Travis's Birthday

On Sunday Travis turned 27 and so we threw him a little party. The party was held at Oaks Park where we could either play sand volleyball or disc golf. Beforehand we snacked on cheesecake (his favorite dessert) and ice cream. Unfortunately it was incredibly windy--so we had to pretend the candles were lit. There was one surprise Travis didn't know about. When I sent out the email to everyone about the party I asked them to bring a can of silly string. I had bought kiddy party favors for everyone to take--making it look like a kid's party. So when I told Travis we were going to play pin the tail on the donkey he thought it was part of the "kid theme". It actually was my decoy to blindfold him. While I situated the blindfold everyone else passed out the cans of silly string. As I spun him around the party goers formed a circle around him--some people with a can in each hand. I moved out of the way, counted to 3, and Travis was smothered in silly string of all colors! It was fantastic! We got him so good!

Here are a few pictures (courtesy of my friend David's facebook page):



Getting Travis ready for "pin the tail on the donkey"



Travis buried under silly string.



I did help clean him up...a little.

TAM Conference

This past week I was in Austin with my fellow co-workers for the annual TAM conference. TAM stands for Texas Association of Museums. It's a time to meet others who work in the museum field, attend sessions on new information relating to museums, and in the evening visit museums within the city.

I was excited but also a little nervous. I had never been to a conference before and wasn't sure what to do. Alot of the time I hung around my boss, Anne, who introduced me to different people. As the week went on I started to met some people on my own--people who were close to my age. On Thursday evening there was a dance held at the Bob Bullock Museum. Of course being the Church of Christ girl that I am (meaning I'm not so good at dancing) I spent my time looking at the museum and watching my bosses and others cut a rug on the dance floor.

It was a highly enjoyable week. I truly enjoyed visiting the different museums in Austin--9 in all:

Blanton Art Museum
Harry Ransom Center Galleries
Texas Natural Science Center
Austin Museum of Art--Laguna Gloria (located at Travis Lake)
Lyndon B. Johnson Musuem
George Washington Carver Museum
Umlauf Statue Garden & Museum (Gorgeous!)
Austin Children's Museum (So fun!)
Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum

Christmas in April

Last Sunday I received my fantastic Christmas present from Travis. For those who don't remember, Travis got me tickets to the musical Wicked which was showing in Houston. So at 2:00 Sunday afternoon we headed out, me in my semi-formal dress I had bought a couple months ago and he in his suave suit. We first stopped off in Conroe to see Travis's brother, Cody, for a bit. Then we headed to the Woodlands for an early dinner before the show. After a little bit of confusion (my fault--there are too many buildings out there!) we found our destination--The Cheescake Factory. I had eaten there once before for a bachlorette party and remembered it was pretty delicious. The food was absolutely exquisite! It was hard to make myself stop eating so I could save room for the cheesecake. We split a piece of tiramisu cheesecake which was heavenly!

Once we were nice and full we headed to downtown Houston. We arrived an hour before the show so we had some time to leisurely walk around. We were sitting in the balcony which I think is the best spot because you can see everything that is going on. I was amazed by how many kids were there--mainly middle school girls. As we were sitting we watched one family going up the stairs--the middle school aged daughter was saying to her mom, "I'm so excited. I'm going to die" while the high school aged daughter was telling her sister to shut up. Reminded me of times I had with my sisters.

The musical was absolutely amazing! The music and the story line were fantastic. I've decided I have to get that soundtrack. Travis and I both really wanted to go watch it again.

It was a very enjoyable day and the perfect gift!

Stress...It's a Killer

I personally hate stress. I haven't experienced it in quite awhile--since I've been out of school. During my high school and college years I would push myself to the stress limit. Usually my stress came from having lots of projects all due at the same time. I would loose sleep working on them and also put alot of energy into worrying about each one.

All of these feelings came back to me on Thursday. This week I have been designing a Saturday program about wildflowers. My first time to give it is this Satureday (today). Things were going smoothly on Thursday until I started running into computer problems. I was scanning and printing pictures of the flowers but some were scanning with the wrong color shades or they had blotchy spots that I just couldn't fix. By the end of the day I was stressed to the max!

That evening I went over to Travis's to watch my shows (The Office and Grey's Anatomy) and to relax. I was quite miffed when I found out Grey's Anatomy was a rerun. I was feeling very worn out from the day, I had a major headache, and I still had that feeling of stress in me. It all finally reached the boiling point when Travis said one little innocent thing to me. He made a joking remark to me that for some reason pushed me to the edge...and I burst into tears. Poor Travis had no idea what he had done! I feel sorry for men who have to put up with us emotional women. I felt liberated after the tears--I had let go of the stress.

Thank goodness I don't have one of those jobs that has stress everyday. I'm highly sure it would be the death of me...or Travis :)

The People That You Meet

At work we have descendant cards that visitors can fill out. These cards let us know of people who are descendants of Republic of Texas citizens. Yesterday the front desk lady brought for me to type into the database. As I was typing in the different fields, I noticed the email address ended with acu.edu. So I looked back at the last name and realized I had an education professor with the same name. So I ran up to the front to see if they were still there--and it was him! He retired right after I took his class and he has been living in Minnesota. He remembered me once I mentioned who my dad was and we had a nice little chat. I still am amazed by the people I see out here or the connections I have to others.

This week I am working on putting together a Saturday program. When I was hired the intent was that I would create and give programs on Saturday afternoons. Well, so far that hasn't happened because of other stuff I have been working on. But during the month of April I will be giving a short program about wildflowers. Since most of the people coming out to the park are looking at the bluebonnets, paintbrushes, etc, why not give them some interesting information? So we will see how it goes...