Small Group Reunion

Matt and I joined our first small group, through Northpoint Community Church, back in August of 2006. We had just been married about a month and wanted to find a way to get connected and meet other couples in the area.

We joined a group of 6 other couples and our friendship has continued throughout the years.

Each year we get together with this group and everyone brings their families and we just hang out and catch up. Its fun to see how the kids all change from year to year.

Each year our group also seems to grow as couples add to their families.

We started out with only 2 of the couples having kids, and between them 3 kids, now we are at 7 kids, with another little one on the way. Can't wait to see if there are anymore new additions by next year.

Auburn Roomie Reunion

In January, myself and my old college roommates- Sandra, Courtney, Carrie ventured down to the loveliest village on the plains, Auburn.

Carrie had been in Mobile staying with her parents for a while, and the Sandra was living in Atlanta at the time, doing her internship. With Courtney and I both in Atlanta too, we decided to all travel down to Auburn and meet up for the weekend.

We walked around campus reminiscing and taking pictures, and hung out in our hotel room a good bit. We also got to meet up with our other Auburn friend Lauren, and we all went out to eat at "Cock of the Walk", a small little rest. that serves up seafood. It was nice to all be together again.

Here are a few pictures from the trip:

Sandra and I

The ladies of apt. 531

Samford Hall

Courtney, Carrie and Sandra

Carrie and Courtney

and to all a goodnight.."

It's a little after Christmas now, but I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas spending time with friends and family, and celebrating the birth of Jesus!

We are spending a few days with the Sell's. We went to the Christmas Eve service last night with Matt's family, have had a nice Christmas day. We exchanged gifts, had a nice Christmas dinner, played some Wii and just hung out. It was nice just to do much of nothing all day and just hang out and relax.

We will head to B'ham in a few days as well, and spend some time with my family.

Hard to believe in a week it will be 2010! Can't wait to see what is in store.

Christmas morning

our little present

Macie posing in front of the tree

Family picture

Our Christmas decorations

our tree

Family Picture in Front of the tree

Spending time in B'ham

Posing with Tyler, Megan, and Bear

opening our gift from Tyler and Megan

mom and dad posing

me and Tyler

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!

Giving Thanks

Today we celebrate all we are thankful for! I am so thankful for our wonderful families, friends, good health, a home to provide shelter, jobs, freedom, the men and woman fighting for our country and so many other blessings, that we don't deserve.

Let us not only remember how thankful we are on this day, but every day of the year.
Sometimes its hard not to get caught up in the everday things of life, and really think aboutall of the blessings that we are given.
So, on today and every day, let's try to remember even the smalls things, that make us thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are some pictures from our Thanksgiving at my aunt's house.

Hanging out with my little cousins

Playing with the leaves

Everyone say Cheese!

Our fall decor

3rd Anniversary!

Yesterday Matt and I celebrated out third anniversary! I can't believe its been 3 years since we got married. Everything goes by so fast!
We have gotten to experience alot in this third year, and I can't wait to see whats in store for the next year.Some of the things we have done this year:

-Went to Disney World the day after we celebrated our 2nd anniversary.
- Purchased a new car. After driving the same car since I was 16 I said goodbye to the Sentra and got a Nissan Altima.- Matt's dad's family came down and we had them over to our house for the first time, to celebrate Christmas with them before heading to B'ham to celebrate Christmas with my family.
-Matt completed his 4th year of teaching.
-I celebrated my second anniversary with Merial.- We attended my cousins wedding in B'ham.
- Traveled to Las Vegas over Spring Break. My first time to go!
- Traveled to Michigan in June, for Matt's cousins wedding.- Went to the beach with my family over the 4th, our yearly tradition.

Our trip to Las Vegas was an early anniversary celebration, so for our official anniversary last night we went out to eat at one of our favorite rest., Stoney River, who by the way has the best rolls in the world! We rented a movie afterwards and then headed to bed to get ready for work the next day.
Here is a picture of us from our wedding day 3 years ago:

and us on our third anniversary:

Coming soon, another post on couponing, a belated post on Vegas, and house updates.

Kate minus Jon and the 8

About a month ago some friends and I went to see Kate Gosselin speak at Roswell United Methodist Church.

Tickets were just $5 for balcony and since I have been following the show for a while now I really wanted to hear her speak in person.

My neighbor Kelly and I rode together and met up with friends from my small grup Nicole and Jennifer as well as Nicole's friend Allison. We ate some dinner and then headed to the church.

It was pretty crowded although the church was fairly large, but suprisingly it did not completely fill up, there were still spots in the balcony.

Many of us were wondering what she was going to speak about esp. since recent rumors have been circulating about Jon and Kate separating.

Some pictures came out recently of Jon at a bar with some college students while he was away at his mom's taking care of her. Since then the media has been speculating all sorts of things and still is I think.

So we were all curious if she would mention this at all, which turns out she didn't.

Mainly she spoke of "their story" from when she and Jon meet, having the twins and finding out they were having sextuplets and she also answered some questions about the show.

She shared how her faith has always been a part of their story and leaning on God for strength through the trying times and the good times.

Afterwards she signed autographs and signed copies of her book. Kelly and I decided to wait out the line and I got my book signed. It was very quick but we got to speak to her for just a moment as she was signing and we also got to get some up close pictures while we were waiting in line as well.

Here are some pictures from the event.

Home improvements

There are always little things I think of that I would like to do to our house, I guess that is never ending.


I have a list of things that I at some point I would like to do in regards to decorating/changing some things up.

One thing I have wanted to do for a long time is paint our breakfast nook.
I thought about this soon after we moved in, just to give the living room/breakfast area a little something.

Our living room and breakfast area flow together and it would take so much to paint our entire living room, but the breakfast nook is a pretty small area, so I thought it wouldn't be too hard to paint it.

We searched out colors and bought three small sample sizes of different shades of red.
Originally I thought I wanted to do a tan/beige, just a little darker than the color of our walls now, but after thinking about it more and with my mom's thoughts as well I wanted to do something with more color to make it stand out.
So I started looking at reds.

After trying out three small sections on the wall we picked the red that we liked the best.

Now, note to anyone wanting to do red, b/c it is so dark and bold if you start with a white wall you must first do a coat of primer and then most likely 2 coats of the red.

Thank goodness it was a small space b/c an entire red room could take quite a while with doing three coats.

I think it turned out good and we even found some cheap art from Old Time Pottery to complete the look. I also picked up some fake lemons and red apples to use as the centerpeice and replace the green apples I had before.

Here is the completed project: