What happened?

What happened to It's Hip to Save??? I am going through withdrawals.

Thanks for visiting us!

Our friends, Sam and Sarah, came for a visit a couple of weeks ago.  We had lots of fun with them at the pumpkin patch and at the Tea Gardens.  We miss our Austin friends and look forward to having all of them down at some time.

Halloween Night

This is what we had in our driveway on Halloween:

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Sarah (my sister) and Patrick on their recent engagement!  We are so happy for you!

Still playing summer catch-up

Our friends Andrew and Kaleena are out of the country in El Salvador.  Luckily for us, they have Skype and we still get to talk to them and play our nerdy board game online.

Corpus Christi

This summer we spent a month in Corpus Christi while we waited to find out where I would work.  We had lots of fun and did pretty much everything there is to do while we were there.  Here are a few pictures:

The Lexington, "Blue Ghost"

A sea turtle at the Texas State Aquarium
Jellyfish at the aquarium
Old bridge that used to cross the bay
The big bridge in Corpus
Dolphin at the aquarium
Seagulls on Mustang Island
Sailboats in the bay
The Atlantic Coquinas were really thick this year
We went to a sea turtle release at the National Seashore while we were there

Magic Kingdom

My favorite park!  I could have easily spent 2 days at this park!

Cinderella's Castle

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party (the spinning teacups)

The River Boat (from Huckleberry Finn)

Funny poster outside of one of the shows

Downtown Disney

We went to Downtown Disney a couple of times while we were in Orlando.  It was good entertainment and it wasn't as exhausting as the parks.  It mainly had places to buy Disney souvenirs and restaurants.  We didn't really want to spend lots of money on the video game park and Cirque du Soleil, so we stuck to window shopping and eating.

These are some pictures from the T-Rex restaurant.  It had really neat atmosphere and great food.  The food was a bit pricey, but we somehow managed to spend under $20 for our meal.  If you have ever been to the Rainforest Cafe, T-Rex was a lot like that.  We sat in the ice cave where there were "fossils" embedded into the wall.  Every 30 minutes there was a light show with sound effects to simulate a meteor shower.  It was lots of fun and I definitely recommend it. 

Here we are with the Rainforest Cafe and some lego statues in the background.
The sea monster and dinosaur below are made from Legos.

This was a really good looking statues outside of the Rainforest Cafe.

Disney's Animal Kingdom

The park was the best zoo that I have ever visited!  Here is the African Safari ride.

The famous tree of life.  Notice that there are animals carved into the trunk.  P.S. The tree is fake.
We thought all of these signs leading up to the Everest ride were funny.

Time to play summer catch up

We are finally getting settled in our new place and have our own internet connection!  Now I can play catch up on our whirl wind summer!

Maloney Update

Things new with us:

1. We went to Disney World to celebrate graduation

2. We have been at the beach enjoying life

3. I have accepted a job, I start in August

4. We will be moving away from our town very soon

We will really miss all of our friends when we move and hope that everyone will come and visit.  Of course, we will be back every once in a while to see everyone.

We have a weak internet connection where we are staying, so I will have to upload pictures later.  I would rather not give out more info on where I will be working since my blog is public.  Feel free to call or email me if you are curious.

Anniversary

Today is our 6th anniversary!  We went to the gazebo we were married in and talked about what we could remember from our wedding day.  It was fun, but now I am at home alone.  Grant had to go on a trip for work :(

We went to Disney World last week.  I will put up some pictures one I find a new charger for the camera battery (I left it in our hotel room).  We had a ton of fun and I can't wait to go back!

Graduation

My graduation is tomorrow.  I am so excited!  Commencement is on Saturday and I am singing at it with the choir.  It will be awesome.  The guest speaker is Robert Rodriguez!  There will be fireworks shot off from the tower after the ceremony.

Be your own travel agent!

We are going to Orlando next week and I found some really great deals online.  I frequently plan vacations that I would love to go on, but can't afford yet.  I find great deals all the time on Hotwire and Kayak

Hotwire has very low prices but has the disadvantage of not knowing exactly what hotel you will be getting; their star rating system is pretty reliable.  Kayak searches hundreds of travel websites for you to find the best deal and will give you a link directly to the website you wish to use.  On both Hotwire and Kayak, you can sort the results by price, star rating, location, etc.

While trying to find a good deal on a flight, I recently discovered Cheap Airlines.  By using Cheap Airlines, we saved about $150 more than we would have by using Kayak and several other travel sites.

On the move...

