I'm officially finished with my Master's Degree!!!

Yep, that's right!! I'm finished!!! YAY!!! I had my last class last night and turned in my last assignment. It's such a relief to be finished again :) Now, I just have to get everything ready for graduation!!! :)

My teacher is amazing and she actually held our last class at El Rincon, a Mexican restaurant on the strip and she bought nachos for everyone! (how fun is that? ;)) My two technology classes have been wonderful, and after talking with her, I've decided that I want to get my PhD in Educational Technology (the actual degree is PhD in Instructional Leadership with an emphasis in Educational Technology). After talking with her last night, I'm 100% sure this is what I want to do, so I'm going to start getting my application ready so that I can get started as soon as possible!

After class, I went and grabbed some Olive Garden for mine and Alex's date night. As I mentioned before, we've added a Thursday night date night to have dinner and watch Scrubs :). Anyway, he came over and we had a great time hanging out and watching TV. Unfortunately, he didn't get to stay long because he had to go home to study and work on homework :( . I just spent the rest of the evening resting and working on my apartment because my parents are coming in town next weekend to help me finish cleaning my apartment for my graduation guests :)

Well since I'm off work today, I'm going to work my tail off to get my apartment ready. I'll write more when I have some free time! :)

Crystal's Wedding Weekend (Day 2 & 3)

Obviously, yesterday was a super busy day so I did not have a chance to blog, so sorry!! Anyway, I did not take a lot of pictures so I'm "borrowing" pictures from my friends and my mommy so I'll constantly be updating this :) Anyway, Saturday morning, I woke up and headed to the Bridesmaids' Brunch at the Rock House. It was super yummy!! Here are some pictures of us at the Rock House.


(Please excuse my horribly flat hair, I was about to go get it fixed) Which leads me to my next event of the day, the hair appointment. Because it would be a long day, I really wanted to get my hair fixed. I'm so glad I did!! I could have never made it look like that :) Anyway, after the hair apppointment, I went back to the hotel to get ready to head to the church for pictures.

I got to the church a little early, but it ended up being earlier than everyone else so we didn't get to start taking pictures until about 4:30!! Anyway, the pictures went well, and I can't wait to see how they turned out! :) Here are some of us getting ready!
*Note: I'll add more here later!!

The wedding and reception went well, and we decided to all go out and have a good time afterwards! The entire bridal party headed to this place called the Blue Parrot. We had the best time (poor place didn't know what hit it until we came in!) They had this blues, jazzy band and we danced for hours! After the bar closed, we went out to the boat dock, where one of the groomsmen's family had a boat. We hung out for a while on it just talking and hanging out. We had such a good time!! It was great hanging out with the girls again! :)




We did not get back to the hotel until about 4 in the morning so we crashed so we could wake up this morning to get packed, and head home! We left about 11, grabbed some lunch, and shopped at the outlet stores in Boaz. Alex got a pretty (I mean handsome) green polo from the Polo Outlet. I got some cute elephant coffee service pieces and some Coca-Cola bottle salt and pepper shakers from Kitchen Collections! Then we headed back home. We got here a little while ago so I'm going to quickly unpack and start on homework for my last class this week! :)

I'll write more later! :)

Guntersville, We We Come!! (Crystal's Wedding Weekend Day 1)

We left at about 7:00 AM because the boys were playing golf at 10 and Alex wanted to hit some before everyone else arrived. So this sleepy pair climbed into the car and headed to Guntersville (not before stopping off for some breakfast from Sonic ;)). Alex and I usually do well on long car rides like that...Alex used to drive me around in the bug for hours and we'd talk so that has kinda become our catch up time :). Anyway, we finally arrived in Guntersville. Because we couldn't check into our hotel until 3, Alex let me take the jeep to go run some errands. Thanks to my trusty VZW Navigator, I was able to get everything done with some time to spare! :) I got tired of driving around, so I thought I'd swing by the hotel, just to see if we could get in. I ran into Crystal there...finalizing the hotel arrangements for all the guests. Thankfully, they had our room ready so I single-handedly took all of our luggage upstairs and laid down to relax until I had to go get Alex. Here are some pictures of our gorgeous room :)

Alex ended up hanging out with the groomsmen most of the day, so I got to be lazy and have the bathroom all to myself to get ready for the rehearsal. Alex was sweet and brought me dinner from Applebee's :).

