Mom, IRL

Maybe you've seen funny pictures on the internet of laundry fiascos, wardrobe malfunctions, or messy kids with the hashtag "moms IRL" or something similar. Those moms may be the real deal, but nothing is better than a visit from your mom in real life!

That's right! Mommy came to Dallas for a spontaneous mid-semester visit, and it couldn't have been better! Last time my family visited was Thanksgiving, which was wonderful in its own way. I gave everyone the official school tour then, but campus was a graveyard over the holiday weekend. Since Mom flew in on a Wednesday morning, she tagged along with me at school and took part in my everyday life! It was a blast introducing her to my professors and classmates, and she even got to see me perform in Caruth (our main concert hall) and rehearse with my trio!

Highlights of our time:

1. Performing/playing for Mom at school!
2. Eating out at our favorite restaurants!
3. Flash card mid-term review with Mom (she makes up the best goofy connections to remember mundane facts!)
4. Parish Feast! Our church's quarterly Friday night dinner just happened to be over Mom's visit, so she spent some extended time with our church family.
5. Meals with the profs! We had breakfast together with two of my main and most influential professors. (Of course we forgot to take a picture!) We also had breakfast with another one of my favorite professors, who heard Mom was in town and invited us out. SMU profs have class, and they genuinely care about their students. So blessed!
6. Watching all our favorite murder shows together on a lazy Saturday!
7. More trips to Sprouts than I'd care to admit!
8. Coming home to find my laundry done, my house cleaned, and ice cream in the freezer. Mom are just the best.

Performance class!

Rehearsing Café Music

Curry and Pad Thai from The Mint!

Taco night!

Pizza night at Fireside Pies -- our new favorite GF pizza place!

Selfies with the Weim

Flash cards

More flash cards 

"This my grandma. I keep her."

Mom sent me this picture while I was at school.
She stayed home to relax and read one day, and Brooklyn kept her company.

Breakfast with Professor M and MA!

Parish Feast! 

I love you, Mommy! Thank you setting aside your own daily activities to enter into mine for a few days! I love that you got to be part of our life here with church, school, the crazy Weimaraner, and many grocery store runs. Come back again soon! Xoxo!

The Other Marathon

No, this is not another post about my race. I'm referring to Grad School, Year Two.

We really lived it up this final week of summer! I am feeling so much more energized and recovered from my marathon, which allowed us to have a fun and active week.

Now the real marathon begins.

I had orientation on Friday, and it was far less stressful this year. In fact, it was just plain fun! The faculty bought us lunch and asked about our summers. We met the two incoming graduate students and reviewed the essentials. I can't say just how thankful I am! This time last year I was studying for entrance exams like a mad woman. Being immersed into the MM performance/ped program last year incurred an incredible amount of change in a short period of time. How grateful I am for returning students and a year of experience under my belt. I have much to learn, but the transition should be much smoother this time around. I couldn't be happier with my program and the opportunity to return for year two!

Enjoy some photos from our final week of summer.

A Hard Night's Day at the Granada Theatre -- first live show we've seen in Dallas, and a fun one at that!

Tuesday swim

Wednesday 10K with our local running store

Friday run in my new kicks!

Saturday ride -- 22 miles and new trails!

High-risk selfie :)

A friend from church snapped photos of everyone at lunch today, just because. I love this candid shot!

Super food salads, week three!

School at 8:45 this morning. I guess no one else wanted to make copies on their last weekend morning?!

October is Over

Sooo.... I think it's been a while since my last Tuesday post. Sorry about that, but life has been getting in the way of blogging. Monday night is always a hard night for me to want to do anything. Many things to recap though. Jessie and I have been enjoying lots of things in our life recently. One thing that I am happy about is no longer having to cut and chisel apart frozen chubs for the dog.

We had been buying 10 lb. chubs of frozen chicken meat for the dog, and I was responsible for cutting apart and portioning it for the dog.

She is always very interested in how I portion it out.

Well the most exciting part is that the age of the chub has ended! The dog food company has discontinued making the food, and now we just buy whole, sliced chicken from the store and thow it in her bowl. I feel like I work at Pollo Tropical. "You want a quarter chicken or half a chicken?"

