Winter is gone!

March has arrived in Texas and I think it is safe to say that winter is officially gone.  Here's a quick update of the last couple months:

January-
T.J.'s school year has a January term (similar to Spring Term, but not as much fun) so he just had one class for three weeks in January.  The class was focused on hispanic church studies and missions.  He spent one weekend in Laredo with the whole class and then another weekend with one class member in Irving.  He did give one sermon during this class if you want to read it here: http://padreteejay.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/january-encuentro-sermon/ You can check out his pictures on Facebook too!  My January wasn't quite as exciting.  At work we were preparing for our big every three years accredidation survey, which we successfully passed at the end of the month!  Throughout January, both of us were continuing to run (T.J. more than me) while we prepared for the Livestrong Austin Marathon and Half Marathon.

February-
T.J. preached again in February and you can read that one here: http://padreteejay.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/feast-of-saint-brigid-sermon/  This one was a student-led service and T.J. was part of the group that put the entire service together so he was very proud of this service.  We kicked off February with the Superbowl at the seminary, obviously cheering for the Giants.  I entered every possible contest I could find, even tweeted to Jim Irsay to try to win tickets, but it just didn't work out for us.  We tried to host a Hanover Pub Night here in Austin, but T.J. and I were the only ones who showed up, so it was basically just a date night out at the Pub!  We celebrated Valentine's Day by going out to a nice restaurant and had a wonderful chocolate sack for dessert!

The big event for us in February was RACE Day!  Dad came down here Friday before the race and we had a fun weekend showing him around Austin (got to go to Alamo Drafthouse for the first time!).  Race Day was good - I was a little bit slower than my goal time because of some unexpected knee pain, but still my fastest time and I did it all by myself so I was very proud of myself.  Dad did a great job in the half also - I think he was in the best shape after the race compared to T.J. and me!  T.J. completed the whole 26.2 miles!!  The marathon ran past the seminary so T.J. had a group of his classmates waiting outside the school to cheer him on from mile 24 and one of the guys ran the last two miles with him!    We ended February with a concert last night for The Mahones, Frank Turner, and Dropkick Murphys! 

I have been doing a terrible job taking pictures lately, so my goal is to start being better about that since I can take pictures on my phone and I always have my phone with me.  We'll see how that goes for the next post!

Christmas

T.J. and I (with Hermione, of course!) left Austin on December 23^rd and drove about 11 hours on Friday.  This was Hermione’s first real road trip and we weren’t sure how she would do since she hates being in the carrier on the way to the vet.  

 

We let her out of her carrier once we got on the road and after a few minutes of exploring around the car, she decided it wasn’t that exciting and she was going to nap.   We debated about the hotel with Hermione, but decided that since we had her little box and we wanted to take that in that it was better to find a pet friendly hotel than try to sneak her in.  It wasn’t an issue at all!  There was a $15 charge, but then we didn’t have to hide and sneak in the side door.  Saturday we drove (when I say we drove, I mean that T.J. drove and I sat in the passenger seat) from Blytheville, Arkansas to Oxford to see T.J.’s dad’s family.  We had dinner in Oxford then drove to Kokomo that evening and spent Christmas Day with my family.  From there we went to Marion to see T.J.’s mom’s family.  Hermione was pretty good with all of the travels, but did enjoy some running around and exploring at each of our stops, including on top of things!  

We got to stop for dinner on our last day in Indy and see some Hanover friends, which is always a good time! Since I’ve only been at my job for about three months, I didn’t have a lot of PTO built up, but my boss graciously offered to let me work the week after Christmas “from home.”  That basically meant that I was attached to my phone checking e-mail for five days and spent a few hours sitting with my computer working for a couple days, but didn’t interfere too much.  We made it back to Austin on December 29^th to 78 degree weather.  While it was nice to see a little bit of snow in Indiana over Christmas, coming back to 78 degrees was definitely nice!

San Antonio

I am playing catch up again and posting a few blog updates at once…I really need to get better at doing this when things actually happen!

T.J. and I went to San Antonio for a weekend in December to celebrate his semester being over and just over two years from our last trip there together when we got engaged!  We didn’t have any plans other than to relax and enjoy the weekend.  We spent most of Saturday and Sunday walking around the Riverwalk and stopping at various places for some shopping, eating, drinking, and basketball watching.  We did find a place that had the Crossroads Classic on TV so we got to watch the IU vs. Notre Dame game and see the Hoosiers make it 10-0!  

T.J. thinking about his complete semester!

We stopped at random places throughout the day to take pictures that for our Christmas card that never actually got mailed out…enjoy!

Would have been the Christmas card if I had mailed any :)