Cruising towards the beginning of our 3rd year of marriage...

...and we couldn't be more excited!! We leave on February 11th, the day before our anniversary. So we will be aboard the Liberty of the Seas (Royal Caribbean) and be at sea on the day of our anniversary... I see a trip to the spa, champagne and a romantic dinner in our future for that day... trying to decide if I should bring our wedding champagne flutes on board to use at our anniversary dinner? Probably will, haha! Valentine's Day is 2 days after our anniversary so we'll be on our trip then too, and I've always loved that so far for our honeymoon and 1 year anniversary! It's like 2 celebrations in one trip (and that also means double the presents!! hahaha).

This will be our first cruise together... Aaron's first cruise ever, and mine in 10 years (and the only other cruises I had been on were with my family on Carnival for 3 days, so never aboard a Royal Caribbean and for about a week). We will be visiting Labadee, Haiti and Jamaica! We've looked up pictures and Labadee is absolutely gorgeous and looks like a great place to relax and enjoy the beach, and for Jamaica we plan to go to the waterfalls and ride horses in the Caribbean! Riding horses was a must for Aaron, he's obsessed... me, not so much.... but, I'm allowing it because we rode horses in Georgia for our 1 year anniversary through the country and I think it'll be cool to do it again exactly one year later, but this time in the Caribbean! I'll try anything once I guess, so let's hope riding them in the beautiful, blue ocean waters is a different and better experience than riding through the wilderness, ha!

The only stresses about the trip: we have to drive to Ft. Lauderdale to sail out of there, so that's a bit of a drive, but we'll break it up and stay in Orlando probably, but I am excited to see Ft. Laudy a little because I've really only been there mayyyybe once, Aaron's been a bunch though. Also, being disconnected from the world with really little phone/internet for a week will be super weird, but probably good! And, mainly, of course we'll miss our little baby, Sugarbear!! I don't know how I will ever stand being away from my kids one day if I'm this worried about our little puppy!

With all that being said, we can't wait!!! And, I will definitely be doing a post when we get back with a whole bunch of pictures!

Year in review: 2012

Can anyone else believe it is 2013?! And, that it's already halfway through the month of January 2013, I was supposed to do this post on like the 2nd!  I don't know why it seems so crazy to me, maybe because it seems like I blinked and 2012 is already over, weird. But, since it is a new year I figured I would really do the final post to officially bring my blog up to date by doing a "year in review"-style post (similar to my 2011 post)! So, here goes the best of 2012:

Early-Spring 2012: 

• The year began with a conference to Keystone, CO for a scientific conference. The Keystone conferences are prestigious conferences and I actually won a scholarship to attend the conference! 

My scholarship award! Woo!

It was also the first time our entire lab went to a conference together (most of the time people go to conferences solo as the conference pertains to their project, but this one was on the overall science we study in the lab: chromatin and epigenetics, so it was good!). 

From left to right: BEAR ON THE PLANE! Frontier Airlines animals on the tail of the plane and got lucky with a bear! I felt really good about that flight ;-) Some other pictures of playing in the snow, taking a pic to text Aaron the I <3 him, and a pic at the conference (I did work a little! haha)

• Immediately following the conference I flew from Colorado to Orlando to see my brother Michael off to Navy bootcamp!

From left to right: Brotherly love haha we spent some time all together just hanging around my mom's house for the couple days before Michael left and this is him throwing my other brother Maverick in the pool, Michael in front of the recruitment office after signing his final paperwork for the go-ahead, me hugging my oldest, youngest bro!, me granny michael mom before he leaves!

• This was a little bit of a stressful time because 2 days after I drove home from Orlando from seeing Michael off, I had my oral qualification exams for my doctorate (I had completed my written exams successfully previously in the Fall 2010), the oral is difficult because it's what gives you what's called "Candidacy for the Doctorate" and you are official a candidate. It's a big deal. And its crazy because its you in the room with your 5 committee members and basically they grill you on all of biology, and specifically your area of training. It was difficult and I stressed, but the results were great, I passed and am officially a Doctoral Candidate!!

My friends had a little get-together for me in another conference room with champagne!

• Spent a few weekends in January shopping and preparing for a best friend of mine, Taylor's wedding! I made her bouquets for her wedding and one weekend she came to Tally to dress shop, we ended up finding a lace dream dress for her here, we got so lucky! Then, on February 4th, was the actual wedding! It was at Dubsdread Golf Club in Orlando which is a rustic, lodge feeling kind of place and it is a great venue! The wedding was beautiful and we were/are so happy for the new Mr. and Mrs. Robertson.

