A Review Of 2008

Wow...what a wonderful year 2008 has been! Here is a review, in chronological order...

• We celebrated the New Year with friends, and then dug into the top tier of our wedding cake. No, it wasn't our One Year Anniversary. We thought it might be better to eat the cake at the beginning of the New Year instead of on the day of our One Year. I think we made a good decision. :)
• Decided in January that our next vacation location was Alaska. The saving and planning for our dream trip began.
• In January, we also decided that "Corporate America" was not a place that Landon should spend his working life. The saving and planning for a July exit from "Corporate America" began.
• We're not sure what happened in between January and June. Ha! Lots of working and planning for things to come...and spending lots of time together.
• Celebrated Landon's 27th bday in May.
• June came and we packed up for a couple weeks of fun in Alaska. We were amazed at the beauty and the vastness. While there, we took a helicopter ride to Punchbowl Glacier and did some dogsledding on the glacier, mountain biked at Denali National Park, took an 8 hour bus tour of Denali (amazing), went halibut fishing in Homer, took a boat to the Aaliak Glacier (which we saw calve many times) and also went whale watching near Seward... The list goes on. The memories we made on this trip are unbelievable. Sometimes we feel like the whole trip was a dream. Everyone please go to Alaska.
• A week after returning from Alaska, Landon put in his 2-week notice at Chesapeake. It was decided that he would enter the real estate world as a home inspector, with the eventual goal of building up property for rentals and renovating homes.
• Celebrated Jen's 26th bday in July.
• Decided that it was time to move. We spent a couple months finishing up on little things to complete the remodel.
• Headed to Vail, Colorado for our One Year Anniverary!!!! October 20, 2007 was the best day of our lives. The trip was a great end to a perfect first year of marriage. :)
• Headed to Boston a couple of days after Vail to continue the celebration. Great trip!
• Officially put the duplex on the market in early November. Wahoo! We are ready to be on the other side of town near church, friends, family, and shopping. :)
• Landon passed his big test. He is officially a home inspector in the state of Oklahoma. The next steps (liabilty, licensure, LLC, trade name, etc) were also completed in the next few weeks.
• In mid-December, we had officially had little BabyDog Lucy for a year. Yes, she is 15 now and was Landon's childhood dog, but she has been such a blessing and makes us laugh all the time. We also think she is enjoying being an "only dog" and revels in all the attention.
• Clint Williams Design begins working on the design concept for Hubbart Homes. We will be excited to reveal everything soon...

This has been the most wonderful year, and there are so many things that we didn't mention above. We are grateful for our families and friends, and all the little memories we made with each of you in 2008. We can't wait to see what 2009 has in store for all of us!

Holiday Recap

What a wonderful holiday season! We are so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends.

We enjoyed celebrating Christmas early with Landon's dad on the Sunday before Christmas. We made breakfast for dinner, and I whipped up homemade cinnamon rolls. Yummy. Russ taught us some new domino games, and we had lots of laughs and fun.

This was our year to celebrate Christmas with my family. Whitney almost didn't make it home from Chicago due to cancelled flights, but through a series of events she made it home!!! On Christmas Eve we went to church with my family and then came home to a yummy dinner and a game of Phase 10 (my mom's obsession). We woke up early on Christmas morning and headed over to my parent's house for presents and breakfast. After breakfast, everyone packed up and headed to Enid for my extended family Christmas. The only pictures we took were at the extended family Christmas...I know, I'm horrible. We also went to the Rockette's with my family on Friday night. They were awesome! Mom got us AMAZING seats (on the floor, 7th row). If you haven't seen them, I highly recommend that you go!

We still haven't celebrated with Landon's mom and sister, but we should be doing that sometime soon. We are also heading to the Texas panhandle next weekend to celebrate with Landon's grandma...both Christmas and birthday. Let the celebrating continue...

Christmas Break

We are on Day 4 of our extended Christmas Break!!! I love working for the state and having 2 weeks off for the holidays. So far, we have slept, slept, slept, and played games. We are excited for the next few days of family fun and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

We hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!

