Texas Lou

Archive for the ‘Ben’ Category

On Saturday morning, I ran the Charlottesville Women’s Four Miler for the 5th year in a row.  The race takes place every year on Labor Day weekend, and the money raised goes to support the University of Virginia Cancer Center Breast Care Program which helps  to fund breast cancer research and support local women fighting the disease.

I was really excited about my performance this year.  Despite it raining during the entire race, I beat my record for the course and crossed the finish line in just under 45 minutes.  In addition, I ran the first mile at 9 minutes and 19 seconds which is a HUGE record for me (I usually run between an 11 and 12 minute mile)!  Below are my results from the past 5 years and they definitely show what an improvement I’ve made!

2012 Results

2011 Results

2010 Results

2009 Results

2008 Results

To get ready for the race, the past couple of years, my friends Sarah and Wendy and I have made shirts to wear on race day.  This year, mine said:

T-shirt…$4

Race Registration…$45

E Racing Cancer…Priceless

Sarah and Wendy’s shirts quoted lyrics from the Young MC song “Bust A Move” (get it…bust as in boobies…haha!).

Me, Sarah, and Wendy before the race sporting our creative T’s!

Ben even came out to support us and I want to say a special thank you to him for holding all of our bags and waiting for us in the rain.

Ben and I before the race

Sarah and I waiting for Wendy to arrive with our race bibs.

Ben and I…check out all the pink in the background!

One of the best things about this race is all of the support it gets from the local community.  People come out rain or shine to volunteer and cheer on the runners and everyone gets all decked out in pink.  We even saw a man with three kids who all had their hair dyed pink (including the father’s beard) and were wearing pink shirts in support of their wife/mom running the race!  It’s the number 1 most popular race in Charlottesville and race registration has closed out in under 12 hours the past couple of years.  I was really lucky to get a spot this year since race registration was on my wedding day.  Lucky for me, my pal Wendy signed me up!  I love this race and I plan on running it every year as long as I’m able.  And one day, if I have daughters, I hope to have them run it with me!

Almost every night, our cat Eva brings one of her toy mice to bed when she comes to join us.  Like a child needing their stuffed animal to fall asleep, Eva needs one of her mice before she can settle in for the night.  Ben and I will often wake up in the morning to find a mouse or two (and sometimes a q-tip) in the bed with us.

Last night, after Eva jumped into bed with her stuffed mouse that is pretty unrecognizable at this point, a scary thought struck me.  When we eventually have a house, where our cats may from time to time go outside, what if Eva finds a real mouse and brings that to bed?  I mentioned this to Ben and he replied that he’d heard of cats doing this before.  All I know is if I wake up with a real mouse in bed with me, dead or alive, I’m going to freak out!

Friday afternoon, I met up with my friend/sister-in-law Sarah and my friend Amy to hang out at Fridays After 5.  Sarah and Amy were downtown looking for some last minute items for Amy’s wedding which is in less than two weeks!  I’m so excited for Amy and Joel’s wedding…it’s going to be a blast!

After meeting up with the girls, we stopped by Baggby’s Gourmet Sandwiches and then headed over to the Nook to join Sarah’s parents, Craig and Robin, for some drinks.

The girls and I downtown at Friday’s After Five.

After drinks at the Nook, we headed to the pavilion to watch Mingo Fishtrap play.  I’d never heard of them, but Sarah’s parents were raving about their music.  Plus they are from Austin, so any band from Texas deserves a listen from me.  I really enjoyed their music and they were great at playing several different styles and genres.

Mingo Fishtrap performing at the Charlottesville Pavilion

They even brought their own sign!

Amy and Sarah downtown

After taking the picture above, Sarah and Amy both asked if it was going on the blog.  Well here it is girls!

Ben and I were supposed to get dinner with our friends Cheryl and Dan who sadly moved to Tennessee on Saturday, but their movers came too late and they weren’t finished packing until well after dinner time.  We will miss them, but are planning on a visit soon!

After Fridays After 5, Ben and I randomly headed out to Sarah and Ian’s new house for a fun night with friends.  All in all, it was a perfect start to the weekend!  I hope everyone’s Friday was as fun as mine!

The title of this post is one of my favorite quotes about love and relationships.  I think I really like it because it describes the teamwork, partnership, and cooperation that I believe is necessary for a healthy and lasting relationship.

Speaking of love and games, I wanted to show the cornhole set that I had custom made for my wedding.  The theme of the wedding was Texas and Virginia (mine and Ben’s home states respectively in case it wasn’t already obvious).  We had lots of little aspects of the wedding that went along with this theme like the Texas shaped bride’s cake (yes, you read that right, we had a bride’s cake instead of a groom’s cake) and the Virginia wine and beer served at the reception.  I think this game brought the whole theme together quite nicely, not to mention it was great fun to have at the wedding and Ben and I can enjoy them for years to come.

