Girls Weekend!

This past weekend I got together with a group of some of my most favorite people in the world (that includes their offspring)...my High School girl friends. I have known some since Elementary school and the others since Middle school. We had such a good time just hanging out and talking about the good ol days and where we are now. We have all grown up but this weekend reminded me why we will always be friends.

Here's a recap on the girls and memories of them.....
I met Thompson in Reading when she sat in front of me and I asked her if she could grow her bangs out because I couldn't see the teacher. We have been friends for life since then. Even when her awesome truck she drove in High School required a pitcher of water before it would go anywhere. Thank you for all those rides home! She now has the sweetest and most precious baby boy Caden. What a good baby!! It's because he has such a good Mama:)



Next we have Mav or Ally or Mavy or Allyson. She answers to all of them:) I have known her for a very very long time. Our dads were friends in college. One of my favorite memories of her is from the 6th grade, she rocked the Mexican Pancho with a white turtle neck. But the best part was...she tucked that bad boy in. If only I had a picture. We also snuck out of her house one night in High School, she had just failed to mention to me that there was a deep hole right when you stepped out. Needless to say...we didn't make it very far. Mav is such a good and patient Mama and I loved getting to see her and her sweet Camden this weekend.




Next we have Molly or Moppy. We have been friends since the second grade (I think) at church. We have so many memories and funny situations it's hard to think of the best. But probably my favorite is when we were in maybe 6th or 7th grade. My dad took us to the fair. If you are from Abilene you know how awesome the West Texas fair is and how it rains on it every year. Molly and I had just gotten off the fairis wheel and we were running down the ramp. Molly had on a white ESPRIT shirt (I know it's weird that I can remember that) and as we got near the end of the ramp...Molly ate it! She went head first into the mud. I remember it like it was yesterday. The best part was, no one would give us napkins. Oh Memories.
We have been through a lot and you have definitely always added spice to my life.

Speaking of Spice, this picture is of Molly after eating a pepper...oops.


Sweet Laura, we have been friends probably since the 8th grade when she asked me to be on her soccer team. She was awesome and I was not. Laura was and is so much fun to be around. We always got into trouble. Some of my favorite times were chasing boys with Laura. She always caught them and I never really figured it out. It was so fun to be with her this weekend and getting to love on her sweet little girl Laney. I just hope they move to Dallas:)



Last but not least, Andrea the hostess with the mostess! She made this weekend so much fun. Her house was the perfect place to host our first girls weekend. We have been friends since the 8th grade also. We always had fun together. In High School we were the youngest of the group and couldn't take drivers ed until the summer. We found the cheapest place in town which was also a church/cult. It was a little sketchy but it was cheap. Andrea signed us up for our driving times. My favorite time was when she signed us up for 5am! Are you kidding me! I ran at least 3 red lights because I was so tired. But we still passed. The best part was she had already gotten a car before we went to drivers ed...she would drive us there sometimes. That's Abilene for you:) It was so fun getting to spend time with her this weekend and I can't wait to meet baby #2!!

We're ALL moved in and loving it!

Last Wednesday was the official moving day. We were all packed up (BIG thank you to Mrs. Traci Duty and her amazing packing skillz) and ready for the movers. They got there in the morning and has us completely moved within 4 hours (which includes a lunch break). Best money I ever spent. It was so nice to not have to worry about that part of the move. We had our first house guest (My wonderful In-laws) that Friday night. Call me crazy but it helped me get the house in order. I work much better under pressure. We had such a good time with them.

Jason mowed the lawn on Monday with our new lawn mower. We got the self pushing kind, hoping to lose some weight this summer.


So now we are in the house and LOVING it! I told Jason if we can move into a house this easy, we should give the baby thing a try...he didn't think that was too funny.
Here are some before and after pictures for your viewing pleasure....

Dining Area BEFORE:


Dining Area AFTER:


Kitchen Galley BEFORE:


Kitchen Galley AFTER:


Living BEFORE:


Living AFTER:


Hope you enjoyed the pictures and as it gets to looking better I will add some more.

Have a wonderful weekend and come on over if you are in the neighborhood!

