Bek's lab

"Sometimes it's best to get your walls knocked down, lose your most cherished constructs, and be fully swept away." --How to Live at the Beach, by Sandy Gingras

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Location: Kailua, HI, United States

I'm a stay-at-home momma to 2 little ones, military spouse, and distributor for Young Living, cooking up new DIY recipes for house and home.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

The new 'Do

Since the pictures are working for me today...

Before: (that's me in the black and white dress)
It's not terribly long, but, that in front is the shorter layers and they are pulled up in clips. It was definitly about armpit length. It's the best I've got!
PS~from L-R, that's my hubby, one of our best friends from high school, me, and our friend's girlfriend, who also went to high school with us. Both the boys were in the wedding, hence, the peeling down of tux layers ;)

And my after pic is a double whammy...
That's right, not only the short hair, but that's miss Jadabear herself. I took her for her first time at a Japanese steakhouse. She told her Popi, "the man cooked fire!" She even tried to eat with chopsticks. How cute?! I know it's not the greatest pic of my hair, but it's a cute picture. And I still have a "wedding weekend #2" post to go, and the hair will continue to be showed off. I just wanted to get it out there and show you just how brave I am! Ha!
(I forgot to mention that I have had this style before...hehe. I grew it out for my wedding and just got tired of it. But it is drastic!)

Wedding weekend #1, complete with pictures!

Ok, so I'm getting the pictures to work a little better today. Isn't that dress stunning? And look at him, hiding back there in his dress blues. They even cut the cake with his sabre. The ceremony was at 6:30pm, so yes, right around sunset. As you can see, she used that beautiful, rich red color. The girls carried white roses and the bride had red. The did that unity sand thing too. Have you heard about this? They poured 2 flutes of sand, his was red, and hers was white, into one container, instead of the more common unity candle. The opening on the new container was pretty small, so they alternated colors. It came out really well.

And here, on the right, is the Korean outfits. I thought it was a very nice touch. Her mother and her sister wore the traditional frocks for the entire event. Her mother was adorable. Speaking basically no english, she got out there and danced with the rest of us! When this couple first got together, everyone was a little concerned, considering the circumstances, but they and their families seemed truely happy and excited for their future. We, of course, wish them the best, and all bets are on them to have the first baby ;)

They did the sweetheart table thing, which was lovely. And the cake had a rasberry filling...mmm. We all danced into the night and threw rich red rose petals to see them off at the end of the evening. I'm sure a fun time was had by all ;)

(PS, mom, it's Hyesung)

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Wedding weekend #1

I'm going to go ahead with the timeline and see how far blogger will let me go with the pictures.
Thursday, September 14: DH and I flew into Jax. We stayed the night with his parents and had a lovely visit.
Friday, September 15: DH and I make the 2 hour drive to his college town where we are staying with friends for the weekend. After showering and cleaning up, we head down another 45 minutes south to the city where wedding #1 will be. DH and the friend we stayed with are both in the wedding and we had to pick their tuxedos up before rehearsal. We had a lovely, but somewhat lengthy rehearsal and went on to dinner. After dinner, we drove 45 minutes back to the city we were staying in and went out for a bachelor/bachelorette party/reunion. We got home really late and I ended up sitting up all night chatting with 2 girls who were staying with us. I went to high school with both of them and hadn't seen them in a while.

Saturday, September 16: I wake up about 9am and haul it 2 hours to a bridal shower for wedding #2. The shower only lasts about 2 and 1/2 hours, but she's a very dear friend. I turn right around and haul it back the 2 hours to where we're staying to get ready for wedding #1. We make it just in time for the wedding to start (remember it's 45 minutes away!) It was a beautiful wedding at an equestrian club in horse country of central Florida (isn't it beautiful?!) The groom is a dear friend of my hubby and he was in our wedding. He's a military man. The bride is Korean and about 10 years older than us. Her family made the trip and were just adorable. It was still a very "American" wedding. Since he's in the military and she's not exactly familiar, I think his mother did a lot of the planning. She's a very proper southern woman. She was so cute! His father is a "good ole boy." Seriously! He's in the social club. Things were quite traditional for the most part. The bride's father had past away years ago, so she danced with his father, which I thought was nice. A little later in the evening, the groom danced with her mother to even things out. Also, halfway through the reception, they changed into traditional Korean garb. Very festive and very fun.

