Belize here we come!

We leave for Belize in just over 24 hours. We're really looking forward to 8 days of R&R with the Allen family!

A holiday weekend in New York City

We've been wanting to get back to NYC for a festive holiday weekend for a long time, so this past weekend we had a blast catching up with old friends in the city and doing a lot of touristy things.

Highlights include a romantic carriage ride in Central Park, meeting Jason Frank's wife Jenny (Jason was a close friend of mine in college), seeing Jerry's fashion studio (FORM) in Soho (Jerry is Dana's fraternity brother and a very successful clothing designer - check out "FORM" when you get a chance) and getting my first luxury designer clothing, listening to live music at a very cool venue with Jane, Adam, Kristie & Carol, holiday shopping at Bryant Park with Shannon & Joe (all incredible friends from Kappa or Hilton Head summers), and so much more!

Community Group Christmas Party

A fun-filled night of Ryan's special pasta recipe, a white elephant gift exchange and lots of Dance, Dance Revolution!

Such a fun Saturday!

Yesterday was such a fun day! The girls in my community group spent the morning helping Stephanie create wedding bouquets for her sister-in-law's wedding. At first it was really stressful since none of us had ANY experience, but I think they turned out great. I made the "toss" bouquet, which was a totally new concept to me (making an extra bouquet to give away to the person who catches it).

After that I went to the mall to do Christmas shopping. Normally I avoid the mall when I know it will be crowded, but there was so much fun stuff going on! Nintendo was giving out free massages, Chick-fil-A was giving out free Peppermint Chocolate milkshakes, and there was a red carpet event where I got my makeup done by a professional and a free goodie bag of hair and makeup stuff.
Later that evening we went to a holiday party at my manager's house. It was beautiful and we won this cool digital picture keychain. This time we had to match people up with their favorite holiday memories. Dana's favorite memory is his mom stashing cookie dough in the fridge for him and his brother when she made holiday cookies. Mine is the year Santa came early and surprised us on just a random day because we were spending Christmas at Disney.

The days we really love our job...

Dana and I were in training together this week and it was honestly incredible! One of our VPs taught a marketing class that she created, and I felt like I learned more in 3 days than I did during all of business school. She's so inspiring. We had a ton of fun talking through case studies on brands such as Barbie, American Girl, BMW, Axe, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Cadillac and Playboy. Dana won a $150 gift certificate to a nice dinner as a prize for drawing the best superhero - another fun assignment : )

Yesterday we stopped by Sondra and TJ's after class and enjoyed catching up over wine since we haven't seen them in forever. Sondra just completed a marathon and is in incredible shape. Tonight we caught up with Janelle, Michael and baby Maya over wine and pecan pie. Janelle loved the stuff we had made for Maya at Lizzie Rivers! My friend Ashley is really doing great things with her business.

We have a VERY busy rest of the weekend ahead... but more on that later!

Good for a Laugh...

My 4 year old niece is learning how to make videos. She did this on her own when we weren't looking and it cracks me up!!!

Thanksgiving Traditions

I have a fun Thanksgiving tradition of meeting up with 2 of my Accenture girlfriends who I met while living in Atlanta after college. It's so wonderful to catch up each year!
This year marked our 10 year anniversary of meeting each other and our 4 year anniversary of meeting up in Dallas each year to catch up. Kelli (Carson) McKee lives in Gulf Shores and now has a baby named Carson who is such a cutie and Betsy is doing great in Atlanta. We're hoping to have a "reunion" of our old crew in Atlanta next May or June!

Thanksgiving Gluttony & the Rockettes

We really need to step it up with our blog updates! Time just seems to be flying by... We've been in Michigan since last Wednesday. The first few days we were doing MBA recruiting back at the University of Michigan. It was very cool to see the new, ultra-modern business school (since we graduated they have started a huge renovation project).

On Friday we headed to Birmingham, MI where Christine's sister now lives with her family. Since then we've been busy cooking up a storm, shopping for xmas presents, remembering how to drive in the snow and getting in quality time with our nieces.

A few special highlights include going back to the awesome church we used to attend in Ann Arbor (New Life) to visit old friends and see their new building, participating in gymnastics class with the girls and seeing the Rockettes perform their famous holiday show. We had incredible seats that fell into our hands at the last minute, so we were so happy it all worked out!

Great Times.... Great Friends

This weekend Christine was in West Palm Beach, Florida for Sara's bachelorette weekend. The weather was PERFECT and the Kappas enjoyed a relaxing time at Kate's beach house. Highlights included running along the beach with Shannon, seeing dolphins swim along the yachts right in Kate's backyard, and participating in a weekend of "Sara's Favorite Things" - a cute theme that her bridesmaids created that re-enacted Oprah's big giveaway shows - but with Sara's favorites of course.

Dana partied it up at Erol & Danielle's going away party (sadly, our good friends are moving to Boston) and then he got to see Hillary, Rachel & Bill (who were in town from Chicago) at brunch before everyone headed to Lindsay Daigle's wedding.

Sunday attended our first Thanksgiving party at the Keys. Our church small group got together for a wonderful meal! Lindsay's house looked incredible - just like a page out of a Martha Stewart magazine. Christine was happy to have her first eggnog of the season!

Still enjoying the beautiful fall weather...

Baby Hottinger has arrived and she is such a cutie! Welcome to the world Maya Anderson!

Friday night Dana cooked Janelle, Michael and Chad dinner so that we could get in some quality time with the new baby and give mom & dad a rest.

Yesterday I created homemade spa treatments at Rhasheda's baby shower. I can't wait to try them out!

Last night we enjoyed some good wine and yummy jambalaya at the Leach's November bash. (Melanie is from Southern Louisiana and takes her Southern heritage very seriously) I spent a lot of time catching up with Padmini and her husband Raj and I feel like I learned a lot of interesting things about India. Great times!