Decorating for Christmas

Our second Christmas together. This year, due to my work schedule, we will be spending Christmas on the island. Fortunately, we won't be spending the holidays alone. Mom and Dad will be joining us on Christmas eve and stay a couple days. Aunt Sandy may also be joining us for Christmas dinner. 


So we went ahead and got a nice Christmas tree from Home Depot. It's a 7.5' Black Foot Hills Fir tree, pre-lit with multi-color led lights.

 Jason putting our tree together and fluffing it

 Lit with garland, no ornaments yet.

As soon as the tree skirt came, the kitties wanted to lay under the tree

We are looking forward to celebrating the season in our home. This will be my first year staying on the island for Christmas. I'm looking forward to it. Services will be held at FPC at 4 pm (kid friendly) and 7 pm (traditional candle light). All in the area are welcome to join.

Thanksgiving 2011

This year we spent Thanksgiving in College Station with my family. It was a day of food, fun and football. The whole Gilbert clan (minus Av) was on hand for the festivities. The girls all did facials to help Marcy out with her budding Mary Kay business. Dinner was full of yummy treats of the traditional variety. After that we had a Christmas gift card white elephant exchange. J got a Home Depot card and I managed to knick the Specs card :)


Of course, we can't get together without some pictures. Below is the whole Gilbert side of the family (again, minus Av) and one of our immediate family (this year's Christmas card).

Long time no update

Well..... It's been over a month since I last updated here. I'm going to do some dedicated posts for bigger events. Here I'll do some smaller things.


Right after Thanksgiving we got our 3 offer on the house. We were thinking that we'd get 2, but the second never came through. So far this is looking far more promising than the previous offers. More paperwork is being done and things are being taken care of with the house. Prayers that we officially close this time, anticipated date is December 31.


Wedding plans are going smoothly. I've touched base with most of the major people in the last week. Everything seems on track for the big day. The centerpiece pots will be picked up tomorrow. I did a test run for our gift to guests. I think it turned out well.


Rascal is doing all right. He's taking meds daily, which puts some strain on out of town plans. Still in limbo, but I'm sure we'll get there eventually. I think everything else gets its own post, so I'll get on with it.

D'Feet Breast Cancer 5k Walk

Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing the D'Feet Breast Cancer 5k Walk with one of my dear friends Mandi. It was a great event that allowed us a chance to spend time together that also benefited a great cause. I have been trying to do this walk for about 3 years now, and every year something has come up. We finished in about 45 minutes, not much longer than it takes me to "run" a 5k. I think I'll be taking a break for the near future from races, what with the wedding and all. 


Speaking of, we are now just under 3 months to go! Seems like this year has just flown by. Please tell me they aren't going to continue in this fashion! This month is going to be fairly quiet for wedding things. I will have dress alterations and my wedding band should be ready this week. Our second round of invites will go out either just before or just after Turkey day.


Sadly, we lost another buyer on the house. We had hoped to be closing on the house a week from tomorrow, but we found out Thursday that their lender had backed out. So the house will be going back on the market again. We can only hope that it will get sold before the wedding. 

Galveston Revival 5k Run

In honor of the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Ike, Susan and I decided to run the Galveston Revival 5k Run. The last 5k I ran was actually in July of 2008, just before Ike. I spontaneously decided to run the Volkslaufe during a trip back to Frankenmuth. 


I don't run 5k's to break or set records. I mostly do them to say "yup, I ran that". For this year, this is the first one I did. Unfortunately, my hip/back problems forced me to walk more than I'd have liked. However, I still managed to finish the race in about 40 minutes. Below is a picture of Susan and I post race.

Next weekend I will be doing the D'Feet Breast Cancer 5k Walk with my friend Mandi (among other things).

Robert and April's Wedding

At the end of September, we were able to make a quick trip back to Wisconsin to see J's brother get married. Due to both our work schedules, we weren't able to stay too long. However, it was great to see everyone again.

The happy couple :)

Us after the ceremony

We had a great time celebrating with them, and getting to spend some more time with family.

Updates on Rascal & the Wedding

After undergoing a biopsy, we are still no closer to learning what Rascal has. Since the steroid shot helped, he's going to continue to get treats infused with steroids. The vet gave me some plain treats to see what he liked best. Interestingly enough, he loves all treats :) 


In other news, we are doing well on the wedding plans. The first round of invitations went out about a month ago.

To date, we have gotten about 1/3 of them back. Hopefully the second round will be going out after Thanksgiving, so don't worry if you haven't gotten one yet. It may yet be coming. We now have all the big things taken care of for the wedding. I know I'm running behind on activities/events. I'll try to do better about updating.