The rehearsal started at 6 so we headed to the church to do that. Here are some pictures Alex took (sorry there aren't many...he ended up having to stand in for a missing groomsmen)



After the rehearsal, we went to dinner at Top O' the River. The food was super yummy! So yummy that no one even took the time to take pictures :) I did get this one of Alex and I though!


(Yes, we match....I made him, poor thing!)

Anyway, we're back now and ready for bed! I'll try and update more on Sunday when we return!!

Much love,
Maegan

I know...it's been a while!!

Sorry I have not done a good job about keeping up lately!! It's been insanely busy and Alex and I have been going through a tough patch so I've been doing a lot of soul searching. When you've been dating for this long, sometimes you just have to step back and make sure you're doing the right thing. However, never fear! We're fine now! :) On top of our Sunday date nights, we've started having a date night on Thursday night as well. Alex has cut his cable off and the only new show he misses seeing is Scrubs, so he comes over on Thursday nights, I buy dinner and we watch Scrubs together. As busy as we both are, it's nice to have that scheduled time just for us :) We've been on a break for about a week and tonight was really great because everything was okay :) We're looking forward to our weekend together in Guntersville! :) I'll definitely be blogging more about that when I get back on Sunday!

Have a super fabulous week!

Much love,
Maegan

Thank Heavens for Personal Trainers and Grandmothers! :)

Let me give you the back story to my above statement. A college friend is getting married on April 19th and she asked me to be a bridesmaid. She chose a dress that is gorgeous on the model...but does not translate well to certain body types...mine included. We ordered the dresses back in December and because I had been measured for other things, I had my current dress measurements. I used the chart they provided to figure out what size dress I needed to order. Well according to the chart, I needed a size 16 because of my midsection (which is my problem area). Because the dress is floor length with a train, I knew there was no possible way that we could fix a size 16 to fit me (I normally wear a 6-8) so after much discussion with several people, we decided that it would be better for me to order an 8 since that fit all of my other measurements and go from there. Well, when the dresses came in in February, I tried it on. Let me tell you, it was the biggest mess I have ever seen. The shoulders of the dress stood out out and above my shoulders, the back of the dress was crooked, and the dress would not even zip (surprisingly, it had nothing to do with my midsection, it was my "barrel" rib cage that caused the problem!). The dress was fairly expensive (over 200 dollars) and could not be exchanged or returned so needless to say I was hysterical over the situation. My wonderful grandmother is a wonderful seamstress and has remade many a dance costumes over the year (she's so wonderful that she would even go in and resew stuff just to make it look less sloppy!) so we called her to see if the dress was salvageable. She came up there and after about an hour of messing with it, she assured me that she would be able to make it work, even if we added in material. Well, to make sure it fit, I wanted to lose some weight anyway so I called on a dear friend of mine who is also a personal trainer. We had a few sessions last year, but I got so busy I never met back up with her. Well when I told her of the dress crisis, she was eager to help and we got started right away.

This weekend I went home to do the final alterations of the dress (including deciding whether or not we had to add material YIKES!) and my poor grandmother had already spent 2 Saturday's taking apart the entire dress and sewing it back together to make it fit better on me, however, she was waiting to see if we needed to add material before she finished it. Her and my mom helped me in the dress and guess what....it zipped ALL THE WAY!!! I was so ecstatic!!!!Unfortunately, I had to calm down because the dress still had a lot of work left (that was the only area that fit at the moment haha) so we pinned and tucked and sewed and tried on all day Saturday. Then, my grandmother stayed up all night Saturday and worked on it until late last night. I tried it on one last time before heading back to Tuscaloosa and it fit perfectly!!! I'm so lucky to have a grandmother that would put that much time and effort into a dress for me :) She did assure me that when I get married, she wants to make the bridesmaids' dresses so no one has to go through that!

