Some pics from our wedding

Friends Jace and Randy took a break from the dancing to snap a shot with us

Almost same picture from Sara's wedding, but Sara and I changed spots. Note to all pictured, must take this picture at everyone's wedding.

Jon and I dancing the night away. I'm guessing this was 'our' dance. We actually got to dance a lot!

Mom helping me put on jewelry. I love that you can see the whole back of my dress!

One of my favs of me and my dad, although dad has his eyes closed. But he did in almost every picture so this was the best I could do.

Me and my lovely maid of honor (and also sister) Kate!

The Olympics

It has come and gone so fast, like it always does. I just got into the routine of coming home after work to 8 hours of Olympic coverage and now it's gone. Last night Jon and I sat bored stiff. No more Heroes (yes we finished season 2 already) and no more Olympics. I'm fortunate enough to still have hours of footage of events I heard about but wasn't able to watch. That will be comforting for a few more days.

The 2008 Olympic games were pretty outstanding. Let's review some of the highlights:

1. Duh! Michael Phelps winning his 8 gold medals (and in great fashion with the Olympics being 8-8-08)
2. U.S. Men's gymnastics getting bronze with like 10 alternates on the team
3. "Smashing" France in the 4x100 meter relay in swimming (take that!)
4. Nastia Liukin getting Gold in all-around gymnastics (not a surprise but it was great to knock out China for a change)
5. The Chinese being ridiculously underage (but there is always a need for some type of scandal, steroids are overrated)
6. Treanor and Walsh dominating in sand volleyball for their 2nd gold
7. U.S. women's' soccer outing Brazil in soccer 1-0 in overtime for gold for the second time
8. Glenn Eller winning gold in trap shooting. Not that cool sounding at first, but he was the youngest of the final 6 contestants, is active in the U.S. army and set a world record!
9. Our U.S. doubles ping pong team (who were Chinese) that got the farthest ever in any Olympics. They were outed by their Korean counterparts!
10. The U.S.'s Shalane Flanagan who got the bronze in the women's 10,000m. The only U.S. woman to ever medal in this event, and she did it after having a stomach virus for 3 days! I cried when she won. But that is just how important these Olympic games are to me!

Now lets take a look at the not so amazing Olympic moments:

1. Both the men's and women's 4x100 meter relays dropping the baton on the final leg and loosing out on Olympic gold. Tragic in itself, but even more so because the same thing happened in Athens. Can't we learn!!!!
2. Women's water polo team loosing out to The Netherlands in the last minute of the game. The men also lost to Hungary.
3. Wallace Spearman getting disqualified in the 200m final for stepping on the inside line of his lane, forfeiting his Silver metal
4. The bronze medallist in the 200m final also stepping on the inside line of his lane and forfeiting the bronze. Luckily two U.S. runners were there to accept both medals!
5. Nastia Liukin being outed for gold on the uneven bars by the 12 yr old Chinese girl in a tie-breaker. Tragic!
6. The U.S. not winning any medals in diving and China dominating in every diving event by like 100 points.
7. U.S. Softball being outed for gold again, and this is the last year for it. (Isn't softball like basketball in that we should dominate and have no competition!)
8. U.S.'s boxing hopeful Andrade outed in the quarterfinals by South Korea's JungJoo. He left the match crying but I don't blame him! Then China won gold....again.
9. The U.S. having no athletes compete in the singles matches for a metal, however the Williams sisters pulled out a gold in doubles, and the Bryans managed a bronze
10. Newcomer Katie Hoff being out-touched for gold by England's Rebecca Addlington in the 400 m freestyle by .07 seconds. She was robbed!

(Please note that these events are not rated, they are simply listed in the order I remembered them)

So many great memories to take with us from this year! Now, on to the 2010 winter Olympics in Canada! Let's hope they can out-do China's show, but without the whole winning half the gold medals part.

The Freshman of 2008

It has been a long year. They say that the year after College is this big transition year into responsibility and adulthood. I decided to add getting married into the mix, so I must agree with this especially in my case. It was really hard for me to stay in the college town that I'd been living in for the past 4 years. Getting engaged made it a little easier, but even a year later I'm still not completely sold on the idea. I was lucky enough to land a job for the very University I had just graduated from. Living in Abilene and not being associated with ACU was really weird for the brief time I worked under another employer. My first 'real' job was to be an Admissions Counselor. I thought it would be all fun and games at first, but I had a rude awakening that things were going to get serious fast.

The last year has been up and down for me, I've had high points and very very low points. I feel like I am finally to a place of closure after the past year. My students are here and enrolled, and today is their first day of College. The idea of having to start over from scratch is really scary. After all, this year has been an uphill battle for me. I have never had to work so long to see the fruits of my labor. I'm the type of person that would rather work as hard as possible for a short amount of time than draw the work out over the long haul. With this job I got the best of both...work as hard as you can for the long haul. That's not to say that I'm not looking forward to next years class. I just know how long it will be between that first conversation and them being here. In the meantime, I look forward to watching this freshman class excel and succeed. Hopefully that will be a continual means of motivation for me. I will never forget the way it felt to walk in during opening ceremonies of Welcome Week and see all of the Freshman class together, and most of all to know that many of those students wouldn't be here without me. I finally feel refreshed and rewarded after a year of exhaustion.

Heroes

This past Christmas my parents had the great idea of getting my then fiance a 6 month trial with Netflix. Now we are hooked. Since the 6 month trial was up, we decided to keep the account the account going and are even considering upgrading. Yes, their marketing scheme worked on us! We are addicted. One part of netflix we haven't taken advantage of is their 'Watch Now' option. Immediate movies, seemingly free. What could be better!? Well the selection over the past few months has not been ideal. We had felt this way a long while until we discovered that you can watch TV sitcoms as well, and then our hope was restored.

On this past Sunday evening, Jon (my husband) suggested something that, at the time, seemed to be a wonderful idea! We had been hearing a lot about Heroes, a drama series on NBC. I'd seen the trailers for the new season premiere, and yes I was interested, but with so many of my favorite shows finally returning this fall (minus Lost) I didn't think there was time to throw another in the mix. I caved. We stayed up watching episodes past 1am, a rare occurance in the Bruner home these days. We have completed the first season in 4 days! That is averaging 5 shows a day. And no we don't have lives!

I found the show to be very addicting! I even have dreams about it! (Will I soon discover my hidden abilities? Peter Petrelli didn't discover his until late in life!) I must give props to the writters, at least for the first season. Every episode left me hanging in agony and wanting more. Luckily it was only a mouse click away. I'm worried that I am being spoiled with this instant satisfaction of knowing what happens! When the series starts again and I have to wait a week for answers, I really don't know what I will do with myself. This may be a new approach to watching tv dramas. Just wait and then you can watch it all at once!

Last night ended the marathon of Heroes: Season 1. I was a little let down by the anticlimatic ending. It was good, but the Peter Petrelli and Sylar fight scene lacked a little something. I do understand that they are new to using their powers, so I'm just hoping that in future seasons we will get to see some much more cool action scenes. Right now I am anxiously awaiting season 2. Jon and I decided against starting it last night, we needed a break to get back into reality. Hopefully 24 hr will be long enough!