Paul's Promotion and the Beale Wedding

I've decided I need to start "blogging" more. I just keep putting it off until I have a ton to write..not good. So, Last week Paul was "officially" promoted to Captain!! YAY!! :) The Battalion Commander gave a really nice speech at his ceremony, then he presented him with a plaque holding his certificate of promotion granted by Congress... Pretty impressive. :)



This is a picture of the Battalion Commander presenting Paul with the certificate. :)



They actually allowed me to "promote" Paul by placing his new rank on his uniform. He's officially a Captain now (Hints the railroad track symbol on the uniform). :)


This is a few of Paul's closest friends. Left to Right: Dave Beale, Alvin Cavalier, Paul (duh), and Christopher George. When these four get together, it's trouble.

Last weekend, we attended Dave and Kellan's wedding. It was actual mine and Paul's first Catholic wedding to ever go to, so it was interesting. It was a very beautiful wedding and you could tell they were so happy! :) Here are a couple pics from it.

The Happy Couple! :)

After the wedding, there were lots and lots of bubbles. While we were waiting to visit with them, we enjoyed playing with the bubbles. The funniest was watching 3 of America's finest, most mature U.S. soldiers have a ball with pink tubes of bubbles. Sound entertaining? OHHH it was!! Here they are... haha

My hubby.. :)

There they are.. too funny!

Then Paul and I decided we needed a few pictures in the car or maybe I just decided that... Here's the result..

This picture was taken of us at the wedding.

This weekend, we're actually going to Dave and Kellan's tomorrow for dinner (and they're one week anniversary). We're excited about having them here to hang out with now! :) Also, next week is Riverfest... So, we get to tour a castle, have free food, go on a boat ride, and tour a few islands... Pretty exciting!

Paul and I are also trying to plan a backyard bible club for all of the kids in the neighborhood and maybe have a few water games. Unlike the south, many kids here have never heard of Jesus.. and God is somewhat of a foreign idea to them. Please keep them in your prayers. Also, we started visiting the barracks a few weeks ago to talk to the single soldiers that get forgot about and share cookies. We're hoping to get a game night going in the barracks and begin sharing God's love with them. Please pray that God will give us the courage, consistency, and knowledge of what to say during our visitations. Also pray for the single soldiers because they sure do live a lonely life. Think about it: they deploy, come home to...only their fellow soldiers (most of them), then wait to deploy again... most want to asap because they've grown to feel more "appreciated" and "loved" and "needed" in Afghanistan than here. They feel they belong more there. Isn't that sad? Please keep them in your prayers.

God's got great plans for New York and Soldiers!!! Please also pray that Paul and I will be sensitive and attentive to GOD's Plans and His will as we strive to love people HIS way! :)

I love yall and Ill write soon! :) Happy weekend and God bless! :)

NYC and Taylor Swift

May 15-16 weekend I finally got to enjoy the long awaited Christmas present that my amazing husband invested in while he was still in Afghan. What's that you ask? Taylor Swift tickets in NYC ofcourse!! It was awesome! Running low on money, we made the most of what we had as cheap as possible :) It was great fun.

First, we arrived at the hotel early Saturday morning around 2 am. The hotel took almost an hour to check in. So you're thinking, "hmm..maybe a long line" ? Nope.. No line, just really dumb people. The hotel had just opened and looked nice for a good price. Once we got into our room, we realized we had no towels, shampoo, or rags. OCD as I am, I checked the covers to make sure everything was clean and SAFE. It seemed good. We crashed, and the next morning we realized...The shower is broken. Great. haha So, Paul goes down stairs to ask for another room to find an extremely long line of really frustrated people (with reservations) waiting for their rooms. Luckily, he didn't have to wait in line and we got another room. Once we moved all of our things, we realized the tv in our new room was broken and the AC was broken as well. Great. By this time, we were frustrated so we went to IHOP and had peanut butter pancakes. YUM! This is us excited about pancakes:

After that, we made our way to the Taylor Swift concert!!! Surrounded by little girls ages 7-15 everywhere, but it was still Fun Fun Fun!! The picture above to the right is us at the concert!

Kelly Pickler opened for Taylor Swift, and we weren't very impressed with her. I'm not the biggest Kelly Pickler fan, but she did sing one song I really liked. Then, it was finally time!!! BAM!! Here's a couple pics of TAYLOR SWIFT!!! AHHHHH!!! (Paul was such a good sport btw):)

So, we had decent seats, but not the best! They were about in the middle, bc I saw it ridiculous to pay too much for tickets! :) Luckily, she came to us!!! We were about two rows from where she performed one of her songs!!! So, here are those pictures! :)

The next day, we slept in a little and then wokeup to go to the city and visit the BROOKLYN BRIDGE and GROUND ZERO. I was so excited!!! Heres a pic of us getting ready!