Anyway, just thought I'd share my exciting news. I'll definitely post pictures of me in the dress at the wedding next week!

Love,
M

Goodbye Library :(

I know this may come as a surprise to you...because believe me it was a surprise to everyone else...including Alex and the owner. Ok, here's the back story. The Thursday beforet spring break, I arrive to work and my coworker Jenny said "Did you see the paper?" (referring to the student newspaper) I hadn't so she gave me her copy and this was what I saw (links to their website with the article) Date set to consider removing Library bar on Strip - News Okay, so I was floored I didn't know about this before, but because of mine and Alex's lack of communication lately (not necessarily in a bad way, but by the time we get to actually talk we forget about a lot of stuff!) and the problems they had been facing, I thought maybe this was just something he forgot to tell me about. Well, I tried to call him, but unfortunately he was still asleep. Several hours later he called and said, "Did you see the paper?" and I immeadiately knew what he was referring to. Apparently, he had NO idea about this. I talked to him later that day and apparently the owner didn't know about it either which was a little strange to me, but it doesn't surprise me. Anyway, because they had had lots of issues already, they figured they would not be able to fight this and just expected to close the first week of April or so (They were supposed to vote on the 1st). Then after spring break, Alex found out that the landlord was upping their rent on April 1stand they just couldn't afford it so they didn't renew their license, which meant their last night would be Monday, March 31st. They toyed with the idea of opening on Monday, but they figured Saturday would be their last "big night". They did decide to go ahead and open on Monday, but Alex and the rest of the staff were done after Saturday night. Anyway, despite my already long day I knew I couldn't miss the Library's last day. I called up several of my friends and invited them and we all partied one last time. Although the Library has caused me a lot of relationship stress, it still was a big part of our lives so it was a bittersweet ending (plus I was losing my "First Lady of the Library" status :( ) Here are some pictures from the last night. Note: I was very sad I was not able to get a picture with Alex, because I got one on his first night, but things were so CRAZY I could not get him to stand still for more than 2 seconds Sad Day!



Recognizing all of the staff that was there that night (which was almost all of them). Being the horrible girlfriend, I cut Alex out of the picture - he would be on the far right.


Another staff picture...still no Alex (to my defense, I'm so short I was holding it above my head)


The staff leading one last "Roll Tide Roll". I actually caught Alex in this one! :) This was right before the waterworks started (they decided to use the "guns" to spray everyone with water...yeah not fun times)

Some of my friends who came to hang out: (Patricia, Frances Ann, Tara)



When I arrived to work today, Jenny had a paper on my desk and it read:

The Library bar closes, will be replaced - News

Of course, I had not had time to tell a lot of my friends so I got a ton of phone calls today so I had to go through this same story a million times. Although I'm excited about getting to spend more time with Alex, I'm going to miss having it to go to if I get bored, or even throwing parties there. Alex and the rest of the staff were getting a little fed up with things (which is a whole different story) so this definitely got them out of the drama. As of right now, Alex has gotten several job offers but he has not accepted any. He says he'd rather wait until this summer, which is understandable. However, we've gotten spoiled by his nice paycheck so it's been tough trying to adjust to a limited budget, but we're getting to see each other more which is wonderful! :)

Anyway, I'll be sure to keep you updated!

My crazy weekend & Happy April Fool's!

