Puppy Love

While we were in Chicago right before we came home, Jonny hap another little surprise for me. We have wanted a puppy for a while, but was waiting for the right time. We were looking for one before we went on our trip, and well we came back with another little girl in the family. :) This is Harley, she is a " miniature aussi" Australian Shepherd, mixed with Jack Russel terrier. She is 9 weeks in this picture, and will stay a pretty small dog. She is very small and weighs around a pound or so. She is so sweet, and loves to sleep and cuddle with you. We already love her, because Australian Shepherds are the number one dogs to train, she has learned so fast and so much, just in a week she is already potty trained and can sit, lay down and come. We are excited to have this new little addition the the family.

1 Year Closer To Eternity

 Jonny wanted to make our first anniversary a special one, so he surprised me with going to Chicago. It was beautiful with all the lights with it being right after Christmas. Our hotel was right on the miracle mile with all the lights and our window was looking right off it. Our room was great it was like a little apartment with stairs and everything, very classy and very nice. ( Jonny did a great job :) )


After we checked into our place, we decided to go walk around a little bit, there were beautiful lights and HUGE decorated trees, and really cool sculptures everywhere. We walked around a bit just enjoying the views.

On our anniversary night we decided we just had to try out this world famous, Chicago Deep Dish Pizza... We found the best pizza place in town and went for it, after a long wait we were seated even right next to the window looking out at the lights. I mentioned to the lady that it was our 1 year anniversary and latter after our amazing, delicious, Deep Dish we got a even better Free dessert. It turned out to be a great night spent, with my Prince Charming.

The next morning we woke up early and drove to the big monument the Cloud, aka " The Bean" in Millennium Park. I have always seen the "bean" on movies and shows and always thought it would be cool to see. Turns out, it is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be :) it was soooo cool and really pretty with it reflecting off the city. Its so SHINY, I would have loved to see it at sunset or sunrise. I think its a definite thing you need to see if you are in Chicago area.

I am so grateful to have such an amazing husband who works so hard and who loves me with all of his heart. I don't know what I would ever do without my best friend by my side. He is the most amazing husband, friend, and companion anyone could ever ask for. Our first year was a very busy and amazing one, I am so excited to spent the rest of Eternity with my Prince Charming Jonny. He is everything and more I wished for in a husband when I was a young girl. I knew that when I met and married Jonny that Dreams do come true. :) 

Where The Wild Things Are

The day before our anniversary we decided to go to Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, it was free and it was one of the best zoo's that we have ever been to !!! It was cold outside, but most of the animals where inside, so that was nice to be warm.

We saw all kinds of really cool things happen. Above in the bottom right picture that is me in a log, with a black bear in hibernation on the other side of it :) ( how cool is that.) We also got to witness a jaguar 'rawer' at us, and attack the fence. A baby hippo jump into water, swimming and playing, the lion and tiger up close , just on the other side of a glass. while we were in the monkey section we watched the two big, male gorillas fight over dominance. ( it was pretty funny, to see the alpha get annoyed with the other little boys testing him.) We saw Huge birds of pry fly, a baby rhino, and big sea lions racing in the water. I would say that, this visit was the most active I had ever seen any of the animals. It was so much fun, just to walk around and see the animals when the zoo was not so crowded with people. Believe me, some people were there and I just happened to witness some very funny things being said. These were a couple of the ones I can remember....

grown woman ( no kids ) : " What animal is this?'  ummmm that would be a tiger..... 

Grown Man: " Is that an otter or beaver?" really ..... 

Little kid: "Dad look the gorillas layed eggs."  Dad: " Sweetheart gorillas dont lay eggs" kid:"oh....." 

 We had lots of laughs and loved seeing the well taken care of animals at the Lincoln Park Zoo. I guess going to the zoo is just one of our things we do, Jonny and I have been to a lot of zoo's together this year .Maybe one day, we will make it a real AFRICAN SAFARI.

