Busy Bees!

It's been a LONG time since my last post mainly because I/we have been very busy since September! School, work, trip to England, moving into our house in February and for those of you who don't know Tom and I are expecting a baby boy in about 3 weeks! It has seriously flown by and I really cannot believe that we will have a new member of our family here that quickly. Speaking of new members of our family..We also have a new 4 legged addition named Brady :) A friend of mine had a 5 month old puppy that the owner was moving and needed a new home for him so, I offered to try it out! Thomas and I fell in love with him instantly. We've had him about a few months or so now and he is doing great! He's a really sweet dog that fits in perfectly with us. Here's a photo of our baby for now ;)

Here is a picture of our home! We moved in February 15th, can't believe its already been over 4 months we've been in our home. It came together so nicely! Building a home was a bit stressful when everything is on such a small scale, trying to imagine it on a whole house is overwhelming. I've just recently started decorating the inside so, I will post more pictures of the inside later as it comes together.

This blog post will be especially long since it's been so long..just to catch up on some of the important bits!
Here are a few of our photos from our trip to England for Christmas. It was SO much fun..despite the flights...being in the 1st trimester+being on an 11 hour flight= not a good idea. Lets just say the flight attendants had to make an announcement to " pass all the sick bags to the girl on row F"..not my finest moments. However, I was extremely relaxed through it all surprisingly since those who know me well know that have have severe anxiety on planes. Once we got there I was much better! We were able to relax at the Shenton's, take a tour of Tom's old school ( it was so much fun seeing where he went to school and getting to meet some of his old teachers), christmas day with the family, football/soccer match on boxing day, trip to London for our anniversary, and many other really fun times.

 On boxing day we went to watch a football match with the family and Grandad Shenton. We were in the box seats for the game which included a full English dinner prior to the game. It was such a fun experience. It was such a neat atmosphere, everybody was so into the game compared to the soccer matches in the MLS.

 On our first anniversary Thomas' family took us to London for a weekend! It was so much fun being back in the city where we were engaged. We did a bit of sight seeing, shopping and some very fine meals. This was our anniversary dinner at Jamie Oliver's Italian in Covent Gardens. It was really nice!

The next day in London we kept it pretty low key because Tom got food poisoning the night of our anniversary..poor boy. He was really good about it and we kept on going the next day! We did some shopping and went back to the spot where we got engaged in St. James' Park. Overall it was SO nice to go back to England and visit. We are looking forward to his family's visit in the end of July! Can't believe how quickly they will be here.

Thomas also was extra busy this spring season with his jobs! He is the director of training at Gusher United/BYSC and the club has done really well under his direction! I'm really proud of all the hard work he puts in. He also started playing for the Texas Strikers a PASL ( Professional Arena Soccer League) team that is brand new in Beaumont. It's had its ups and downs but it has been a fun experience for Tom to travel around the US doing something he loves to do.

Now things are starting to wind down with Tom's job and my work! This has been my has week of work and now it's time to relax and get things ready for Baby. I will post about my baby shower in Beaumont next! It was absolutely amazing. Hopefully one of the next few posts will be about the arrival of our new little one! We are so excited and can't believe we've only got 3 weeks ( or less!)
Oh and here's a little sneak peek at our little man!

Good day!

I got some exciting news today! I got an academic scholarship through Lamar today! I am SO excited. I couldn't apply for scholarships before the deadline in April because I had not been at Lamar full time for a semester yet so, it was looking like I wouldn't get one for the 2012-2013 school year. I was lucky to have a very nice scholarship employee at Lamar find a scholarship that someone lost. This is honestly something I never expected to do, I never tried hard in high school. I was more worried about my social life and extra curricular activities. I naturally thought that I wasn't very good in school since, my grades never showed it. However, I found out that when I tried I could really do well in school. Moral of the story is that hard work pays off. And on top of that I got a 100% on my first anatomy and physiology II quiz! yay! And we started our fetal pig dissection today and it was SO neat. I loved it..maybe I'm weird. Anyways..Life is good for now! The semester hasn't gotten too crazy yet. Tom's work load has slowed down a lot so we get to spend a lot more time together :)

Married to a Foreigner Part 2

So people thing it's all fun and games being married to an English man (and sometimes it is) but lately its been pretty darn frustrating. And not because of him at all just because somethings are more difficult because he is not from here. Obviously. So this is going to be a big vent post about our latest battle.  So first, we found out that we will be living here for longer than expected which is good! However, we now need to find a house instead of throwing money away at an apartment. Which brings me to our first problem..credit. I have great credit but since I'm in school, I'm not working. So it's all on Tom..and Tom has NO credit in the US. He has great credit in England but nothing here. And apparently credit transfers from France, Australia and all these other countries except for England..of course. So, we have been working on building Tom a credit score and we have done everything we have been told but 7 months later still not one ounce of credit. (They told us it would take probably 3-6 months to get credit). So here we are having to tell our apartment complex if we are staying or not by the 10th of this month (for a 60 day notice). Our lease is up in October but still its a bit nerve racking trying to figure out what to do.
Secondly, we recently had to register our car in Beaumont and get car insurance. I set everything up and we got a great deal with the car insurance. I spent a few hours in June getting everything signed up and thought it was all good...but it wasn't. When we were vacationing in Florida I get a call that since Tom does not have a Texas Drivers License we are not eligible for this sector of insurance but, if he can get a drivers license by August 10th we can keep this insurance and save 30 dollars every month (which is a big deal to me). So as soon as we get back from our vacation we go to the ever exciting DPS and wait for over an hour to be told that since Tom is between 18-24 he has to take adult drivers education. Great. So Tom is REALLY busy at work right now with it being the beginning of the season and is finding it hard to find time to take this 6 hour online course. So finally I sign him up for the course and get him started. He finishes it in a couple days and we have to pay 40 extra bucks to get it over-nighted so he can go the next day to the DPS. So we go to the DPS yesterday with the document and bring all of what we were asked to bring to the DPS. So we wait another 2 hours only to be told we had the wrong documents....this time Tom was much less nice I had to go the back and handle the situation since he practically yelling at the woman telling us the information. She gave us a "skip the line" pass..thankfully. But then tells us Tom has to get a permit and that it would be 2 months before he could have a driving test. Which obviously does not make my deadline for the insurance. I about broke down after all of my efforts to get this together. I tried calling different DPS's to see if they had a random opening but they were all rude of course and just said no without any question. So these are not by any means major life problems, we are fine and healthy and loving life. I'm just venting and I wouldn't change anything..except for the people working at the DPS :)

