April 2012

April - This was by far one of the busiest months for us.  Danny was wrapping up the semester, meaning spending long nights writing his several 10-20 page essays and research papers (yuck), studying and taking finals, and getting all of the last ROTC training for the semester and his final PT test (which, btw, he did quite well in all of the above, pulling off a 3.25 gpa for the semester. I'm so proud of all the hard work he does).  For me, work was insanely busy for the month with lots of policy and procedure changes and people leaving and new people getting hired and just a lot more documents to deal with.  And, as seems to be the trend of the year thus far, we dealt with a lot of health issues for both of us, leading to a crazy month.

Other highlights of the month (in no particular order):
-General Conference weekend--Danny had a training in San Antonio that weekend; he ended up getting really sick (poor thing) and had to come home early, but on the bright side, he got to finally see some of conference -- they've had training weekends every single general conference since he got here.
-Easter--we didn't do a whole lot this year (didn't want to go overboard like last year and burn myself out) but still nice and quiet.
-the baby blessing of Danny's newest nephew, James (first kid of Nick and Kay), which meant *all* the family came out to see everyone ... we took a bunch of photos, but who knows where they ended up...
-this also included Danny's parents visiting for the whole week, so we got to spend lots of time hanging out, eating out, and getting to know each other better
-another party with our friends, a farewell / last get together for a bunch of people who moved at the end of the semester
-the ROTC spring formal, which also meant shopping for a fancy dress (...yay and ugh all at the same time for that one)! definitely a new and kinda exciting experience and Danny got to participate in the sword arch and wear a spiffy dress uniform. (wish I had gotten more pictures, but the event was so formal that it never seemed appropriate to whip out my camera and take snapshots... oh well.)

Apr 8 - Easter

Our Easter Brunch - tried to keep it simple this year

instead of dyeing eggs the traditional way, I saw this idea on pinterest (yes, I caved, and am already fully addicted to the site) about dyeing the actual eggs themselves.  I liked the idea because I really like deviled eggs but then you have to peel off all the shells that you just spent an hour coloring, and then they don't look special anymore.  I'm so glad I tried this -- it was super easy and fast and makes a big impact (though it did make Danny much more cautious to actually eat them since they weren't white, lol).

Apr 13 - ROTC Spring Formal

I did get a few snapshots of us all dressed up after the formal.

My new dress, a really lucky find at Dress Barn just a week before the event.

The formal was held in a ballroom in the same building I work at, and only half an hour after I got off work, so I brought all my stuff to work with me, and got changed and did my make up and had one of my coworkers help me with my hair all in between work and the formal.  Needless to say, by the end of the night, we were pretty exhausted ... and unfortunately, time and Texas humidity were not friendly to my curly styled hair.  oh well, at least I felt pretty at the beginning of the formal, lol.

(... ok, these are *technically* pictures from last year's spring formal, but I couldn't for the life of me find pictures of this year's formal yet, even though I know they had a professional photographer taking photos all night, even of all the individual couples... but at least these give a good idea of what it was like)

Apr 14 - Garcia's Georgetown party

While Debbie and Silverio were in town, some friends of theirs from Georgetown (where Danny grew up) threw them a party, and we went with them.  I didn't really know anyone, but I know my in-laws enjoyed seeing everyone again and even Danny talked with some of his friends he grew up with.

Silverio telling life stories and their adventures in London

with one of the hosts

Apr 18

Friend Farewell Party

Easter

(Eventually, I will get caught up and will actually post things when they happen, lol).

I got a new dress for Easter! :D  Aside from my wedding dress and ring dance dress, I haven't had an actual dress since I was fourteen.  They never seemed to fit right so I've always worn skirts and blouses.  So when I happened to see some really cute (and modest!) dresses at Dress Barn that actually fit me, I just had to get one.  It makes me feel so fancy and I love how it twirls.

... trying to initiate some Easter traditions in our new family... Danny was a bit skeptical of the level of fun in dyeing eggs as adults, but once I convinced him to join me (I attempted to color an egg in camo color and he just had to try and make his own camo colored egg too), he seemed to enjoy himself.

the results!  (we used a package of dyes from the store, but I didn't want to use all of the color tablet at once.  They weren't labeled so I tried to pick three that looked like primary colors and ended up getting a blue, fushia, and lime green... hence the odd colors.)

Daniel's creations (sorry the lighting is bad, the one on the left was a striped one, and the one on the right is his camo egg).

Easter Morning - I couldn't decide whether I'd rather do I big Easter brunch or a big Easter dinner, so I opted for both (note to self: *bad* idea... for only two people, this was waaaay too much food, time and effort... plus I got a bad flu later that week and didn't even get to enjoy any of the leftovers, but whatever, it's the effort that counts, right?)  We had fruit and deviled eggs and blueberry muffins and banana muffins. yay!

I also surprised Danny with homemade Easter baskets made from paper lunch sacks.  Can you tell which is which?  haha. I made mine a cute little white bunny but I figured Danny wouldn't really care for that, so I made his an Army Easter Bunny. (side note: yes, I know I colored him with jungle camo colors instead of digital desert camo colors, but ya know, digital camo is really hard to color. so there.  Danny, though he did mention the inaccuracy, loved it all the same.)

I even found some camo colored Easter eggs that came with little toy army men too. such a fun surprise!

... though I still liked mine.

Happy Easter!