Monday, May 30, 2011

Quick weekend home

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

I just got back from an awesome (but too quick) weekend in Michigan with my family hosting Catherine's wedding shower. Here is the quick run down:
I had the worst travel day ever, but made (miraculously) both flights and arrived in Detroit around noon on Friday. If I ever recover, I'll blog about what happened.
Meg, Catherine and my mom picked me up from the airport and we went out to lunch and did some super fun shopping at Meg's favorite store, Trader Joe's. I love those women. Then we headed to my parents house, ate dinner, made our pom pom flowers and mom and I got to work baking and cooking for the shower.
Saturday, my dad took us out for breakfast and then we got to work at the church finishing the food preparation and decorating. Mad props go to dad who put up all our cute little Martha Stewart homemade pom pom flowers:


Our centerpieces were mason jars filled with fresh flowers, with ribbon and raffia tied around the middle and paper from the paper source.



Our menu was mini brownies with piped dyed frosting, mini cheesecake squares, cheesecake balls (Kym, those were amazing), truffles, lemon bars, a fresh fruit platter and a yummy salad with gorgonzola cheese, homemade candied walnuts, homemade poppyseed dressing and cranberries. YUM. We also had homemade lemonade and sparking flavored water for drinks.

Here's the pretty bride-to-be opening up gifts (with her helper, Kaitlin):


After the shower, I ran home to see my brothers really fast before they headed back to Lansing for a wedding they were both in. I'm bummed I wasn't able to see more of my family, but I knew it was going to be a short weekend.

Sunday, we all ate breakfast together and then mom drove me to the airport where I had a very smooth and uneventful flight home. Thank you Jesus. I'm pretty sure I'm going my skin will break-out for the next month due the Friday flight stress. Greeaaat.

Oh, and here's my latest bread baking success (from this book), straight up white sandwich bread:


P.S. HI again to Aunt Sue and Sarah! :)

Thursday, May 26, 2011




Apparently, the small child knows his Thomas the Train characters. This cracked me up.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Weekend Recap

Hey friends!

Sorry I haven't blogged much lately! Lots and lots of stuff going on! The days are full of watching Brennan, or Brennan and Kennady, MOPS, Bible Study, playgroup, grocery shopping, cleaning the rental house, unpacking, unpacking, unpacking, etc. Thankfully this weekend was a little bit of a break and we got to catch up on some things. The third Friday of every month, The Met hosts Common Ground, which is a time for women to get together and hang out while working on all sorts of crafty-stuff. Some knit, some sew, some scrapbook, some just hang out and eat (yummy dessert is provided). I am working on a special scrapbook project so I went and got a lot done. Uninterrupted time to work and hang with girlfriends? Yes, please.

Saturday I woke up bright and early to hit up the Canyon Gate (our neighborhood's) garage sales. It was a bust. There were lots of garage sales, I just didn't find anything. We spent the rest of the day working on the house- Jon built wooden shelves for the garage and I washed the windows inside and out.

Some of the shelves in mid-progress

There aren't basements in the south. Did you know this? So we are using half of our garage to store items that were in our basement, hence the shelves for all our rubbermaid tubs. The other half will house our CRV.

Saturday night, Jon and I went out a date to celebrate our 7th anniversary! After working in 90 degree weather, we were ready to shower and clean up and eat!! We got lucky and someone cancelled their reservations at The Melting Pot and we were able to get in, woo hoo!! (note to self, don't wait until 3:00 day of to make reservations next time).

It.was.awesome. It was our first time and we looooved it. We were there from 7:30-10:00 just talking, taking our time, eating, relaxing. We got the Big Feast four course meal which included cheese fondue, salads, our main course (filet mignon, chicken, pork, shrimp and beef tenderloins) and chocolate fondue for dessert. Our server was so awesome, she took our photo and printed out the picture for us and gave us complimentary champagne. I was so full, it almost hurt (ok, it did hurt).

Sunday, after church, we went to the Art Car Parade in Houston with our friends, Andrew and Cathi (remember this from last year, mom A?)

(did your children ever go through a "the camera is the enemy phase?" B refuses to look at the camera.)

Did you also know that the south has fire ants? They do. And they are the devil. We unknowingly put our chairs down in fire ant heaven and Brennan has a few bites to prove it. I hate those things, part of the curse I tell ya.

This was my favorite car:

Some other cars in the parade:




Friday, May 20, 2011

Theme Song For Today



Love to you all, be back soon!

Friday, May 13, 2011

Move and Mothers

Yo. This is only my 15th attempt to get this post out. After a thunderstorm briefly took out our power, and then Brennan woke up crying from his nap due to said storm, and then I spilled Diet Coke, and then blogspot went down and lost my previous post, I'm finally getting it up (or am I?). Here she blows!!!

I wanted to post a few pictures of our big move day last Saturday. The guys did the actual moving and some girls met me at the new house to start unpacking. Carlee, Cherish and Crystal helped with the kitchen and I will be forever grateful.



The guys moving (James, you crack me up):

We decided not to rent a U-Haul truck because it was such a short move (.9 miles). Thankfully, our life group came out with trucks and a willingness to help. We only had one casualty, a stool that fell out of the truck, but thankfully we were going to be selling it on craigslist so it didn't really matter (part of a breakfast nook we no longer use).

We already feel more at home in this house than in our rental. Maybe because we know it's ours, or maybe because it actually has some paint on the ways, or probably both. Whichever, we are glad to be here!

The day after we moved was Mother's Day. Jon said my gift was being in the new house. :) Although, he did get me some other gifts and brought me starbucks for breakfast (my fav, marble mocha, nonfat milk, no whip, if you must know).

The fam on Mother's Day:

And the little man that made me a Mother (he thinks the map at The Met is his personal playground):


Love to you all!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

And we're in!

Hey y'all!!

I'm posting from the kitchen counter of our new house! We moved on Saturday and praise be to God, it was super smooth. The days leading up to the move, not so much smooth. But we got it all packed, thanks MOSTLY to dear friends who brought Brennan and I food (Laura), helped me pack the kitchen (Tammy) and packed up the living room (Shelly). I am so so so grateful to them.

We also had a lot of help moving on Saturday from our awesome life group at church. We started at 9 and by 1:00 most of our stuff had been moved here. I had some girlfriends helping me unpack as the guys brought stuff in and it worked out great. We had the kitchen and living room done by Saturday night. The rest of the rooms, however, are still mostly in boxes :)

We just got internet tonight, so I hope to upload my photos from my phone and do some more updating later this week.

Love to you all!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Packing's for Losers


It's Tuesday afternoon and I haven't started packing yet and I'm blogging. Why you ask? Because I am a slacker, that's why. And because I figure if I just wait long enough, the magic packing fairy will come to my house and save me from my troubles.

We did however, get the living and our bedroom painted at the new house, hooray!! We spent all day Saturday, all day Sunday and last night and finished her up. And we got a lot of the small, little things done, such as buying new smoke detectors and batteries (remember this post?), changing filters, changing out locks, buying a garage door remote, etc. It's getting warm in Houston so we are becoming especially thankful that our new house is very energy efficient (double pane windows and radiant barrier in the attic).

I'm still baking my way through this book, however my last attempt wasn't so pretty. It looked like this:
A weird looking bread triangle.


It was supposed to look like this:


I don't have a pizza peel and you're supposed to use the peel to simply slide the bread from the peel to the oven. However, I had to pick up the bread and transfer it to the oven which resulted in the weird looking bread. Oh well, still tasted good!

Off to pack (I think.. .)