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!  

Is it a phobia?

     Today, I went to the grocery store for the first time in over 3 weeks. One might even say a month.  (Yes, I realize that this is not okay and probably puts me on some list for being a bad wife.)  I'm honestly not sure what to blame it on.  
     My Mom?   Whom also hates going to the grocery store and must have instilled this same hatred in me over the years.  (She will probably kill me for saying that.)  Let's be honest, I can't blame my Mom even if I want.  
     What about the crowds and inconvenience?  I seriously dislike having to weave the cart around the aisles, other shoppers, and small children.  Also, it doesn't help that I usually am lugging the groceries into the apartment and need to use the restroom at the same time.  Too much information, huh?  Sorry. :-/  
     This month I could definitely blame it on the fact that we have decided to eat "healthier" and to try to buy more organic products.  Both of these things are unfamiliar to me.  What is eating healthy?  Usually that means bland and boring.  Yuck!  I love mashed potatoes, fried chicken, chocolate, cookies, pies, macaroni and cheese, pasta of any kind....well you get the point.  And organic just confuses me.  The dirty dozen and clean fifteen - wait but last year tomatoes were on the "buy organic" list?  See what I mean, just confusing and overwhelming.  So, the remedy for that was to shop at Central Market.  It was a great experience, felt a little out of place, but got most of the shopping done.  Most. This means if I shop there, I have to go to two stores.  Ugh, the agony.  
     Maybe it is really the fact that even though there is food, albeit healthy, organic, or crappy, in the house, I don't exactly know what to do with it?  I mean I can make dinner and it tastes decent and maybe pretty good, if I'm lucky.  But, I'm only half-heartedly interested in cooking.  There are days that I'm really excited about learning about what goes with what, and how many portions of this you need to have a day.  Then there are days when all I think is blah, blah, blah - where is the take-out menu?  
    I feel really bad for Nate, so I guess that is what will be the fire that makes me boil.  Or that one day when I have children, I really don't want to be a mom that can't cook.  Anyway, maybe I will grow out of this dislike, or phobia?  


(Did I mention I wrote this to put off going to the second grocery store to finish my shopping?) 

Boom! Pop! Crackle! Pow! Whistle! Wow.

After much debate, Nate and I decided to make the trek to Lake Norfork in Arkansas with our new puppy, Bella, and Yuki, the chihuahua, and all of our stuff. (Nate and I tend to over pack.  Yup - he does it too!!! Sure does make me feel better that I'm not the only one.)  So, we packed all of our belongings and dogs in the truck and headed out Friday afternoon for the 7 hour drive to Jonesboro.  Yuki always rides in her crate, but we let Bella roam around.  (There is a bit of jealousy from Yuki. Imagine that!) We made it around 1:00am, went to sleep and woke up early to get new tires on the truck.  After dropping Yuki off with Grandpa Gary and Christina, we headed to the lake for a couple of fun days of boat rides, tubing and skiing.  Bella enjoyed playing with the family (and napping in her food/water bowls, so precious).  

We had a great time visiting with the family and enjoying the water!  Unfortunately, our fun ended with lots of mosquito bites for me and an ear infection for Nate.  :(  We were so exhausted from the drive and fun that we went to bed at 8:30!! (Yes, 8:30. It was still daylight out.)  I should report that Nate is feeling much better, thank goodness! 


A big thank you to Rilla and Bill and Gary and Christina for the wonderful southern hospitality and love! We wish we could spend more weekends with you guys.  Much love from us! 

Enjoying the water! 

Bahahaha got him! 

Hi from the tube! (Nate)

Bill getting ready to take off!

Enjoying watermelon! 

Bella staying cool in her water bowl...

Bella napping! 

Casey rockin' the wake!

Happy Independence Day!