Misbehaving

We went out to dinner with my parents and Julie last night. As always, it was a great time. For some reason we began talking about discipline and how Whitney, Julie, and I acted as children. We were cracking up. Landon and I are crossing our fingers that we have little Julie children, not little Whitney or I children. HeHe. Here are a couple examples...

(Whitney and Jen misbehaving everywhere...very often)
Mom: If you guys don't start behaving we will need to have a "meeting."
Whitney and Jen: You can't make us have a "meeting," OR We don't want to have a "meeting," which was followed by us bolting at top speed out of the area where the "meeting" could be taking place.

(Julie is almost considering misbehaving at Target...very rare)
Mom: If you don't start behaving we will have to step into the Ladies Room and have a "meeting."
Julie: (Starts crying) NO, NO, NO. I don't want to have a "meeting." I will behave. (Acts angelic for the rest of the day)

Also...

1. My dad used to have us write sentences when we were in elementary school and we misbehaved. For example, "I will not lie." I used to get in trouble because I would write "I" 25 times down the page, and then I would write "will" 25 times down the page, and so on until I was done. It was faster, can you blame me?!
2. Mom spanks Whitney and I, we laugh. Mom gives Julie a look, she cries.
3. Another punishment for misbehaving (from Dad), was scooping the dog poop in the backyard. I'm still scarred from that experience. This was the worst punishment of all. Thanks Dad.

HA!

Lucy the Moosey

We played holiday dress-up with Lucy today. The moose ears didn't quite fit her head, so we put them on her belly. She was not happy. Lucy says "Merry Christmas."

Lucy also wants everyone to know her Christmas list:

1. Fresh grated cheese delivered to the door daily.
2. A walnut tree.
3. Lots of puppermints.
4. All of Grandpa Mitch's lost socks.
5. Her own ottoman to sleep on every night.
6. Cataract surgery.

Weekend Wrap-Up

We didn't do anything too exciting this weekend, but here's a wrap-up...

• Made the February ski trip official! Woohoo! We are so excited to spend a few days in Winter Park with friends. We are all ready for now...new ski clothes purchased for Landon and we have paid in full. Yay!
• Had date night...Taco Bueno and 2 Redbox movies. We watched the newest Indiana Jones and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Landon loved Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (not). We are so exciting. :)
• Volunteered at church on Saturday morning. Crossings does a backpack/toy drive for inner city schools...and we sorted and boxed the items for delivery this week. It was SO heartwarming to see all the backpacks/toys for the children. But, not just for material reasons. It was obvious that so many families had spent time filling the backpacks with love and prayer.
• Watched Sam Bradford win the Heisman. Yay! Also, got totally annoyed at Billy Sims for yelling "Boomer" a million times. Congrats to Sam!
• Watched the Survivor season finale. We are so glad that Bob won! He is the cutest old man, and we think he deserved to win. On the reality TV topic, we have noticed a new alarming trend for me...I cry at every finale of reality television. I cried last week when Starr and Nick won Amazing Race, and I cried last night when Bob won Survivor. I WILL NOT cry if Vicki wins Biggest Loser. I will be mad. (For those thinking we watch way too much TV, The Office is the only other show...).
• Cleaned the whole house top to bottom.
• Finished all last minute Christmas items...gifts are purchased and wrapped and Christmas cards have been mailed. Now we just have a few more Christmas movies to watch and lots of holiday snacks to eat. :)

We hope everyone has a great week!

Lab Rat

Most of you know that one of my main focuses at work is Cardiology research (pacemakers and ICDs). I love my job, but I spend hours chasing patients via phone and begging them to be compliant. Of note, I also have some really good patients who make my life wonderful. :)

A mass email was sent out about a month ago asking for people between the ages of 20-30 who are healthy, have a normal BMI, don't regularly exercise, and are non-diabetic. I fit perfectly into this category. For some reason, I feel like I owe it to the world of research to participate in a study and be a good patient. This was my chance...

