Good eats!

One of the fundraisers we choose to do for our Horsefeathers project was to sell tickets to a pancake breakfast at Applebees. This allowed us to raise money ahead of time by selling tickets then have the breakfast on a Saturday after the project was over and everyone had a little extra time. Our wonderful families both supported us by buying tickets and coming to the event! It was a great opportunity for our parents to get to know each other a little bit better, and it was a lot of fun. I love spending time with our families and I am so glad they were able to come eat with us!

Here we are full of pancakes! Sitting in the Shannon Miller booth. :) The lighting wasn't so good, so the picture is pretty low quality, but I did what I could to improve it.

Matt's headboard and bed frame that he ordered way back on September 11th finally came in, so his parents brought that up with them and set it up after breakfast. I think it was worth the 2 month wait. The wood is a dark stain and it has a leather inset headboard. It looks spectacular and really ties the black armour he refinished in with some of the other dark wood pieces of furniture he has.

This is the Armour that Matt refinished earlier this year. He did an incredible job!

Here is his new bed frame and bedding! What can I say, he's got style.

Then today I got to enjoy more delicious food! Today at work was my department's Thanksgiving celebration. I brought some yummy Turtle Brownies with Walnuts! The people who organized the lunch were worried about having enough food for my entire department but we ended up having TONS of leftovers! They packed everything up afterwards and could barely close the refrigerator in my department. They joked about taping it shut hehe. Needless to say there will be leftovers tomorrow (my day off, my loss) and maybe enough for Wednesday as well! There's a lot to be thankful for including delicious long lasting feasts and wonderful people.

P.S. I love these sweet boys :) Bryce wanted Grandpa to set Griffin right next to him in the chair. He got the pillows set up just right so Griffin would be comfortable, then he snuggled Griffin and gave him sweet kisses! So precious.

Group Babysitting and Sister Shopping

Last weekend I had a babysitting adventure! The Presley's asked me to watch their sweet kids! Of course I said yes, I miss those guys. As it turned out, Kaleigh and Westin wanted to hang out that night too, so I asked if it was ok to bring them along. What's better than 3 babysitters for the price of one, right? It gave us a little bit of time to chat and see each other's lovely faces.

The boys (11 and 7) had a wrestling tournament that day so they were absolutely EXHAUSTED! We didn't hear much out of them the entire night. They got some needed rest and relaxation after their long day.

I brought along some supplies to make funfetti cookies and me and Molly (4 years old) went to town! She was a great little assistant cook and everybody enjoyed the warm cookies.

Thursday after work, Karen and I met up to get some early Christmas Shopping out of the way! I can't say that I crossed too many items off my list, but I got a bit of a start. We had a fabulous time! We spent some time in Sephora playing with the makeup and at Bath and Body Works with all the smell goods! She had some coupons for a freebie with purchase and she let me have one of the freebies! She is just so sweet. I got some glorious Eucalyptus-Spearmint Volumizing Shampoo! It makes my hair smell fresh and minty (Matt loves mint fragrances). Then we ate some bourbon chicken and rice (soooo yummy!). We did a little more shopping and found some good stuff. We had such a great time, I hope we go again soon!

Project: Horse House

This semester we are taking a class called Project Management. We had to create a full project plan as a class and pull it off successfully. We decided to help a organization called Horsefeathers Equine rescue. They are a nonprofit organization that takes in abused or neglected horses who would otherwise be put down. Some of the horses have health issues that their former owners neglected to treat others have chemical burns etc. Some of the horses were blind and a few looked as though they had joint problems. Our project scope was to build two horse sheds and dig a trench to lay waterline so that the horses could have water in the barn. In only 6 weeks our class of 23 college students raised enough money and materials donated for some very needy horses.

We worked very hard on planning successful fundraisers and even had extra money leftover to donate to the charity. All of the horses had great personality and were very deserving of the loafing sheds to get them out of the wind, snow and weather.

We made friends with some of the horses. We considered adopting this brown one haha!

This white horse had joint problems :(

Team Trench

We actually had a pretty fun time building these sheds from the ground up. It was a good learning experience, neither of us had ever built something so large. All the hard work was very much worth it when we saw one of the horses go straight over to the shed after we completed it to check it out. *smiles*

Here is my team with the frame almost complete.

Teamwork! (or class clowns)

Shed 1 Completed!! We were really proud of our work and hope the horses enjoy it too!

