Ramblings about my job and life... sorry if it bores you! lol

Sooo... I know I said I was "Coach Laura" again but I actually decided to not take the coaching position. I was offered 10 extra hours at my current job since my boss got promoted to the Director of our office so she wont be able to do as many student appointments, it's busy enough already... it's going to be crazy! But I love every minute of my job.

Fall semester has started and the campus is FULL of students. I love it though! Students are still in that excitement phase which is great. I actually have the opportunity this semester to do an internship where I am co-teaching the AFS or Academic Foundation Seminar classes that are for freshman students. In these classes they learn about how to choose a major/career, what resources are available to them, how to use the library, etc., and some of the "soft skills" needed from a college education. My class seems really great and I'm excited to see the projects they produce! :)

Welcome Week is in full swing... it is a series of events that go on at the beginning of the fall semester with lots of free food, games, prizes and fun! I just went to the "Beach Bash" and saw lots of students and colleagues. I also got to see my HUBBY as Waffle House came out and grilled burgers and chicken sandwiches for us!!

Other exciting news at work... I co-submitted presentation proposals for two conferences... one is entitled the NASPA (National Association of Student Personnel Administration) Drive-In in which I submitted a presentation proposal on the Summer Leadership Series I developed this summer with the coordinator of SGA, and the other is entitled SoACE (Souther Association of Colleges and Employers) which I submitted a presentation on Career Exploration Teams, a peer-based "career coaching" model which my boss and I have facilitated in our office. Weeellll, BOTH got approved!!! I'm excited but also extremely nervous at this point. The NASPA drive-in is in early October in Tampa, and the SoACE conference is in December in Nashville. It'll be a great experience!!

I'm also a committee chair planning the fall Leadership Symposium which will hopefully be awesome this year!! I'm really excited because we were able to get one of the higher ups from Waffle House who does speaches all over the country come and talk at our symposium! His name is Bert and if you've ever eaten at WH and see "Bert's Chili" on the menu- yes, it's named after THIS guy! Too cool! David was really impressed when I told him. lol.

I still see students everyday as well helping tem choose a major/career, put together a resume, do a mock interview, etc.... so needless to say, I'm going to be a busy bee this semester, but I'm loving it!

Oh and did I mention I'm taking two classes online? haha!

OH! In other news, I also started my official half-marathon training schedule which I'm super excited about! I took the typical 3 months training guide by Hal Higdon and edited it to be a 5 month training program so I can work at it more gradual. So far it's really going great, and it was the kick in the pants I needed!

Now I have to give an update on the furbabies, as always. Well Starla Kitty just ATE A RUBBERBAND so I'm a little concerned, and I caught Princess chewing on Daddies shoes. Wonderful! She never chews anything other than trash usually, but she has an obsession with David's work shoes. I think because they probably smell like bacon being that those shoes spend the majority of the time at Waffle House. LOL.

Lastly, I CAN'T believe our 1st year wedding anniversary is coming up!! My mom and Aunt were nice enough to suggest having a anniversary celebration dinner this weekend at my aunt's house, so that'll be lots of fun, and I'm sure yummy food, which is key! ;) Hopefully I'll get pictures from that to post.

OK I think I have typed FAR too much. Kudos to you if you made it to the end!!! I will try to have a post with pictures in it soon, as it's been too long.

Hope everyone had a wonderful week. I love you all! :D

* and just for fun and for the sake of randomness, I decided to add in a picture lol. This is me SUPER excited after our wedding because we got a view of the castle! I'm posting it because I would give anything to be at the Grand Floridian right now! lol

Coach Laura again!

It's been almost 6 years since I've coached gymnastics and cheerleading, but I'm getting back into it, for a little anyways! :-) YES, I got the part-time gymnastics/cheerleading coach position! I'm so excited! It's Monday-Thursday, 4-7pm, and I also may be able to work with some of the classes they offer on Saturday morning/early afternoon. So I'll be busy with that as well as working Monday-Thursday 9-3 at Career Services and I typically cover the nighttime (8-10pm) and weekend presentations we have to do for the residence halls and such as well. I'm tired just thinking about it. haha.

Other news... I'm applying for two positions for after I graduate in December that have just been posted at the University of Central Florida (ORLANDO!). So David and I are talking about the possibility of moving there after I finish my masters in December as he may have the opportunity to transfer. It's all up in the air now but keep your fingers crossed. One of the jobs is my DREAM position!! AND the director of that department at UCF used to be the director at the department at UWF where I work now and she loved me, so I figure that can't hurt right? lol.

