come in...it's too cute!

I am so thankful that we have this week off too. My to-do list is really long, but I'm making progress. Dentist appointments, cleaning & re-organizing, GoodWill donations to deliver. But don't worry...I'm going to sneak in a little after-Christmas shopping as well as the mani-pedi and massage that Bryan gave me for Christmas!

News!!!

Big News!!! Avery and Christina are engaged! Yep, he popped the question last night. The big blizzard in Minneapolis caused some minor readjustments to the planned date, but made it extra romantic too. Check out the cool cake he had made to look like a ring box. It says "Marry me?" on the corner. Aren't they cute?
In other news, Bryan ran the White Rock Marathon in Dallas last weekend. Yes, that's his 2nd marathon in 5 weeks! His time was about the same as the Abilene race, but he actually felt better about this race. I was very proud of him! Here is a picture of his finisher's medal and his bib. This race is huge! I think there were 7,000 marathoners and 13,000 half-marathoners. You got a different medal depending on your race and a different finisher's T-shirt for each event as well.

And, last weekend Mom & Dad came to visit. They brought us these cool Adirondak chairs for an early Christmas gift. They put them together for us and Mom and I stained them last weekend. This weekend I varnished them. They look pretty good if I do say so myself.

Turkey Trot

Happy Turkey Day everyone! We've had a wonderful Thanksgiving week with Bryan's dad here to visit from Nashville. The weather has been beautiful (until the cold front came through today). The boys played golf twice, we hit the outlet mall, and we even had 2 opportunities to use our fire pit! Look at this awesome fire! The s'mores were delicious!
Thanksgiving morning we got up early to join 40,000 Turkey Trot participants in downtown Dallas. They had a 5K and an 8 mile race, but Bryan and I opted for the 5K. It may be a little boastful to say it, but I ran the whole 3.1 miles! Bryan was so sweet to run with me the whole way even though I really slowed him down. In case you are wondering, 40,000 people is a lot! It took 10 minutes after the official start before we even got to the starting line! Lots of families walking, strollers, people in costumes, and dogs. It was fun, but you definitely want to be at the front of the race if you are planning to run in any kind of competitive way.

Here we are in front of the big inflatable turkey. Yes, those men beside us have long, blonde wigs sewn into their caps. The boys just headed out to the Cowboys game.

In other news, I finally finished graduate school! Yahoo! I defended my professional paper a couple fo weeks ago, and turned in the final corrections the 2nd week of November! My official graduation is not until December, but it is such a relief to be finished.

Bryan has been doing a lot of traveling. He went to Houston for a science convention 2 weeks ago, and was in San Anotonio last weekend for a soccer convention. Before school soccer practice kicks off (pun intended) the Monday after Thanksgiving and their first games will be over Christmas break. I can't believe soccer season is already here!

Abilene Marathon

This weekend we traveled to Abilene for Bryan to run in the Marathoning for Miracles marathon. He did awesome! His official time was just under 4 hours 19 minutes.

Here he is approaching the finish line.

And, here he is crossing the line to receive his medal! I was so proud of him. We had a great weekend visiting with our friends Matt and Andi (and their sweet little boy Ryan). And, we even caught ACU's football win on Saturday afternoon.

Sporting Events

We are a few weeks into the school year, so the Beck's are back into a full array of sporting events. Bryan plays softball and coed soccer, and bowling league was supposed to resume last week. But, apparently the league did not make on our night, so we've declared our team the winner (I'm sure we would have beaten any other teams that would have signed up). We've still been meeting the last couple of weeks as a team for "practice". Wouldn't you know it...we've bowled better than we ever did when it actually counted against another team. Two weeks ago I actually beat Bryan in one game, and last week I bowled a 180 for a game! Yes, I know it will never happen again, but it did once. I have no proof of course because the lights were set in such a way that my camera phone could not capture a good photo of the scoreboard :(

Last Sunday we "competed" in a miniature golf tournament as a fund-raiser for Special Olympics. Our team got 3rd place! We got some nice giftcards and coupons to restaurants...no better prize for the Becks!

And of course, Fall means the Cowboys are playing again. Thank goodness they won last week...it sure would have been grim around our house if they were 0-3 going into the Bye week.

Summer

Well, summer is rapidly coming to a close, and I have not kept up with the blog like I intended. So, here is a run-down of what has been going on "back at the Beck's".

In mid-June, Bryan ran a half-marathon in Estes Park, Colorado. His dad joined him for the trip, and they had a great time. It was surprisingly cold for June. It was cloudy the whole time, and in the mid-40's. They were glad they had coats! And, it rained on race day! Despite the less-than-perfect weather, Bryan did great at his race. His time was a little over 2 hours, which was great considering the rain, cold, hills, and elevation! He is currently training for a full marathon in October.

While they were on their trip, I was home studying for my Comps tests for grad school. Big fun, huh? But, I did pass all of them! I also did a lot of work on may professional paper...the last obstacle to finishing grad school. I will finish it this fall and graduate in December.

In July, we went to Sedona, Arizona with Bill and Lou (Bryan's aunt and uncle). We had a great trip! On the way out, we stopped at Meteor Crater just outside of Flagstaff. I had never heard of it, but about 50,000 years ago, a huge meteor landed here and made the huge crater. They think it was about 700 feet deep at the time and may have had a lake in it. But due to erosion, now it is only about 550 feet deep. It is over 2.5 miles around the crater! Here I am next to a possible piece of the meteor. It looks small, but it weighs more than a car!

Here is a picture of Bryan beside the crater. You kind of lose perspective on how big it is when you are beside it. but, the Statue of Liberty would fit inside and not rise above the rim. Or, by our estimation from our knowledge of the new Cowboy Stadium, the crater is deeper than Cowboy Stadium is tall.

The NASA astronauts that landed on the moon trained here back in the 60's.

Here we are at the Grand Canyon. No picture of the Grand Canyon does it justice, but here are a few of us beside it. Bill had been growing his beard for a while. Bryan decided he needed one to match for the trip!

Bryan and I do not always dress to match...just a coincidence. These were special Life is Good shirts that they made for Sedona.

By the way, the Grand Canyon is about 8 times deeper than Meteor Crater (and not caused by a meteor at all). It is about 10 miles across as the crow flies, but about 200 miles around the rim.

This one was taken back in Sedona on a patio on the Main Street. Sedona is absolutely beautiful! It was also really nice weather. Who knew Arizona had a monsoon season? It rained a little bit almost every day, and although it would get hot in the afternoon, the mornings and evenings were cool.

Here we are on the patio of a restaurant. Nice view, huh?

We took a little excursion one day to Montezuma's Castle. Way back when (late 1300's) an Indian tribe built this "castle" way up on the side of a cliff. They needed ladders to get up there. It was really cool, although I'm not sure I would want to live way up there.

You can't go to Sedona without hiking at least one of the big rocks. This is Bell Rock.

We did not go all the way up, although there were some people who did! But, it was fun to hike around and see all of the red rocks up close. Here I am by a little "stream" of rainwater than ran down the rock.

Here is a good one of Bill and Lou on Bell Rock. Thanks for a great trip Bill and Lou!

Adi stayed in Amarillo with my Mom and Dad while we were on our trip. I think they had a lot of fun!

We have spent a few days the past week or so working at school. I think we both have our rooms ready. And, we spent a couple of days last week in Austin. Bryan had a work conference there, and I tagged along! It was great to see my Uncle Rick and my MeeMee's Cousins Jim and Karen.