"Turns out not where, but who you're with that really matters"

Well here we are, the beginning of another month and we sit here recapping the last month for our faithful blog followers, as always I apologize to keep you waiting so long between the posts! June turned out to be a relaxing and fun month for both of us, filled with family and friends that we continue to be blessed to have in our lives.

Shortly after my last blog post back at the beginning of June I was thrilled when Reed called me and said he had a long weekend coming up the next weekend and wanted to come visit and that he was going to bring his new girlfriend, Devon. They got in late on Thursday night and Friday since I had to work they came down town and did some sight seeing and then stopped by and had lunch with me at work before they headed out the beach for the afternoon. That night we went to the Charleston Battery soccer game because they were playing the Richmond Kickers and Reed had a chance to see some of his buddies who he played with in the past who are now on their team. After the game we caught up with some of my friends at one of our favorite places to hang out now that the weather is nice, Red's on Shem Creek. Saturday we went over to Isle of Palms for the day and hung out on the beach and at The Windjammer watching the US v. England World Cup game. After a nice day at the beach Timmy cooked us some amazing fajitas and we just relaxed which was so nice. Sunday Reed and Devon came with us to church and we took them to brunch at one of our favorite spots downtown, Hominy Grill. It was a great weekend and we really enjoyed having Reed and Devon here to visit!

The following weekend Jonathan and Mary Katherine stopped by and stayed with us on their way to Hilton Head for the week. We were happy to have them all here to visit and Timmy cooked some amazing steak and shrimp kabobs (can you tell we are really enjoying our grill?). They headed out to the beach on Saturday morning but they came back by on their way back home the following weekend. I was in Ohio, which I will get to more in a minute, but Timmy enjoyed the opportunity to spend the weekend with them on their way back. Again, good meals were enjoyed and they even had the chance to go downtown and do some sightseeing around Charleston. Other than Timmy's parents this is the first time one of his brother's and their family have been able to visit us since we were married and moved to South Carolina so we really enjoyed being able to have them here. We also are looking forward to our trip up to Maryland in August to celebrate Benjamin's 1st birthday!





Like I mentioned above, I left on June 24 to head to Oxford, OH for a week to facilitate for Beta Theta Pi's Wooden Institute. I am always so grateful for the opportunity to give to Beta and spend time working with other Beta's and Friends of Beta's to help the collegiate members from across the country really understand the values of the fraternity and how to live them. While the week is about the participants experience I am always so surprised about how much I also grow and learn from the experience every year. It was great to reconnect and spend time with some of my Beta friends as well as meet new friends and professionals in the field who were also there facilitating for the week. I also had the chance to meet some of the new Beta staff members, including TJ Hutchings who will be the LC in the Southeast region so he will work with the South Carolina colony that I also advise. For those of you who work in the higher ed world or with fraternity/sorority life, TJ is keeping a blog of his traveling experiences as a consultant, so if you want something else to follow I recommend his blog, Just Livin the Dream . I wish that I had thought to blog while I was on the road for two years for Chi Omega!




So July is upon us, where does the time go? It his now been a full year since I started my job at CofC. It has been an amazing year and I continue to feel so blessed to be living in an amazing city, doing a job that I love with amazing students and co-workers, to be surrounded by great friends, and to have such a caring and supportive husband. To celebrate the 4th of July weekend the girls and I (along with the men in our lives) have gotten a house at the beach for the long weekend. I am excited for some vacation and beach time and will be sure to post next week about our girls weekend!

I hope that you and your family & friends have a wonderful July 4th, wherever and however you may be celebrating. What a blessing it is to live in America and to have the opportunity to enjoy all the freedoms that come along with that. Let us never forget all of those who have fought and sacrificed and continue to do so that we can enjoy everything and everyone we have in our lives!