I started the study today. I am now back at work AND sweaty and disgusting. They did some general testing and then I exercised for about 45 minutes with a heart rate monitor on and this mask thing on my face. Awesome. My short hair looks fabulous and I have indentions in my face where the mask was. I'll be going back 3 times in January to exercise and drink milk shakes and get my blood drawn. Should be interesting. :)

33

You know those little information boxes that hang on realtor signs...the ones that have an information sheet on the house telling price and size and showing pictures of the inside of the house. Well, I have a confession. Today I took all the papers and made tiny little numbers on the back (for tracking purposes, of course). There were 33 pages. I'm sure that our numbers will dwindle as our neighbors grab the information sheets, but hopefully they've already looked it up on the internet and don't need our little papers. Please don't come by and take all of our little papers unless you want to buy our duplex. That would mess up my count. :)

Little Things To Be Happy About Today...

A challenge from Whitney.

What 5 seemingly insignificant little things made you happy today? (besides the obvious big things, family, friends, health, income . . .etc)

TODAY, this made me happy:

1. Being able to sleep in an extra 15 minutes.
2. Dove chocolate.
3. Hearing on the radio that the Rotary Club is having a "special signing Santa" at Northpark Mall for those children who communicate via sign language.
4. Getting in my car and having Landon and my favorite song of the moment come on the radio...the song is "Chicken Fried" by the Zac Brown Band.
5. Knowing that tonight I finally have a night to relax.

What made you happy today??

A Letter

Dear Texas,
Please stop whining and crying about not going to the Big 12 Championship game. People should not feel sorry for you. Remember...OU lost to Texas, Texas lost to Texas Tech, and Texas Tech lost to OU. Therefore, we have a 3-way tie, not a 2-way tie. Texas Tech beat you. The Big 12 South winner cannot be decided by using a "head-to-head" method as Mack Brown likes to think. That would take us in a never ending circle. We happened to play a more difficult schedule, and the computers happened to love us, but you don't deserve to go to the Big 12 Championship game anymore than OU or Texas Tech.

Thank you,
The Hubbarts

Home, Sweet, Home

Here are the duplex pictures, as promised. Landon did a wonderful job of remodeling and renovating! Somehow, I forgot to take pictures of the kitchen, but hopefully I'll remember to put those up soon. Please excuse all the hand-me-down furniture and somewhat heinous decorating. We will buy all new furniture when we sell the duplex and buy our next house. We just didn't see a point in buying furniture for a place we would be in about a year. Anyway, onto the pictures...

Duplex from the front.

From the front door, the hallway is immediately to the left. The front door opens directly into the living room. In the background you can see the kitchen and eating area. (Again, excuse the furniture/decorating.)
More living room.
Eating area. To the right is the kitchen.

Going down the hallway, the master bedroom is the first door on the right.

From the master bedroom to the master bathroom.

The master bathroom. Notice the tiled shower that you can see in the mirror.

It is my favorite part.

Back into the hallway and around the corner to the left, you will see the guest bedroom. It's actually fairly big, though you can't tell because of all the random furniture we have in there.

Directly across the hall from the guest bedroom is the guest bathroom.

Picture taken from the bathtub.

Guest bathroom again.

The laudry room is the last thing down the hallway, which then leads into the garage.

Again, we are so grateful for our little home. It has allowed us to travel and live stress-free for our first year of marriage. But now we can't wait to sell it and move closer to church and friends.

Rest

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We spent Thursday with Russ and his family, and then Friday with Kathy and her family...and now we are exhausted. It is so nice to spend the holidays with family though. Our plan for today is rest, rest, and football. :) Boomer Sooner!

Does anyone shop on Black Friday? I just can't do it. For some reason I would rather wake up later, wait in a shorter line, and pay more. Gap had buy one get one free sweaters, and Pottery Barn had 20% off any item...two of my favorite stores, but I still can't get myself to venture out into the craziness.

Thankful

Over this Thanksgiving holiday, I am especially thankful for...

