Employee of the Month

Today my boss came in and told me I was employee of the month. Yippee! Free water! But then he said, "Why don't you go home and enjoy the rest of the day" So of course I said, okay, see ya later. Luckily we had a "cold" front come in last night so the temp is around 58. Cool enough for me to make hot chocolate, curl up in a blanket and read... or take a nap. I can't decide, maybe both. It's a good day.

In October we finally got a good rain storm. It was so nice, but we could still use some more. Check out the video.

October fun

This month has been a crazy blur. My parents and my two youngest sisters came during conference weekend. It was fun to show them around Houston, I think they were surprised by how nice it was. They only stayed for three days but we crammed in a lot of fun stuff in those few days. Her is a picture of an alligator we saw at Brazos Bend State park while they were here.

The next week our outside storage closet got flooded because of a leak in the water heater above ours. So we had to bring all our camping gear, Christmas decorations and other miscellaneous stuff in from the storage closet. Luckily nothing was damaged. A few of our cardboard boxes got soaked, but everything inside them was fine. The next week my brother and his wife and their 8 month old came to stay with us for a few days. It was a bit crowded with all our stuff in the living room, but it was nice to have them here. The next week Tyler started his second round of mid-terms. We finally got our closet fixed so we moved everything back outside. I feel like our apartment is huge now, nothing like a little perspective to make you appreciate what you have. Neither of us were feeling great this weekend so we didn't go to any Halloween parties. Instead we stayed home and carved our pumpkins. It was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures. Can you tell what Tyler has been thinking about lately?

Tyler just finished his last mid-term today and it is such a relief! Now he just has to study for his competency exam... he's not too worried about that one though. I took my personal training certification test and passed. So now I am certified to be a personal trainer. Just one of those hoops you have to jump through, it was a good review though. I've been doing some personal training on the side for a few months. It's pretty fun most of the time.

Work is good, I am in charge of the flag football league and it's been going really well. We had tons of people sign up, enough for eight teams of 9 players each for 5 on 5. There were seven girls that signed up, so I agreed to play so there could be a girl on each team. I have only played football two or three times before in my life so it was a bit rough in the beginning but I am getting better. I am really enjoying it so far.

The weather is finally cooling off here, we've had a couple days in the 60s and 70s which is pretty awesome. I finally got to pull out my cozy pants and blankets. But I have to say, it was nice to be able to go to the Trunk or Treat without a coat on. I can't say that I miss the cold right now, but I am sure I will in December. I hope you all are doing well.

Rain

We finally got some rain. It is so exciting. It has been so dry here, it was starting to feel like Utah or Nevada! There were wildfires everywhere, people were having to evacuate because they couldn't be contained. And finally this weekend we got some beautiful, much needed rain. It made everything humid again, I had not realized that I could miss the humidity. It isn't that much cooler, but it isn't so hot anymore either. We are still praying for more, but we are so happy for what we got.

August Update

We've had a great month. It started with Tyler spending a week in Santa Cruz California for Adaptive Optics summer school. he had an interesting experience. The campus is very green apparently, as in environmentally friendly. It is in the middle of a redwood forest. Instead of cutting down trees they built around them, so it is a bit different from other campuses. They also had all recyclable utensils and such when they ate. As far as the subject matter, he said it was interesting but a bit over his experience level. Most of the people there were PhDs or PhD students, and a lot of them were in astronomy rather than vision science, so it was hard to apply some of the information.

From California, he flew to SLC where I met him so we could spend a few days visiting my parents. I can't believe it was the first time I had been home in a year! It was nice to be back in the mountains and to enjoy the cool weather. My family was complaining that it was so hot and humid that week, but we were loving it. Tyler helped out by installing two ceiling fans in my parents house as well as fixing two other light fixtures. He is upholding the Wyatt tradition of working on vacation. We had a great time though. We also got a chance to stop in and see Grandma and Grandpa Bankhead. That was really nice too, they seem to be doing well. Grandpa is moving around really well and looks really good. It was fun to see them.

