Our 2013

Wichita State ‘Shocked’ the whole world and made it to the NCAA Final Four. Needless to say Amber was loving basketball season and was a proud Shocker fan.  She even had a picture that she took on campus make the news in Wichita. Talk about becoming “big time”.

We graduated college. I mean, that’s pretty much the biggest accomplishment we could have ever asked for. It was such a cool experience to graduate together as husband and wife and to be the first in both families to have graduated college. This made all the struggles completely worth it. (But we aren’t excited about the student loan paybacks that will be starting here soon).

We made the decision to start the process of Payden applying to join the Officer Training for the United States Air Force. Although it didn’t work out in our favor or the way we had hoped, we learned a lot about the process and may be trying again in the New Year. He is also reapplying for different Police Forces as well, hopefully with in this New Year we will start a new career for Payden, one that he has wanted and one that is a good financial support for our upcoming life changes.

I witnessed both of my sorority littles getting married, and was Matron of Honor in the wedding for one of them.

We celebrated 2 years of marriage and 7 years of us being together. It is crazy to see how fast time has gone by since our first date in high school.

We vacationed in Oklahoma City the weekend of our anniversary for a couple of days. It was a wonderful get away.We went to the Oklahoma City Zoo, the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, the state capitol, the veteran’s memorial, the outlet mall, and walked around the Bricktown District andRiverwalk. We tried two new restaurants including Taco Mayo per his uncle’s request and Cattlemen’s Steakhouse because it was on two of our favorite Food Network shows: “Man vs.Food” and “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives”.

Amber got to meet some celebrities that she is obsessed with. She got free VIP passes through work to meet Bobby Bones, Amy, Eddie and Laura Bell Bundy. It was so awesome and her blog post about it even made it onto their Facebook page. She also won a free Meet and Greet pass through Blake Shelton’s fan club and got to meet him! He was so cool in person, the exact way Amber expected him to be from watching him on TV and such. Plus for that concert Amber and her friend Kayla were front row on the floor and the concert was amazing, with extra guest including Danielle Bradbery, and Miranda Lambert. Plus the opening acts were awesome: Jana Kramer and Easton Corbin. Needless to say the concert was amazing and Amber had an awesome year getting to meet some of her favorite people!

October was a busy month and the same month that we decided to start trying again for different police forces. Hopefully Payden will be getting onto one here soon. We spent our Halloween watching D-List horror movies on Netflix. It was perfect.

Wichita State’s 2013-2014 Basketball season started on November 2nd and Amber loves that her two favorite seasons start around the same time: Holiday Season and Basketball Season.

Thanksgiving was great: one of our favorite days of the year. Hamilton family got together at Aunt Brenda/Uncle Bryce/The Shop to celebrate and have lunch. Then we went to The Horth’s new house to celebrate and have dinner. Like every year it was just a busy, busy day but totally worth it.  

Amber got her wisdom teeth taken out on December 3rd and it was somewhat of a long recovery process but we are glad it is done and over with and we won’t have to worry about it ever again. Lol

Christmas time was a busy time for us, just like it is every year. We decided to open our gifts to each other on the 23rd, and like always it was so much fun. This year we decided to give each other big gifts for Christmas and I swear that was the best part, we did so well! Christmas Eve was spent with the whole Hamilton side of the family. Christmas Eve was a ton of fun with a white elephant gift exchange, ton of food, laughter and family time. Christmas day was just as fun. We started the day off with celebrating with the Horth family. The Horth family Christmas was a ton of fun with brunch food, games, gift giving and family time. After spending the morning with the Horth family we headed over to the Hamilton’s house to celebrate with the immediate Hamilton family: Brent, Nancy, Paige, Carolyn and the two of us.   After a few rounds of “Apples to Apples” and food it was time to go home and get some rest before Amber had to go back to work on the 26th.

On 12/29 Wichita State won another game making them 13-0 in the season! Such a great way to end the year of 2013.

Since we don’t do much for New Year’s Eve we ended our year pretty much after Christmas. But overall 2013 was a great year for the two of us and we are beyond excited to see what 2014 has in store for us. We have already started thinking about what to do for our 3rd wedding anniversary and Amber has already started designing the 2014 Christmas cards. 2013 taught Amber who her real friends are and 2014 is going to be a year to celebrate those true friendships and to move on from past relationships.   Happy 2014! And thank you for all of those who have always been there for us.