Birthday Celebrations with Casey and Emily!

This past weekend, Nate's brother, Casey, and his wife, Emily, came to visit to celebrate all of our birthdays! (Em - July 26, Nate - Aug 2, Me - Aug 5, poor Casey has to wait until December.)  We had a great time with them and Bella really enjoyed Hudson being here.  There is a debate over whether Hudson is her cousin or boyfriend.  Nate says boyfriend and Casey says cousin....hmmm?  :)

They made it in really late Thursday night (or extremely early Friday morning, however you want to look at it) and we hung around the apartment Friday waiting on Nate to get off work.  Friday evening we celebrated birthdays by having dinner at Patrizio's, an italian restaurant, and then went to Black Friar on Mckinney Ave.  We planned on going dancing, but decided to put it off until Saturday night.

Casey and Emily 

Nate and I 

All of us! 

Saturday morning the boys woke up pretty early to play golf at Tour 18 in Flower Mound with friends Eddie and Jorge.  (I asked for pictures, but have yet to see any....) Em and I slept in, played with the pups, had breakfast at Einstein Bros, and went shopping! I took her to one of my favorite home stores, ZGallerie!  She fell in love too!! (I"m trying my hardest to give them tons of reasons to move to Dallas, hopefully this will pay off!) The boys were pretty tuckered out when they got home, so we ended up not going dancing saturday night either.  :( It is on our to-do list for their next visit.  We cooked dinner, made cookies (they were gone within minutes of coming out of the oven) and watched Shutter Island, then went to bed.

Sunday, we went to church, had lunch at Neo's (the pizza place), played with the pups, had Pink Berry yogurt, and went to Gloria's for dinner.  All in all, it was a pretty relaxing day.  We had one last breakfast at Einstein Bros Monday morning before they headed home to Arkansas.  I will leave you with some fun pics of Bella and Hudson playing!!

Chewing on their bones!

Playing tug-o-war!

Bella taking Hudson down!

Hudson being a sweet boy!

Sweet puppy love! 

Tuckered out from all that playing!! 

One Busy Weekend!

The weekend of July 23rd was pretty busy for us!  Nate's Dad, Gary, and his girlfriend, Christina, came to visit us from Arkansas.  It was really great having them here to see our place and hang out for a few days!  They got in Friday night and the first thing we did was take them by a house that we really liked.  Nate and I have been casually house hunting for a little while now.  Anyway, we found this house in the neighborhood we loved and thought it would be perfect for us.  G&C (short for Gary and Christina) said it had great drive-up appeal.  After looking at the house, we decided to try this new little pizzeria, called Neo's, with-in walking distance of our apartment.  It was actually a pretty decent evening in Dallas (for July), so we took the long way around the block to show them the science museum under construction, House of Blues, and a little bit of West End.  Neo's was great and has become a little favorite of ours.  

Saturday morning, we shared our regular routine of Einstein Bro's with G&C and then headed off on a short 3 hour drive to Marshall with Yuki and Bella and a plasma TV.  This was actually a pretty hard day for me.  Nate and I decided that it would be best for Yuki to live with my grandparents because she did not take well to getting a new doggy sister.  Plus, the g-parents are home all the time and have a great yard for her to play in.  (A little update: I'm pretty sure she has forgotten who I am and is taking to her new surroundings quite well.  I hear she gets peanut butter in her dog food, a little oatmeal in the mornings, sun bathes on the brick walkway, and has fallen off the top of the couch which almost gave my grandpa a heart attack. Let's hope she keeps those daring stunts to a minimum!) We also dropped off the TV for them to use in their living room.  We had 3 after getting married - do two people seriously need 3 TVs?  We didn't think so.  We spent all day hanging out in my grandparents backyard eating BBQ, letting Bella swim in the pool, and receiving golf lessons from my grandpa.  He has a pretty sweet set-up: a putting green and homemade driving range area.  From what I hear you can get lessons for the cheap price of $75 an hour, if you are interested! After the drive back to Dallas, we were pretty pooped, so we had sandwiches and cantaloupe and watermelon from Arkansas.  My first time to have yellow watermelon!  

Sunday was a leisurely day of shopping at Bass Pro Shop, eating crab legs at Joe's Crab Shack, and watching TV on the couch.  Oh wait, we did do one other thing...our realtor called and told us he found a house that we just had to come see, so we did!  It is across Walnut Hill from the other house, so still in the area we like.  We absolutely fell in love!!  G&C got to see both houses and actually witnessed us making an offer on both! How cool is that?  I called them the B and the G houses.  We knew right away that the G house was the one we wanted to fight to get.  It was brand new on the market, the past Friday actually, and we finalized our offer on Monday. After all the excitement of house stuff, G&C made a great dinner for us.  It was this omelet sandwich with bell peppers and fruit on the side.  YUMMY!!! (Nate and I tried to make it the very next night, but it wasn't as good. Bummer.) 

Monday morning we had to say "good-bye," but hopefully we showed them a good enough time that they will want to come visit again really soon!  :)  (We will get pictures next time, I'm sad to report that I have no pics to post of the weekend.)

Celebrate!

My Love, I wish you a happy birthday,

But it's me who has been blessed, 

For I got to spend this year with you, 

In our comfy, cozy nest.

You are a rare and beautiful person; 

You have delightful attributes, 

Like competence and intelligence, 

And what's more, lots of cutes!

You have mental strength and character

To guide you on your way;

People sense this strength in you, 

And care about what you say.

So let's celebrate your birthday, 

Because without it I'd never have met

My darling, wonderful you, 

The best thing that's happened to me yet!

By: Karl Fuchs

Honey, I hope you have an amazing day. I love you very much!