Courage

  "Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all."

So the other night while Tom was at work the only thing on was The Princess Diaries. Anyways, I was casually watching it while doing other things but then I heard this quote about courage and I absolutely loved it. Ambrose Redmoon is actually is quoted for saying the first sentence in the quote, I'm not sure about the rest. But, how true it is. I tend to be quite cautious when it comes to most things. I'm constantly thinking about how certain actions will impact others. While this could be seen as a good trait, it's exhausting and draining.  My friends always joke that when there is nothing to stress about I find something. I need to think less, have more faith, and live more. Stop worrying about things I cannot change and love every moment that I am blessed with. I just loved this quote so much that I wanted to share it :) Hope others find it as powerful as I do. I found the image below on Pinterest ( I LOVE Pinterest) and thought it went well with what I was thinking about. I also just love Gordon B. Hinkley. That's all for today :)

Birthday! :)

On to my birthday! It was absolutely amazing. It started off with breakfast and presents in bed. Thomas is SO good to me. Then he got a hot bath ready for me and told me to get ready for my day. So I get all ready and wonder whats going to be next and then there is a knock at the door annnnnd its my mom and siblings! I was so surprised I had no idea that they were coming over! My mom said we had to leave immediately. So along with all my sisters we went to get pedicures. It was so nice. Just what I needed. We then went back to the apartment to "go out to lunch" but when we got back the apartment was all decorated with streamers, balloons and a lunch with all my favorite foods were on the table. Then we had some cake that my sister homemade and decorated! It was perfect. We all hung out until my family had to go back home. Tom took me out to my favorite food for dinner.. Mexican! It was a great birthday to say the least. And Thomas spoiled me lots of course. Now I have to figure out how to make his birthday equally as amazing..its going to be pretty difficult.
Here is the cake chef Emily made-

The super cute table decorations( I love the movie Tangled)-

And my new favorite t-shirt from Emily-

All in all it was a great day! Thanks to Mom, Alex, Emily, Bethany, Kailey, Dad (for letting them come to Beaumont) and of course Thomas! Love you all.

Beginning of Summer

So..I've been REALLY bad about blogging and I have SO much time right now. It's pretty embarrassing. So I'm going to do some catch up today :) I'm going to start off at the beginning of summer with the visit of James (Tom's brother) and Lauren. It was a blast having them here even though it wasn't quite as exciting as it should have been. Tom was unfortunately really busy with try outs at work so we were stuck in the ever exciting Beaumont for 2 weeks. So, I've only lived in Beaumont since we got married (7 months) and I've been busy with school and work. I had not looked into anything fun to do so right before they got here I decided to search it and see if there was anything fun to do in Beaumont. Let me tell you...it was a sad search..basically we had to choose between an energy museum and an oil museum. Or both if we were really daring. So that sums up Beaumont for those of you who don't know much about it. It's nothing exciting..but has everything we need. I'm not complaining..I do like it but it's no tourist destination. So I felt awful that they paid so much money to vacation in Beaumont,Texas. However, it turned out to be very nice. It was a very relaxed time. We did make it up to Austin for a weekend to hang out in the city and then over to Schlitterbahn. We picked an interesting weekend to go to Austin...It turned out to be a motorcycle/biker festival that weekend. So at night they closed down more streets than normal and motorcycles lined every street. All I will say is that it was a bit interesting walking down the streets of downtown Austin at 10 pm..But it was definitely an experience. Here's a picture of what it looked like!

Then to finish off their visit we were lucky enough to get a suite box at the new Dynamo Stadium for a game. It was so much fun and the stadium is SO nice! All of us before the game :)

It was so good to have James and Lauren here and I hope they had as much fun as we did having them here! Can't wait till our trip back to England in December!!

Happiness

This post is a bit more serious than my other posts but, I wanted to be grateful today.

Today I was thinking about what it truly means to be happy. I am truly happy every day. Even when things aren’t going exactly the way I hoped. I’m happy because I have an amazing husband that loves me for me. I’m happy because I have a nice place to live and Thomas has a job that he loves. I’m happy because I have an amazing calling at church with such sweet girls. I’m happy because I have the true church in my life. I’m happy because I know I’m trying my hardest at school and its showing. I’m happy because I love everything about my life. I’m peaceful and content with absolutely everything. And I’ve been this way since I met Thomas. I’m so grateful for him, all my family, and friends. Thank you to all of you who have been there for me and contribute to my true happiness. Here is a quote that I found that I love.. "We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have" - Frederick Keonig

On a less serious note: I have 3 set in stone A’s for the semester! I have one final left next week for anatomy!! And to keep an A average I have to just make a 50 on the exam. Next Wednesday is my exam and then I’m free for the summer! My last day of work in next week and that is bittersweet.  This is a picture of what I’ll be doing starting next Thursday. Laying out by the pool and reading a few books off my long summer book list :)