Jeff and Emily's Engagement

 

When Jeff texted me to tell me that he was planning to propose to Emily in the near future, I was ecstatic!  When I realized I was working that weekend, I wanted to die that I wouldn't be there for the surprise and excitement.  I started asking around at work if someone could switch me days, and luckily, a great nurse was willing!

Since I was only going to be in town for 36 hours, I had to be very nonchalant to Emily about the quick trip.  I used Trevor's drill weekend as an excuse to fly home and then drive back to Lubbock with him the following day. 

My parents were in Chicago for a weekend trip, so Emily picked me up from the airport at 9 am Sunday morning, and we headed to Starbucks to kill time before church at 11:15.  What happens at coffee shops?  You have great, meaningful conversations about what's on your heart.  Well what else is on Emily's heart than getting engaged soon?!?  That is all she talked about.  I nodded my head, told her "just be patient, it will happen in perfect timing", without a single smirk or grin ever crossing my face.  Hardest thing ever.

Jeff lives in Nashville, and had flown to Austin for the weekend, but Emily had no idea he was home.  He planned to surprise her at Cheesecake Factory that night, so my parents played the "we are starving and our plane is late so let's meet at Cheesecake Factory at 5:30."  It was perfect!  Emily didn't think a thing about it. After church, Emily talked to Jeff a few times on the phone and each time she hung up she would say, "He's lying to me!"  She had picked up on the beep of "his" car when he was "running errands" and she knew that was not the beep his car made.  What a sneak!  He had also lied about his fall break being the weekend after, and Emily figured that one out, too.

5 o'clock rolled around and Emily and I left our parents house in Georgetown to make it on time.  I somehow got Emily to freshen up her makeup, and even put on some eyeliner, which she doesn't normally wear.  I wanted to throw up the entire drive.  Emily was driving like a maniac down I-35 and I was so nervous! We made it, parked in the parking garage, and made our way to the entrance of the restaurant.  I made sure Emily was in front of me, and she opened the door, and Jeff was standing there with a bouquet of roses.  Emily froze, and later I found out that she said, "I hate you!" Haha! They had a date there alone, and we met Jeff's parents for dinner at another restaurant.

Celebrating at Monument Cafe in Georgetown for breakfast the next morning

Jeff took Emily to the capitol after dinner, and brought her to a bench with rose petals all around it.  They talked for a few minutes, and Jeff finally got down on one knee and asked Emily to be his wife!  So sweet!  He even hired a photographer, Jessica Scott, who will also be shooting their wedding day.  You can read her blog post about the proposal here:
 http://www.jessicachristinephotography.com/blog/2012/10/16/jeffemily-the-proposal/

The soon to be Newman's are planning a June 15, 2013 wedding! We love you Jeff, welcome to the family!

St Lucia

 Get ready for a super long/detailed/picture heavy post :)

My parents gave me one of the best gifts I have ever received for graduation- my choice of a dream vacation for me and Trevor! Amazing! My dream honeymoon/vacation has ALWAYS been St Lucia. So where did we take a trip? None other than the dreamy island of St Lucia. Vieux Fort, St Lucia to be exact.

We decided to wait until mid September to take our trip. I started my job in June, and Trevor had a month long drill during August, so September worked out perfectly.  It was great because after all the graduation and new job "glowiness" had faded away, a vacation was the perfect way to recharge.

We drove to Dallas on a Friday and spent the night with our friends Greg and Lauren who were awesome and took us to the airport Saturday morning at 3:30 am!  Our flight departed at 5:45 and we were off! We switched planes in Miami, then our next stop was St Lucia!

We arrived about 1 that afternoon, and got on a bus to get to the resort.  The resort was literally 3 minutes away from the airport, score!  When we got off the bus at our resort, there was a man serving some delicious "red punch", and they handed out cool washcloths for refreshment.  It was a dream from the moment we arrived!  We ate a late lunch at the casual buffet, went swimming in the lazy river with drinks in hand, then snoozed on the beach.  We went back to our room and passed out for the next 2 and a half hours... I guess the trip had caught up with us! When we woke up, we participated in "Pirate Night", a theme dinner on the pavilion.  We ate wonderful food and had live entertainment right in front of us!  We even participated in a conga line- I hesitated, but my "go big or go home" husband insisted we get our dance on ;)

Day 2:
Trevor got up early to go work out at in the resort gym, this is the only workout he did the entire trip, to my surprise.  We ate at the breakfast buffet, drank coffee and relaxed in the lobby area, and looked into excursions for the week.  We spent time at the pool, got ourselves some drinks at the swim-up bar, tanned, and I did a lot of reading on my nook.  Lunch was poolside that day and it was delicious. They also had fresh coconuts they would slice open and stick a straw in so you could drink the coconut milk!  We were so excited until we actually tasted it... not a sweet as you would think.  Later that afternoon we headed back to take showers and nap before our first fancy dinner at Calabash, the Caribbean restaurant!