"Funny how it's the little things in life, that mean the most"

Sometimes I find that it is all too easy for all of us to get caught up in the hustle and bustle and business that life often brings and that we can overlook some of the little things in our lives that really mean the most, such as spending time with family, having great friends, a walk around the neighborhood, a boat ride, breakfast in bed, ice cream on a hot summer night, and the joy that great music and a live concert can bring to your life. Lucky for us we have had the chance over the past few weeks to really enjoy some of those simple things we are so blessed to have in our lives!

The weekend after my last post we had the chance to travel home to Richmond and spend some time with my mom and brother as well as Timmy's parents to celebrate Mother's Day and my mom's birthday a little late and to have a little early celebration of my birthday with them. We had the chance to eat, no overeat at Cheesecake Factory, which was for sure one of the simple pleasures that we miss since there is not one near is in SC.

Another one of of the things we were able to celebrate and enjoy over the past few weeks was my birthday. I have spoken a lot on here about the amazing women I have been blessed to work with and have as friends since moving to Charleston. Well Libby's birthday is just a few days before mine and we were lucky to be able to celebrate with the gang together on Libby's birthday. We enjoyed pedicures together in the morning and then enjoyed a fun Mexican dinner with the group that night, it was really great to have a birthday buddy and we look forward to celebrating many more together! Below are a few pictures from that celebration.




Over Memorial Day Weekend, when my actual birthday was, Timmy and I had the chance to visit my dad and Regan at their place in Hertford, NC. We hadn't had the chance to visit since they moved into their new place or even when the weather was nice so we were happy to have a nice weekend. We enjoyed the time to visit, relax, go out on the boat rides, meet some of their neighbors, and really enjoyed the nice cookout they had that Sunday night. I think that the 40 people singing Happy Birthday to me may have been a new record for me! Zoey was able to come with us and I think she enjoyed the boat more than we did, check out some of the pictures below!






This past weekend we finally had the chance to stay in Charleston and hang out with some friends here. Friday night Timmy had to do a promo event at Wild Wing so we went and hung out there with Steve and Jessica from the 96.9 Wolf Country morning show. They are so fun and down to earth and we enjoy hanging out with them. Our friends came along and Casey, one of Timmy's co-workers from Columbia was in town for the weekend with her husband Wally and they were there as well. Saturday morning Timmy surprised me with another late birthday surprise by making me breakfast in bed, it was amazing! Saturday night we went to see Zac Brown Band, which was amazing. Our tickets ended up being right in the front row of our section on the first level, so we had a great view and great time enjoying the amazing music! Other than the extreme heat and humidity it was a wonderful night. Sunday we were able to make it back to church and our community group, we are still enjoying meeting and getting to know more and more people at the church. We really feel blessed to have found such a great, young congregation to join!







We are looking forward to a few more weeks and weekends without travel before I head out of town at the end of the month. Hope wherever you are that you continue to enjoy all the little things in your life that mean the most to you as well!

"It's time to try defying gravity, I think I'll try defying gravity"

I am very lucky every now and then to have the opportunity to facilitate at different leadership programs, and those of you who follow my blog regularly know that I have done several programs for Beta Theta Pi over the past couple of years. Well last week I spent the week at Bonnie Doone Plantation in Walterboro, SC at serving as a small group facilitator for our CofC LeaderShape session. The experience was absolutely amazing! I don't know if it was the fact that we had awesome lead facilitators, a great group of cluster facilitators, amazing students, that my small group really opened up and had a great week, or the fact that I will actually have the chance to see all the students I worked with throughout the week again and follow-up with them, but something about the LeaderShape experience really impacted me more than I have been impacted at some of the other programs I have facilitated. I feel so blessed and fortunate to have the chance to work with amazing students and professionals on a daily basis and really thank God for leading me down this student affairs path, and last week was again just re-affirmation that I am really doing what I love. Below are a few pictures from the week.





I mentioned a few times on here before that Timmy and I had been visiting churches. Well I am happy to announce that this past Sunday we finally became members of Redeemer Presbyterian Church and are very excited to get to know more members and to get involved. We have been visiting the church since January and enjoy the worship services and the people we have met. We have found a small group to get involved in and are really looking forward to growing together spiritually through our involvement with the church. We never officially joined a church while we were in Columbia so we are very excited about this step in our journey together!

