Hawaii!!

So, I've been a really terrible blogger lately, but things have been busy with travel for the holidays and then travel for work. Travel for work wasn't too bad though because I was able to go to Hawaii for free!!! I was gone for about five days, and two and a half of those were for traveling to and from the Big Island of Hawaii. Our first stop was in Honolulu before we hopped on a little plane to Kona. Of course, it just happened to be raining in Honolulu when we landed and then it was dark by the time we reached Kona. Here are a couple of pictures of the Honolulu airport and a sunset through the airplane window.

There was a four hour time change that was a little tough to get used to, but it was nice getting the day started early with a quick jog before anyone else was really awake. By the time I made it back to the room to shower, this was the view I saw from our baclony:

And around the corner of the balcony:

We stayed in a pretty nice resort, but the resort was pretty much all we were able to see for the short amount of time that we were there. But the pool was nice to hang out in for a little while. And of course the view was fantastic!!

Too bad we didn't get to stay at the Hilton.....it seemed like it was its own village on the island and you even had the option of swimming with the dolphins within the resort.

Everything there is pretty open, so for lunch we had a couple of visitors that were hoping to get a snack.

And last, because we were pretty much staying on a volcanic island, there was lava rock everywhere. Instead of people spray painting the sides of the lava rock, they used bleached or dead coral as their "grafitti". For those that like to take natural souveniers this was a big "no-no" on the island of Hawaii. Apparently, if you take anything made by the island such as a lava rock, you would be cursed by their gods. Bad things have happened to people who take lava rocks home.....such as their house burns down. Every day the post office recieves hundreds of pounds of natural souveniers that people send back because they had been cursed :). Because I didn't want to find out if this curse was true or not, I just took a couple of pictures and called it good.

And they're off!!

Bethany's dad and I decided we would run in the Vulcan 10k on Saturday in downtown Birmingham. It was definatly fun! If you're looking for a great place with wonderful scenery, I highly recommend it. The course starts at Boutwell Auditorium, runs along 2nd Ave., down by the Highland Golf Course, and back to the auditorium. Of course there's a good long uphill in the middle followed by a quite fast downhill. Excellent. For those of you unsure, the 10k is equivelent to 6.2 miles.

The necessary pre-race photo inside the auditorium. I told Bethany to take lots of pictures so she did. Of course we need the pre-race photos. I had a little case of jitters, but they went away rather quickly, right after the first mile.

And they're off. We were several minutes behind the leaders, but it's all good. We had timing chips on our shoes (provided by the race) that kept up with everything.
Bethany took some pretty good pictures of us coming into the finishing chute. Mr. C finished in just under an hour and I finished in a little over an hour. Not too bad. The winner finished in 29 mins though.

The typical post race photo. I was pretty excited about it. I definatly have plans to keep it up. The next race is either the Turkey Burner 5k (3.1mi) or the Jingle Bell Run 5k (3.1mi). The next big one though will be Feb 10, 2008, which will be the Mercedes Half Marathon (13.1mi). If you want to come out and cheer us on, feel free to do so. We'll make a day out of it!

Halloween & Such...

So we decided to go to Baker's Farm out in Harpersville,Al to gather some pumpkins for Halloween. It was the same place we went last year, but it was just as fun. There was the cotton pen, the corn maze, small animal zoo, the hayride, pumpkin picking, and the lemonade stand. Quite fun. Robert took some pictures and of course shared in the fun with everyone else.

Bethany finally found a horse to ride. The great thing was that you didn't have to clean up after this little guy. I think we may even be able to put one of these in our backyard without breaking the housing rules.There were lots of pumpkins. Last year we saw short flat pumpkins, white pumpkins, and even the large pumpkins. This year, well it was still the flat pumpkins, but also knobby little pumpkins. There were lots to choose from either way!

Bethany says, "I think I found one....but I need to keep looking."Actually, she found more than one. She found two. It seemed like she would find one, like it, hold on to it, fine another, make a pile, and keep going. Eventually we talked her down to just two. I'm sure she would have been happy with more.