Day 3:  September 10th was Trevor's 23rd birthday! He woke me up saying "Wake up, wake up! It's my birthday! We ate breakfast and headed to the pool early that morning.  We stayed until lunch time, then ate and took naps.  Do you see a trend, here? :)

That afternoon we took a taxi into town to buy some razors for Trevor. What an eye opening ride that was.  We saw very poor families on the streets, dogs and horses just roaming around the streets, and people trying to sell things.  It made us feel so guilty for being treated like royalty at the resort and we never even knew what kinds of things went on in the St Lucian people's lives.  Sad.  I have never even been out of the country before this trip, so that was a first for me.

We headed back to the resort to get ready for the Manager's Reception on the upper deck at sunset.  They handed out door prizes and had appetizers for us to much on.  We didn't win anything but it sure was fun! This was the only sunset we saw the entire trip because we were always inside showering and getting ready for dinner at that time.

We had a fancy dinner that night at Silk, the Asian restaurant. This was my favorite dinner.  The food was so so good. Trevor's dessert that night was banana egg rolls with caramel sauce and coconut ice cream. Yum!

Day 4: We went on an excursion this day!  We got a private tour to the city of Souffiere, which was about 45 minutes away.  We toured the Volcano and sulfur springs, Botanical gardens, the Pitons, and were able to ask lots and lots of questions about the culture and more.  When we got back to the resort, we went to the pool and stayed ALL day long.  We didn't leave until 5:30 that evening.  So relaxing and wonderful.

That night it was theme dinner again and it was "Western Night". Believe it or not, there were other Texans in the house! Love! There was a St Lucian western band called the Ellen Stone band, and they sang so many crowd favorites: George Straight, Willie Nelson, and Garth Brooks were the best.  We got up on stage to participate in a line dance and basically embarrassed ourselves. Ha!

Day 5:
We were up early in hopes to be able to book a zipline adventure for that afternoon. We wanted to live it up on our last full day! It didn't work out, so we settle for a couples massage at the spa :)

Our massage was an hour long, and so so worth it.  Trevor's masseuse was named Shakira, haha!
The rest of the day was spent napping and swimming in the pool, just soaking up the St Lucian sun for the last few hours before we would have to say goodbye :(

Last day:
We woke up at 5:45 am to get up to watch the sunrise...best decision ever. It was glorious.

After breakfast we headed back to the room to pack up and shower for the ride home.  Long story short, our plane to Miami was 1.5 hours late to St Lucia, causing us to miss our connecting flight to Dallas.  We were stuck in Miami for another night, but had a comfortable king sized bed to sleep in and comped dinner/breakfast.  We didn't go to sleep that night until 11:30 and woke up the next morning at 4 to be ready for the shuttle to the airport.  We made it back to Dallas, though and that is all that matters! We are so glad the travel hiccups happened on the way home instead of the way there.  The whole trip was totally worth the trouble, though!
 

We will never ever forget this special trip and hope there are lots more in the future! St Lucia, we will be back :)

Dreams do come true!

I started taking care of patients on July 2nd and it has been so much fun!  It's also been overwhelming and challenging, but mostly fun :)  It is so surreal to finally be experiencing the career I've always dreamed of, and practicing in the unit I've always wanted to work in.

I specifically remember being a 7th grader and writing 3 short term and 3 long term goals during the first week of school.  I don't remember any of my short term goals, but my long term goals were 1. Go to college, 2. Be a mom someday, and 3. Be a Neonatal Nurse.  Other than loving babies, I don't know what spurred me to set that goal when I was 13.

My senior year of high school, I still had dreams of becoming a NICU nurse.  By then, labor and delivery was interesting to me too.  We had a program called "COOL Week" (Career Opportunities on Location) in our school district.  We got to pick our dream career and go on location for a few days to experience what the job entailed.  I was able to go to a Level 3 NICU in downtown Austin at Brackenridge Hospital to follow a nurse.  It was incredible!  I absolutely fell in love with those babies, the compassion the nurses showed to the families, and the peaceful, dark environment the NICU was.  After those 2 days, I was sure I wanted to accomplish my goal.