I'm so sorry I have not blogged much this week, but it was a busy rest of the week. As I mentioned in the last post, I had a lot to do before my Gadsden class and my parent's visit (and little did I know, Alex's parents visit). Being the compulsive list maker that I am, I even made out a minute-by-minute schedule. I of course did not follow it, but I felt better just planning it out like that. So I'd been working on one of my many assignments due for the weekend. Our teacher was very lenient about turning stuff in and although I hate turning it stuff late, he told us at our last class on the March 15th, that we could turn in the rest of our assignments at the last class. Well, I thought..."this won't be a problem" WRONG! I forgot there were only two weeks between the classes instead of the usual month (one of which was spring break) so it was a harder task than I thought. I was pretty good and worked on a lot of it at work, but being the procrastinator I am I left some of it until Friday. I spent the majority of the day going between cleaning and homework because I have a hard time focusing on one thing for too long if I have other stuff that has to be done. Ten o'clock rolled around and I was finishing my last bit of homework. Even though my apartment was still far from presentable, I at least felt better knowing that was done. I saved it and went back to cleaning. At about 2:00 A MI decided to go ahead and put it on my jump drive so I wouldn't forget it. Well because my computer and I don't get along too well, it decided to be complicated and crash and resort back to a previously saved draft of one of my huge assignments. I seriously freaked out because this was actually the assignment I'd been working on all week. So I of course tried everything I could think of to get it back and decided instead of wasting more time on a lost cause, I was just going to start over on it. Thankfully it resorted back to a point that I had a lot of my links done (it was a webquest) so I didn't have to re-search all of that again. It still took me several hours to get it done. I finished at 5:30 and because I knew I had to get up at 6:30 I decided it was a better idea just to stay up which I did.

The two hour drive was tough, but thankfully class went well and although the two hour drive back was just as bad, I did have a sense of relief knowing that I only had 1 class to stress over now :) I got back just in time to do some more cleaning and relaxing before having to head to Josh's game at 2 (that was the reason of my parents' visit, Josh had a baseball game here in Tuscaloosa). It was their usual double header and the second game got delayed because of the weather so we spent a good deal of time at the ballfield. I was fighting staying awake and when it started raining, we went to the car and I got to take a much needed nap for a little while. After the game, we headed back to my apartment because my mom wanted to clean some (she LOVES to clean!) and I wanted to go to the Library's last night later that evening. After they left, I got ready and headed to the bar to say goodbye to the Library (Note: it deserves its own post so I will blog in detail sometime next week) Needless to say, I passed out when I got home about 2:30 AM.

Unfortunately, I did not get to sleep late on Sunday because Alex's parents were coming in town. I had no idea when they'd be there so I woke up at 9 so I could get ready just in case. They didn't arrive until 1, so I had some time to straighten up the apartment so that they could come see it (all except the bedroom - it's still off limits :)) and meet them over at Alex's. They took us to lunch at Hokkaido which is one of mine and Alex's favorite restaurants. It was yummy as always! Then we did our usual Starbucks and Target run and then they came to check out my apartment. After they left, I had some downtime to nap which was nice until Alex called and wanted to do dinner and a movie for our "date night". We watched Ocean's 11 and had chicken cordon bleu YUM!

Yesterday was the usual Monday...nothing too exciting. It was however the last official day the Libary would be open, but the owner decided to run it with all of his friends so Alex didn't have to go. Today was of course April Fool's Day and the only joke I had to deal with was that my friend Tara changed her Facebook status to engaged. I called her and fussed at her for not letting me know, and she of course told me it was a joke. I was happy that I got to see Alex tonight though! I'm a huge Johnny Depp fan and of course "Sweeney Todd" came out today. Alex bought it and he made dinner (Beer Brats which I had never had and was surprised to find out they were really good). The movie was amazing! I highly recommend you seeing it. Alex had already seen it in the theater and I was surprised he wanted to see it again since it was a musical, but he really liked it. One of my favorite songs "Not While I'm Around" was in it! :)

Anyway, I just got home (he had to study) so I'm going to get some stuff done around here and go to bed.

I'll update later!

Much love,
Maegan