Trip to Austin

This last weekend Andrea and I went to visit our friends Brandon and Lizzy in Austin!  They moved down from Utah last October.  I'm trying to convince Brandon to come to Texas A&M to the Bush school, but Lizzy is a diehard UT fan, and I don't know if she could allow Brandon to be an Aggie.

The drive to Austin was only 1 1/2 hours.  Google maps showed it would be 2, so we were glad to get there quicker.  The first thing we did when we got to Austin was, of course, check out the football stadium.  I thought A&M's stadium was huge, but this thing was ginormous.  I looked it up later and found that over 100,000 people can fit in it.  We were a little sad that it was closed, because I guess sometimes you can walk up and get a closer view of the field and monstrous video screen.

After the stadium we went to the administration building:

The buildings in Austin were very unique and old.  It was fun driving around downtown Austin.

After a drive through UT we went to the State Capitol:

Below is Andrea with her good friend, Lizzy.  (She's a big UT fan.  She thought I might wear an A&M shirt, so she wore a UT shirt).

The rotunda was huge.  We got to go inside the building and walk around:

Welcome to Texas

We went on a "hike" after to the top of the tallest peak in Austin.  We joked around that it was the tallest peak in all of Texas.  There were 103 steps to get to the top.

Our trip to Austin was a lot of fun, but short.  We were glad to see our friends!

Howdy!

This week has blown by quickly, and I haven't started school yet!  My first day of class will be on Wednesday, because we are celebrating MLK day, so I get the day off, and I don't have classes on Tuesday.  I'm excited for my schedule this semester.

This is my schedule.  Mondays will be very long and busy, but I have a good schedule for my job at The Association of Former Students and more time during the day to study than I did last semester, so I think it will work out okay.  I'm very excited for my Higher Education Law class.  The professor has emailed us, and it sounds like the class will be a lot of work, but very rewarding.

This last week Andrea and I went to a Texas A&M basketball game.

We loved the stadium!

The seats were so comfortable.  It was like the movie theater seats.  And we were on the second level, so it's not like we had close seats or anything like that.  All of the seats were nice.  The student sections were crazy!  A&M places the students behind the baskets, and the yell leaders would lead the students during free throws to try and mess up the opposing team.  At certain points while the other team was shooting free throws, A&M students would sit in their seats, and right before the player shoots, the students would jump up.  I'm convinced the students are the reason that the opposing team missed so many free throws. 

Andrea made her delicious mint brownies last night.  These brownies are better (in my opinion) than the BYU mint brownies.  They are delicious!  We keep improving our cooking skills and meal selection.  This last week Andrea made a soup for the first time.  It was so good that we decided to try another new soup this week.  Because I don't have work or school tomorrow, I'll try my hand in the kitchen.  Wish me luck!

Christmas and Holiday Break

Sorry for not writing for the last month and a half.  Things got crazy with the end of school, Christmas, and our Holiday vacation.

The good news is I survived my first semester of grad school!  Andrea says she has never seen me work or study so hard in all our time together.  I felt good about the time that I spent with homework (Andrea will say I spent way too much time on homework and not enough with her).  I was busy almost every day, including Saturday's, working on homework, so that didn't leave a lot of time to spend with Andrea.  We managed to have fun watching movies together and looking at Christmas lights in College Station's Central Park.  It is put on by the city, they have tons of lights and it is all free!

Andrea loved going to this park to look at Christmas lights.  We walked around 3 different times, and one time Allison, Brock and their kids came up with us.

This is another park with Christmas lights on it called Santa's Wonderland.  We would drive by it on the freeway on the way to Houston.  It looked like a lot of fun, but it was kind of expensive for us, so maybe this year we'll save up our money :)

Our anniversary was December 18th!  I can't believe it's been one year (and some) since we were married.  This last year has flown by.  We've done so much this last year: graduated from college, moved to Texas, started working and graduate school; needless to say it's a crazy year, but I'm so grateful that I have Andrea with me.  We decided to celebrate our anniversary by buying a new TV.  We bought a Philips TV, and after a little trouble, got Andrea's laptop hooked up to it, so we can watch netflix directly on the TV!

Not only did we buy a TV, we also opened our Christmas presents to each other.  This year, we went to California for Christmas, and then to Utah to see my family, and we didn't want to travel with our presents, so we exchanged gifts before we left.
 

Andrea really wanted a Christmas tree, and I found this tree after help from my Dad.  It's not the prettiest Christmas tree ever, but it was a live tree, and it made Andrea happy :)

We also went to the temple, and out to eat in Houston to celebrate our Anniversary. 

I LOVE YOU ANDREA!

On December 23rd, we flew to Oakland, to be with Andrea's parents for Christmas.  It was a lot of fun being with them.  On Christmas Eve we went to San Fransisco and had a blast:

We visited the Walt Disney museum, walked around the city looking at the Christmas lights, and enjoyed Shrek the Musical.

Christmas Day was a little different than any I had previously experienced.  Growing up, we were always up at the crack of dawn waiting to open presents and had to be told we when we were allowed out of our rooms so my parents could sleep.  Andrea and I didn't wake up until nearly 10 am!  We got up and then had a very nice breakfast, and then her parents surprised us with presents.  We weren't expecting any from them, because they had gotten us new cell phones earlier, but much to our surprise, they had got presents for us to open on Christmas Day!

Her parents are so great!  Thank you so much!

Our time in Antioch was fun, but on the 28th it was time to hop on another plane and go visit my family.  Leaving Utah and my family has been very hard, and I miss them, so I was very excited to see everyone again.  We had a blast with my family: basketball games, museums, ice skating, lots of games, and family visiting.

Another highlight of our visit with my family was taking family pictures!  Andrea and I started dating a few months after Jason left on his mission, and she had met him previously, but had never gotten a picture all together.

Aren't we cute?

Anyway, we are back in Texas, and back to work, though I don't start school for another week, which is nice.

We will work on updating our blog more frequently.  Thanks for all your support and we love you all!