The whole class in front of shed 2

This is how we all felt when we were finished!

MOVING!

Friday, I helped Matt move out of his rent house back to an apartment in Edmond! It really was a lot of work! We loaded up a car and a truck with clothes and smaller items like end tables and nightstands and the like and brought it over. We were halfway through unloading the truck when three tiny little girls and a little dog came out of the apartment across from Matt's. The dog immediately ran into Matt's apartment to start marking it's territory so Matt quickly sprinted after it with the speed of an olympian and kicked it out. Another college guy came out of his apartment about that time and we wrangled the toddler so she didnt fall down the stairs or make her way out into the parking lot and asked the 5 year old if her mom was around. About that time the mom came out and was acting a little strange, but thankfully she took the girls and dog back in to safety. What an interesting first impression.

The apartment itself is really nice though. From the inside it seems like a house. It is painted nice neutral tones and has really pretty light fixtures throughout. It even has big walk in closets and lots of storage! It has to be hard downsizing from their much bigger rent house but i'm glad Matt and his brother found a nice apartment with a lot of space. Plus this will put them a lot closer to school and work. Overall a good decision.

Anyway, shortly after the strange neighbor run in, Matt had to go meet his parents to load up some of the bigger/heavier things in his Dad's truck. I stayed at the new apartment trying to get things unpacked, settled, and organized. The apartment is on the first floor but still has a few steps leading up to it. Boy, were my calves getting sore after making so many trips back and forth to the car unloading. I was working up quite the appetite also!

Thankfully Matt's sweet parents brought some delicious Mazzios pizza, calzone, and cheese bread with them when they arrived! Matt's mom Kim even went to the store and got us paper plates and cups and everything we needed for the meal because we hadn't moved the dishes over yet. I'm so glad they came to help. There's no way my weak little arms could have helped Matt get his bed and armoir loaded and unloaded. We finally finished up everything we could around 11:00 then headed back to the rent house to take some no longer needed items to Matt's Aunt's garage sale. By the time we returned the trucks to Matt's parents house and got back to Edmond it was about 1:00 am! What a busy day! Whew, i'm glad the majority of the moving is over. Now, we'll just have to help Bob move in and clean up the old house... but, that will have to wait for another day.

Ritzy Shopping

Today when we checked out of our hotel, they told us about another mall we had never been to: Northpark! They even printed out directions for us. But once again, they were very vague. Some of our actual printed directions didn't even have street names. It literally said: u-turn, u-turn, turn right, turn right, turn right. Thank goodness Matt is a super driver and we had a general idea of where we were trying to end up.

Northpark was such a wonderful surprise! It was very classy and had great elaborate decorations and stores throughout.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much they must have spent on pumpkins alone in this mall. There were LOADS of them! Massive piles of them around every corner! Filling any extra planters they might have. It was amazing!

Then there were these giant moving statues! There were four or five all hooked together by a pully system just hammering away! They were quite tall as you can see compared to some of the people in the background. There were quite a few neat sculptures spread around the rest of the mall also.

Here is a huge planter filled with tiny cactus! There were sooooo many of them!

There was also this giant water feature that turtles and ducks actually lived in, INSIDE the mall! We were impressed with how clean their water was. There was even a little bridge you could walk over and sun lamps for the animals to bask under.

I was so excited to see this store I absolutely begged Matt to take these pictures before he even saw the name! I should have bought something, but I think they only had sunglasses. It would be pretty neat to sport a tote with "ILORI" on the side though :)

Look how excited I am! haha!

Matt in his natural habitat. Drinking starbucks at the Lego Store! We also found a cool store across from this one with all kinds of unique toys in it! We're talkin' functional light sabers, Harry Potter statues and any action figure you could ever want. Action figures I never even knew existed. Like Mr. Bacon vs Monsieur Tofu...?

The Dallas World Aquarium!

This Halloween was pretty unique for us. The first one I can remember not dressing up for, possibly ever. Because we were in Dallas, we didn't really celebrate this year. Today was the day for the visit to the Dallas World Aquarium! Off we went in Matt’s car only to discover that our Google directions led us to an office building… not much excitement there. We circled the block a few times to be sure we hadn’t missed it. But still, no fish. We decided to stop at a little convenience store to ask directions. After a few moments of debate over what street to take, one of the guys there nicely offered to lead the way in his car and we could follow. We made it! It cost $20 each to get in so we were really hoping it was worth the money. It was!!

