It is official! Brett has graduated! He has earned his PhD!!! This summer has been super crazy, busy, and stressful but I’ll explain more about that in a few weeks 🙂 Until then, enjoy some pictures from our great graduation weekend!
This year for Thanksgiving, Brett and I decided to stay in Champaign. A few friends decided to stay in town as well and we organized an entire day of festitivies. Starting the week before with baking and ending with a lengthy poker game, our Thanksgiving Day was different than every other year and yet, wonderful.
Wow! It is already 2015 and officially time to turn the heat back up (both on this blog and outside) 🙂
Brett and I have had a busy year. Our Christmas letter was late (as usual) and will be sent in the next week as a Valentine’s Day letter 🙂 I figured the letter was so late by now that I’d just go with it! I’m excited to be heading full-force into a new career (more on that in the coming weeks) and am hoping to be able to spend at least a post per week worth of time here, at malloryandbrett.com. Brett and I have many changes coming into our lives in the next year (but no, we’re not pregnant) and really want this blog to be a place to update our friends and family with our big happenings.
Winter has been cold here in Champaign. We celebrated Thanksgiving in Champaign with friends, helped my dad move into a new house, and enjoyed Christmas down in St. Louis. We’ve been working a lot, scheming of what is to come, devoting time to old and new hobbies, and playing with our lovely daughter dogs. Here are some photos of what has been happening around here…
Enjoy! We’re glad to be back here!
This is what early spring in the Casperson-Jones house was like…we will update very soon about our lovely trips with family and Brett’s defense 🙂
Life has been super super super busy in the Casperson-Jones house! 🙂 We’ve celebrated Brett’s birthday, his sister Kristin and his Mom’s birthday, Easter with both of our families, my dad’s birthday, a successful half-marathon run, some good food, fun with the pups, and so much more 🙂 Here is a little bit of what our past couple of months have looked like in pictures!
Brett’s Birthday: I woke up early and before Brett was awake, made homemade, triple berry buttermilk pancakes. They were sooo good! That night I surprised him with a homemade(ish) brownie ice cream cake…with plenty of candles 🙂
Running pups: The girls have continued to enjoy running with us. We take them for a few miles and then leave them at home 🙂
Food!: I learned to make a fun and really yummy asian dish from a friend!
Lacuna Loft: I took Lacuna Loft to the Working Women’s Expo and had a great time! The company continues to be great fun to run and I’m enjoying the ride.
Easter: Easter was a great time, as usual 🙂 We dyed eggs with Brett’s family, celebrated some birthdays, and then helped cook Easter dinner at my dad’s 🙂 We also got to see my dad’s new house for the first time!
More life: more food, more work, more pups, more fun…and a concert! Man, do we love music 🙂
The Champaign Half Marathon!: nothing more to say 🙂 Dad, and Cathy came to cheer us on. Brett ran with me and we both added a bit of time but it was so.much.fun 🙂 We won’t be able to run the Chicago Marathon this year…I am in a wedding the day before. I’ll have to find another fun race to start training for!
(and obviously we had ice cream afterwards) 🙂
with warmer weather…out comes the hammock!!!
For my dad’s birthday, we put together a small, 5 pot herb garden for him…and for ourselves! We planted basil, chocolate mint (that is a REAL thing!), rosemary, cilantro, and lemon balm. Along with a random succulent. All plants are doing well 🙂
We had fun celebrating Raj’s birthday and surprising him 🙂
we’re still loving Champaign…and the random things that happen here like robots on the street.
The pups continue liking my work schedule…though I do enjoy working from around town too
For my dad’s birthday we surprised him at a restaurant! Lucas, Brett, my dad, and I all went to the Air Show in St. Louis for the day and then freshened up at home and headed to dinner. While I didn’t have a good reason for why we *had* to rush home and head to this particular restaurant at this particular time…my dad was still surprised and we had a great time 🙂
That weekend we also spent a bit of time in Freeburg and some time hiking around in the woods behind my dad’s new house 🙂
So far this spring I have made homemade chocolate mint ice cream and a strawberry pie. (My first pie!!!)
The newest update is that I donated my hair to locks of love last week 🙂
And that’s all! Sorry for the long update since I haven’t posted in a while. I’d like to get better about that…but, if I’m not writing enough here and you’re still wanting to read a great blog everyday, head over to Lacuna Loft or Projection Mapping Central 🙂
Brett, Raj, and their third business partner Kevin, recently got some really great press in the Champaign County News Gazette! You can check out the article here!
With two start ups, things have been quite busy in our house 🙂 The dream team even recently moved all of their equipment out of our downstairs and into an incubator space that they are renting. I’ve crashed a few late night parties hack-a-thons deadline crunches with the guys at their new space in the past few weeks 🙂 The team is always hard at work!
If you want to learn more about what they do, click here and if you want to see their company’s official website, click here. 🙂