 

Christmas Cheer

This was our first official Christmas together, we were suppose to fly out to California but plans changed and we ended up having our own little Christmas here in Nauvoo, Illinois. Our Christmas was full of Cheer and fun :). We woke up made cinnamon rolls ( very yummy)  and then sat around our cute little tree and opened our gifts one by one. Christmas gifts are great, but I think the most important gift was being together and knowing that we how much we love each other.

This year was also a little funny, we didn't know for sure what we were doing until the day before Christmas eve, so there was no decorations out. Until we found a box in the shed full of Christmas decorations. Now finding this surprise the day or so before Christmas I just could not overlook it so we started decorating. We went to wall-mart and got a 7 foot tree for $10....yep $10 amazing. Its amazing how much cheaper Christmas decorations are the day before hahah :) The BELIEVE sign I made while we were in Houston and am so glad I made it :)

Its our first Christmas officially married together and we were spending it as just the two of us. I HAD TO MAKE AN AMAZING DINNER, my mom taught me very well. I made Ham, stuffing, potatos, green bean casserole, and sweet potato pie .. It was all soooooo Yummy and we didn't even put a dent it the food that night. we had left overs solid for another week at least .. I thought it would be a lot harder, but it went pretty smoothly. Now I know that when the time comes I can make a great feast :)

 What a blessing it is to live in a home that is warm, having family who loves you and a place were one can feel Christs love. I feel like that is the most important gift of Christmas is the love that our Heavenly Father has for us that he gave us his son, and our brother to come down to this Earth for us. I feel like the past few years I have gotten caught up with the "Christmas sprite" of the gifts, food and being with family, but this year I had a little more time to think. I am so grateful for our Christs birth and the sacrifices he made all through out his life, not only for every man and woman on this earth who ever was and will be, but he made that sacrifice for me. Jonny and I are so grateful to be able to have that knowledge and to share that same warm feeling together.

Christmas Tree Hunt

Its almost Christmas and we do not even have a tree, whats up with that. ( Where is the holiday spirit) so Jonny and I decided ( mostly Jonny) that we will go out in the back woods of our home and find ourselves a Christmas tree. I was afraid of ending up with a Charlie Brown tree, but Jonny had bigger dreams in mind. It had just snowed about a foot the night before so we bundled up and went out hiking up the hill, looking for our tree.

Jonny found an old rusted saw in the shed and we were off, everything was just covered in snow and leave less, we were having a hard time finding a tree. We have noticed that our yard is what seems to be an animal highway crossing. When we reached the top of the hill we found tracks everywhere. The day before we heard wild turkeys in the woods.... well they were for sure turkeys and BIG ones to the tracks were as big as Jonnys hand ( and Jonny has big hands) We even could see where they had nested for the night with 20 or so spots that you could see where they had Laid. There was also deer tracks and you could see where they had slept to. Its amazing to be able to see all kinds of animal tracks when it snows. Without the snow we would have never seen any tracks and would not even know how many animals come walking, hopping or strolling through our yard !!!! We have even been talking about getting a Critter Cam to see them, I think it would be pretty cool, because some of the tracks we cant find out what they are and some start and stop out of no where...
Happy to say that we ended up having a great adventure behind out house and trucking through the snow, but sad to say no tree was found... Latter that night we FOUND one at the store and brought it back home :)
Our Imagination got us into yet another fun Adventure !

There's No Business like "Snow" Business!!

Well we are now both in Nauvoo now, after a lot of driving we made it. The only problem we encountered was when we eventually did get home after a very long drive, it had snowed so hard and iced that we could not pull up our driveway..... Me being from North Carolina, I have never snow shoveled anything... yes, it snows in NC and iced but we never needed to. Jonny said that he had done it a few times, but never while growing up ( being in the desert and all). Since we made it home and we now live right on a highway we had no choice but to break out the old, very used, yellow snow shovel ! Our driveway is very steep so we were slipping and sliding the whole time while we shoveled, taking turns of course.( defiantly gave my back a WORKOUT). 