We are moving! Where? We don't know yet.  I take that back, we are moving all of our stuff into storage.  We will be going on a working vacation (work for Grant and vacation for me) for about a month. After that, who knows where we will live.  I have to find a job and I would like to live somewhere near my work.

We started packing this week and have gotten 33 boxes packed and stacked in the garage and almost all the laundry, including blankets and curtains, is finished.  I think this will be the smoothest move yet!

Hopefully, we will have plenty of help when it comes time to load up everything and move into the storage unit and again when it comes time to load up everything and move into a new place (wink wink, nudge nudge).

It is finished!

I am finally done with college.  I am in disbelief!  I have been ready for this for a long time.  A new chapter of my life is about to begin and I can't wait because in that chapter, I will be getting paid.  Please pray that I find a good job.

1 week!

I can't believe it is almost over.  I have a ton of homework to do before my last seminar class! 

2 weeks

I have only 2 weeks left of classes! Yipee!  Summer is almost here.

4 weeks

4 weeks left of classes!!! I can't believe it.  It's almost over.

Things we have been doing lately

I haven't posted any pictures lately, so I am playing catch-up with this blog.

We went to the river parade in San Antonio for St. Patrick's Day.  Each float helped to dye the river green.

We have been hiking and fishing several times at McKinney Falls.  Here is a picture of all the beautiful trees the first week the leaves were out.

I went to the shooting range for the first time and chickened out.  I ended up sighting the whole time since the old-timey gun my husband has doesn't have a modern scope.  The owner of the range is determined to end my fear of guns.  The first and only time I have ever shot a gun (excluding air rifles) was this past summer at the Parks and Wildlife Expo.  This is a picture of the ground in one of the shooting stalls.  The range is an outdoor range.

Goodbye Redbox

We are officially boycotting Redbox and you should too!  A DVD we returned was lost and they have charged us $25 (full price) for a movie that we don't even have!!!!  They also don't seem very interested in keeping our business as evidence from the customer service rep's attitude.

I was told that this could happen if we put the DVD in the case backward.

We could have had 3 whole months of Net Flix if we had known this would happen.

Busy, Busy, Busy, Excited, Excited, Excited

I have several pictures that I have been meaning to post, but it is a little bit of an ordeal to get them on here since they are all taken with my phone... The pictures will have to wait.

Right now, I am gearing up for a long haul of busy weekends.  I won't be off the hook until May 8.  It's okay, everything that we are doing is going to be fun.

Today, I started at my new student teaching assignment.  I have finished with middle school and am now on for elementary.  The first day was great and I really love my cooperating teacher.

Starting today, I am counting down until the last day of classes... 7 WEEKS!!! Yay!  I am not really counting down toward graduation, just the end of class.  If you are interested, my graduation is on May 22 at 3 (this is where I walk across the stage with the College of Fine Arts) and commencement is on May 23 (this is University-wide and I will be on stage to sing with the UT choir, but they won't call my name).

As graceful as a swan...

on the freeway.

This is a picture of a swan that I saw on I 35 this morning.  Luckily I was traveling north, while the was traveling south.  There was a pretty big back up of traffic behind it... of cars, that is.

Test results

I PASSED!

Job Hunt

I started applying for jobs today.  Wish me luck!

Movies

Grant and I like to watch a lot of movies, so I thought I would give a review of a few we have seen lately.

Australia:  This one's story was okay, but what I really loved about it was the little boy that sings in it.  The story has some adventure and some romance, but it manly just wants to show off how hunky Hugh Jackman is.  It seems that he is posing to show off his muscles in every scene.  This one is worth renting.  I would like to buy it for the singing little boy.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:  We saw this one right after Christmas.  I really liked it a lot.  This is one I will definitely want to buy.  The story is about a man that ages backwards... he was born old and died young.

We saw Hancock in the theatre when it first came out, but recently rented it again.  It was worth it.  It is a comedy about a super hero who is basically a loser.  I probably wouldn't buy it, but I would definitely watch it again.

I got Planet Earth for Christmas.  I know it is not really a movie, but I don't care.  We have watched the first 2 episodes so far.  It is so good.  The scenery is overwhelmingly beautiful and the commentary is not distracting.  It is definitely worth buying.

Fun Weekend.....

This was supposed to be a funny cartoon about being sick all weekend....

Happy New Year!!!

We had lots of fun last night at First Night last night.  I am so glad we were able to spend New Year's with such good friends.  If you didn't go this year, you should definitely go next year.  There were lots of fun events and some really great fireworks.

One event that really stuck out in my mind were the singing Tesla coils.  Someone who was there already put a video of it on youtube.  The sound is coming from the electricity.