Well, now that we have them, it's time to carve them. Bethany stopped by and picked up some templates for us to use...Pretty good idea. I carved a weird looking half jack-o-lantern, half face on mine. It was the largest pumpkin we had and sadly, the design was still almost too big.

I took another picture, but I tried to get fancy and it didn’t quite work. I was hoping to zoom in during the shot to get a scarier picture, and it didn’t turn out as I had hoped. Here’s to trying anyways.

The second pumpkin I carved (left) and Bethany’s little knobby guy (right).It’s kind of cool if you ask me. Under the light, the knobs really stood out in some of the pictures.Her knobby gremlin, all by himself. Also, it was time to make cookies. Bethany and her mom baked and iced cookies for the holiday. I think there was somewhere around 5-6 dozen cookies made. Since I was out of town until Sunday, they did most of the icing…but it still turned out pretty good without my helpWell, tomorrow is the big day. We’ve heard reports that folks in our neighborhood have spent nearly $200 on candy and still ran out. We’ll see how far our bag gets us. We’re planning on sitting outside, dressed up somehow, passing out candy. Hopefully it won’t be as hectic as they make it sound!

Why so cheap?!?

So how much would your body be worth to the Medical field? Apparently, mine isn't too much.


$4875.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth.

-Robert

I'm not worth too much dead either :).


$4190.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth.

-Bethany

Baby Shower Cookies

This past Saturday, my mom and I went to Tamara's baby shower. It was a lot of fun, and Tamara and Dallas went home with TONS of stuff for their new baby. Tamara's mom asked mine to make her famous cut out cookies for the shower.....the theme was under the sea. My mom and I had a good time hanging out decorating cookies.
While we were finishing up cookies, my dad and Robert went for a run. They are working towards a 10k in November. They were able to spend the day watching football.....yay for Alabama and Auburn winning!! When my mom and I got home we went out to the Santa Fe Cattle Company for dinner....it was really good. Overall we had a good Saturday afternoon :).

AL vs. Houston--Homecoming

A couple of weekends ago, Robert and I went to the AL vs Houston homecoming game. Robert's grandmother gave us 2 of her tickets to sit on the 30 yard line--fantastic seats!! The only downside to that game was that it started at 2pm. Inside the stadium was HOT and there was no breeze....unfortunately we couldn't sit in the sun any longer and left at half time. We ended up going back to the tent and watched the game with Amy and Michael in the shade :)....amazing what the temperature difference is. It was a pleasant weekend and Robert and I were able to spend some time with Robert's grandmother. Robert was also able to get some good pictures of the campus at night, but I'll let him post them when he gets a chance. Overall it was a pretty laid back weekend :).

This blog is now rated...

Yes, yes, we're slackers. We haven't posted much in a while, but we will. Hopefully this weekend we'll have something to post about. It's just been a pretty routine few days lately. Work, thesis, run, work, thesis, run.

We'll get something up here soon. In the meantime, feel free to know that this blog is safe for all ages! Just in case anyone was ever wondering about our blog. By they way, you can check your blog's rating here.

The Big 1!

Well, we have been married for 1 year (actually on 9-30-2007) and what a year it has been. For the day's celebration, we started out by going to Cedar Grove Church, which is the small little church just outside our neighborhood. It was cute, the inside was very traditional, maybe had 100 people at the contemporary service and turns out Bethany knew of' the preacher's daughter who just happened to sit in front of us. The preacher's daughter was friends with one of Bethany's roomates at Auburn. Small world, huh?

Afterwards, we came home and decided to try our hands at making Shrimp Pasta with a tomato cream sauce and it turned out oh so good. So good in fact, that I have been eating it for lunch these last three days. For dessert, there is nothing better than 1yr old wedding cake that has been in the freezer. Granted, it didn't taste like it did a year ago, but it was still pretty good. A few of the dots and swirls were missing, but hey, it's been there for a year. We're still debating on whether or not we'll rewrap it for another year...but probably not.