Now while we were shoveling, it was snowing and also late at night. We were able to shovel enough to be able to get one car half way up the driveway and the other just at the base.... The next morning it was to cold for our Honda Civic to even start. So now that we are here I have shoveled the driveway once by myself and Jonny has done it a handful of times while I follow him with a very HEAVY bag of salt, Teamwork is where its at. In the top picture, that is the beautiful Mississippi river frozen over !!!  That picture was taken at the bottom of our driveway, so yeah I would say we are pretty close :).I would be silly to say, that this will be our only time shoveling our driveway for a while. Since then it has snowed many, many times, looks like by the end of Winter I will have a back of STEAL :) you gotta love all the snow and ice.

A Bunch Of Turkys

This year Jonny and I visited my family for Thanksgiving, and it turned out great because my whole family was able to make it home for the holidays. It had almost been a year since we had seen any of my sisters and brothers, and we were very excited to play card games, have family talks and eat lots and lots of turkey. The picture above was taken right before our Thanksgiving dinner, on our front steps. Our Family is growing for sure !!!!!

 

We were so excited to be able to see and hold the new baby Emmett and to spend time with the little boys Mason and Deacon. Even though we were so excited our plane was still delayed, because of a huge thunder storm that came in. Even with a little wait we made it home and was able to be with the family.( In the top right picture) that was the first time Jonny has held such a small newborn baby, and he did really well. We were both so surprised how small he was, but within the week and a half we were there he chucked up a little bit. It must have been that Thanksgiving Dinner his momma ate :).

Thanksgiving dinner was sooooooo yummy we had everyone in the kitchen at one point making their dish for the dinner, it was a little over whelming at times, but it was really cool to just step back and see everyone in the family laughing and talking and helping each other. Jonny and I made mash potatoes and pistachio pudding. I made so much potatoes around (5 pounds) that it was coming out of our ears by the end of the week. Good thing everyone loved it and it was all gone by two days. Even Emmett was a little overwhelmed when we placed him next to the pumpkin pie, it was about the size of him !!!! Mason and Deacon loved our pistachio pudding and called it pistachio ice-cream :) they ate it all up, wanting more and more.. ( I'm glad it was a hit with the little guys.) We ate and ate and ate till our turkey pants would not stretch any farther...

The best part of thanksgiving with my family is our tradition, each year we go around the table and say what we are thankful for and how much we are grateful for everything we have and all of our blessings. It was really amazing to hear all of my parents, brothers, sisters and even my nephews talk about what they are thankful for. Jonny and I are truly blessed to have such a loving family and such support from every direction we look. There were tears of happiness and love and those are the best feelings that I could hope for our holiday together.

 

After dinner I was lucky enough to be able to take a little turkey nap with this guy laying on my chest. He is so sweet and so snuggly, I just wanted him all to myself all week. I loved it when he would grab my fingers with his little hands and hold on for dear life :). It was so fun because Jonny and I got a change to babysit Mason, Deacon, and Emmett for a night and it was so much fun:). I had Emmett and Mason and Deacon just wrestled and wrestled with Jonny till they all just tuckered themselves out.

At the very bottom (sorry its a blurry pic) is Jonny playing with the boys, they were moving so fast it was hard to take a decent picture, and of course me and Emmett just hanging out at the top right.  Another thing we were able to do is visit Jonnys friend Rob and his wife, who live in Winston Saleem NC. We spent the day visiting and meeting his baby. I'm so glad that we were able to make it out there to see friends and to catch up, they had not seen each other in a year or so. On the way up we passed the big peach water tower, its Masons favorite.  

I was so greatful to be with all of my family during the Thanksgiving holiday. I love each and every one of them so much and I'm so thankful that I was born into such an amazing family. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, I hope that your Turkey day was filled with love and laughter.

WHAT HAVE I DONE........

I have been wanting to do something with my hair for a long time, and was really scared to do anything, I mean I get scared getting my hair cut so I was a little hesitant to do anything. ONE day my friend Heidi and Emily where going to do hair... Since Heidi went to beauty school I felt a little better. Sooooo a long story short I WAS PRESSURED into dying my beautiful hairs..... I picked out a "BOX" mistake 1, that was really close to my actual hair color, just adding a little warmth they say.... well that little warmth turned my hair RED !!! Yep red..... Not knowing what just happened or how to react I liked it at first, then Jonny saw it and in a nice way expressed that he did not like it and that I destroyed my hair... :( And I totally agree with him.... WHAT WAS I THINKING.... sooo for 2 days I was a solid Red head, and not saying anything against red heads, but red is not my color. It had to be fixed so I went to the salon and did my best to fix it.