Sunday, September 17: DH and I got up, once again, and drove back up to Jax. We met up for lunch with my family. My aunt happened to be in town from SC and my grandmother happened to be in from Atlanta. We got together at my sister's new place with them and my other aunt and her family. Little family reunion (those of you who check in the Jada's Gigi, aka, my mom, and with T Texas Red, my aunt, are familiar with our family). I got to see not only the extended family, but we got to play with little Jada herself. She's so big! We went on to have dinner with my hubby's family.

Monday, September 18: We had a lovely morning of sleeping in! I went that afternoon to get my hair cut off! I had to do a rehighlighting after I tried to touch up my roots myself. oops! Anyway, I love my new hairdo. Then, I took my hubby to the airport and sent him home to TX. He couldn't take enough leave to say the whole time with me.

Ok, blogger won't let me post more pictures, so I will be sure to post a pic of the bride and groom, and before and after pics of my hair (believe me, it's drastic!), and fill you all in on the next week! It was a long trip...

Monday, September 25, 2006

We're Baaaack!

What a success! I don't think I could have possibly crammed in more fun, or seen more people than I did in the last 11 days. Dh only stayed for the first weekend, but I didn't let that stop me. I got to see college friends, high school friends, and relatives, and even made a handful of new friends. I stayed up 5 separate nights til, oh, 4 or 5am just chatting and catching up with different people. I cut off all my hair too! It's super cute and I like it a lot.
Wanna hear something funny...I actually made myself sick from lack of sleep, eating junk, dehydration, and singing and dancing at the weddings, rehearsals, bridal shower and bachelorette parties. It was a blast! I figured I could sleep when I got home, right? But, I did come home with a nasty little cold. Hopefully it will be short lived and there will be nothing to make me regret my awesome week.
It was nice to get home to my hubby and my kitty. I really missed him at the wedding he missed. I probably have about 150 pictures and access to at least 1-200 more (yay for digital cameras!), some of which I will plan to post after I get some more sleep. Hope you all enjoyed your weekends nearly as much as I did ;)

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Sunny Florida, here we come!

I know it's hot and sunny here in Texas, but there is nothin like good ole sunny Florida! We have felt very home sick for FL lately. We're finally going for a visit! We have weddings 2 weekends in a row. We have seriously been looking forward to this trip for weeks. I've wanted to pack for the last 2 weeks. Now, I am about finished! We fly out tomorrow! We have a long list of friends and family we'll be seeing. Most of them we haven't see in the 5 months it's been since our wedding. A few, it's been even longer. I think one girl I'm going to see I haven't seen in about a year! She was supposed to be in my wedding, but the navy confiscated her from me (she's a nurse, and they were understaffed, she couldn't get leave...ect...) Anyway, have I mentioned we're excited? We're going to see so many people and do all kinds of things. DH doesn't get as long of a trip as me. We need to save some of that time off for the holidays coming up. But, I/we have a rehearsal dinner, a bridal shower, a wedding, a bachelorette party, a joint bachelor/bachelorette party, football games to watch, good southern BBQ we can't get in TX, dinner with family, hot tubbing, and slumber parties. We plan to cram in as much funness as we can! Enjoy your weekend! Mine starts tomorrow!

Monday, September 11, 2006

A Word of Advice?

Like I've said in a previous post, I have several friends getting married soon. In fact, the next 2 weekends I'll be wedding-it-up. We are super excited. I have to go to a shower for the latter wedding the first weekend before the first wedding (we're going to be very busy). Part of the festivities of the bridal shower is that we are supposed to write messages of advice on cute little pieces of stationary for the bride-to-be. Now, my hubby and I have been together for a good 5 years, but we've only been married for 5 months. I've learned some valuable things and received lots of good advice at my wedding, but I know a lot of you who check in with me have years on me in this department. What advice would you offer a newlywed? This is the couple who are both in the Navy and in the same community. They will be apart for at least several months just starting out. She's ''hoping to see him at thanksgiving and Christmas" (how sad is that?!) So, I have a few words to offer myself, but I am interested to see what all of you have to say. She, and I, will appreciate your encouraging words.