1. Husband. There are no words, he is just the most wonderful thing ever. I am beyond blessed to have married Landon. We are so excited to celebrate our second married holiday season!
2. Family. Mom and Dad, you're the best. Whitney and Julie, you're the best. The rest of the family, you're also the best. Thanks for being fun and loving and silly and supportive. I will miss you this Thanksgiving.
3. Dog. BabyDog Lucy just keeps us laughing. Life would be so different without her.
4. Friends. What a blessing to have so many friends, from so many seasons of life. No doubt the Lord put all of these people in my life for a reason, and I'm forever grateful for the friendships and memories.
5. Job. In the midst of an economic crisis, I am grateful for a stable job and a stable income.
6. Hubby's job. Yay! I'm so proud of him for following his dreams and making the big career change.
7. Church. I LOVE Crossings. It was the first church I tried after graduating from OU. Four years later, I love it even more.
8. Home. Although we are ready to move on, the duplex has been more of a blessing than we could have ever known. Living there has allowed us to travel, save, and make Landon's career change...with no financial stress. Really though, someone come buy it. :)
9. Health.
10. Travel. Landon and I are so grateful for opportunities to travel. We have been to Puerto Vallarta, Alaska, Vail, and Boston since we were married 13 months ago. The things we have been able to see and the memories we have made are truly priceless. Also, thanks to Mom and Dad for watching Lucy while we have been traveling around. She likes your house more than ours. :)
11. The Office. To keep me laughing.

Also, a big congratulations to Kate and Matthew on their engagement! Another big congrats to Matt and Traci on their second pregnancy! There is so much to be thankful for this season!!!!!!!!

Things I Forgot...

With the busyness and excitement of listing the duplex, I forgot to mention a couple things...

We went to the OKC Thunder game on Monday with my parents, Casey (Whitney's boyfriend), and Jonathan Small. So fun! Even though the Thunder is totally horrible, the atmosphere was still positive and the crowd was active. The Ford Center was even close to being full. Thanks Mom and Dad! We will look forward to more Thunder games to come!

I got my hair cut yesterday. Short. It looks really cute though. I love my hair lady. She is the only person who has ever (seriously, ever) made my hair look presentable. :) Pictures of my new hair cut to come as well.

On The Market

Someone come and buy our duplex! :) We have been ready to list the duplex for a month, but have been waiting for our bathroom vanity tops to arrive. After talking with our realtor, we decided to cancel the vanity tops. We both feel good about this decision, and we're really excited to see what happens. Cross your fingers for a sale!

Pictures of our little duplex to come...

Weekend In Review

Nothing too exciting went on this weekend, but here's a recap...

• Changeling. This movie is so disturbing and strange, though it was well-written, acted, directed, etc. Landon and I were bothered by some of the movie scenes. Some scenes were SO graphic. I'm sure that they think they needed all the graphic scenes, but we would have been fine for them to not show the man being hung or the children's bones being dug up. See, I told you it was too graphic.
• Our bathroom vanity tops have still not arrived. I'm about to karate chop Crane bathroom company. Neither of our vanity tops are standard size, so we had to custom order them. Unfortunately, our only options now are waiting (they are 3+ weeks overdue) or leaving them as they are. I guess I will have to be patient.
• We changed out our heinous old thermostat for a newer digital thermostat. So easy and inexpensive. And, it looks so good. I'm glad I married a handyman. :)
• Landon beat me at Battleship again, and again, and again.
• We didn't watch any football this weekend! This is a record for our household.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and that your week is off to a great start!

The Results Are In...

Landon passed his BIG test last night!!! Wahoo! He is officially a home inspector.

I am so proud of him. :) He left a job that was very good, to pursue something that he has always wanted to do. I don't think leaving a stable job is always easy, especially for men. He prayed and planned and researched before making the big move. AND, he studied diligently for months for his big test. I seriously couldn't be more proud and happy for him.

He is incredibly talented in the area of home remodeling, and we feel like the home inspector position will fit right in with his big overall plan.

Yay for Landon!!!

Little Sister

My favorite younger sister, Whitney, just started a blog. Check out http://chicagosooner.blogspot.com. She lives the fun, adventerous life in Chicago! Love you little sister.

(Don't worry, Julie is my favorite youngest sister.)

Tis The Season...

