Sunday, February 26, 2012

Moving Day!

A few months ago, I posted about our journey of buying our first house! Since then, we closed on our house on December 30, 2011 and we moved in on January, 14, 2012! It's definitely been an adventure since then. Here's a little re-cap of our move:

It happened by coincidence that the same day we were planning to move was the same day that I was scheduled to attend a speech therapy conference for work.  For those of you who are SLP's, the conference I was scheduled to attend was the Beckman Oral Motor Conference.  I was thrilled to have the opportunity to go & learn more about this area of our field...and, my work helped pay for a large portion of the cost to attend! So, it's not like I was going to skip out or miss the conference, but at the same time-I felt like I needed to be an active participant in helping us move. I was a little torn, but I ended up going to the conference (and loved it! If you're an SLP, I highly recommend it!). Fortunately, Kyle was able to recruit some wonderful friends/coworkers/his brother to help us move the big items.  I packed our boxes the weekend before & the week of, so we were ready to go! I left for my conference Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m. I got home around 6:00 that evening, and EVERYTHING had been moved from the apartment to the house. I was in awe.  I felt a tad bit guilty, but I was so thankful for all the help we had from friends & family!

My sweet parents also came into town to help us get everything moved over & set up in our new place.  Thanks to my sweet, self-less Mom who laid contact paper in every single cabinet and drawer in the house AND for my technology savvy of a Dad who set up our computer and new T.V. (and who later helped us fix both toilets! More on that in a bit...)

Here are a few photos of the day:



 Mom & I upacking the kitchen

 Boxes, boxes & more boxes!

 Sweet hubby setting up furniture in our room

 The GREEN bedroom! Woa...
 Our new T.V. :)

 Sweet Daddy


The Peter Rabbit Bedroom

At the end of Day 1, our hall bathroom toilet decided to overflow. Awesome. And, it didn't just overflow a little bit, it was more like a river flowing from the bathroom to the room across the hall...
We looked at each other and said, "Welcome to homeownership. :)"
Ha, later that weekend, Kyle & my Dad spent countless hours fixing both toilets.. Thanks to these wonderful men in my life, I now have 2 functional toilets in my house. Ha, TMI?


Just a little tired at the end of Day 1

The next day my extended family drove over from Ft. Worth to see our house! Thanks Papa & Grandma, Tim, Ruth, Brittany, Beverly & Ben for making the trip across DFW to visit us!




 Everyone on the front porch!


Everything was moved out of the front room by the end of the day!
You can actually see the pretty wood floors!



Later that evening, my sweet brother-in-law and sister-in-law brought us dinner!
It was just what we needed & tasted SO good.

We are loving our new home! However, with this house has come lots of projects big & small...seems like we have a constant to-do list. Through it all, we really are enjoying every minute of it!

Come visit us, please! :)

More pictures of the house & updated projects coming soon. Stay tuned!

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Abilene Christmas & New Years!

So, I realize I am posting waaay out of order here, but I had to post about our Christmas & New Years in Abilene!

Since we spent the actual Christmas holiday in Chicago this year, we traveled to Abilene the next weekend to be with my family & celebrate. Here are lots of pictures to fill you in on our visit:



 Grandmommy came over for Christmas, too!

 They got each other the same Cowboys sweatshirt & didn't even know it!


 My present from my little bro- The cutest Christmas decoration for next year!

 The boys & their new Baylor belts



Thanks for reading my Christmas post, even though it was so VERY late! At least I finally put pictures up, right? :) Better late than never!

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope eveyone had a fantastic Valentine's Day! We enjoyed our little holiday at home...we usually don't go all out for Valentine's, but we also love having an excuse to celebrate something. It seems to makes life more fun if you get to celebrate the little things in life every once in awhile. :)

We made a stellar dinner - or, maybe I should say Kyle made the "stellar" part of the dinner which was fresh salmon cooked out on the grill on a cedar plank. YUM. I prepared the sides (rice, veggies & crescent rolls - Thanks Amy!)






After dinner, I made some Double Chocolate Chip Cookies to give away to my clients tomorrow! (Even though it will be one day late..oops!) These cookies are SO GOOD..let me know if you're interested in the recipe & I'll send it to ya!





Happy Valentine's Everyone!

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Chi-town Christmas!

I know I am waaaay behind, here. However, I have this OCD-ness in me that makes me post things in sequential order. So, since I haven't posted at all about Christmas, here it is...

We spent Christmas in Chicago this year!
We always love visiting Chi-town & we had a great time. 
 Only one thing that was a dissapointment: It didn't snow.
This Texas girl was bummed.





While we were there, we went downtown to see the city at Christmas- its always fun walking the Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue.




Marilyn Monroe statue by the Trinity River

Outside the Lego Store


The City in Legos!


Stopped at Ghiradelli, of course..


Enjoying my White Chocolate Mocha

We loved seeing both the Phillips and the Moore sides of the family over Christmas! We were able to get a picture with Papa Moore and the Souders family. We missed having Nana with us on Christmas Eve, but it sure was fun visiting with her the day before!


Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of the Phillip side..next time!

It makes me laugh just thinking about family traditions at Christmas time-- if you have ever celebrated a holiday with my family, you know that pictures are a BIG DEAL! In fact, if you don't take a picture at every  Christmas gathering with each individual family and then again with the whole family together (using the tri-pod, of course!) then you have officially ruined the holiday...haha. Okay, maybe not totally ruined, but you've at least put a damper on it because pictures are just the most important thing! 

Well, remember that one time I got married & change my last name? Now that I am a part of another wonderful family, I've learned that not all families are as crazy about pictures as mine.. haha. Actually, I don't know if there are ANY families out there that love taking pictures more than my family does!

Alright...next post, our Christmas in the {325} with lots of pictures included :)