Long time no post...

My life has been a little chaotic lately. I haven't been posting...at all. I thought I would give you a little update on what is new in the wonderful world of Lauren (and Walter) :)

• We are officially less than 8 weeks away from our beach wedding in Cozumel! We actually leave to go down there exactly 7 weeks from this coming Thursday. When we started planning it over a year ago, it seemed forever away...and now that we are approaching the big day, it seems like these last couple of months have flown by. I couldn't be more excited though. I am planning on posting an update on how the wedding plans are going within the next week, so stay tuned!

• I successfully defended my PhD proposal almost exactly 1 month ago, which means I am officially a PhD candidate, and also means I am one step closer to graduating! It is so nice to have that load off. I have been busy in the lab and it has been nice to get away from the computer/writing and do some research. This is how I feel most of the time: 

 

...but this is sometimes what it really looks like:

 

Yep. That's a sleeping bag...in my office floor. Last week I was running a 60 hour experiment that I had to monitor every four hours. Which translates into practically living in my office, so the sleeping bag (and the foam mattress topper) were absolute necessities. The joys of trying to become a rocket scientist...don't act like you're not jealous... ;)

• On that note...7.5 weeks until the wedding also means about 7 weeks of school (6 weeks of classes, 1 week of finals...Walter is ecstatic!), which also means about 9 weeks until we return to the lovely Ridgecrest, California, for "Internship: The Sequel"...get excited. We are working on trying to get Walter an internship out there so he doesn't die from boredom and leave me forever. Say a little prayer for us :) The good news is, we are incredibly blessed with a great house to stay in this summer, thanks to Kristin - a coworker friend of mine that I met while I was there last summer that is renting one of their houses to us! We already have a Budget truck rental booked for the week of the move. Now if only I could get motivated to start on some of the packing... :P

• Spring Break was last week, and after my week of sleeping on my office floor, we got a nice treat and got to go visit some of my friends that live in North Carolina for a few days. We left Wednesday and got back yesterday. I got to visit the other half of my heart (a.k.a my dear friend Jesse who is one of my bridesmaids in the wedding) and her husband for a couple of days. We went to the beach :) And I also got to go visit my amazing Little Stevie and her gorgeous baby boy, Easton (a.k.a "Baby Little"). Unfortunately Mr. Little was on TDY for the Air Force, so we didn't get to see him, but we had a great time and a much needed vacation! That's all I'm going to say about it for now because it deserves a blog post all it's own :)

• Wow. I just realized by looking back at old blog posts that it really has been FOREVER since I've updated. I quit P90X. I didn't enjoy it, and decided to switch back to Insanity about a month ago. I started week 4 as of this morning. I am actually repeating week 4 this week to make up for the fact that I only did the workouts 2 of the 6 days last week since I was in North Carolina for the rest of the week. This means I have 5 weeks left after this one, which will mean I will have time to finish the complete 60 days about a week before the wedding! :) 

• I have also ran a couple of races since my last post! I actually ran my first 5K of the season last weekend! My sister and I have done the St. Patrick's Day 5K in Tulsa together for the past 3 years. We get to dress up in all green and run 3.1 miles. It's a good time. One of these years I am going to remember to take a "before" picture instead of an "after" picture where I just ran 3 miles and look disgusting. One of these years :) On an exciting note, I finished in 27:25, which just so happens to be my personal record for a 5K. I was pretty excited considering I hadn't ran pretty much since the Freakin' Eurekan 15K Trail Race back in February...which I also don't think I ever posted about. But let's just say this...it was really cold, my knee was killing me after about mile 4...I would have completely stopped running after mile 6 if it weren't for the fact that I was on a trail and the only way out was to finish it. haha...I may never do a trail race again actually. But it was still a good time...I had fun with my friend Christie, we got free soup after it was over, and they gave me some really awesome running socks that I would've never bought for myself (too expensive)...so all in all it was a good time! :) Here's my sister and I after the 5K:

 

• I have been a complete slacker on my New Year's Resolution by the way. We were doing so well at first...but then school got crazy and our slow cooker died. Bad combination. I have, however, been sticking to making menus. We have just had a lot of repeats of things that we tried earlier in the year and liked. haha. But I added something new this week...hopefully it turns out well and I can post a yummy recipe again soon!

Well, I think that is a pretty decent update for now. I am really hoping to get back into the swing of things and post at least a little more regularly. We'll see... Last week was really good for both of us...gave us a nice break and a bit of a fresh start. It feels good, and I am hoping to regain a little bit of control in my life and conquer the chaos. Happy Monday!