"It's the season to be jolly, and be thankful for all that we have"

I feel like every few months I am on here apologizing for being a bad blogger, but once again we have had a busy month and now that the holidays are upon us things have continued to be busy. Timmy and I both agree however that we have had so much to be thankful for this year and feel so blessed to be where we are in our lives this holiday season. At the beginning of November Timmy was offered a job here in Charleston with Citadel Broadcasting. He is still an account executive but is now working for radio rather than TV. While he had a hard time leaving his friends and co-workers behind at Raycom we both grateful that he is no longer commuting to Columbia every day.


I had the entire week of Thanksgiving off work and was able to head to Blacksburg the weekend before to go to the VT v. NC State game. It was great to catch up with with some of my favorite Hokie friends and to visit my favorite place on earth! I spent the rest of the week at home with mom as she continued to recover from her surgery. We had a wonderful time laying around on the couch all day most days, which was nice for both of us! Timmy came to Chester on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and we enjoyed Thanksgiving and the weekend after visiting with his family and spending time with Benjamin.
I also had the chance to get out and catch up with some friends on Black Friday at our annual Chester reunion that night. It was great to be home and catch up for a few days with friends and family.
Since we finally have a house to decorate we have enjoyed our real size Christmas tree and decorating the house for the holidays. We are hosting two holiday parties here for my students and have enjoyed getting everything ready. The preparations remind me a lot of getting ready for the annual Westra Family Christmas Party we had every year growing up. While there will probably be no singing or 12 Days of Christmas, and certainly not as many people, I feel blessed to have learned from one of the best hostesses I know, my mom!


The beginning of December also marks the Annual Meeting for the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors, the professional organization that myself and others in my field are members of. I always enjoy the opportunity to catch up with old colleagues and friends, engage in some great dialogue about fraternity/sorority life, and to sharpen my own skills from the different education sessions. I continue to feel blessed to have a job that I am so passionate about and to work with so many other amazing professionals, it is truly humbling to see all the amazing things that are happening in our field!

There is a very brief update on our last month. Like I mentioned before, we have a variety of Holiday Parties coming up and we look forward to both attending and hosting!

"We’ve come so far since that day, And I thought I loved you then."

Well like I mentioned during my last blog entry, the weekend of October 24-25 marked 10 years that Timmy and I have been together. It is so crazy to think about how much we have grown and all that we have been through over the past 10 years, even though we have only been married for a little over 2 years.

For those of you who may not know Timmy and I met in high school. We started "hanging out" the summer of 99 before he left for college and I began my junior year of high school. He told me when he left for school that he liked me a lot but that since he was going away for school he did not want to start a serious long distance relationship. Although I was hurt I respected that. We stayed friends, even wrote each other letters and mailed them back and forth (yes, email was around but we still mailed each other letter snail mail style). I still have one letter he sent to me in which he wrote to me about his new girlfriend Dawn. Fortunately for me that relationship did not last long and we hung out the entire time he was home for his fall break that October. October 23 was my junior homecoming and I asked Timmy to come back and go with me and he did! (Looking back it was probably a little embarrassing to be a college guy going back to HS dances- but he was trooper and ended up not only at my junior homecoming, but also my senior homecoming and both proms!) A few months later when we decided we were probably officially a couple, we picked that weekend to mark the beginning of our relationship.

Homecoming 99- Luckily one of the things that has changed over the past 10 years is that Timmy started smiling in pictures!

We went to dinner before hand with Clayton & Brandon, it was Brandon's 16th Birthday!

We spent the first 8 years of that relationship pretty much long distance, never even living in the same area code until we got married and moved to Columbia. Luckily both of our families are in Chester so we still got to see each other plenty and managed to make it work. He will never let me forget those few months my second year of college that we broke up, but it was that time apart that made me realize that he was the one for me.

We have truly been very blessed and when I think about all that has changed over the past 10 years I feel very lucky to have been through it all with Timmy by my side. I know that we never know what the future has in store for us but I know that I have been blessed with an amazing husband and that we are both supported by amazing family and friends and with that kind of love and support I am certain that together we will be able to get through all that this life has in store for us!

10 years later...

We celebrated the night at Wesley & Marci's Wedding

and while the girlfriends in their lives have changed, Clayton & Brandon are still great friends of mine, I got to briefly celebrate his 26th Birthday with him as well!

"And in a week or two it'll be Halloween, Set the page and the stage for the scene"

Well Timmy and I have gotten settled into the new place and finally had some time last weekend to catch up with old and new friends in Charleston. My friend Liz and her husband Adam were here visiting Adam's parents over the weekend and we had the chance to go over and watch the VT game with them (that is as much as I am going to say about the game, for those of you who follow college football and who are Hokie fans like me, you know there is not possibly anything good I can say about that game). But at least we got to enjoy the good company of great friends. It was great to see them and catch up. Sunday we went to Pumpkin Patch with some of my CofC friends and then had them all over to carve pumpkins and have dinner. It was great to have them over and Timmy and I had a great time getting to carve pumpkins, it is actually the first time we have ever done that together. Below are a few pictures of our pumpkin and entertaining adventure!

