While I'm Studying...

...so I discovered the last couple of weekends what it is that the dogs do while I'm slaving away studying and working on grad school projects. Yesterday I swiveled around in my office chair to find this...

Aaaahhhh...the life of a dog!


In other news, a couple of weeks ago I was able to help our friend, Lauren, celebrate the birth of her and her husband Steve's first baby, Claire. Claire decided to come a little early, so she's still at the hospital. However, we gathered to celebrate her and help welcome her to the Byrd family. Here are some pictures of the fun.



Back: Melissa & Serena (who also married a Justin!)
Middle: Me, Sara and Lauren...and Baby Claire is on the TV =)
Front: Megan and Madreane
All these gals have been friends of mine since I first moved to Austin. I attended Hyde Park Baptist with them and met them all in the singles dept. In fact, many (if not all?) of them were friends with Justin well before I was in the picture =). They're a great group of gals, and even though lots of us attend different churches now, we still enjoy gathering together to hang out and celebrate the joys in each other's lives. I'm so lucky to have such great gals to spend time with!


Me and Sara


Me and Melissa


And...a picture of Justin and I Valentine's Day morning before heading off to church...just because I think it's cute =)

GEEK PRIDE!

Well, Academic Bowl regionals was fun as always. Especially this year since my parents were able to come and experience all the geekness that is Academic Bowl =).
Our team did SO AWESOME and really dominated for much of the competition, but once entering the semi-finals, they got a couple of bad breaks. However, they still ended up bringing home the medal for 4th place, which is amazing to do when there are 16 talented teams to compete with! So, we are not going to DC, yet. All the fourth place teams (in the other 4 regions) will take a 20 question test like we did after winning 4th place. When ALL those regions are done (the END of March--ah!) we will find out who did the best on that test. That team (hopefully US!) will then get to go to Nationals in DC. So, not all hope is lost, but it is sure hard to sit and wait for all the other regions to finish their competitions! Until then, the team will keep on practicing and hope for the best!
Here is a picture (a little fuzzy, but not too bad) of the team after receiving their medals (in the center is Claira, our star senior, with our mascot "Lunch Box").


Back row (l-r) Gallaudet President, Me, Maggie, Eric, Mike, and Kim Krebs (regional coordinator)
Front row (l-r) Darby, Claira, Marisa

This is a picture of mom, dad and I after breakfast Sunday morning before we parted ways. I must say I don't really like this picture, except that mom and dad look good. I had on two long sleeve t-shirts, a huge hooded sweatshirt AND my coat. I look like a big puffy balloon! But, who cares, it's a cute memory of how awesome my parents are to drive all the way to OK to watch me coach my kiddos =)!

ACADEMIC BOWL!!!

Probably the MOST favorite part of my job is coaching our school's Academic Bowl team (it's like quiz bowl, but for Deaf students only). It is a super cool, fun, academic competition and I get to spend four days with some of my favorite students. This year, we head to OK School for the Deaf in Sulphur, where we'll compete against 7 other teams in our pool (2 pools of 8 with 16 teams total). Hopefully we will come out in the top two of our pool and get into the semi-finals. If we can clinch 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place we'll guarantee ourselves a spot in the National Competition at Gallaudet in Washington, D.C. EXCITING!!! Three years ago, we got third, but at that time only the top two teams got to go to D.C. The year after that, we got fourth. Last year we were in a three-way-tie to get into the semi-finals, and lost the tie (which is broken based on some crazy math calculations). However, this year we are determined to turn the tides and get ourselves to D.C.! We have a much stronger team than last year, but it's tough to know how strong the competition will be, and how strong our pool will be. Only time will tell, but I know our kids will give it their all.
So, all you GEEKS out there, be thinking of us as we show our GEEK PRIDE this weekend in OK =).
I'll post pictures and let you all know how we did next week!