Newlywed Retreat

First, I need to give some background. We go to a newlywed Sunday School class at church. We love it! We've met a lot of really great friends through the class, and we think it's been a great blessing for our marriage. The class covers typical newlywed topics - finances, conflict resolution, needs, etc.

The class hosts an annual retreat in Red Top, TX, and we have been hearing about the retreat for a while now - everyone said it was a highlight of the class, and we shouldn't miss it, so we didn't!

The retreat was awesome. It was held at a really nice retreat center in the country. It was beautiful and so relaxing. We learned a lot, grew our marriage, and got to spend a lot of one on one time with our Bible Study friends and new friends!

It was great fun!

Our room! We were the second couple to sign up, so we got the second best room at the retreat center. It was huge! And could have slept a ton of people (with one regular bed and 2 day beds). Highlights of the room- king size bed and our own bathroom! Our house was the only one that had rooms with their own bathrooms.

Our house, the garden house!

The garden. So peaceful!

The main house, where we had all our sessions.

Lan and I on the last day. This was a really cool vine tunnel. Very romantic!

Me with our friend Christine. She and her husband, Kirby, rode with us to the retreat. They live close to us, and are so fun to be around!

There are lots of exciting posts to come! Stay tuned :)

Love from Houston,

L and J

We Ran a 5K

Those of you that have known me for a long time know that I ran cross country in high school. It wasn't my favorite thing ever, but I did enjoy the benefits that came along with it (being fit, for instance).

When Lan and I got married, we committed to working out together 3 times a week (Lan does much more alone, I stick to the minimum 3...). Since we don't have a gym membership (not worth the money), my workout of choice is running. Lan also enjoys running (he's been an avid runner since high school).

As a little extra motivation, in January, we decided to run in a 5K our church was sponsoring, benefitting Aid Sudan. We signed up, and started training (well, sort of). Neither of us care about being the fastest ones on the track, but our goal was to run the whole way without stopping (something I rarely did in high school XC). So, we ran. A lot.

The race was terribly early a couple weekends ago and I'm happy to report that we both ran the whole way! Lan ran it about 30 seconds faster than I did.

We both got passed by a pregnant woman running with a stroller with a small child inside AND a woman running with a double wide stroller with TWO children inside, but such is life. We ran the whole way and are happy.

Another goal of ours was not to finish last, which we also accomplished! We both finished in the middle of our age groups.

The 5K is over now, but we're still running together. It was fun to train and work towards a goal together, and we can't wait to do it again!

Love from Houston,

L and J

Happy Birthday Memaw!

I am blessed to have two amazing grandmothers in my life! Yesterday, my Memaw Dowdle celebrated her birthday. Every time I talk to her, she always tells me that she's been reading my blog and enjoys reading about all the fun we're having ("you just sound like you're always having a big time") and all the food I'm cooking for Lan ("you sure do cook a lot").

Me with Memaw at my Pajama Wedding Party Brunch the day before my wedding.

Memaw loaning me my something old on my wedding day. I wore her beautiful gold wedding band.

So, Memaw, I hope you are reading this! Happy Birthday! You are so special to me. I love you, and I'm so glad you're in my life.

:) Jennifer

The Busiest Weekend of my Life

March is Houston Rodeo time (yeah, Lynn and Mom, I'm behind!), and I have been looking forward to going to the Rodeo for some time! It's a pretty big deal! And, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, lots of big names in country music come to Houston and play during the rodeo. For our very first rodeo experience, we decided to go see Jason Aldean play.

As is our usual custom, we also decided that we would pack as much into this weekend as possible! Friday night, we went to Katy to help our friends Jonah and Anne Marie load up their U-Haul for a move to The Woodlands. We got there a little late (oops!) and caught the tail end of the packing that day, but we helped them unload the next day in The Woodlands. Also on that Saturday, we looked at a few neighborhoods in that area, and went to a crawfish boil at our friends Chris and Marley's. THEN, at the end of the day, we went to Gallery Furniture and bought a recliner for Lan (this has been in the works for some time, and I am happy Lan finally has his fancy new recliner!).

So, you get the idea, it was a busy weekend. AND to top it all off, the Jason Aldean concert was on Sunday. So, after church, we ate CPK for lunch then headed to the Rodeo with our friends Aaron and Emily.

When you go to the rodeo, there's so much more to it than just the rodeo! There are lots of exhibits and animals and there's a carnival... there's a lot. So Emily and I really wanted to see some of the animals (namely the baby chickens) before we went to the rodeo, so Lan and Aaron dropped us off and we got to see some of the animals.

You could go in here to see cows and sheep! (See next two pictures)

The chickens!

The incubator! You could wait here to see chicks hatching. The three little blobs in the upper left hand corner are newly hatched chicks!

Baby Chicks in action!

The rodeo was... quite the experience. It was really cool! I had never seen anyone ride a bull or do barrel racing before, and we went on the last day of the finals, so we got to see the best of the best compete! And, it was held in Reliant Stadium, where they held the final four this year.

Rodeo opening parade

The rodeo began with a prayer (which I really liked) and the national anthem (complete with a really impressive fireworks show! Confession: I got a little teary eyed. What can I say? I love America). Then, the competitions.

This is one of the cowboys riding a bronc bareback!

Then, they had a competition called "Mutton Busting," and basically what happens in this competition is they strap little kids to sheep and the kids try to hold on for as long as they can. This was my favorite :) The little kids were really cute, and it was really funny. They kept interviewing the kids during the afternoon, and they have some pretty interesting practice methods! Most of the kids said they practiced on their dog, and one little girl said she practiced on her brother. I think she misunderstood the question :)

After all this, Jason Aldean played!! We all really enjoyed his concert and had a fun time people watching during it... Jason also had fireworks, and his stage rotated (how cool is that??).

