About Me

Hi! My name is Melissa, and welcome to my book blog! A little info about me... 

I grew up in a small town in west-central Nebraska, and I'm an only child. Throughout high school I was involved in band, pretty much everything I could possibly be involved in with it! What did this love of music lead to? Keep reading....

That's me on the left, scary I know...

Because of this love for music and marching band in particular, I got married to a very silly man and my best friend named Jason on June 13, 2009. How did we meet you ask? At band camp. (Get the awful American Pie jokes out of the way now, trust me, we've heard every single one, and they get really old). We were 15 and 16 at the time, and started dating about a year after we met. We are from towns that are about 3 1/2 hours apart, so we did the long distance thing for awhile. Then? We went to college together (Go Huskers!!!) 

This is a really old picture, (Circa 2005) but I still like it.

Go Huskers!

Fall, 2007, I think?

My graduation, December 2008

We decided to make it official right after he graduated in May 2009. He said we couldn't get married until we were both out of college - we stuck to it, but just barely! 

Some of our engagement pics

The big day! June 13, 2009

Then we went on a fabulous honeymoon to Mexico!

After the wedding, we lived in Lincoln for a year.

Our 1st anniversary - in our very messy apartment!

We were looking for teaching jobs: he's a teacher too, a music teacher of course! He finally found one in a teeny tiny fly speck of a town in northeast Nebraska, so we picked up everything and moved to a new place. He teaches K-12, band, choir, elementary music - the whole shebang. He does everything short of driving the bus for the music program. He is a pretty busy guy. It's been good so far, a bit of an adjustment from a big city to a tiny town, but totally worth it. Since there weren't any job openings for me in the area, I started substitute teaching at the same school where he works and I also started on my Master's degree online. Pretty cool, right?

Our new rental house, with me peeking in the window for some odd reason. Guess I'm a creeper.

Now Jason and I are both dog people, and had always wanted a puppy of our own. We couldn't ever have one in Lincoln since we lived in an apartment that didn't allow pets, but after we moved, we rented a really awesome house from a really awesome landlord who was okay with us getting a dog. In November, 2010, we adopted our baby, Buddy, a 1 year old yellow lab, from a rescue program in Lincoln called Second Chance Pups. Check out their website here. This program rescues dogs from local shelters and gives them a second chance at their forever home. The dogs are trained by inmates from the Nebraska State Penitentiary in a 9 week program and then adopted out to loving families. Buddy has been an amazing addition to our family and is probably the most spoiled doggy on the planet. (Currently as I write this, he is sacked out on the couch with about 3 squeaky toys around him... what a life). He's super smart and well behaved, if you live in Nebraska and are thinking of getting dog, Second Chance Pups is the way to go!!!

Jason with Buddy the first time we met him. He's grown so much already!

My baby :)

So that's the basics about me. Nothing too exciting, but it's me so yeah :)