"There's nothing sweeter than summertime..."

Here's to summer arriving! That's right, exams at the College ended on Wednesday and graduation was today, which means that in my world summer has arrived. Even though I do still work through the summer, things will definitely be quieter and less hectic during the week with the students gone. It's been weird getting used to actually getting to leave work at the end of the work day and not have to hang around all night for meetings or events. I may even have time to get back into running again, and am definitely looking forward to having more time to spend with Timmy other than just on the weekends.

With the warm weather finally here we have been enjoying our new patio and grill and have hosted several dinners over the past few weeks. Our neighborhood pool opened last weekend and we haven't made it over yet but are looking forward to having that so close. I was able to make it to the beach today with my friends Libby and Tyler which was awesome, I am starting to love Charleston more and more as the weather gets warmer and we have been able to enjoy the outdoors and all the great things that we are lucky to be so close to living here.

We made it back home to Virginia a few weekends ago for my sorority sister Jackie's wedding and got to catch up with family. We are planning to head home again in two weeks to visit our moms for a post-Mother's Day celebration with them. Last weekend we went to Columbia with Libby and Tyler to the Carrie Underwood concert, SHE IS AMAZING! If you ever have the chance to see her live I highly recommend it, she is a great performer and an amazing singer.

Life has been exciting for our spoiled little puppy Zoey as well. Some of you know that she is really a sweet dog but sometimes she gets a little protective and overly excited when we see other dogs in the neighborhood and on walks. We never really know how she is going to react around other dogs so we don't really socialize her too much. She gets along great with mom's dog Sydney and she had some dog friends in Columbia, Finlay and Addy, but we hadn't really introduced her to many dogs since we have moved. Last night though we took her over to meet our friends Libby and Tyler's golden-doodle Ebbie. They got along great and enjoyed playing, even though most of the time Zoey was distracted by the food. We are happy that she has a friend and that they can hang out together. Tonight we are having the crew over for a cookout and Ebbie is coming as well as Kassie and Sean's boxer Palmer, so hopefully they will all have a great time!

Tomorrow I head off for LeaderShape, a week long leadership retreat for the students at CofC. It should be a great week and I am looking forward to being out of the office for a little while.

Mom's, we are sorry we won't be home with you tomorrow for Mother's day but we hope that you both have an amazing day! You both deserve the best for all that you do for us and the family and we hope your day is as special as you are! To all mom's who may read this blog I hope that you each have a wonderful day as well. What a true blessing mother's are to the world!

"I run my life, or is it running me..."

Well here I am again, another month has gone by and I haven't been very good about keeping my blog updated (I am really sorry Heather). Timmy and I have both been busy with work and it seems like our weekends have defined our off time for the past month as well. I am sorry that I have been bad about updating the blog but here is a brief update of what we have been up to for the past several weeks (mostly weekends).

We enjoyed a weekend trip home the second weekend in March to catch up with family and friends. The best part however was that I finally got to see Wicked! We had been trying to see it for a while it wasn't working out either with our schedule or it would be sold out. So when we were home last summer and Timmy saw it was coming to Richmond in March he got us tickets and we had a great time taking his parents along to go see it! It was amazing and I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it and get the chance to!

The following weekend Kassie and I took seven of our Panhellenic council officers down to Atlanta for a regional conference. It was great spending time with the girls as well as getting to catch up with other friends and colleagues.



Some of you know that the fall after Timmy and I got married we ran in a 5K that benefited the Make-A-Wish Foundation. We spent several months leading up to that little race practicing and preparing. Well we decided that since we now live in Charleston that we needed to participate in their annual Cooper River Bridge Run, which is a 10K. We registered but didn't really spend too much time preparing for this one, just decided we would do the best we could even if we walked. Well we did the race and I am happy to report that despite being out of shape and not really preparing we both completed the race in less than an hour and 15 minutes (beating our goal of trying to do it in at least an hour and half!). We are glad we did it and certainly enjoyed the long nap we took that afternoon afterwards!