We walked around the city and saw ground zero. It was really touching and sad to see everything. Here are some pictures from ground zero.

The picture on the far right is a memorial where people came and left stuff in memory of those lost. The picture second from the right is all of the missing people after the tragic accident. People passed out these flyers on the streets in hopes of finding their loved ones. The pics of the far left are of ground zero itself and the reconstruction.

Here are two more pictures from ground zero. On the far right, is the memorial of teddy bears. They passed teddy bears out after 9-11 for all of the schools and relief workers and firemen. On the far left is a fireman uniform on the back pew of the catholic church by ground zero. They said that the firemen would come in and pray, nap, or just to meditate.

After visiting ground zero, we walked to the Brooklyn bridge!! It was a long walk, but very very beautiful! We had a lot of fun. Here are a couple more pictures of the view and one of us! :)

Afterwards, we headed back home and even stopped at Olive Garden for lunch. YUM :)

Happy One Month Anniversary! :)

Paul and I celebrated our one month anniversary last night! :) We went to eat at Red Lobster.. enjoyed crab legs and shared a dessert. Perfect. :) It's been a great first month of marriage. We were blessed enough to have a long honeymoon in Hawaii (almost 2 weeks). Once we arrived back in New York, we began unpacking (blah!). I'm happy to report our house is almost "officially" a home!!! It's all decorated with the exception of a couple things.. and within a week, we should be able to have people over!! YAY!! I'll post pictures as soon as it's complete! I'm very excited..it's coming together nicely. :)

Last night, we were also able to visit with some friends prior to our dinner. First, we visited Katie and her new baby Aiden who is absolutey precious!! Katie has decked out his entire room in Snoopy and sports!! Very very cute! Here is a picture of Baby Aiden:

After we left, we visited our neighbors, the White family! We're lucky to have such great neighbors. They're actually looking for a church too, so we talked about where we both had been visiting. Please pray that Paul and I will find the church home that God has waiting for us. :) Tonight, we're going to see Cameron and Anthony (our neighbors sons) play baseball! Paul and I are really excited. It's been a long time since we've seen a baseball game.

Also last night, we walked along the river. It was very chilly but SO pretty. Here is a picture I took:

Also, we're planning a trip to NYC this weekend to see Taylor Swift. This was my Christmas present from Paul. (There's only so much you can buy for Christmas when you're deployed.) As you can imagine, I'm SUPER EXCITED!! I love the city AND Taylor Swift! WOO HOO!

This is a picture I took of my awesome Hubby last night. He's SO attractive. I'm very blessed. :) Ya'll have a good week! Pics to come of the city and Taylor Swift! :)

"I Now Pronounce You Mr. and Mrs. Paul Walker"

Paul and I recently got married on April 10, 2010. Life is crazy hectic, but it's comforting knowing God is leading us! :) I finished Graduate School at MSU in December and have been back and forth from NY to MS every since planning our wedding. :) Paul returned from Afghanistan Dec. 26, 2010, and it's been GREAT having him back home! In the last 8 months, we've traveled from South Carolina to Mississippi to Tennessee to Florida to Texas to New York and to Hawaii. It has been CRAZY, but extremely fun and intriguing.

We were married on April 10th, and we honeymooned in Hawaii thereafter. There are so many AWESOME things about Hawaii like the abundance of pineapple and how amazingly heavenly it taste in your mouth.

Other things great about Hawaii are: the amazing sunset that's available for viewing EVERY single night, the great seafood, the ABC stores that sell everything you could possibly imagine, the beautiful sites no matter WHERE you are, the amazing beaches, and the North Shore atmosphere (where its VERY beautiful with lots of locals and not overcrowded with tourists!)

I guess I got excited and jumped to the honeymoon, but the wedding was awesome fun too. God has blessed me with such an amazing family and crazy awesome friends, so it was simply amazing! :)

As you can see, the bridesmaids and I performed a choreographed dance (thanks to Leigh Ann). It was SO MUCH FUN!!! :) Cari documented this well in her blog entry entitled "Just Dance"! She has such a cute, interesting blog.. To view it see: http://bradandcarigaunt.blogspot.com/. To complete the wedding, I was welcomed to the army family with the saber arch...Here we go! :)

So, just as soon as we returned from our honeymoon, it was time to move all of my things and our many gifts to New York. After 2 1/2 LONG LONG days, of driving...we arrived late on May 1, 2010! YAY! Ofcourse, we were completely exhausted. After a little rest, we unloaded the truck and began unpacking. We are still in the process of unpacking, but it's really neat watching our house become a home! :)