When we got home it was back to the grindstone. I had to work the next morning and Tyler had just a few days off before school started up again. He has just started his second year in optometry school. This year is supposed to be a tough one because he has to learn all the clinical exams as well as memorizing all the drugs from his pharmacology class. It should be interesting.

I am staying busy too. I just certified to be an indoor cycling instructor, they call it Spinning, so I will start teaching Spin classes two times a week. It is a great workout, easier on the body than running is. Plus, I will get paid for the classes I teach which will be nice too.

We also celebrated our third anniversary on the 23rd. It is amazing that it has been three years already!

The temperature dropped about ten degrees this week. We are now in the 90s instead of above 100, it feels really nice. And it hasn't been very humid. Almost like Utah, it gives me hope that maybe fall is around the corner, maybe.

July Update

We've just been up the the same old stuff. But the month has flown by. Tyler has been kept busy with his research. He just finished his project and presenting his poster. It was a relief to get it over with! He is now in California for a week of Adaptive Optics School. We get the feeling that the professor he is working for this summer wants him to stay in his lab for the PhD program. But Tyler isn't sure if adaptive optics is what he wants to pursue. School will start again before we know it.

A couple weeks ago one of the professors had a party at his house. They had a pie baking competition and Tyler and I decided to both make a pie. He made a lemon meringue pie that looked pretty awesome. was worried that I might lose the competition, but then his pie didn't set right so he decided not to take it :-) I ended up winning with my peanut butter cream pie. I used Dad Wyatt's winning recipe, so it was pretty much a given that I would win!

I have been busy at work. I'm in charge of the rec leagues at the fitness center. We just finished basketball and will be starting volleyball next week. I have also been working hard to build the website for them. It is starting to come together. There are still a few kinks to work out. I want to change most of the pictures on it and some of the other elements but I think the overall effect is coming along well. If any of you are interested you can check it out at www.rodriguezfitness.com. You can let me know if you have any ideas for making it better, or if you find broken links or anything like that. It is a work in progress, so I will be changing things periodically.

A couple weeks ago we decided to go to a state park call Brazos Bend. It is basically a swamp but actually it was a lot prettier than I had expected. We saw a lot of alligators, none of them were very big though so it wasn't too scary. The thing that did scare me was all the spiders. The things were huge and there were a ton of them. You would see one, then see two or three others and think that was a lot of spiders together but then suddenly you would realize that there were more, a lot more. We tried to take some pictures but I don't know if they did them justice. Luckily the spiders were not aggressive either, they just stayed in the trees. The great part about the spiders though, was that the whole time we were there, we never once got bit by a mosquito.

Yesterday we went to the beach, it was a lot of fun. We made an awning out of our tarp with a couple of pvc polls. It worked pretty well and made things pretty nice. The water was so warm it was like playing in bathtub water. The waves were kind of lame though :( but we still had a great time.

This month has been a good one for the Houston Wyatts. Tyler had a birthday. He really appreciates all the birthday wishes from everyone, thank you! He got a helicopter too that he's been flying around the apartment. It's pretty cool. I'll send a link to a video if you want to see, and pictures of course. It is the best pet you could ask for, he is cute, he does what he's supposed to, you don't have to feed him, and if you ignore him for a few days it's no big deal.

For his birthday dinner we went down to a city on the coast called Kimah. They have a BBQ place called T-Bone Tom's where you can get "armadillo eggs". Armadillo eggs are made of a jalapeno filled with pulled bbq beef and breaded with a corn batter and fried. It was featured on the Food Network's Dinners, Drive-Ins and Dives, and for good reason. It is amazing! If any of you come to visit it will definitely be on the list of things to do. The week after Tyler's birthday we got to really experience Houston when our AC decided to stop working. I should also mention that this is one of the hottest summers Houston has seen for years. It was pretty awful, but luckily they gave us a portable unit that kept our bedroom cool until the unit could be replaced. We were told that after a hurricane the hardest part is living without AC until the power gets fixed. So we got survival training. It makes me want to invest in a battery powered fan, or a generator! Anyway, the good news is that we got a whole new AC unit, hopefully that will reduce the electricity bill!