We decided to stay in Charleston for Easter since we will be going home at the end of the month for a wedding. In the Easter spirit though we dyed Easter eggs with our friends Melantha and Kassie. Mom also came down to visit and we hosted Easter dinner at our house for all of our friends who were also still in town. We bought a new table for our screened in porch and finally had a chance to use our china (first time ever). We love to host and it was great to have mom here and to celebrate with her and our Charleston family.








This weekend we have been hanging around and resting as the next couple of weeks and weekends will be busy again. We are enjoying that the weather is finally getting nice, Charleston is certainly beautiful this time of year, it makes us both grateful for all of the many blessings we have in our lives!

"Because I knew you, I have been changed for good"

We all have them in our lives, and if we are lucky we have more than one. The teacher(s) who not only teach us the subjects of their courses but that also teach us about life; and when we complete our time in their courses we not only leave as better students, but we carry their spirit, their love, and their inspiration with us for the rest of our lives.

I was blessed to have one of these teachers in high school, Mrs. Margaret F. Gregory. Mrs. Gregory taught chorus at my high school and I was blessed to have the opportunity to have her my senior year for two chorus classes. Prior to my senior year though I had worked with Mrs. G at church as she lead our youth choir and I also had the chance to take private voice lessons from her for a year. She definitely was passionate about music and passed that along to all that she met. She lit up the room when she walked into it, and beyond teaching music she really did teach everyone that she met about how to live and love life to the fullest.

Mrs. Gregory died suddenly last Monday morning and it has been a hard and sad week for everyone who was blessed to have known her and have her touch their life. There are things that happen in our lives all the time that we don't understand and we don't think are fair, and losing Mrs. Gregory so soon is definitely one of those. I am comforted knowing that God has plans for everyone and that I know she is now singing in his choir, the greatest choir of all! I was lucky to get to spend some time with Mrs. Gregory and her husband last summer when they came to Charleston for a visit and took me out to dinner. I will always cherish the lessons she taught me both inside and outside of the classroom, and to honor her will strive to live my life as she lived hers. I pray that I can be the same type of inspiration and joy to others I meet and work with in life as Mrs. Gregory was to all she met. I miss you Mrs. Gregory, and know that I will see you again someday!

"If it's cold outside, show the world the warmth of your smile"

I don't know about my friends and family, but I am ready for spring to get here! Two weeks ago we actually got some snow here in Charleston, nothing compared to VA and further north, but we got about 3 inches at our house and according to the news it was the 4th largest snow storm to ever hit Charleston. For those of you who know me, you know that snow is not my favorite thing, but we certainly didn't miss the opportunity to capture some pictures in hopes that this will be the only time we experience snow while we are in Charleston!






Below are a few other things we have enjoyed over the past few weeks that help us keep our mind off this cold weather!

* Celebrating our friend Melantha's 30th Birthday!

* A quick visit from my Chi Omega Friend Ashlee Hicks.

* Church and brunch together on Valentine's Day.

* Playing Tyler & Libby's Beatles Rockband.

* Both of us having President's Day off of work and being able to enjoy some time together shopping, catching a movie, and visiting with Timmy's former co-worker from Columbia Casey and her family who were in Charleston for the day.

* My trip to Jacksonville to facilitate at the Beta SE Keystone. I love having the opportunity to give my time to Beta and to catch up with old and new friends!

* Our new webcam and being able to Skype with our parents, Jon and MK and Benjamin, and our friend Meg in CA for a while on her birthday! Let us know if you have a webcam and want to Skype, we are loving it!

This weekend 6 of my friends who work for Beta are coming down to Charleston for the weekend to visit. We are looking forward to the company and to have the chance to explore around Charleston some more!