I made these yummy looking pancakes with the Crate and Barrel pancake mold. I'm so domestic. :) Not really. I seriously probably threw away 3-4 pancakes before these kind of/sort of turned out. At least they tasted good! I know everyone will be lining up at the Hubbart front door for pancakes as the holidays arrive.

Boston Trip

We LOVE Boston! What a fun trip! We both agree that Boston is our #1 favorite big city. We had 4 really busy days, and I'm pretty sure that we covered every major destination in Boston (plus lots more). Some places we visited: Boston Commons, North End (Little Italy), Harvard, MIT, Copley Square and Newberry Street, Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Charles River Esplanade, Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market, Bunker Hill (also know as Stairmaster from Hell or Bunker Hell...names we gave it after climbing 294 stairs to the top of the monument), USS Constitution, Fenway Park, Trinity Church (and lots of other pretty churches), and everything else along the Freedom Trail. Here are a few pictures of our trip (we didn't get the camera out often because it was super cold)...

Boston

Boston here we come!!! I think two days of work this week has been enough for me!

It's A Messy Job...

We've been hard at work trying to finish up our duplex. One of the last things we had to do was replace a part of the sheetrock in the ceiling and then retexture and repaint. This job has been on our list for months, and would definitely have been done last, but our bathroom countertops haven't arrived yet. :) Yes, we have been dreading this. BUT, it is now done and we can cross "finish the ceiling" off our list, and I LOVE crossing things off lists. :) Just an FYI-texturing the ceiling is MESSY!!!

Vail: Day 4

Another day of sleeping in, another day of relazing. :) We flew out later in the afternoon, so it was nice to relax a little more before we had to head home. On our way from Vail to Denver, we were surprised to see snow! Yeah!!! It was absolutely beautiful!!!

It's always hard to get back to "real life" after a good vacation. :) But, what a wonderful way to celebrate our one-year anniversary!

Vail: Day 3

Happy First Anniversary to us!!! What a wonderful year this has been. We are so glad that we decided to take a mini-vacation over our anniversary so that we could just spend time together, reminisce, and make more memories.

We started out the day by walking about 45 minutes to an alpine garden. The pictures below were taken there.

It started raining as we were leaving, so we hopped on a bus back to the hotel and ate lunch at a local sandwich/burger joint called Bart and Yeti's. Yum. It literally rained the whole rest of the day, so we played board games and read. Before we left for vacation we saw on the weather forecast that there was a good chance of rain, so we actually bought Battleship and also packed our favorite game, Sequence. Landon wanted me to mention that he won all the games of Battleship. :( I hate losing.

For dinner we ordered in Dominos. Random, we know. We've only had Dominos twice in the last year. Once on our wedding night and then on our anniversary. :) On our wedding night we were starving and the only place open was Dominos, so we ordered pizza at 2am. Since it was raining and we really didn't want to get out, we decided to continue the Dominos tradition.

Side Note: We are very competetive in everything we do. On the morning of every holiday or event, we always try to say "Happy Anniversary" or "Merry Christmas" (or whatever the event) first. Landon usually wins. I accidently said "Happy Birthday" to him this morning. Whoops. :)

Vail: Day 2

Our plan was to get up early and hike. We didn't so much wake up early, but we did hike. :) Our butler gave us a really good recommendation for a hiking trail...Beaver Lake Trail at Beaver Creek Ski Resort. The trail started at the base of the resort area, but quickly branched out into the wilderness. We loved the trail and seeing Beaver Lake at the top was well worth the long hike up. I think it was a little over 6 miles total.

We missed the aspen's changing by about 2 weeks, though we knew we would before we got here. Seeing just a few of the buttery yellow aspen that were left makes us want to visit again when the trees are changing high in the mountains. Luckily, all of the aspens for about an hour outside of Denver are still yellow, so we were able to see some mountainsides covered with them. So pretty!

After hiking, we relaxed and then went to eat at Blue Moose Pizza, another good restaurant. We really only went there because it was a 30 second walk from our room. :) We were too tired to go anywhere else.