I know I said I'd talk about training for the Half in this blog but unfortunately, I really haven't done much of that yet LOl and I really need to. I did have a good 4.15 mile run on Sunday which is still long for me (oh how am I going to add nearly 10 miles to that?? lol) and last night did the fun McGuires Running Club 5K which was nice. I definitely need to amp it up though!! I've been having problems getting blisters which is extremely annoying.

I also have to post a funny thing we just noticed about Princess. My ringtone that plays when people who call me that don't have a special programmed ringtone is "The Way You Make Me Feel" by Michael Jackson. Well EVERY time that song comes on my phone Princess starts to like howl and whine along with the song. It's the funniest thing!!!! We tried all the other songs on my phone and she doesn't do it to any other one, just that one. I'll have to do a video of it and share somehow.

Well I guess I've rambled enough... I hope everyone's having a good week! :)

Since this was a boring post with no pictures, I'll include a funny pic of Princess passed out in our bed. LOL.

Updates and Disney!

It's been a while since my last update!

Summer has been going good... the Fall semester is almost here so work is already starting to get more and more busy with lots of projects and events coming up, but in a good way! It's exciting but also scary that this will be my last semester in graduate school. In December I will officially be done with my Masters of Education in College Student Personnel Administration! Can I put my email signature as Laura Crouch, M.ed.? lol.

I'm interviewing for a part-time gymnastics coach on the side next week, so keep your fingers crossed that goes well. I'd really enjoy it, and I wouldn't be complaining about bringing in some extra money. ;-)

David just finished up his vacation time and we were lucky enough to get to go to Disney for a couple of days. If you'd like to see all of them just e-mail me and I can send them to you.... or just get on facebook if you're not already, silly!! lol.

Here's a video I think some of you may enjoy. LOL. It's David and I riding Expedition Everest at Disney's Animal Kingdom. I was cracking UP and could not stop laughing to save my life!!! lol. I sound a little insane, but hopefully you'll forgive me. ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2eljcSQrfM

Updates on Princess' eating habits... a few weeks ago she managed to get into a Coffeemate creamer container I had accidentally left out (meaning to throw away) and dragged it to the couch and drank the entire content dry without spilling a drop! At least she didn't make a mess I guess. haha. While at Grandma and Grandpa's she also got into an entire bag of her treats and devoured every singly morsel. Wouldn't you though? I know there are other items I am forgetting.

I really hope to continue this blog up, and I hope I still have some readers. Leave me some comments!! :)

Aunt Kris and Molly's Visit!

Sorry I'm just getting around to posting... this was from last weekend!

Aunt Kris and Molly came to visit for an extended weekend and we had so much fun! On Friday we went and visited Destin and ate at The Back Porch, a seafood place right on the water.

Saturday morning we braved the INTENSE heat to do a 5K on Pensacola Beach! Dad and Kevin finished first among us, with Molly and me, and then David following behind. Aunt Kris and Mom participated in the walking division and somehow came in at the same time as David!! Hmm? LOL. They are speedy walkers!!! ;)

Other than that we basically spent our time lounging in the pool and doing lots of EATING!! What we do best! ;)

Princess especially enjoyed the visit and fell in love with her new girlfriends!

What WONT Princess eat?

So I know I said I would probably be talking about the antics of Princess a lot, so this blog will be devoted to her. haha.

I started thinking about all the things she's gotten into and eaten/chewed up, and I think the list would be shorter of what she HASN'T eaten! haha. No, but in all seriousness, we are grateful as she USUALLY goes for trash or fairly cheap things that are pretty meaningless. It's not like she knaws on our couch or coffee table or anything. lol.

The one exception would be when she chewed up David's XBox 360 headset but she did that with purpose... haha, everytime he put those on he would ignore her! So now he knows better and puts the controllers away. ;)

So for the latest destructions....

-I had tried TWICE to try out the Cliff Shot Bloks (they are eaten for energy in long distance runs) and both times Princess got to the package and devoured them before I got a chance to try them.

- Last week Princess discovered a bag of mix to make biscuits and carried it over to our couch (her favorite demolition location) and ripped it apart all over the couch so we had a nice powder colored couch. The mixture of her spit and the powder made it all harden to our couch-lovely! I'm really kicking myself for not getting a picture of this. lol.

- and the winner for this post... yesterday I came home and David says "I have some bad news." Well yesterday Princess decided to eat an entire bag of fishing bait (the sylacone material kind) that had about 6 pretty large bait in it. The vet said she should be okay and then she probably chewed it up into small enough pieces that it would "pass" okay. Lucky us! Now David knows to put his fishing stuff away in his box.

Around 5:30am I woke up to the sound of Princess puking and got up to clean it and guess what I see? 6 completely whole fish baits! She had swallowed them completely whole.

So needless to say, I've built up a pretty strong stomach having Princess around! haha.