Board 1: Texas

Board 2: Virginia

The boards were hand made by the extremely talented Derik of Cornchucker LLC .  He did a beautiful job and let me customize the wording, colors, and logos on the boards.  I know Ben and I are going to have these set up in our backyard when we finally buy a house and they will always remind us of our wonderful wedding weekend!

I realized the other day that I just passed the 7 year anniversary of moving to Virginia.  I believe I moved into my first Virginian residence on August 9th, 2005.

I remember how weak and sad I felt when I got here.  I literally kicked and screamed part of the way here and could think of nothing else more than to get back to Texas ASAP!  I never dreamed that I would still be here 7 years later.  Even though I still wish I lived in Texas and I miss my friends and family terribly, I wouldn’t change the past.  Had I not left Texas and moved to Virginia, I don’t think I would be as strong and independent as I am today.  Had I stayed in my comfort zone close to mommy and daddy, I may have never really gotten that push out of the metaphorical nest that I needed to truly become an adult.  Living close to my parents was always a crutch that I could take advantage of.  What if I had a flat tire? What if I got in a car accident?  What if I can’t figure out how to cook something?  Mom and dad were always right there to fix things for me.  Of course now they are only a phone call away, but being 2000 miles away from them made me realize that I needed to be able to rely on myself like an adult.

Another reason I would never change the decision I made 7 years ago to follow my college boyfriend to Virginia is that I would have never met so many amazing new friends and family.  I would have never fallen in love with and learned so much from Ben.  I probably would have stayed in an unhealthy and manipulative relationship and not morphed from the shy introvert into the outgoing extrovert (most of the time) that I am now.

I would also probably never get the chance to appreciate a more rural environment.  When I first moved to Charlottesville, I certainly had culture shock!  I spent my whole life living in HUGE cities like Houston and San Antonio.  Not having a gas station on every corner was pretty scary to me…it made me feel cut off from the rest of the world.  Now I LOVE living in a less urban environment.  It means that there are less traffic, less pollution, and less crowds to deal with.  And Facebook, cellphones, email, and this blog certainly keep me feeling connecting to the ones I love who are far away.

I’m so glad that I have traveled the path that lays behind me now.  It certainly wasn’t easy and it’s been filled with some sadness, heartbreak, and loneliness.  But it has also been filled with joy, surprise, adventure, learning, love, and amazement.  I know the future will definitely hold the bad and the good but it will also be shaped by the 7 years I’ve spent here and the decisions that led me here as well.  I just have to remember that in order to experience something amazing, I’ve got to take a risk, endure the negative, and keep a positive outlook on things.  Had I not left Texas, I wouldn’t be the person I am today and that would be sad, because I really do love who I am!

Ok, for those of you who don’t speak computer language operators (***nerd alert***), the title of this post translates to “House Hunting is not equal to House Shopping”.

My number 1 project and obsession that has taken over the wedding planning that not too long ago governed my time and thoughts is searching for a house.  Currently, Ben, our two cats, all of our weddings gifts, and I live in a tiny little one bedroom, one bathroom condo on the fourth floor that Ben bought 4 years ago.  Most of my furniture is temporarily living in a storage unit on the east side of Charlottesville and has been for over 2 years now.  Needless to say, we are passed the point of being out of room and have been for a while so we began our search for that elusive “perfect house” a couple of months before the wedding (I know we’re crazy).

For some reason, I envisioned finding our future house as an easy and fun task.  That most likely is due to the memories I have of house hunting with my parents as an adolescent.  I remember my parents would put us in the car on a Sunday afternoon, we would drive around looking for open houses, and when we found one, my sister, brother, and I would scramble through the open house or model home picking out our new rooms!  What’s not fun about that, right?  Well now that I’m an adult, I realize that finding a house that you will most likely be living in for the next ten years or more (especially with the housing market in its current condition) is alot more complicated than just picking your own room.  It certainly shouldn’t be considered shopping because shopping is supposed to be fun (unless your a teenage girl and 30 pounds overweight, but that’s a story for another day).

Ben and I have been hunting for this perfect house since May.  Every now and then, we think we may have found “the one” and get our hopes up, but then it turns out to be too expensive, too old, has too high of an HOA, has no closet space, has a tiny kitchen, is in a county with poorly rated schools, is too far away from our family, friends, and jobs, or just plain doesn’t look the same as it did in the pictures.  There are so many aspects to consider when buying a house and the decision is made even more stressful by the fact that a huge risk is being taken on our part to sign our lives away for a mortgage.  It also doesn’t help that Ben and I are both very picky and don’t like to make BIG decisions.  We have a really awesome realtor and sometimes I wonder if she goes back to her realtor friends after looking at houses with us and vents about how crazy we are because she’s shown us sooooo many houses and we’ve only found 1 that we were willing to make an offer on, but someone beat us to it.  I wouldn’t blame her if she thought we were the craziest and pickiest househunters in the world!