Work has been going well, and we can now say that we are debt-free! So thankful that God has provided good work for me and has more than provided for our needs. I have been working next to a guy named Gary and have really enjoyed hanging out with him some too. He had the front cover off a Cummins ISX the other day. I thought it was interesting, so I took a picture.

Might look like a scrap pile to you, but it's very organized.

Also found a very old Mack in our truckyard the other day. It came in for a state inspection and failed terribly. We enjoyed the train whistle of a horn that it had though.

I think the year model was 1990

Not a very nice ride

Had to dig some wiring out of the frame rail in a trash truck. I was proud that it only took me about two hours to find the issues going on with this truck. Normally, it would have been in the four to six-hour range. 

Hydraulic oil had leaked into the wiring and ruined it. Along with trash juices :/  

All that to say, work has been going well. I am currently in a class at a Mack and Volvo training center for three days. Although it has been mostly review, I'm glad that I get to attend. Gary has been taking the class with me, and the other day we also went shooting. Because it was so close to Halloween, we decided to shoot zombie targets.

If you look closely, you will note ten fatal holes in the zombie.

I shot the ten rounds from about 12 yards

This is Gary who is very happy to be shooting the zombies after a long day of work.

Jessie did a great job with her Halloween activity by carving a really scary jack-o-lantern.

I was impressed

We spent the evening at our pastor's house, giving out candy from his front yard and enjoying a small fire on one of the first cool nights of the season.

Jessie also did a great job breaking her PR on a Half Marathon run.

Here you can see her passing the competition at the finish 

We also had a good time at the first drive-in theater we have ever been to. It was really fun watch a movie on the big screen from our car with everyone else and their dog.

The power wagon out to the movies

Great times were happening at this photo shoot with Matt and his new gal, Olivia. We love having good friends - old and new - here in the big city. It makes it feel smaller.

Things were taking a little longer then I wanted. 

The month of October had really been full of great activities and I will end with one of my favorite that happened. I was called up by our local Indian Motorcycle dealership and told about free demo rides going on through Saturday. I was very excited to go. The morning of was about 45 degrees outside, and I rode my bike out there (and was kind of frozen when I arrived). They asked which one I wanted to ride and I replied, "Which one has a windshield?" Here are the bikes I was able to ride.

First ride was on the Chief. Base model complete with windshield 

This was my next ride called the Roadmaster. It had an adjustable windshield, heated seats, and heated handle grips.

The last ride was on the Scout once it warmed up.

Had a great time but don't plan on ever buying any of those bikes. Either too much money or not enough bike.

Thanks for reading through this random catch-up post and hope you enjoyed it.

Currently listening to: Miss May I, Bon Iver, and Audio Slave

Currently working on: test questions like "What is the part number for an injector nozzle kit for a 2003 Mack CH?" 

Currently thinking about: Is it socially-acceptable to wear spandex running pants outside of the house without shorts over them, or do the shorts make it worse? Why is it cold?

Tyler Thursday: An Evening of Encouragement

Jessie and I have been thinking long and hard about where we are going to settle on the issue of church. This has been a focus of our relationship ever since marriage was in the picture (which has practically been forever). Even before we had decided on what schools to apply to, we were thinking about possible churches to attend.

I know from experience that moving across the country will have a large impact on your church life. So we started looking around online and researching places that line up with what we believe and what we want in a church; we found that Dallas does church big. We tried attending a church on a survey trip to Dallas, and we ended up being shuttled to an overflow room of a satellite campus. Crazy!

One thing that a mentor of mine told me is that a good church is worth moving your family for. I knew it had to be priority, and it had to be about the people. Even if the website said all the right things, we knew the community needed to line up, too. Otherwise, we would be better off staying home and reading the website every Sunday.

It's amazing to think that while I was praying, God already knew where he was going to put us. We showed up to King’s Parish our first Sunday in Dallas, and there were about four cars in the parking lot. We thought, “Are we in the right place?” It was small. Probably about five-or-six-families small. But there was simple music, (check), there was good sound teaching (check), and there was COMMUNITY (check)! We were welcomed from the moment we arrived, and a lady even offered to let us do our laundry at her house! We had only met minutes before, and she was already offering to do our laundry? That is good community. The whole church went out to lunch with us and bought us lunch. That is good community.