Boring House Update

So much has happened on the house. The paint is done, the wood floors are in (I know someone if you need some) and the carpet went in last night! These pictures are from last week and I will hopefully have some of this week for next week. Does that make sense? Anyway, this is just a boring post for all 5 of you who read this blog. We are super excited to live in our house and get away from our Awful neighbors! The one above us has a tread mill that she uses around 9:30 at night and a screaming baby she doesn't pay much attention to. The people next to us have a dog they take out to use the bathroom at 10:30 every single night. The dog LOVES to bark at our window. So that's awesome. We just can't wait to move! We really have loved living there for 2 1/2 years, It's where Jason proposed and it will always be special to us....just not the neighbors.
We should be in our New Home in a week, say a prayer that Jason and I don't tear each others heads off during the move. I tend to be a bit controlling (no need to comment here) and he tends to forget things.
Have a Happy Thursday!

Master bedroom (Color: White Mountain)


Kitchen (Color: Vert Olive)


Family Room (Color: Grid Grey)


Another shot of the kitchen

And the work begins....

I know it has been WAY too long since I have updated. So I will fill this one up with pictures of the house progress. So for the past 3 weekends, we (that includes Jason, my sister, Bob-in-law and my mom) have cleaned up the front and back yard, put together patio furniture, taken up tack strip, removed a medicine cabinet and the list keeps going. It has been so much fun working on the house. I am ready to live there:) THANK YOU family for all your help!!!







oops....I was tired from watching them work:)






So I decided to paint the Utility (closet) Fuchsia! I know it is a loud color, but I think it will excited me to do the laundry. Also it is next to our kitchen which is Vert Olive (or green). No Kojie jokes. I just happen to like that combination more than Blue and Yellow:)






Bob working the camera.




Lastly, I wanted to give a shout out to Mrs. Traci Duty...she won the American Idol contest at her School last Friday!!! She has been singing every week for I think the past 8 weeks. She was AWESOME!!

New Adventure

That's right to all 5 of you who read my blog, Jason and I are going on a new adventure. We bought and closed on a house Monday! Yippee, hooray!

I still can't believe we have our very own home. It's been a great experience. We only looked at one house (that is because I had obsessively weeded them down on the Internet for the past 3 months). We had a good friend from church, Jason O'Quinn, be our Realtor/mortgage man. Shout out to Jason, you are awesome!

And most importantly, we stayed in budget.



We aren't moving into it just right away. It needs just a little bit of updating, i.e. floors, paint and some fun stuff like that. The house was built in 1960 so it has been around for a while. But that is why we love it, it has such great character and TREES! Being from Abilene I didn't know what a real tree was. Jason is from East Texas and he does. We have always wanted a magnolia tree. When we went to see the house for the first time, Guess what was in the front yard....


A house warming present from God. Thank you God for our magnolia tree.


Here are some pictures of the house. The pictures have the previous home owners stuff in it but it will give you a good idea.

You better believe that the home owner left the Christmas wreath for us.



Here is the kitchen.


Back patio...this will be our favorite spot in the Spring and Fall.


This is looking from the kitchen into the family room.



We hadn't been in the house but 15 minutes on Monday and Jason was already on the roof cleaning out the gutters. That is a good sign that he is OK with doing all the dirty work.



We even have already had our first house guests. The Fabulous Duty's!

This is their natural reaction of course.


Well there it is, our first home. If you ever feel bored on the weekends, give me a call. I will definitely have something for you to paint, clean, scrape, pull up, mow...I mean the list goes on. But if you just want to stop by and say hello, that will be just fine too.
Stay tuned for remodel pictures!

First Monday on a Saturday with the girls.

This past Sat. I and 3 other lovely ladies ventured out to East Texas to First Monday in Canton. It was such a fun day! The weather was BEAUTIFUL! And the fair food was delicious, except for the Cherry limeaid I got that tasted like a hot dog. Not sure what happened there. I am not an avid Canton shopper so I was a bit overwhelmed. We managed to fill Mauri's "Canton Cart". Thank you again Mauri for brining it!

There were a couple great finds of the day...

1. Traci found this amazing Tiger head.


2. Jamie found this really awesome cowboy purse.


3. Probably the best find of all...the Jesus puppet. All the other puppets had crazy faces and looked silly. Not Jesus, he was all business.










We had such a good day eating, talking and shopping. I am bringing a U-Haul next time to bring it all home!