I know some people couldn't handle having her, but despite all of her crazyness, I love that dog silly!!! :-) Plus, as much as I write about her crazy ways, she really is pretty well behaved and relaxed most of the time... but that's no fun to write about! ;)

Oh and if you're wondering "How well do Princess and Starla get along?" Here's a picture to show you:

haha. That was actually a rare occassion for them, but a hilarious picture nonetheless! For the most part, they have a pretty neutral relationship.

In other news... Aunt Kris and cousin Molly are coming in tonight and I am picking them up from the airport. I am SO excited to have a fun weekend! We are running a 5K race this Saturday, which I am actually pretty nervous about because I haven't ran in like a week. The heat has been SO terrible lately it's hard to want to even move from the apartment.

I will definitely post pictures from our weekend visit, stay tuned for that! I hope everyone has a great weekend! :)

New Orleans!

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted an update. I really wanted to keep this going...

This past weekend I went to New Orleans to meet up with some girlfriends. I've been to New Orleans a lot so that wasn't new to me, but I was excited to meet up with my friends because believe it or not, we had never met in real life before! When I was planning my wedding at Disney I

stumbled upon an online forum for people getting married or honeymooning at Disney and ultimately made some GREAT friends who I've been talking to for years. This weekend a few of us met up and had a blast!

As you can probably tell from the pictures, we had such a great time! We of course had beignets and frozen cafe au lait at the Cafe du Monde, and just walked around for a while... it was HOT! Afterwards we headed to one of the girls parents house and had a fun girls night of games and lots of yummy junk food- woohoo!

On the way back home, however, I had a pretty scary near-death experience!! I was driving on I-10 in Alabama, and I was in the left lane and in the right lane a little bit ahead of me was this big truck that was towing a car. It was just tied with some rope it looked like, not very secure. So then the back left tire of the car being towed blew out and the pieces of tire were hitting my car so I hurried and sped up real fast and got around it and in front of it.

Well right after I did that I look in my rearview mirror and the truck tried to pull over without slowing down and because the towed car wasn't attached well, it totally lost control and was flailing around all over the road and almost hit like 5 cars... I thought for sure it was going to be a pile up. It was SO scary to see, I was literally screaming in the car!! This car was just like a rag doll!! It didn't hit me until a few minutes later that had I not sped up around it when I did I would have been RIGHT in the impact zone!!! It was so scary!!!!!

So needless to say, I was happy when I made it home!!! :) I was missing my family... Princess and Starla... oh and David too. Haha! ;)

Now we have even MORE fun to look forward to this coming weekend... Aunt Kris and Molly are coming into town! We cannot wait to lay in the sun with drinks in hand! ;) We are all doing the Sandshaker 5K on Saturday together as well, so that will make for a fun time! I will definitely post an update with pictures afterwards. David is excited to make a good time, he has been improving in his speed considerably every week! I'm just a little jealous! :)

Nice Weekend!

This weekend was so nice! On Saturday I met a friend from my apartment complex by the pool and we had some yummy drinks. There were delicious!! I only had one... err.. three. haha! We just enjoyed the beautiful weather and lounged around for a little bit. It was gorgeous and to be totally honest- the first time I had gone to the pool at our apartment complex. We have lived there almost a year! I just always would go home to my parents pool typically, but it was a nice change of pace.



Afterwards, I enjoyed my newly renovated patio (thanks Ashley! ;)) and sat outside with the furbabies while I finished the book Angels & Demons... now I'm dying to see the movie! Tom Hanks is by far my favorite actor so I'm sure anything he does couldn't be bad. I also am really wanting to see Up as I've heard it's very good, but also really sad.

That night, David and I went to the track and did some speedwork... not too much but still a good workout. When we got home we were sitting on the patio and heard fireworks going off- it was from the Pensacola Pelican's baseball game nearby. It was really nice to sit and watch it from the patio- while I sang the tune to Disney's Wishes fireworks show along with it, much to David's enjoyment. :) We both agreed it reeeeeeeally made us want to go to Disney for our anniversary, even if only for a night or two.

Today David and I were able to go to my parents for dinner which was nice. I also got in a run with my Dad and did 4 miles without walking! First time I've done that in a WHILE so I'm really excited! I had been stuck at 3 for so long it was making me pretty nervous about the Half-Marathon coming up. For dinner we had yummy steak, rice pilaf and corn on the cob! mmm....

While we were hanging outside Princess made a great excape by crawling underneath the fence and we got to go chase her around the neighborhood for a little bit- always fun... not! This is really becoming a habit with her. Makes us wonder what we did to her to make her want to escape us so badly. lol. I think she's just too curious for her own good.

Well that concludes the weekend for us- hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and enjoyed te beautiful weather! Thanks to anyone who is reading along. :)