From left to right: The day we found Tay's dress, some flowers as I was making them for the bouquets, and Tay's bouquet!

Playing around in Taylor's veil as we were getting ready on the big day! (Last two photos by Pilster Photography)

A couple shots of Mr and Mrs Robertson, and the Bears at the fun reception! (First two photos by Pilster Photography)

• About a week after the wedding was our 1 year anniversary on Feb 12! I already recapped our anniversary trip, where we visited the Ritz Reynolds Plantation in Lake Oconee, Georgia! We had a wonderful time! 

2/12/12

Our anniversary cake that was the same flavor as one of the flavors of our wedding cake (we had 3 so for our anniversary cake we picked the Devil's Food Chocolate cake with peanut butter buttercream filling, yummm. The cake is by Anna Cakes in Orlando. We actually had it after we got back from our anniversary trip and the next time we went down to Orlando (which was in March for when I flew to Chicago from there for Michael's bootcamp grad, and drove the cake home to Tally to my husband!

 • In March, Michael graduated from Navy bootcamp in Chicago (the recruit training command base is in Great Lakes, a suburb of Chicago), so me, my mom and step-dad flew up there to attend the graduation and visit Chicago, it was cool because I had never been to Chi-town and attending a military graduation doesn't get more 'Merican than that!!

At the Recruit Training Command at Great Lakes for Michael's Navy Bootcamp Graduation! See if you can spot him in the picture of his whole Division!

Playing around Chicago after graduation when Michael had leave for the day! A couple of these pics are taken at the famous "Bean" and the first one on the left is in the park around Lake Michigan.

       

Loved this anchor on the front gates of the base!

• At the end of the Spring, I successfully submitted and defended my proposal for my doctoral research (this is a big step because then you are officially on Dissertation hours and this must be completed within 6 months of passing qualifying/candidacy exams)! Another big step down on my way to completing my doctorate in Biomed Research.

Summer 2012: 

• The summer was pretty low-key, we both worked a lot actually, may seem weird since it's summer but his company was busy (can't complain there!) and in graduate school you don't get summers off and if you have experiments to do... well, you get them done! But, at least it was productive! The only time we left Tally was to visit Destin a couple times, and then we went and saw the Blue Angels fly in Pensacola, FL with my friend, Brittany!

Gorgeous Pensacola Beach, FL

• The most exciting thing of the Summer last year was we moved into a cute house in a good neighborhood in Tally. We are renting the house as we are hoping to not be in Tallahassee too much longer so it obviously doesn't make sense to buy, but even though it's still a rental we love it and is a much improved changed from living in a condo/townhouse as we have since we moved to Tally in 2009. Since I am caught up to the present after this post, when I start doing more frequent posts I might do a home tour where I show pictures of around the inside of our house!

Our cute little house! And it's pink!

• On July 1st, our little baby pup Sugarbear turned 1 years old!

 
• A couple months after we moved in we had a fun July 4th party to celebrate America! 

Fall-Winter 2012: 

• In September I went to another conference: The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cancer meeting (in Long Island, NY). CSHL meetings are extremely prestigious! I got a little scholarship to attend this meeting so that was amazing! The conference blew my mind, I met leaders in the field, and the atmosphere at the lab campus is so rich in scientific history that I can hardly explain. Some of the biggest discoveries were made right there in the labs at CSHL. One such discovery, was the finding of the  structure of the DNA molecule by Watsona and Crick (Nobel prize winners, obvi). Well, Watson went on to be the president of CSHL for many many years and ended up building a mansion on the grounds because he loves CSHL so much. I visited the mansion and then Watson made an appearance on the last night of the conference where they had the South Hampton quintet play for us. What an amazing experience!

From left to right: The view from behind the the campus of CSHL (sits on the Long Island sound), James Watson discovered of the DNA structure and there he is!!!, Me outside of the McClintock Lab (she is nobel prize winner for her work on transposons in Maize), and on the last night CSHL is famous for their lobster banquet, fancy!

  
• I got selected out of all the graduate students to give a talk at our Departmental Colloquium, which is an honor so I was excited about that! I also won 2 prestigious awards in my department, The Margaret Menzel and Thrower awards! Yay!
 

• We participated a little in FSU's football season, this was us at the heartbreaking FL-FL State game

 

• December 9, 2007 was the day me and Aaron met, and also the day we ended up having our first date... we were chaperones at our church's youth group event where we took the kids to the House of Blues Gospel Brunch that Sunday. We obviously clicked during that trip because Aaron ended up asking for my number when we got back from the day-trip (don't worry we were still good chaperones to the youth group haha!). After we parted ways, he called me THAT NIGHT and asked me to come over... and the rest is history.

