Marionfest

This weekend we celebrated my grandma's 80th birthday with Marionfest in Dallas. Each of her kids came, along with all the grandkids (and one great grandchild). As always, hanging out with my brothers and my cousins was a lot of laughs :)

Lauren is so pretty; and Woody desperately needs a haircut!!

Ashley and Davis modeling in front of our red carpet Marionfest wall. haha

*somehow I didn't get a single picture of Kristi (sorry!)

The first night we were there we all ate dinner at the house, courtesy of Uncle Tom, then ate cake and opened presents. My aunt had a photo book made for my grandma with pictures of all of us. She was so cute when she opened it. She LOVED it!

The next day we had a photographer take pictures of the whole group of us. It was windy as heck outside so I will be interested to see how the pictures turn out. haha.

After pictures we all went to lunch, took a break for a nap, then went out for a fancy dinner that night. Grandma loved every minute of it so I guess that makes it worth it.

Happy Birthday Grandma, we all love you! :)

Ashton

Over the weekend I drove to Dallas to celebrate my grandma's 80th birthday with all my family. More on that later, but I just wanted to post some pictures of my cousin's sweet baby first. Ashton is already a year old and seemed so big since the last time I saw him! I had so much fun taking pictures of this sweet boy. He is so laid back ... probably the most mellow baby I've ever met. What a sweetheart :)

Email

So I mentioned that I have a student teacher right? Well, I do, and she's 38. I felt so awkward at first telling someone older than me what to do, but she's turned out to be incredibly awesome (and a great teacher, which makes my job easy) so it's not actually awkward at all, but in fact quite wonderful! :)

Anyway, after I spent an hour crying over a sewing project gone bad this evening, I checked my phone and found this email from her which totally made my night:

By the way, have I told you how AWESOME I think you are, and how LUCKY I am to have you as my teacher?
Well, it is TRUE!!!! :D
See you in the morning

And on that note, we're putting in a movie here to end the weekend. Too bad we have work tomorrow.

- Posted from my iPad

Galveston State Park/Brazos Bend State Park

Last weekend Tony and I took all the new camping stuff down to Galveston State Park to do some camping! Here is our weekend in pictures:

First, we got to the park and set up camp. I'm used to camping with lots of trees, but this is Galveston after all, so there really aren't any haha. At least there was a nice view of the bay.

After we got camp set up, we decided to take a walk around the park on some of the trails.

We were able to watch the sunset from our walk, which was really pretty, though once the sun went down it got cold fast! This was about the time I busted out my long underwear and 3 shirts haha. Good thing Tony knows how to make a good fire!

The next day we got up and headed over to the beach for some fishing. By fishing I mean Tony is CRAZY and waded into that freezing cold water to fish while I played in the sand and took pictures of birds.

When it became apparent that it was too cold for wade fishing, we drove down to the jetties where we could set up our chairs and fish from the warmth of land (not that it was warm, mind you!). *I love this picture!*

We concluded the evening with a great fire, chili cheese dogs, and s'mores. yum! The next morning we got up early, packed up, and drove to Brazos Bend State Park to spend the day. This place was much more like my idea of camping. It was so pretty! We started out with a walk around the park.

We stopped in the nature center and were able to see and touch a baby alligator. Look how tiny it is!!! (side note: this is NOT me holding it. Those things bite!)

My entire goal of this trip was to see and photograph an alligator, because that is what the park is known for. Lucky me, there was one RIGHT off the path!!! I was literally 3 feet away from this thing!

So, of course I snapped about a million and one pictures. haha

We stayed at Brazos Bend all day and explored the place so we would know where to go when we camp there next time. It was such a beautiful day and we had so much fun! I can't wait to go camping again! :)

New Furniture!

I feel like such a grown up. Look at the new trunk I bought to use as the coffee table in our house!

It's so beautiful; I just love everything about it! I love the color, I love the texture, I love how solid it is, I love how it opens up and what it looks like inside:

I love how it has three separate compartments, two which are big enough for pillows or blankets, and one that you can keep wine in! I love that it comes with the nice wooden tray you see in the picture above. I love that it has arms that pull out so when you open up the top flaps you can rest them on the arms and use it as part of the table.

I can't wait to pick it up on the 28th! This is the sort of furniture I can keep forever (unlike the other furniture I have purchased before (which has been left at my dad's) which I would have used for a few years and then gotten rid of). *speaking of which, since you're keeping my old coffee table, end tables, couch and chair dad, do you want to help contribute to the new furniture fund?!? ;-) hehe* It may not always be in my living room, but it can always have a place in my house somewhere. It's so nice! I can't stop ogling over the pictures hehe :)

Oh yeah, I'm still working on a post about camping last weekend .... I've just been lazy, sorry!

Camping

Here is what I know about myself: when I decide upon a new hobby, I dive in headfirst.

I have been talking about wanting to go camping for months! We had intentions of planning a trip last fall, but by the time we got around to really thinking about it, it was already around the holidays and everyone was busy, then it got too cold. Well, for whatever reason, on Sunday we got to talking about it again. Since we had nothing else to do we took a trip to Academy and I ended up buying quite a bit.

I bought two tents (one 3 person, one 4 person ... it was a really good deal and they are great tents so I got both so more friends could come), and a sleeping bag (Tony bought one too). We came home, set up the tent in the living room, and planned a trip for this coming weekend with some friends.

We got so excited about the trip that we ended up back at Academy to buy more stuff. Let's not even talk about how much stuff I got. Let's just say that I'm pretty much a hardcore camper now. I justified all these purchases because this stuff will last for years and years. Maybe someday I'll take my family camping :) hehe

Plus, T and I are already planning multiple trips with different groups of friends over the next few months so at least I'll get my money's worth out of that.

I'm SO excited!!!

*edit* Last night we MAY have set up camp in the backyard to test out all the new stuff. We spent a number of hours hanging out in the tent in the middle of the yard (I'm sure the neighbors thought we were nuts) before deciding it would be best to get a good night's sleep since it was only Monday and heading inside to sleep. So fun! So excited!

no snow "snow day"

I'm so sad to report that Houston did not get ANY snow yesterday! The weatherman should really not get my hopes up with predictions such as "3-5 inches of snow" when all we're going to get is ice. Oh well, can't complain too much because school was cancelled and I have a nice unplanned three day weekend.

I started off my long weekend in true college throwback fashion: drinking. Fortunately, this time I already knew school was cancelled the next day, unlike that time in college where we ended up having to get up and go to school hungover haha! I hung out with Michelle and the boys and played drinking games with wine. Let me just tell you, wine is a bad thing to play a drinking game with. Oh goodness haha.

Yesterday the roads were apparently icy (though the ones outside my house looked just fine) so I spent most of the day inside. What better time to bust out a sewing project! I'm not sure who reads this, so I'm not going to post pictures of what I made yet, but when it's finished in the next week, and I give it away, then I'll post some pics. It's cute, I'll say that!

After cutting fabric for what felt like years, I spent a few hours sewing and got the majority of the thing put together. YAY! Since we'd been cooped up in the house all day Tony and I decided to go to Armadillo Palace for dinner, drinks, and live music. I invited a number of friends to come with us, but unfortunately when we got there we found out the band was cancelled and they would be closing early. Bummer. I let the friends know not to worry about meeting us there, we had dinner, and then left. We ended up stopping by blockbuster on the way home and renting a movie to watch the rest of the night.

All in all, a good no snow "snow day" .... though I'm still quite disappointed that I didn't get to see any real snow!! Oh well, maybe next year.