Our other exciting news is that we found an entertainment center on Craigslist for a really good deal. It looked like what we were looking for but they were asking 500 and we were thinking of spending 100, but the ad said it needed to be gone by Friday so we thought he might take less. I called him up and he agreed to take 200 for it! It is a four piece set, two middle pieces and two shelve pieces on the outsides. I was worried that we wouldn't be able to fit the whole thing in our truck and since it was out by my work i went after work to see if I could load part of it at least before I picked up Tyler. When I got there I realized that it was nicer than the picture on Craigslist gave it credit for. I was very excited. Of course nicer also means heavier. It was a beast to get home but now that it is here we are really in love with it. It makes our whole place feel a lot nicer, plus it makes it feel more like a home. We will just never move to a second story apartment. :) Speaking of moving, we decided not to just yet. Things just did not feel right when we were trying to find a place to buy. Once we made the decision to renew our lease here, we felt a lot better. It will be a smart move for us in the long run I think because we won't have as much debt. So that is our housing status for now.

Other than that, things are just moving along. Tyler is doing research, and learning a lot. He has run into some issues with his research project, but that is the way research goes I guess. I am still really enjoying my job. I am putting together our company website. It's been a fun project so far. I am going to need some help with editing it in a couple weeks if any of you would be willing to look at it for me. I am going to have a trial run before we show it to the whole company. That way we can work out any of the little kinks. We hope you are all doing well.

Video Editing

My official title at work is "Fitness Specialist" but lately I have felt more like a computer specialist. A few months ago my boss asked me if I could learn about Dreamweaver (computer software that writes HTML as you design a page layout). He wanted me to be able to update a website that they were going to have designed by a professional designer. I was eager to learn and jumped right in. I started reading a "Dreamweaver for Dummies" book and soon got the impression that it was not as complicated as I had thought it would be. In fact, I thought that I could save my boss some money by designing the website myself. He was of course excited about the idea. So he bought the Dreamweaver software as well as Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements which are Adobe's photo and video editing software.

Last week they had a proposal for a new contract and they asked if I thought I would be able to put together a promo video in two days. Well, I had never used video editing software but I figured I might as well try. It was a lot of work and I wasn't sure if I would get it done in time and have it looking presentable. But with Tyler's help, I think it turned out pretty well. I feel pretty good about it at least. Enough so that I wanted to share it with y'all. Click Here to watch it. Or you can use this link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6IhEl4cQ7s

No, I am not in it, and I didn't take the videos either. Just in case you were wondering. I know it is still a bit rough but it was a lot of fun!

Rodeo

This is us at the BBQ contest, it was a bit of a disappointment because we didn't get to help judge the BBQ. But I wore my new glasses, (That's another story, I'll have to fill you in later if you haven't already heard it) and I tried a fried Snickers, pretty much wonderful.

We have been pretty busy this month. March is Rodeo month in Houston. It is a big production. The rodeo takes place in the Reliant Stadium and the whole parking area is covered in carnival rides and games and vendors. It was craziness. Especially because we live just a few blocks from the stadium. It made it easier to find parking though, we just walked. It made traffic bad though.

This was one of the BBQ vendors, it smelled wonderful, as you might imagine. We had to try our own turkey leg. It was more than the two of us could handle, just a bit too much greasy goodness. But we sure enjoyed what we did eat!

This was in the livestock show. Now those are horns!

This is us up a few stories in the Reliant Stadium.

The night we went happened to be Martina McBride. It turned out to be a really good concert.

This was the stage they set up after the rodeo, it is pretty amazing for being a removable stage.