Aaron surprised me after a couple years that he saved the ticket from that day from the Gospel Brunch!

• I had fun re-decorating our Christmas tree:

• We had Holiday photos taken around downtown Tallahassee. These are first professional pictures here, and with Sugarbear in the pictures! We used one of them for our Christmas card this year!

Merry Christmas from the Druliners - 2012!

• We ended 2012, celebrated new Year's Eve in Tallahassee. We had a little get together at our place then went downtown where Tally put on a pretty good event, with Sister Hazel performing and fireworks!

Happy New Years!

  

We are ready for 2013!!

Memories...

I started this blog well over two years ago, and have said many times since then that I really want this blog to be a place where I can document our lives so that we can look back on it. I love that. I have always loved looking back on things I have written and of course pictures and reminiscing and thinking back on all the memories of whatever it is I'm looking at. I love memories. It's what life is all about, making memories. That's what I would like my blog to be... a place for memories in the making, and down the road, a place to re-visit those memories. So, that's what I will do... post anything and everything that I think people will enjoy reading/viewing, and that one day we will enjoy looking back on to see what our point of view was at that particular time!

With all that being said, I've decided I want to basically re-cap the past two years until the present. 1 year and 9 months to the day later...  I'd like to document everything that went into making our wedding day everything that it was.... everything from the initial details, to the actual day and everything in between.   Pretty much my favorite time period up until this point. Oh how I loved the *Winter of 2010-2011*, my heart melts.  In the blog world, most of the time I've seen people post wedding details as they are planning the wedding leading up until the actual day... well in true Brooke fashion, I'm going to do my own thing and switch things up a bit and recap the planning events leading up through the wedding... I'm excited!

So, spend some time and go from this post back through older posts because the posts from the wedding are all back-dated to 2011! I'm going to do my best to catch up some important/fun things from 2011 through the present, the end of 2012 (can't believe it)!!!

And, eventually this blog will be an up-to-date place for me to post day-to-day things going on in the life of these bears!

Our 1 year anniversary

We debated for awhile what to do for our 1 year anniversary... should we go back to Orlando and stay around there? a cruise? doing something wintery (like skiing, lodge, etc.)? Ultimately, we decided we didn't want to fly anywhere (i.e. Brooke didn't) and wanted to road-trip... we ended up booking a stay at the Ritz Carlton Reynolds Plantation on Lake Oconee in Georgia. It was gorgeous, amazing! We couldn't have picked a better trip for our 1 year anniversary.

The Ritz Carlton Reynolds Plantation where we spent our 1 year anniversary (2012)

It was about a 5 hour drive, and when we arrived there were chocolate covered strawberries and champagne with a card to Mr. and Mrs. Druliner for us... the Ritz is so nice because they really don't miss an opportunity to make it personal and I love all the little details! The planation is gorgeous so the first day we stayed around there and in the winter months they do smores every night around a bonfire with hot chocolate so that was lovely. For the remainder of the trip, we did some hiking, we rented a canoe and went fishing in Lake Oconee and rowed around the lake and saw the beautiful mansions that are on the lake and golf resort, my favorite was probably the two times we went to the spa it was sooo relaxing and beautiful and they had a great area for couples and an awesome indoor pool with a fireplace at the end of the pool over looking the jacuzzi, then we went horseback riding, and we dined and had drinks at all the restaurants around the resort which were all 5 star. Not only were we there for our anniversary but Valentine's day also which is one of my favorite things about our wedding date!

Pulling in to the Ritz, the front of the lodge!

The view from the patio off our room, we were on the 1st floor and could walk right out and down to the lake and hammocks

The back of the lodge, and the grounds, absolutely gorgeous, this is where the bonfire with smores was every night.

Lounging on hammocks

Being silly on the swings

Mr. and Mrs. ... MARRIED 1 YEAR BEARS!

BONFIRE!

Smores with heart shaped marshmallows! Like I said, it's the little details!

Mr. and Mrs.

The lake and beach

The infinity pool looking over Lake Oconee

On a canoe, fishing Lake Oconee

Handsome fisher bear sporting the FSU sunnies

Swimming in the indoor spa pool, see the fireplace at the end? love! We spent a lot of time at the spa...

Horseback riding!

My first time on a horse! Not a huge fan, but it was pretty cool

Mr. and Mrs. on horseback

Flowers from my love on our anniversary

This was a surprise!

At our anniversary dinner using the chamagne flutes from our wedding for the first time since we were married!!

Happy 1 year!