Vail: Day 1

We flew into Denver and then rented a car to drive to Vail (see bottom of post for more on our rental car). After stopping to shop at the Coach, JCrew, and Banana Republic Outlets in Silverthorne, we headed to our destination. Our hotel, The Arabelle at Vail Square, was absolutely amazing! It's location was perfect (right at the base of the Eagle Bahn gondola) and the service was excellent. We actually had a personal butler. No lie. The personal butler pretty much did whatever we wanted (which was nothing), BUT, we could have had him draw our bath, unpack our bags, make dinner reservations, etc. Crazy. We highly recommend the Arabelle, but I think it is already booked out for the entire ski season!

Our hotel

Our room

The fireplace

The amazing bathtub

We finished out the day by eating at a REALLY good local pizza joint called Pazzo's Pizzeria and walking around Vail Village. Vail is such a charming little town!

We like to refer to our rental car as the "Aveo Fiasco." When we booked our reservation, we knew we weren't going to be getting a luxury car, but we had no idea it would be this bad. The Aveo is so small that it barely fit our bodies and two suitcases. The worst part was driving up to our hotel, where Valet parking is required. We literally pulled up to the hotel and there were only Corvettes, Volvos, Cadillacs, Mercedes, BMWs, etc. And we pulled up in the Aveo. Landon said he lost his mancard. Fair enough, it was pretty bad.

Countdowns...

4 days until vacation at Vail!
6 days until our one-year anniversary!!!!
2 weeks until vacation in Boston!

That all means almost 2 weeks off work...with my hubby...traveling. I hope I can make it through these last few days of work. :)

Woohoooo!

BabyDog Lucy Versus Scissors

Landon and I have been living on a really tight budget in order to be debt free. Our goal: one year. Goodbye PA school student loans. Now, this debt free business is no easy task...and sometimes it requires exteme measures. BabyDog Lucy was due up for another grooming. Notice how shaggy she is in the first picture, taken about a month ago...so it's only gotten worse since this picture. We did the math and figured we spend about $500 or so just on her haircuts/shampoos/nail clipping per year. That's way too much money. So, we decided to try our hand at grooming her ourselves. :)

Landon and BabyDog Lucy in the middle of grooming.

Lucy's "after" picture.

Her body actually doesn't look bad, but her face is HORRIBLE! She kind of looks like a mix between a Schnauzer and a ratdog. :) We didn't realize that there are certain "cuts" for certain dogs. She definitely didn't get the "Yorkie cut" here. She actually behaved pretty well during the grooming, so we are thinking we will take her to the groomer for her first summer cut, and then we will trim her otherwise.

Side Note: She has cataracts, hence the yellow eyes. And, yes, she also has gray hair. That's what happens when you are 15 years old. :)

Thank You Bakerella!

WOW! I found this recipe on the Bakerella website and made it yesterday. I actually hate cake, so I didn't try it, but it seemed to be a big hit with friends and coworkers. Warning...it might not be so healthy. :)

Who Needs Exercise?!

Last night, we decided that we needed to come up with a work out plan. Neither of us are very good about exercising. I don't mind walking or running at a slow pace. After all, I did run off the track in the middle of a race when they begged me to run in the 1600m race in high school...cross country was more my thing...why did they even ask me to run track?! I don't run fast. Landon, on the other hand, would prefer to run at max speed. He does not like to walk or run at a slow pace. Obviously, our running styles do not mix. This is a problem for us. We have tried to run together on multiple occassions, but we both get frustrated (I run too slow, he runs too fast) and quit.

So, our new plan...
We will run a minimum of two times per week. We can run at our own speed. If we don't run a minimum of two times per week, then we can't eat out that week.

That should be enough motivation, right?! We don't even eat out very often (once every 1-2 weeks), so it won't be that big of a change. BUT, if I don't get Jersey Mike's and Taco Bueno at least once a month, I will NOT be happy. Landon feels the same about Little Caesar's and Wendy's.

I hope we can do this. :)

Side Note: We are eating pizza and watching Biggest Loser right now. :)

Patio

As many of you know, Landon and I have been spending a lot of time working on home improvement projects. Our most recent is a patio type thing and a flower bed. I thought they turned out well. We have a couple more little things to do and then our backyard is done. :)