Tomorrow we are heading back to Richmond for the weekend. We haven't been home since June and are really looking forward to getting back for the weekend. Our friend Wesley is getting married and Saturday is also Reed's birthday so we are looking forward to seeing family and friends and celebrating with everyone. Hopefully there will be some fun pictures and stories to share from the weekend.

This weekend also marks a milestone for Timmy and I. It is hard to believe but this weekend will be 10 years since Timmy came home from Radford to go with me to my junior homecoming and when we started dating. I don't feel old enough to have been in relationship for 10 years, I guess time flies when you are having fun and are blessed to be spending your life with your best friend!

So we certainly have a lot to raise a glass to this weekend- cheers to love, family, and friends!

"It's not a big place sittin' up high on some hill, A lot of things will come and go but love never will, Oh, I'm proud, of the house we built"

Well I know some of you have been patiently awaiting this post. We have finally moved and for the most part settled into our new place, and I am certainly glad to finally be officially down here. There are still a few things left to purchase eventually, some pictures left to hang, and a few boxes to still find a home for but I would say for just two weekends and one week I think we have gotten a lot accomplished. Mom and Margaret came down and were a huge help the weekend we moved so I do have to give them a BIG thanks because we probably wouldn't have as much done otherwise. Like a good blogger I took lots of pictures from the time we closed until now when we have all the furniture in place to document the whole process. But since it has taken me until now to post the pictures I figure I will just share what the place is looking like now, although some of the colors look funny with the camera. We are excited to be here and hope to start having some visitors soon!

Welcome Home Marsh's

View of Downstairs from Front Door

Family Room

New Desk/Office

Kitchen (complete with a cook)

Upstairs Hallway, view from top of the stairs

Master Bedroom

Guest Room 1

Guest Room 2 (our Chicken Man Room)

Upstairs Guest Bathroom
House warming gift from my brother, you definitely can't find these in SC!

Go Hokies!

"I love sleeping in on Saturdays, and I love college football games"

Almost everyone who knows me knows that one of my biggest passions in life is Virginia Tech football. Yet another season is underway which is one of the reasons why I truly believe fall is the most wonderful time of the year (with summer and Christmas being close behind). Of course being in South Carolina and having to work on Saturdays (which I have for the past 6 in a row due to recruitment and various programs) make it difficult to get back to Blacksburg to see the games in person. But I still do not miss watching a single game whether is is on TV or on ESPN's 360 where you merely watch the little arrows get updated with each play.

Yesterday marked the last Saturday for pretty much the rest of this fall semester that I had to work and I am looking forward to being able to sleep in again on the weekends. Luckily our program ended around 1:00 yesterday and I was able to make it back to Columbia in time for the VT v. Nebraska game. As you know, we are moving in two weeks and my sweet husband has been doing a lot of packing on the weekends while I have been gone. When I called him on my way home yesterday I joked with him that I hoped the house would be decorated for the VT game when I got home, to which he responded sarcastically, "but we don't really own anything VT that I could decorate with." I laughed at him and told him I was sure he could at least put Zoey's jersey on her.

Well much to my surprise, an hour and a half later when I got home, not only was I welcomed in the parking lot by Zoey in her VT jersey, I also walked into this...

I was even able to get Timmy to wear a VT Shirt for the game, which again if you know Timmy you know this is not his usual Saturday attire as it is mine.

For those of you who saw the game it was a good one, well good, then bad, then finally ended good with a 1 point victory thanks to a touch down in the last minute of the game by the Hokies. I nearly had several heart attacks during the game and now know that I need to make sure I am in tip-top shape for next week's game against Miami which is certain to also be a tough one for the Hokies. Hopefully our box filled apartment will be able to be filled with Hokie Spirit again for the game next weekend, it will be the last time we watch Saturday football from our apartment here in Columbia. We will move the next Saturday and will be watching the games for the rest of the season in our new home, hopefully on a nice new, big flat screen HDTV we will purchase after we get down there, hey a girl can dream right?!

GO HOKIES!

"So I'll drive, and I'll think about my life"

Wow, it has really been over a month since my last blog post! Life and work have been super hectic over the past month between a trip to MD to visit our new nephew Benjamin, getting ready for the move, and school starting back at CofC and recruitment in full gear. I have been able to spare a day or two or even a night over the past month to get back home to Columbia but with working the past several weekends sometimes it feela like I am spending more time driving then I am at home. We close on our house 3 weeks from today and are scheduled to move the first weekend in October, that weekend cannot get here soon enough! I figured rather than write a lot about the past month I would just post a few pictures of everything. Now that life is getting somewhat back to normal (except for the move) I hope to be a better blogger. Again, sorry it's been so long!

Townhome at our Pre-Drywall Walk Through (ours is the middle one with the brick front)

Visitng Benjamin

My amazing new CofC Co-Workers and Friends (minus Libby)

Panhellenic Exec at Cougar Carnival

IFC Officers & Chapter Presidents at their Recruitment Covocation

NPHC Open House

SGRho's @ NPHC Meet the Greeks

Panhellenic Bid Day...too bad pictures just can't capture the excitement