Happy Valentine's Day

We hope that everyone had a wonderful valentine's day filled with love and laughter. Valentine's day here in Georgia was of course filled with lots of laughs and lots of ponies, nothing out of the ordinary but certainly a day to realize just how lucky Mike and I are to have found each other. I am particularly thankful that he is so supportive of my dreams and the horses. This support has meant the world to me over the past couple of weeks as I have been working long hours with accepting outside riding lessons and proposing a new course to the college. This past week I had my first course proposal meeting with our athletic director and provost of the college, it went amazingly well! Now the next step is to get it through the curriculum board on Tuesday and then its on to the faculty meeting and setting up a time for the course. The thought of having equine studies courses has been on the minds of many coaches through the years at Wesleyan and I am just so excited that with hard work and a ton of organization it is looking like a reality! The addition of these courses will mean I will be a professor in the fall and hopefully our team will start to grow from the new students the courses will bring in. Fingers crossed! Mike and my family have all been wonderful as sounding boards while I have been developing these courses and I cannot thank them enough.

Mike and Tucker hanging out at Wesleyan on Scholarship Day

Speaking of thanking people I also have to thank my parents for teaching me the value of hard work and never giving up. Of course, everyone in your life tells you that you have to work hard and blah blah blah but watching my parents growing up I actually saw that hard work being put into action. There are so many days when I realize how lucky I am to have parents that never let me take things for granted, they always made sure I saw what it took to get to a certain point. I know that Mike is also extremely grateful to his parents for this same thing. Neither of us look at each other and expect for a big house to just appear, we realize that it takes years of hard work to build the foundation for successful and happy lives and honestly as long as we are working hard together its really kind of nice. I know we both also feel very lucky to have grown up with such amazing examples of loving marriages. Tough times either bring couples together or tear them apart and I am so grateful that we have both been lucky enough to see those times pull our parents closer to each other. Thank you for setting such a wonderful example for us!

This past weekend we were lucky enough to have Keri in town for a visit which was so nice! It was great to have another friendly face around here and to catch up on the happenings of the world. This coming weekend I get to head off to Savannah for a bridal show with Katie and I cannot wait!!! I haven't seen Katie since her wedding two summers ago which is just crazy, so there will be lots of catching up to do. Plus an entire day of nothing but fun wedding stuff...sounds pretty perfect to me:) The one challenge that this road trip will present will be testing my willpower. This year for Lent I decided to give up fast food...except for the occasional fish sandwich on Fridays but I won't allow myself fries or any other goodies with it. So traveling without fastfood should be interesting. I think the promise of wedding fun and catching up with Katie at the end of the road will keep me driving past everything. Prepare to hear all about wedding stuff next time!