So at least now I have some highlights and low-lights put into my hair so it is not all one color. I feel like it is better than the red, even though my hair still has a red tint to it, it will just have to do.... My hair is ok now as iv gotten use to it, but I will never dye my hair again until I will be needing so when those grays start popping through..... which hopefully will not be for a while for me. First experience of hair not so good, I think I have learned my lesson. I will one day advise my daughters to not dye there hair EVER....... Should have listened to ya mom. :)

Born To Be WILD

 

 In October Jonny and I volunteered for the Zoo with there special Halloween event. It was a lot of fun to see all the kids in there costumes. We spent all day putting little tattoos on babies, toddlers, and adults, by the end of the day we had pruney fingers and tired backs but it was worth serving.. as well as FREE ZOO TICKETS. 

since Jonny and I will be moving soon we decided that we cant let our free tickets go to waste so we decided to spend the day at the zoo :). It was so fun to see all the animals and every type of monkey and bird I think are known to MAN.. they had quite the collection I was impressed. We loved seeing the sea tanks and learning about the animals around the world. It was really fun, but also really sad. Jonny and I both agree that every zoo that we have ever been to the animals just look depressed and sad, just walking around in a circle over and over again. We both think that going out in the actual WILD would be much more exciting and dangerous ... now that seems like REAL FUN to me :) !!! The most important thing for me was spending time with my husband, holding hands and walking and enjoying the happier animals. We even tried our luck with fitting in, while looking through the African  masks, it was a fun day spent with a fun Best Friend !!!

When Life Gives you Lemons, Make Lemonade !!

If your going to live in Texas you gotta love lemonade, because of all those HOT summer days.... Jonny has a co-worker that has a lemon tree, and every two weeks or so he just brings him 1-2 bags full of fresh lemons. At first he brought them home and I was a little confused of what I was suppose to do with them, but Lemonade was the only thing that just made since :) ... So every two weeks we get more lemons and we make more lemonade, its like we have a never ending supply of lemonade on our hands :) and its very yummy and super easy to make !!! Until we get a juicer one day, Jonny will just have to do :) its hard work to juice all of those lemons, but as you can see he is more than happy to be my handsome juicer for now :D. Its always fun cooking with Jonny and just spending time together doing what we love and making what we love too !! We will MISS THOSE SUMMER DAYS... Bring on the Winter... :)

Oh, the places we will go !!!

For those of you who do not know, Jonny and I have been presented the opportunity to take a field assignment in Illinois, for 10 months. We had 2 weeks notice of Jonny needing to be out there, reporting on December 2nd just after out thanksgiving in North Carolina. We will be living in Nauvoo, Illinois with the Mississippi River right in the front yard, Its beautiful. We will miss Texas and all of the amazing friends that we have made, we feel truly blessed to have had everything we had in our "almost" first year of marriage. Texas has been amazing but Illinois will be filled with many, many new adventures.It was unexpected to pick up and leave everything and move, just as we have gotten our house to feel and look like our home. I know this will be a great thing for Jonny and I and we are very excited for the new change. Good things are going to happen wherever we go, I know that when im with Jonny that is home for me. :) Together we can make any adventure fun and memorable, I would follow Jonny around the world and back if needed :).


 

Caught in the "Web" of Friends

Our first Halloween was a great one!!! I didn't know what to do for our costumes, but after much thought and help we came up with Jonny as lightning, and Me as struck by lightning. It was really easy I made the lighting bolt and got some cloths and an umbrella and Jonny and I went to town lighting things on fire! I thought it was pretty clever and everyone at our church Trunk-or-Treat thought it was awesome as well.:) The picture above is us with our friends Emily and her husband Tyler. The trunk or treat was fun, but thank goodness kids only get that much candy once a year, THEY WHERE ALL CRAZY !!!
This year Jonny and I threw a Halloween party with all of our couple friends we have made. We have made some great ones, we are so blessed to have such awesome friends as these. We had hot chili for dinner and spooky desserts as well as best couple costume, awards were given to the best spooky treat and costumes.We played games all night, ate and had so much fun !!!!!  Below are the costumes of all the Couples...

