I’ve gotten so far behind in blogging I don’t even know where to begin!  I really do need to go back and fill in some of this gap, so many wonderful things have happened, I’ve just been too busy to write about it all!  Lets see, my last post was in October, wow!!  So, a few posts that I’ll try to write in the next few weeks:

• Vacation with friends to Kiawah Island in South Carolina, so much fun!  
• Losing my grandfather in early November, heart breaking, but an opportunity to spend a wonderful week with family.
• Hosting Thanksgiving in OKC for my family!
• Flying to NYC for the first time, both for work & a fun girls weekend with Mom!
• Christmas in Texas with Dwyatt’s family
• New Years in Colorado with my family
• Dinners with friends in January

All of this brings me to today… the time between January and what is now the end of March seems like a blur.  I don’t have many pictures, and I have many memories of long hours, hard work, way too much time in front of computer screen or with my nose in a book, and luckily it all cullminated with an opportunity to pursue a dream!

Ok, so what am I talking about??  Well, as some of you know Dwyatt and I are nearing the end of completing our MBA program.  I feel like that’s all I’ve been talking about on here lately, but it’s a huge thing for us, and it’s been a long time coming!  This is our last semester, and in January we had 2 classes to finish, which meant we were in class 3 nights a week.

If that in itself wasn’t enough, one class called Strategic Venture Development is about double the work of a typical class.  We’ve probably made it that way from taking it so seriously.  You see, the idea in this class is that you come up with an idea for a business concept and you learn to write an actual business plan around that concept.  I think Dwyatt and I have been pretty open in the past about how our dream is to ultimately start our own company.  We see this class as the perfect end to the MBA and a direct launching pad that will help carry us forward into this dream of actually getting out there and building this dream for ourselves.

Writing this plan has been a ton of work.  Most weekdays involved getting up a 4:30am to workout, working all day, working all school during lunch, going to class after work, getting home about 9:45 and working on more school until about 11pm and then doing it all again the next day.  I write that all down not to make myself sound impressive to others, but to remind myself one day, when I forget how much work and dedication it takes, that I am capable!  I truly believe that it takes hard work to accomplish the big dreams and I’m not afraid of that work!

So where does the big dreaming and success come in??  Well, the culmination of this class is to submit the business plan to two different business plan competitions.  One is local to the state of Oklahoma know as Governor’s Cup, and the other is “the super bowl of competitions” (according to our professors) the Rice Business Plan Competition.  The Rice competition has teams apply from all over the world, and they ultimately pick 42 teams to go to Houston to compete.  At this one competition alone they award over $1MM of prize money and seed investments, and there are over 300 judges/venture capitalists/angel investors that attend.  This year they had over 600 applicants, and guess what… WE GOT IN!!!

I’m a very glass half full kind of person, so I had no doubt we’d do well, but I was still shocked beyond belief to hear we got in accepted to Rice!  So now that we’ve settled down a little bit it means more work putting together the presentation, display items, etc.  before we fly to Houston in April!

Very exciting times… it’s definitely one of those experiences that feels like God is just laying down the stepping stones one at a time, leading us down the path of our dreams.  We just have to be patient enough to wait for the next stone, and then faithfully keep stepping toward wherever he leads.  We’re ready for that & can’t wait to see where this road is taking us!

Oh!  And what exactly is our little company??  We are Rose Energy.  You can learn a little more about us here.