(Check out that cool table that I refinished while you're looking at the food...doesn't it just look fantastic?)

Unfortunatly, we weren't able to celebrate much after lunch. Yet again, we had to drive to another funeral home. My Great Uncle, Archie "Underwood" Achimon, passed away over the weekend and the visitation was Sunday. He was 94. We met up with my parents, said our well wishes to the rest of the family and began to head back home. Personally, I'm tired of funeral homes and funerals. Two in two weeks is more than anybody needs to go to!

On the way home, we made a slight detour over to Bethany's parents for dinner. Ribs, mashed potatoes, cheese rolls, and cobbler. Don't tell anyone, but she picked it up as take-out :).

Saying Goodbye....

A little over a week ago on September 20, we said goodbye to a very important person in our lives....especially in Robert's life. Lovingly called Papa, he will always be remembered as the smart, funny, generous and loving person that he was.

The list of wonderful things to describe him could go on and on. It was nice to hear all of the great stories from Robert's family about how this man played such a huge role in their lives. In the few years that I knew him, I could see how much he loved Robert and how much Robert loved him. Robert even picked up a quite a few traits from his Papa....including the love of ice cream. It was a bittersweet moment when we heard the ice cream truck during the funeral....brought a smile to our faces during such a sad time. He will be greatly missed....

3 days and counting

Just an update...we are three days shy of our 1 year anniversary.

September 30, 2007 here we come.

Let's just hope the year old wedding cake that's sitting in the freezer, still tastes halfway decent.

Home Improvement Time

So this weekend we did some home improvement and cleaning. We got quite a bit done, even though it really doesn't show it.

First, we took the old mirror from the half bath (remodeled shortly after moving in), and decided to frame and hang it in the guest bedroom. Robert went to Lowe's and bought a can of white primer, white gloss paint, some 1x3's, some 1/2" strips, and some picture moulding. After some cutting and painting, we had a new mirror to hang.

Afterwards, we removed two ceiling fans and a light fixture, then replaced them all with three new matching fans. Quite fun. After removing the old fans it was obvious why they shook and rattled so bad - they were installed wrong! Here's a picture of one. Unfortunatly we haven't taken a picture of the fans with the light globe on.

Next on the list was to unpack the office closet and redecorate that room. The closet still had boxes of stuff from the move 8 months ago. Several boxes went to the attic, the rest were unpacked onto bookshelves. Pictures were hung on one of the walls, and the whole room was just cleaner.

Once the chores were completed, we watched a little football.

Poor Auburn. A loss to Mississippi State making their record 1-2 for the season.

Way to go Alabama. A last minute win over Arkansas making their record 3-0 for the season.

A camping trip turned dayhike...

Bethany surprised me this weekend by mentioning that we should watch the football game on Saturday morning, then head out for a quick overnight backpacking trip at Oak Mtn State Park.

Since it was only a quick overnighter we quickly packed the packs and looked over the maps for some quick refreshing. The goal was to do a quick little 3-4 miles to the campsite, then spend a little time and do 5-6 miles on Sunday coming back to the trailhead. Nothing fancy, but at least it lets us get out and get the dogs some exercise.

The park is only a 20-30 min drive from our house to the trailhead so the drive wasn’t bad at all. The dogs loved the ride and were ready to go as soon as they saw us packing the bags. They were basically howling at us when we started packing their bag as well. It was just after 4:00 when we got to the ranger station to check in, which would mean we'd be hiking in the cooler weather - or so we thought. I asked the ranger about the water situation and if the creeks and streams were running well enough and she assured me that they were nearly full just a few days ago. I signed up for one of their designated campsites and we set out.

At the trailhead, we donned our packs, suited the dogs up, locked the car, took some photos and headed onward. We stared out on the wide mountain bike trail and eventually split off onto the more hiker-esq white trail. Along the way, we crossed a footbridge with nothing more than dirt powder and leaves underneath. This was the first sign we were in for a rough hike. Well, we continued on toward our destination noticing that the gulley on the side was dry too. It looked as thought it had been weeks, not days, since any water had been in there.