I keep reminding Ben that we just need to be patient and that somebody our house hunt will end with us finding that perfect place.  I know it will eventually happen, but in the meantime we are packed in like sardines at the condo and both obsessively checking the new real estate listings in the area every day.  I guess if I have to be cooped up in a tiny apartment, there’s no one else I’d rather be with than Ben.

My posts have been few and far between this year, but that’s mostly because I’ve been out experiencing life!  Since one of my goals of writing this blog has been to document all of the new and wonderful experiences I have as I make my way through each day, I figured I should share some of those.

Well in no particular order, here they are:

• Got engaged!
• Test drove new cars
• Bought a new car!
• Bought a wedding dress
• Planned and threw 2 baby showers
• Introduced my dad to my future in-laws
• Became a landlord (i.e., invested in a rental property)
• Successfully competed in Warrior Dash
• Found the only Alamo Drafthouse outside of Texas and watched a double feature
• Drove to New Jersey and back in less than 48 hours
• Saw a production of Disney’s Newsies at the Papermill Playhouse and met the cast at a local diner afterward
• Created a wedding website and registered for wedding gifts
• Got a promotion to Software Engineer II
• Learned how to play the awesome game of Dominion
• Planned a wedding (partially)
• Threw a Silpada party
• Got second place in a Biggest Loser contest at work
• Made a fall wreath
• Became addicted to Pinterest
• Went to Smith Mountain Lake
• Watched an elementary school production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Attended the Top of the Hops Beer Festival, met up with an old college roommate, and met a famous blogger
• Had engagement photos taken by an awesome photographer
• Made my own t-shirts for Shamrockfest 2011, the 2011 Charlottesville Women’s Four Miler, and Breaking Dawn Part 1
• Went to a bridal show
• Participated in Office Olympics
• Got my concealed weapons permit
• Attended Scrum training by one of the inventors of Scrum
• Spent a wonderful long weekend in Disney World with my dad, step-mom, little brothers, and my fiance
• Had an AMAZING girls weekend in the Outer Banks
• Helped plan an engagement brunch for a friend
• Attended the 7th Annual Pink Ribbon Polo Classic at King Family Vineyards and met the owner who attended my alma mater
• Watched the Royal Wedding
• Crowd Surfed during the Dropkick Murphys performance at Shamrockfest
• Saw a real live bear
• Experienced my first earthquake…SCARY

I’m sure there are a ton of things that I’m leaving out and so many pictures and stories to go with all of these experiences, and one day I’ll hopefully get them all up here on the blog.

It’s been an AMAZING year so far and I’m hoping 2012 will be even better!

Hope your 2011 has been as great as mine!

I’ve not been very active on the blog and its mostly because I’ve been spending my free time thinking about wedding details and making wedding plans.

The love of my life and I will get married on Saturday, June 23, 2012 (the day after our 6 year anniversary) at the beautiful Clifton Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The Clifton will provide much of the wedding party and out of town guests with rooms for the weekend, as well as catering, linens, and tableware.  I think having a venue that is a one-stop-shop for everything from the cake to the tents is going to make my life alot easier.

The only other official plans I have made for the wedding are arranging for a very talented, local photographer to be there to capture the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, getting ready for the wedding, the ceremony, and the reception.  Aaron Watson takes beautiful photos that succeed completely at capturing the mood and emotion of the moment.  He took family pictures for some good friends of mine and did a beautiful job at portraying the personality of their young family!

I still have LOTS to do…look for a dress, pick out the menu, find someone to make the bride’s cake (that’s right, I’m starting my own tradition:  a bride’s cake instead of a groom’s cake), officially ask my bridesmaids to be in my bridal party, register for gifts, etc.  The list goes on and on and it is quite overwhelming!  So if you wonder where I am or where I’ve been, hopefully June 23, 2012 will be able to show everyone where my time and effort has been going!

I know it’s been a LONG time since I’ve posted anything…I’ve kind of been hibernating for the winter.  However, today is April 1st and we are well on our way into spring so I thought it might be time to break out of hibernation mode.

If you’re reading this blog then you probably already know this, but just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere, I’ll make the announcement:  Ben and I are engaged!  Finally after almost 5 years of dating, Ben proposed on Valentine’s Day.  So for the last two months, I’m been doing some wedding planning and venue searching instead of blogging.

We think we’ve found my venue and picked a date, but I don’t want to announce it until its finalized so I will leave you all with the pictures from our engagement night and a promise to update this blog as soon as our venue and date are official!

Four years ago today, on Thursday, June 22, 2006, I met up with Ben Davidson for drinks at South Street Brewery.  We met as friends, but left as much more than that.

Ben, you are the love of my life, my best friend, and the one I want to spend the rest of my life with.  I love you!

Here are just a few of the happy times we’ve had together over the past 4 years: