Deep in the Heart of Texas

As many of you know Casey and I moved from Orem, Utah, down to Austin, Texas, on August 13. We have been settling in the past month and I figured it was time to give an update on the big move. I don't have pics of the apartment yet (we are still hanging up pictures on the walls and decorating) but I hope to finish all that this weekend. Here is a review of our first month in Texas.

The Move:
Casey and I totally lucked out as my amazing dad flew out to help us move. We also lucked out and my awesome boss Nikki let us put our stuff on the truck her new job was paying for, so we only had to pay the cost of gas for our two cars on the way down. We had two cars, a truck and five drivers so even though it was a 22-hour drive it wasn't too horrible. Neville was a real trooper and made it two solid days of driving. We stay the first night in Alberqure, N.M., and the second night in Dallas. Sunday morning we moved Nikki's stuff out of the truck (in Dallas) and then headed down to Austin. Johanna, John and their kids met us at our apartment with the apartment keys they had picked up for us on Saturday. A really nice neighbor saw us unloading and helped us. Which was extremely fortunate as Casey threw his back out while helping unload Nikki's stuff. He was hobbling around like an old man. We don't have a lot of stuff so luckily the unpacking went quickly.

School/Jobs:
Casey had his first day of orientation on Monday the 16th and then I had mine on Wednesday the 18th. I started work that Thursday and then we both started classes on Wednesday the 25th. So far our classes are interesting and keeping us busy. I work for the Texas Regional Collaborative on the STEM Project http://www.thetrc.org/trc/ and Casey got a job as a graphic design intern with http://www.utexas.edu/tsm/

Life in Austin:
We are really enjoying Austin despite the blazing heat and random tropical storms. Our apartment complex has a pool which we have visited a few times with Jo and her kids. Jo has some cute pics and if I remember to get them from her I will post some. We have also tried out a few restaurants with friends including my friend Natalie who I went to BYU-H with and her husband. We also had a visit from my high school friend, Katie, and her husband Rick who live in Louisiana. Rick got us some free tickets to the first UT home football game and we all bought burnt orange shirts so I really feel like a Longhorn now.

Pictures for your enjoyment:
This is what happens when it rains 9 inches in one day

Sporting our burnt orange at the first UT home game. We won by the way.
The UT fans do actually make the Hook 'em Horns sign a lot. Like the entire game. They also chant a lot, swear a lot and drink a lot. Seeing as my football experience thus far has been high school and BYU it was quite the experience.
This is to show the world how much I love Neville.
And this was just too cute to not share.

Catch up Time

My name is Sarah Rogers and I am a horrible blogger.

There I took the first step to recovery. As many of you have noticed, it has been almost a year since our last blog post. I am going to restart the blog and with the hope that now we are in Austin and are exploring a new city we will have more things to blog about. So here is an attempt to catch you all up on the last 10 months. I will take it one month at a time so I can provide more posts for your viewing pleasure.

November 2009
November means Thanksgiving. Which at this point is the only thing I can say for sure that we did last November. Lesson learned: don't wait 10 months to write a blog post. Thanksgiving was very exciting as we got to go to Arizona and see the entire Rogers family. This is the first time Casey and I have been with his entire family in close to 5 years. We all stayed in a big house with a swimming pool and hot tub and the house was really close to the outlet mall. Casey and I flew down which was sooo much better than driving like we did the year before.

On Thanksgiving morning Casey, Dustin, Jennifer, Darin, Shauna and I ran a 10K race. This was the first 10K Casey and I had ever done and we trained for about 6 weeks for it. We were pleasantly surprised with our times: Casey 51:16.0 just beating Sarah who ran 52:36.7. OK, so 1 min 20 secs is more than "just" beating but it makes me feel better to put it that way.

After the race we ate way too much food and then that night we went to the outlet malls when they opened which was around midnight. That was pretty fun but there were way too many people for my comfort. I hate being in large crowds.

During the rest of the vacation we had a cousin gift exchange, played lots of games, made gingerbread houses and ate way too much. Casey and I got to spend most of Sunday hanging out with Dustin and Maddy and their kids as everyone else had already left. It was a great trip and hopefully we will all get together again in the next year (I believe there is a plan in works as we speak for next summer)

Below are some pictures from Thanksgiving for your viewing pleasure.