 

The winner of the costume contest was Kevin and Karen. who dressed up as characters from the movie UP as the boy and the bird. Jonny and I were runner up, but I think everyone's costumes were so great :) 

The party was so much fun, thanks to Emily Young helping me put it together... I could have not done it by myself. She was in charge of the games and it turned out to be a blast. Our apartment was filled with spiderwebs across the ceilings and and skeletons hanging around. By the end of the night with all of the spooky treats I feel like everyone left in a sugar coma..... waking up the next morning with a Sugar hangover :P ( I think im staying away form sweet things for a while). 

We are so blessed to be able to have and make such great friends and a home to have a party in. Im so excited for next years party, its going to be even SPOOKIER :D 

Carving Memories one Pumpkin at a time

  

We were so excited for Halloween and the Pumpkin carving creativity this year. When we saw the big carved pumpkins in Dallas we were inspired to do something like it. We looked on line and we decided to try our hardest to copy the pumpkin we found as best as possible, and I think we did a pretty good job with our own spin put on it. We got together with our friends Emily and Tyler and we ate Pumpkin cookies and carved away. Both of ours turned out really great. Each couple hat a pumpkin and it turned out to be a great night. The only bad thing is, for some reason pumpkins go bad here really fast here in Texas. Ours rotted and was covered with mold within 2 days... Sad, but worth carving it in the first place:) Maybe next year we might enter Jonnys company pumpkin carving contest !!!

 

 WE HOPE YOU HAVE A SPOOKTACULAR Halloween ......

Wreaths!!

This month iv made some cute crafts, Iv decided that why would I want to spend $45 on a Holiday wreath that I dont really like or spend, $15 and make one you really like... It seems like a win win to me :) I made our Holloween wreath with our H in the middle and it was sooo easy and fast, and I think it turned out super cute. Shoot if its that easy no wounder why there are places like Etsey, you can make BANK off of things like this. ( There will always be people willing to buy) My friend Emily Young saw our new wreath and wanted to make one of her own, so I went over and helped her createt her new Thanksgiving Holiday Wreath :) I think it turned out really, really cute. I just love having the last name letter in there somewhere!

I am so excited to do our christmas wreath and all of our holidays form now on, now that I know how easy and fun it is, I dont know why more people dont make them....  

Rated Meals

Thanks to my wonderful mother for teaching me how to cook, and my dad for teaching me how to experiment with foods to become not a cook but a "CHIEF"as he likes to call it, I know Jonny is sure thankful.Since Jonny and I have been married I have had to alter the way I cook a little bit.... I love spicy foods and foods that punch ya in the mouth with flavor ( got that one from my dad for sure).. but Jonny on the other hand, cant even look at a pepper without getting scared and flavors are to over powering for him......sooooo I learned to compromise with a system I made up for Jonny. I asked Jonny to rate my meals on a scale of 1-10. 1 being never make it again please, to a 10 that its restaurant quality please make it again :). Each week I try to at least have 4 nice home cook meals prepared for Jonny when he gets home from work.( he works so hard all day the least I can do is make the man a great dinner) Below are some of the meals I have made that he liked. Now in all fairness I have never gotten a 1 before thank goodness, but I tend to get 8-9.5 and a ten on a good day. Over time I started getting more 10's so Jonny had to change his system to be even harder to achieve a 10 !!!!!