Another really fun thing that we did during Spring break was that we went to an AHL game. We got a really good deal on hockey tickets which was nice. The AHL is the minor leagues for the NHL, so it was much better than college games. We had pretty good seats too, just ten rows from the front.

I am really enjoying my new job. I work for a company called Rodriguez Fitness Management. They manage a few corporate fitness facilities. The location I work at is about 15-30minutes from our place, depending on traffic. It is a corporate campus with several companies. I started on Valentines Day so I am still getting used to things but it is going really well. Tyler got a bike so he can ride to school on the days our schedules don't match up.

Tyler just found out this week that he was accepted into the summer research program. He will be working with a professor named Dr. Porter. The actual research sounds pretty cool though Tyler will most likely be counting rods and cones or something like that. If you want to know the details you'll have to ask him, I would probably explain it wrong.

"Severe Weather" and a New Job

This week we went from 70 degree weather to 29 degrees with a wind chill. It was kind of funny to see how everyone reacted to the cold weather, people were freaking out. We got a notice from our apartment management that we needed to keep our faucets dripping at night so the pipes would not freeze. I guess it does not get below freezing every winter, we just got lucky. They canceled school and told everyone to stay off the roads because any moisture on the roads will freeze and cause accidents. Tyler's test was canceled so he stayed home today. They had crews out spreading ice melt last night because the forecast predicted freezing rain and snow. I heard that grocery stores were a mess because everyone had to go and buy necessities before the severe weather set in.

I was pretty disappointed this morning when I woke up and it had only rained a little bit, everything looked normal. Then I realized that the rain droplets on the cars and plants were actually frozen. The building next to ours had a spigot break and it was spraying water on the bushes and cars for a while, I thought it was pretty so I went out to take a picture. By the time I got there the leak was being fixed so I came back a bit later and got these. Luckily we did not get much rain or the conditions would have been worse. I personally thought it was a bit anti-climactic but hey, Tyler still got school off so I'm not complaining.

The past few weeks have been crazy with job interviews and such. Right after Christmas break I had an interview at a corporate fitness facility. They ended up hiring someone else but they told me about another similar position with a different company that actually paid better. So I put in my resume. In the meantime I also applied for a position as a personal trainer at a gym (that I won't name) even though it was pretty far away and I wasn't even sure if I wanted to be a personal trainer since the hours are weird. As life goes, I got a call back from the gym almost immediately and went in for an interview which of course went really well. I then heard back from the corporate wellness job and set up an interview. I got a job offer from the gym the day before I went in for my interview with the corporate wellness job so I was a bit stressed for a while because I did not want to burn any bridges. It all worked out though and to shorten my story... I got the offer from the job I wanted and I am really excited about it! I will start officially on the 14th of February so I will be able to tell you more about it soon. But so far I know that it is a gym located near several office buildings that is just for the employees there. I will be doing some personal training, teaching exercise classes, organizing rec tournaments, writing newsletters and all that kind of fun stuff. I am think it is going to be a perfect fit for me. The only down side is that we have to find another way for Tyler to get to school. We'll figure it out though.

When it Rains it Pours

I can't believe the rain here sometimes. It has been coming down hard most of the day. So I thought it would be a good time for me to update our blog.

We had a great time in Las Vegas for Christmas. (Unfortunately we forgot to take our camera) We went shooting, and water skiing, hung out with family and all that good stuff. I also learned how do dip chocolates the Wyatt style. Sorry, I ate them all or I would offer to let you sample them. :)

Since we've been back in Houston time has really flown by. I can't believe it is almost February. I have been working on Tyler's quilt. I had the squares cut out before Christmas to give to him as a gift. After Christmas it didn't take long to get the pieces together. Now I just need to figure out how to finish it! I am thinking about putting on a border before I do the edge. If you have any advise let me know.

I have two job interviews this week and both look promising. I will let you know how it goes. Tyler will be starting his first week of tests this semester after this week so wish him luck with that.