The trails, plants, and trees reminded me of the Myraid Botanical Gardens here in OKC but there were all kinds of fish and animals to see up close. Some were in cages and others were just out in the open.

Our first animal encounter at the aquarium!

I loved seeing these beautiful Flamingos up close! It seem like they are pretty far away and hard to see at the Oklahoma City Zoo.

Would you believe me if i told you this diver was Matt? It's not...

Seeing eye to eye

We also saw some parrot fish in this tank and it reminded us of stories from
Karen and Kenny's honeymoon when they snorkeled and saw them munching on the coral with their little fish beaks.

The sharks live in a 400,000 gallon tank that has a tunnel you can walk through! Talk about surrounded by sharks! The tunnel is 40 ft long and allows you to see Brown and Bonnethead sharks, Eagle and Cownose rays, sawfish and giant groupers from all different angles. We were lucky enough to see them at feeding time. I really thought we would get to see a feeding frenzy with the sharks all fighting for the food. But i suppose the aquarium feeds them pretty well or they would gang up on the smaller fish in the tank. The sharks and rays just casually sucked the feeder fish into their mouths and they were gone!


This is a really beautiful picture of the shark tunnel I found on the aquarium's website at http://www.dwazoo.com/

That fish with the big chainsaw looking thing on his face is called a Saw Fish. Matt and i were a little facinated with them.

This is the Mayan Performance Troupe! Their music filled the entire aquarium.


The Temple of the Jaguar!

ROAR!



The corcodiles tails were thicker than their bodies!! Wow I bet they are full of powerful muscles.

There were a lot of really big tanks featuring reef life from many different countries. (Notice the big strange fish in the upper right hand corner of this picture? Alive and doing well, just resting that way i guess. ha)

The Fish Whisperer! Matt tried to communicate with this one. Is this alligator gar? Anyone know? Neil?

This GIANT tank was the home of a manatee, sea turtles, rays, and some other interesting fish. This picture doesn't even begin to do this tank justice. It is more than twice as wide as this picture and the bottom of the tank drops about 40 ft. It was fun to watch the big manatee swim back and forth right in front of the glass like it was just as happy to see us as we were to see it!

A little bit blurry, but I loved this picture of Matt and I with the waterfall. This waterfall actually flows into the same tank the manatee is in.

This little guy was the cutest!!! Matt wanted to take him home. He leapt down from onto this log and pounced onto the pumpkin for a snack. He began eating grapes out of it that were bigger than his tiny face! Sooooo cute!

I think Matt was starting to get pretty hungry at this point... haha

Halfway through our tropical adventure!

A hat! (aka wall art)

I'm a red-head too!

There was actually a sloth sittin in a short little tree that we probably could have reached up and touched! He was all curled up asleep so we couldn't see him very well, but we were sure wishing he would wake up and move around!

This little guy was passed out too! Love the way his leg is hanging off the branch. :)

I loved this tank! The top was open so you could see in really well. It was full of rays and turtles! You could also look in from the side and see the fine details of the rays.

There were also some really precious river otters that I could not quite capture a picture of! They were having too much fun splashing, playing and chasing each other. By the time they popped out of the water onto a rock and I got my camera aimed in the right direction, SPLASH! they were back in the water doing underwater flips. They looked like they were having a blast.

After we left the aquarium we decided to get some lunch then head to the Galleria for some shopping. What fun! There was a two story Forever 21 (one of my favorite stores) that was absolutely enormous! You could literally spend days in there looking at all the cute clothes and jewelry. I tried to look quickly so Matt wouldn't be bored out of his mind but i still managed to get a heavy bagful of things (all were good deals of course *winks*)

Then it was Matt's turn visiting a HUGE Express! We also stopped in some neat stores they don't have at our usual Mall like Gucci, Armani Exchange, Coach, Prada... you get the idea, just for fun. Matt did find a watch at Gucci he was pretty interested in. It had a large face with diamonds all the way around in the shape of a G.

Then, we found out it was $4,000. A little out of our price range to say the least. We looked in a few other stores to find a similar style but when the prices went up past the $10,000 range we began to lose hope. Alas, no watch for Matt.

I think we walked the entire mall twice and boy were our feet and legs feeling the burn! At least we saved our wallets a little by avoiding that watch, and hopefully we burned off some of the glorious Jack-in-the-Box we pigged out on all weekend! YUM! :)

(sorry this post is so long! Hope you enjoyed all the pictures.)