Some pictures from the concert...

Needless to say, we had a great time and look forward to rodeo time next year!

Upcoming blog posts for us include our 5K, our Newlywed Retreat, and future plans! Stay tuned.

Love from Houston,

L and J

John and Rebekah Get Hitched

So, I'm behind. This post is dedicated an event that happened a whole 3 weeks ago (oops!). Sorry for the delay!

A few weeks ago, we got to go to Memphis for John and Rebekah Harrleson's wedding. John is one of Lan's closest friends. I met Rebekah early on in college, through a couple of my Chi O friends, Laura and Erica. When I started dating Lan, he was living with John, and John and Rebekah were also dating, so I really got to know her during this time. Especially in the beginning, when I was still getting to know Lan and his friends, it was such a comfort to have Rebekah, a familiar face, around. Rebekah is an amazing, Godly woman, and I know God has great things in store for her marriage!

Needless to say, we love John and Rebekah and were so honored to be a part of their wedding weekend! The wedding was beautiful, and Rebekah was a stunning bride. John, you are a very lucky guy!

Some pictures from the weekend... Sadly, I think I had my camera on a bad setting ALL WEEKEND, so these are all blurry :( I am very, very bummed, but I wanted to share anyway...

The best part of going back to the wedding for me was getting to see old friends! For those of you not lucky enough to know them, these are two of my best friends from college, Erica and Laura. I love and miss you both terribly! Please come to Houston :)

Me with Laura Gullet, another college friend! She stayed at Lori's with me while we were in Memphis, so we got to have lots of quality bonding time!

Me with the bride at the rehearsal dinner! So beautiful, I hate it's blurry. She just posted a much better version of this picture on FB, if you're interested. Her camera was 10 times better than mine.

Me with the most handsome boy I know :)

Friends at Lori's!

Lan and I at the reception.

Me with Erica, the maid of honor, at the reception!

Me with the beautiful bride!

Friends at the reception :)

Another one of me and Lan.

Us with Lori, big sis and matchmaker extraordinaire!

That concludes my pictures! I wish I had taken pictures at brunch on Sunday. We went through Oxford on the way home and I got to see Lindsay, my best friend from Junior Miss!

We had an amazing weekend, and it was so refreshing to see all our college friends in one place! We must do this again soon :)

John and Rebekah, congratulations! You will love being married. Please come visit us soon.

Luckily, this weekend promises to be freer than the past couple weekends, so hopefully you'll be hearing from me again soon - I have lots more updates!

Love from Houston,

L and J

A Texas Weekend

I often tell Lan that I don't think we do enough "cool things." There are a lot of unique things that we can do in Houston, and we want to do more of them, so last weekend (well, weekend before last.. I'm behind), we did just that!

Friday was "Go Texan" day, which basically just kicks off the rodeo. As an added bonus, employees at both mine and Lan's companies got to "dress like a Texan" to work. I had never seen so many cowboy hats in one place.

On Friday night, we went downtown for dinner with our friend Emily. Lan had told me about Spaghetti Warehouse before, and I had always pictured a fast food type place, but it was actually a nice restaurant! It was in a really cool building downtown, that is supposedly haunted. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Spaghetti Warehouse's paranormal activity, but there were some ghost tour brochures there. We opted out.

Me with Lan at Spaghetti Warehouse

On Saturday night, we went to the BBQ Competition at the Houston Rodeo. If you've talked to me in the last month, you know that I was really excited for this! I love food and a BBQ Competition just sounded cool. It wasn't what I was expecting, but we had fun!

It was kind of a mix between tailgating and Bulldog Bash, except for much bigger. There were tents and people everywhere! Regular entry got you into general places, but there were also private tents. A lot of these belonged to businesses that would give out tickets to their tent to their customers. We got lucky and got into one of these tents! And let me just say, the BBQ in this tent was delicious.

This is the private tent we went to.

Another cool part of the night was the live music. There were some Texas country bands playing the night we were there (the big country acts play later in the rodeo- this was the kick off weekend).

The stage at the BBQ Competition

There was also a carnival! I don't know what it is about carnivals/fairs, but they have always sounded fun to me- maybe it's the cotton candy and funnel cake. You know how I feel about sweets. Admittedly, these types of things can be kind of a rip off (why does it cost so much to buy tickets???), but we had fun anyway. Lan had fried cookie dough (just as delicious as it sounds) and I had cotton candy. Then, we splurged and rode the ferris wheel. It was pretty cool.

Views of the carnival/fair area.

View from the top of the ferris wheel.

Needless to say, we had a fun-filled weekend! There are lots of fun things to do in Houston. :)

Up next for us... John and Rebekah's wedding (yay!) and Jason Aldean concert at the rodeo.

Love from Houston!

L & J

Lake Weekend

Last weekend, we went to Lake Livingston with our Bible Study friends. This trip has been in the works for a while. One of our friends' parents (Dustin's) live on Lake Livingston, so we planned a visit!

If you know me, you know I love being around the water-- beach, river, lake, I love it all, so this weekend was really fun for me. The weather couldn't have been more beautiful, and we had such a relaxing time!

We watched movies, played games, hung out outside, went fishing, went for a boat ride, had a fish fry and made a bonfire (with smores, of course). That sounds like a lot, but mostly we just relaxed and enjoyed each other's company.

We had a great time, and can't wait to visit again in the summer!

Some pictures from the trip (courtesy of Broadstreet Photography-- yes, we have professional photographer friends!)...

Ladies fishing, part 1

Ladies fishing, part 2!

Me and Lan- fishing as a team! (Mainly because I got bored... to me, fishing is only fun when you catch something)

The group, silly picture :)

The group, real picture

Up next for us... Rodeo Kick Off - BBQ Cookoff!

Love from Houston,

J & L