We continue to attend church at King's Parish, and we can't help but think that we have found a new church home. So as not to be stragglers, we are also considering membership. We mentioned to the pastor that we had questions about what it looks like to be a member at King’s Parish, and he offered to come to our home and talk that same week.

Well that brings us to tonight when Pastor Winburne came over and shared about the church's journey over the last three years during the planting process. The thing that has stuck with me the most so far is a good analogy that he used. He said something like, “Being a member of a church plant is like going to the kitchen and making a great meal for everyone, instead of going to a larger church and running through the buffet.”

We are excited to be part of what God is doing in Dallas and part of the kitchen serving committee. I’m working out a contract now since we are a fairly valuble couple as a piano pianist and drum/bassist/guitarist, but we will see what they offer J. Pray for us, that we can listen to what God would have us do and make good choices.

Currently listening to: Secret and Whisper, Woven War

Currently Working on: About four trucks, because parts department never has the parts I need. I diagnose about four or five and then all the parts get here at the same time. AHH!

Currently thinking about: What it means to be a godly leader.  

A Labor Day Worth His Wages

Our apologies for not living up to our Tyler Tuesday commitment this week! The holiday weekend through us for a loop. As Tyler mentioned last week in his installment, we were contemplating how to spend a long weekend without spending.

First, there is something you should know. This is currently a large part of our lives and dictates some of the activities we can and cannot do. For instance, I had to leave Brooklyn at home when I went for a long run with my neighbor, Melissa.

It also meant that we had to spend money on diapers. Ty came home around 9PM one night from Walmart and said, "You know, I thought it'd be a while before I was doing late-night diaper runs." After trying two different sizes of pet diapers, we went with size-six baby diapers. Of course, Brooklyn has been trying to act like a human all her life...we should have known.

After a failed attempt at trying to bring college football into our home via bunny ears (our TV is analog, not digital!), we decided to get out of the house. Tyler tells me to always bring my wallet, so as to always have identification on me. The trick is just leaving that wallet in the car. No temptation to spend! 

We went to the Bishop Arts District in Oak Cliff. We had been once before with friends from church, but a rainy evening quenched our thirst for aimless wandering. This time we poked our heads in nearly every novelty store. There are some neat places!

Our original plan was to visit the Oak Cliff bike shop. It's well-known in Dallas. Unfortunately, they were trying to close just as we arrived. Guess we'll have to go back again!

One of the shops is called "Dirt," and I wish most of all that I had photos to share. Well, I actually do have a single photo, but I realized afterward that I photographed a sign that says, "No photos." Oops. I'll not compound my mistake by posting it on social media. Anyway, Dirt is all about plants, flowers, and using them for vintage and wedding decor. It is simply lovely and wonderfully fragrant.

Many of the other shops we visited we unique, too: artwork, furniture, design, specialty chocolate (good thing the wallet was in the car!), pet supplies, etc. Enjoy a glimpse of our journey through Bishop Arts!

Candles galore! My mom would have loved this store!

Outdoor furniture expo

Chocolate salami? They also had chocolate olive oil, chocolate balsamic vinaigrette, and many other oddities.

Tyler jokingly asked me if I knew what this was. I did! I've even played it. Anyone else have an idea?

Coordinates of our city. I loved this!

Sunday was enjoyed amongst friends. Sunday is my favorite day of the week - hands down! After service on Sunday, we enjoyed lunch at home with friends. I used to feel like I had to prepare a feast in order to invite others to join us. I'm learning that there will always be plenty, and the company will always be grateful! When we invited Matt and Hannah, I had no idea what I was going to cook. My grillin' husband saved the day, and I threw together a salad and some fruit. In the evening, we attended an evensong service at our pastor's home that night. A full day in the best way possible!

On Monday, we took the bikes out for the first time since I started school! Such fun!

At the dam at White Rock Lake

When you work as hard as Ty does, you think twice about spending all your income on your day off. :) He always jokes that the best way to save is to keep working. If you work on Saturday, you don't have time to go out and spend. And yes, he is working today! I'm about to hit the keys, the books, and the pavement. (Not simultaneously!) All wonderfully free activities, I might add! Although the piano is really in need of a good tuning...