Megan and me with our new RN badges!

 Working at UMC's NICU has been amazing.  I feel so blessed to have had the chance to be a nurse-tech in the same unit; I am more comfortable there than if I started fresh as a graduate nurse.  The people I work with are great, and that makes going to work fun.  One of my proud moments was starting an IV on a baby on the first stick, while the dad was in the room! I was so so excited! Talk about pressure! :)

I have been learning to take care of "growers" who are bigger babies learning to eat and growing/or getting antibiotics, and "intermediates" who are more critical babies with respiratory difficulty, prematurity, and lots of other potential problems.  That has lasted about 4 weeks.  Now I will be on my own for the next 2 weeks taking care of these types of babies! Scary but so exciting to be solo!  Wednesday was my first day alone, and it went great! I had several other nurses checking on me throughout the shift to make sure I was okay, which I appreciated very much.

Also, I took boards, or the NCLEX on Monday, July 16th.  I had 265 questions and it took me 5 hours to finish.  It was probably the worst 5 hours of my life.  So much emotion, tension, anxiety and worry consumed those hours! Yuck. I'm so glad it's over and that I PASSED! Praise the Lord!  No more tests for the rest of my life! I got my license in the mail the next week. Woohoo!

That's all for now :)

Happy 4th!

We had a fun 4th of July! I was off of work, and Trevor only had to coach one class in the morning, so we had almost a full day together which is rare these days!  Our friends Tatiana and Sheldon invited us to go to 4th on Broadway Street Dance, where Josh Abbott played! First we ate turkey burgers, sweet potato fries, and strawberry shortcake. We made some chunky salsa with corn, black beans, tomato, avocado, onion and lime juice to go with tortilla chips, all of the food was so good!

After we ate, we drove downtown and parked, then walked a ways to where the concert would be.  Brandon Adams and the William Clark Green bands played first, so we waited and two stepped until JAB played.  It rained for about 10 minutes on us. Big, fat, COLD raindrops! Thankfully it cleared up quickly!  Some people left when it started, and I'm glad we stuck it out since it didn't last too long.  In between William Clark Green Band and JAB, we were able to see some fireworks in the distance! We all loved getting to watch those since there weren't any where we were.

After JAB had played 3-4 songs, it was almost 11 so we started walking back to the car.  We felt so old for leaving before they were done playing! ;)  The boys excuse was that they had to be up super early this morning.

I hope you had a great 4th of July and hopefully you were able to spend it with family and friends while doing something fun and relaxing. Even during difficult political times like this, I am so thankful to be an American.  I love everything our country represents, and that 4th of July is so important to us as Americans.  Watching the fireworks last night was once again a reminder of all the men and women who have fought for our freedom, a brave act that I'm not sure I could ever do.  Thank you to all the veterans who have given up so much for me!!! Happy Independence Day!

2 years

 June 26th, 2010

2 years ago we stood in front of our closest family and friends to promise our love to one another.

We vowed to love each other no matter what came our way in life,

 to serve Christ by serving each other,

  and to commit to each other spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

  2 years ago I married my best friend, my strength. I married the man God picked just for me.

     The pure joy, love and excitement that embodied that day are still fresh in my heart.

The sweet, sweet memories of that day will never leave my mind.

Trevor took me to a local restaurant for our anniversary date, a fancy little place called Stella's. Neither of us had been there so it was a fun treat for the occasion! Trevor had an Italian pizza that was delicious, and I had grilled pork tenderloin with apricot glaze- so good.  After dinner we came home, ate homemade vanilla Blue Bell with caramel and Hershey's chocolate, got cozy on the couch and popped in our wedding DVD.  We giggled at the funny things that happened and smiled from ear to ear while listening to those vows we told each other 2 years ago.  I am so very thankful for marriage the way God intended it to be.  Constant companionship throughout life is such a treasured blessing to me.  

My prayer for the next year of our marriage is that we would be an example to others of what a christian marriage should look like- selfless, serving, and forgiving.  

I am really looking forward to year #3. I wonder what will come our way this year?  New friends, challenges, blessings, jobs?  Whatever it is, I pray that we would seek the Lord and call upon HIM in our times of need, but also in times of praise.  Thank you Lord, for sweet blessings!

Anna