Sweater

My mom knitted me the most beautiful sweater for my birthday. Yes, I said KNITTED it! Isn't it gorgeous!
And, of course I had to include a close-up of me with Adi.

Let It Snow

We awoke this morning to almost an inch of rain during the night. By 11:00 the rain had turned to sleet, and by 11:45 it was snowing! We quickly had a 3-4 inch blanket covering the yard, the sidewalks, and the roads! We are keeping our fingers crossed for a snow day on Monday! But, we had a great time playing in the snow.

Adi loves the snow...running, playing, and especially eating the fluffy white stuff.

Here she is jumping up for a snowball treat!

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.