"Lest we forget"

Where were you? I was a new freshman in college. I rolled out of bed, my roommate still asleep, for my 9:30 class. I'm not a morning person, and lamented the hour. I dragged my feet the 2 blocks to my theatre class. I slumped in my chair for the hour and dragged my feet back, looking forward to returning to bed. Once I walked back into my building, I woke up almost instantly.
In the lobby, they had dragged the big screen TV out from the "event/ballroom." A few members of the staff and a handful of other tenants were standing, staring. No one was speaking. It was nearly 11am at this point. The second tower had just collapsed. Everyone on TV was frantic. So much so, I couldn't tell what in the world was going on. I just knew it was bad. I ran upstairs to my room, turned on the TV, and called my dad. I was finally getting a grip of what had happened. My phone conversation and the noise of the TV had disturbed my still sleeping roommate, Jen. She was from North New Jersey and woke up a lot quicker than I had earlier that morning. She panicked. "Who do I know that could be there?" One of her best friends from home, her father worked at WTC. He was OK.
All classes for the rest of the day were cancelled. Jen and I spent the day watching the news and talking off and on with family on the phone. We watched the fear in Washington. We watched lower Manhattan evacuated. We watched the false alarm of a car bomb in Washington. We watched the empty 5th Tower collapse. It was like we were waiting for something else bad to happen. We were a little afraid for our own little city. Yes, it is small, but it is the Capital city of a somewhat major state where to President's brother is the Governor. If we've learned anything from that day, we learned not to be naive about their capablilities.
By about 8pm we were exhausted. We had to get out of our little dorm room. We decided to go to Pizza Hut to get some dinner. There was no one out. There was no one there. They were out of everything! We ended up with a thin crust pizza. I guess we shouldn't have picked a place that delivered.
Where were you?

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Happy Birthday, Babe

He's my best friend and my husband. He's the funnest and funniest person I know (notice the goofball lounge to the right!) I've known him for 7 years, we've been together for 5 of those, and married for 5 months. He's had a rough time with his job the past few months. I just want him to be happy and he wants the same for me. Because of the job mess, he's usually basically off from work and we've been able to spend all kinds of time together...a nice change from the last 5 years (we went to different schools for college). But today he had a lousy 12-hour shift. On his Birthday! It did give me time to bake him a cake and clean up a bit. We also went out to eat with our 1 friend left in town. Kinda sad really. But we were together, mostly, and that's what's important. Happy Birthday, babe!

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

The Tides Have Turned


I graduated from Florida State University in the spring of 2005. If you follow college football at all, you know FSU has quite the legacy. There is no other sport in the country like college football. The fans are so invested. There is a sense of ownership among the students. We are all die-hard forever. Every loss is a result of bad calls. Your team is perfect.

We have 2 major rivals: University of Florida and University of Miami. We are developing a new one with Clemson thanks to the coaches (our coach, Bobby Bowden's son now coaches at Clemson) and they are in our conference. Historically, no matter how good one of these teams is, or how bad, or how good or bad we are, the outcome of the game is always unpredictable. Each series has run pretty close, with nearly an equal number of wins over the years. My class was the first and only class to graduate losing to Miami in football 5 times in 4 years. That's right, we actually played them in a Bowl game and lost then too, making it twice in 1 year. Pretty heartbreaking. Their fans are so vicious too! It's a common bond we have with UF...we are both against Miami.

Well, yesterday started a trend. We beat them for the second year in a row! 13-10. Once again, it was close, and wasn't over until the last drive, but we won. The tides are changin, my friend. The streak has switched! And we had such a rockin defense. We're goin all the way this year, baby! Watch out for them NOLES!

*On a little side note, my hubby went to rival school, UF, and we root for each other, except when we play each other ;) His team decisively won their season opener against S Miss 34-7. Yay for them! Until November, at least!