This made us a little weary about taking the dogs so far into the woods, then not having any water so we decided we would just hike to Maggie's Glen for a quick out-and-back dayhike. As we got closer, to our amazement we noticed that there was some water trapped in the low spots of the stream along the way. Once at the Glen, we let the dogs cool off a bit in what little water there was, we took a few pictures, and then we headed back out.
We went a little out of the way and made a loop back to the trailhead in which we started. After another 30mins or so of hiking, we reached the car and unloaded the packs. We took the last of the water and gave it to the dogs to cool them down, and prepared to head back home.

After stopping at the ranger station to tell them about the water and remove my name from the backcountry list she apologized and gave us a raincheck for next time.

Once getting back home, we brought the packs inside, and figured at least we had a good short little walk with the dogs.

Posted by Robert

So, it's been hectic

Well here we are trying to catch up with this blog. It's amazing how so much can happen in a weekend and then you have to try to keep up with it all.

First things first I guess,

Bethany's sister flew in from New Mexico on Wednesday. Because I was at work and Bethany was in Auburn, her parents drove up to meet Amanda at the airport. After some time wasting, we all went to the Mexican place down the street and Bethany met us there on her way in from AU. Thursday wasn't that bad. Bethany, her mom, and her sister all met me for lunch at the Black Pearl (Asian cuisine), which is very tasty. Then off they went to look at and get applications to day spas in the area.

That afternoon I spent some time trying to get the last of the tailgating box ready for the big game. Basically we took a garden cart, added a wooden platform, some small sides, and then painted it. It's supposed to carry all of the tailgating equipment in one trip - since we can't park near our spot anymore. What a load of pooey! I went to Lowe's to get the official paint and wouldn't you know the Oklahoma Crimson is supposed to be more true than the Alabama Red. After mixing up samples, they noticed that they are both the same color.

Friday was spent with the girls (Mrs. C, Amanda, and Bethany) doing some more job searching and apartment hunting. In case you didn't know, Amanda is considering moving back to Alabama and is trying to see what her options will be before she moves out here. Good idea. While they were out shopping, I was at work. Nothing too fancy there. Once getting home though, it was time to pack the cart, and sort all the tailgating goods. We even made a few cookies for the game. Let the fun begin. I staged everything in the garage and had it all ready to load first thing in the morning.
Well on Saturday it was the big day. The Alabama Crimson Tide was hosting the Western Carolina Catamounts and we were going to tailgate. The expected time of departure was 9:30am. That didn't happen. It's usually like that too! The truck was loaded, the people were ready, the directions were left behind for the second wave of visitors and we were off. Because of the dog situation and the fact that Dave wouldn't drive up until Sat morning sometime, he and Lisa were going to leave around lunch. Hopefully by then, the first wave would have been setup and ready to go.

We arrived a little after noon and used the wagon to transport all of the goods to the spot. Not a bad idea, but with the uneven terrain, it was a scary ride. I think we almost lost the load a few times. We got to the spot, unloaded rather quickly, and setup to spend the day on campus. Within a few hours of arriving, Dave & Lisa called saying they were nearby. Bethany, Amanda, and myself met them to help them carry what they brought along. It was all great until Bethany dropped the box of cookies off the wagon and onto the ground. Even though they crumbled, they were still edible.

Well Michael & I went to the game while Bethany and her family sat and watched the Auburn game. Michael ordered the game on PPV for them, but something messed up and the game didn't come through. Oh well. They're Auburn fans so it didn't upset their feelings at all. Man that Auburn game was a close one. Bethany was hoping we would leave early, especially since it was a blowout...but she didn't agree that 0:20 remaining was early.

I made the famous 'football chicken' as usual and we served it with potato salad out on the quad. Quite tasty, but late eating. It was a long day. We didn't head for home until around midnight and that still put us at home around 1:30am. Talk about a long day.
Sunday was for recovering and catching up on the tiredness. Dave and I did that well by playing Wii tennis for nearly 8 hours. What a bunch of crazies!

Posted by Robert