Rice, salsa chicken with broccoli- 9

  Stuffed bell peppers with rice and meat- 10       

In our home you can never go wrong with Chocolate Chip pancakes, with the occasional banana pancakes so this was a 10 for sure :D                                                      

Homemade chicken and cheese pizza- 9 I added a little Tabasco hot sauce to mine and I thought it was a 10 ;)

Banana Bread some with Chocolate chips, some with pecans and some with both :) So yummy I made a bunch and gave some to friends. Jonny really likes banana bread so he gave it a 10.5... That made me feel pretty good for sure :) :) :) :) Im so happy that my husband likes my cooking, even when its a little spicy for him he still eats it, bless his heart. ( I just make sure to kiss his burning lips after dinner) So far the system has worked great and it makes me want to try hard to get higher numbers each meal !!!! I think Jonny is a pretty lucky guy and has it MADE :).

Texas State Fair

This weekend since Jonny had Friday off we decided to go to the Texas State Fair, both of us had never been to a State Fair before so we both thought it would be a great experience to go at least once ... We wish it was in Houston, but we had to drive all the way to Dallas which is 4 hrs away  but seems a lot farther. We got there and we decided to camp at a place called Cedar Hill, its right in the middle of Dallas and its Huge !! We got our campsite right on the water, it was beautiful we got there right as the sun was setting :).. That next morning we took our pink and yellow floats and hit the water, we were the only ones out there. The water was soooo nice and cool with a breeze, it felt great Jonny and I could have stayed there all day in the water... but we had a famous fair to get to !!!

The night we camped we roasted hotdogs and made s'mores, Jonny even created his own little way of roasting his mallows ... bottom right pic..This worked until he caught it of fire, then started waving it around. The flaming Mallow whipped right past my FACE, after that no more roasting hahah. For breakfast that Saturday morning we went to this famous cinnamon role  place, where they can make them bigger than the size of a cookie sheet. ( the biggest one is $75 and can feed more than 45 people) We decided just to go with the smallest size one, which was still HUGE. ( top right, that plate is bigger than a normal plate too) We ate breakfast and got stuffed really fast, we could not even finish the bun.

The fair was HUGE... a little overwhelming. There was soooo much to see and do that you didn't know which way or direction to go in. It felt like we just kinda wandered around all day, but we did see some cool things... We saw this guy who carves pumpkins, but what you may not realize is that these pumpkins are ginormous !!!  Each of these pumpkins come up to my waist and prob weigh over 400-500 pounds. With all kinds of crazy faces carved into them, it was amazing..
Of course we had to stop at the car places... Jonny had his eye on this dream truck a Ford raptor. I had to promise him that we would get one, one day just to get him to walk away from it.

 The fair was a good one, with BIG TEX in the middle ( big guy) he's been there for over 70 years, appearing every year at the state fair. He even talks to you if you stand there long enough, I thought it was cool. Our friends Emily and Tyler Young met up with us at the Ferris wheel and we took a ride together. It was a really, really big one and we could see the whole city and fair ground when we were at the top. The last thing we did was attend a show called Birds of the World... Where there was all kinds of wild birds and they did all kinds of tricks, some even sang songs to us !!! I think the most funny part of this show was, during it I was eating on a Huge turkey leg.. Poor birds hahah I just had to get a turkey leg, I remember when I was little we would go to Disney World and my parents would always get us each a turkey legs...what a great memory :) :)
The fair was a lot of fun and I am very glad that Jonny and I both were able to get our share of state fairs in.... I think we both decided that we like smaller fairs a little better. Dallas was really pretty and we will defiantly go back and camp again.

Greetings From Emmett !!

This past week my sister Jessica and Eric had there baby boy Emmett! 

This is my beautiful sister and her baby boy getting ready to go home for the first time. He is just sooo cute and little. He weighed 6lbs13oz 20.75 inches long, with blue eyes and blond hair. I am so proud of my new little nephew... I cant wait to hold him in November, during Thanksgiving time. 
Its crazy to think that my sister Vanessa is pregnant and will be having another this year. Our family is growing one baby at a time, I am so excited for our family reunions in the future. They are going to be so full of fun with all of us and little cousins running around :) :) :). 

Here are some more pics of  my new adorable nephew Emmett... 

 Born OCTOBER 10, 2013 

I just think this pic is soo cute, he is so long... LOOK at those long arms and legs :) Jessica says that he is a very quite baby who loves to snuggle and is very observant.