A Tale of Two Coopers: 2009

Friday, December 11

A little Randomness never hurt anyone...

First off...I did a little Christmas decorating. We aren't going to be in town for Christmas this year, but I still wanted our house to show a little holiday cheer, so I put up a Christmas tree!

I was at the Dollar store and saw this ' Charlie Brown' tree and just had to buy it! The presents you see under the tree are for me and Chris from my parents. Instead of doing one big gift, my mom decided to give us the 12 days of Christmas (not literally, for those of you who watch the office, even though I thought that was pretty cool!!) Each present has a number on it and starting with December 13, we get to open 1 present a day until Christmas! It is way fun!

So here is our "christmas tree"

This topper is the only one I could find at the dollar store. It is pretty much 1/2 the size of the tree. I don't know how it is even staying up there!

Changing topics... this is the random part...I just finished my Floral Art class at A&M. I took it because I needed some more hours in Horticulture and it turned out to be the best class ever! For our final we got into groups of two and had to create LIFESIZE replicas of people from different decades. It didn't have to be a certain person, but it had to symbolize something from that decade. It was way fun! The materials used to create the shape of the 'bodies' was chicken wire, but then we had to cover it with dried plant material. (you could use some clothing if you wanted, but you still had to incorporate plant material)

The 90s! I love this guys boombox!

The 80s!

The 70s!

I really like the detail on this one...the face, hands and feet are rose petals and the hair is corn husks!

This one is from a decade in the 1800s...I think that they picked 1860.

They made theirs completely from cornhusks...

This one is from the 1930s it is depicting a photo titled "The Stooping Man"

This was one one of my favorites they used nothing but plant material as well, but they used a combination of leaves instead of corn husks.

This one is from the 1920s.

(Personally, I think a flapper would of been more appropriate but what do I really know about the 20s!)

In case you can't tell, this is a bride from the 20s...

Lastly, is the FUTURE!! my group depicted a person from the 2080s! We used all plant material except the alien pet and her neon green hair! On Chris's suggestion we named her Ziggy Stardust... :)

specifically I did the boot all by myself. It is a moon boot with a heel made from sweetgum balls and some random neon green leaves. We didn't even spray paint the leaves this color. They are found that way in nature! On a side note, this took a really, really, really long time. in fact it took so long that we didn't even make a second boot, we just stuck that leg behind a moon rock and called it good. I don't think that it will hurt our grade, b/c it was my profs idea to do it!!

Anyway that was the climax to a great class...if only my other classes had such fun finals. They meet the time consuming criteria, but just not the fun part.
P.S. I missed posting about Thanksgiving...big surprise there...maybe I will post about it later...maybe not...it case (when) the latter happens I'll just tell you we had a great time!

Saturday, November 14

Chris's Aggie Ring Day!

The day had finally arrived November 13, 2009: CHRIS'S RING DAY...a day he has been looking forward to for a very long time. Unfortunately, Chris's ring day started out like any other day...waking up at 6AM to go to work. Ya that kind of sucked...but nothing could stop the smile on Chris's face...even at 6AM.

Luckily while Chris had to go to work I was able to get off. So I went and stood in line to get his Ring Ticket and to pick the time when he wanted to get his ring. 2,500 Aggies were going to get their rings today, so in order to get the time slot you wanted, you had to get there early. I drove Chris to work and then went to stand in line to get the ticket. No one could pull their ticket until 7:15, but when I got there at 6:35, a few hundred people were already waiting in line!! It was crazy. There were people who had camped out over night. Even though there were hundreds of people in front of me, I was still able to get a 4:30 ticket! WHOOP! All this happened before 8, but I still had some things to do. I went home and started prepping things for Chris's Ring Dunking Party (more on that later).

After Chris got off work at 12 we did what he wanted to do...which was pretty much relax, b/c it had been a pretty hard week!! Skip forward to 3:00 and we started to get ready to go and get Chris's ring!! For those who don't know receiving your Aggie ring is more important than walking across the stage to graduate. To qualify for a ring you have to have:

90 completed undergraduate cumulative hours
45 completed undergraduate hours at A&M University
2.0 cumulative GPA
Must not be on academic probation, suspension, dismissal, expulsion, or on honor violation probation from the university.

Since it was such a big deal, we invited Chris's family to come and celebrate with us!

We got there a little early so of course random picture were taken!

Chris and Bando showing off how 'excellent' they really are!

This is the crowd of people that were there...and if you look toward the right of the picture you can see a giant replica of the Aggie ring, it weigh 6500lbs.

Finally the time for Chris to get his ring arrived. We walked into the Alumni building, down the hall where we waited in line with other Aggies whose last name began with 'C'...then it was Chris's turn...WHOOP!!

Chris checking out that the spelling of his name is correct. They were able to engrave his whole name on the inside. This may sound quite impressive but the ring was size 14 3/4 so there was no problem!

Chris putting on his Aggie Ring for the first time! WHOOP!

"Chris is no longer a Sophomore and he has a ring to prove it!"

Gig'em Chris!

Next it was time for pictures...

Gig'em Aggies

The whole group:
Lou, Steve-o, CrittyPuH, Snooze, Bando

Chris and his Parents

Chris with one of his good friends Ross, who also got his ring that day!

After Chris got his ring it was time to PARTY!
Thanks to Sarah for letting us use your house...since our little apartment was too small!!

One unofficial tradition A&M has connected with receiving the Aggie Ring is a Ring Dunk. Traditionally an Aggie would dunk their ring in a pitcher of beer, aprox 60oz, (hence the tradition is unofficial). Then you would chug down the whole pitcher and catch your new ring in your mouth! Since dunking the ring in alcohol would pose a problem in our marriage (among other things) Chris chose to dunk his ring in his favorite drink: Dr Pepper.

The pitcher filled with 60 oz of DP...
I had Chris's name and date of his ring day engraved on the front. When I get my ring, we will engrave my info on the back!

If you look really closely at the bottom left of the pitcher you can see Chris's ring at the bottom!

Then the time came to dunk...
This is Chris before...and

This is Chris right after he dunked his ring... and...
right before he threw up!
It took Chris 42.6 seconds to down 60 oz of DP. Needless to say he only solidified that he is THE MAN! It was freaking amazing to watch...don't believe me...scroll down and watch it for yourself!