Fourth

Our 4th of July was very low key, and we had family over on the 5th.  Nick and I had my family over to our house on the 5th for grillin' and good times.  We had an excellent time having everyone over to just hang out and relax.  Nick got a grill from my brother and has been dying to use it so we had burgers and these fabulously wonderful jalapenos.

They taste amazing and are incredibly easy to make.  The key is to make sure you scrape out all of the seeds and then rinse the jalapenos so that they are not crazy hot.  Then you fill them with cream cheese, wrap with bacon, and either grill or bake them.  So good and a crowd pleaser!

I also made some patriotic cupcakes!  We found super cute cupcake liners and decorations at Wal-Mart.  The red ones are pinwheels!  How awesome is that?!

In person they were far more blue and red, and much less pink and turquoise.  I promise!  All in all we had a lovely weekend, a fabulous fourth, and wished every week included a three day weekend!

Movie Night!

This past weekend in Houston was full of rain!  The rain was horrible, so many streets and highways were flooded.  Nick and I decided it was best for us to stay in.  This then lead to a practically free date night!  We had our movie night at home...picked a movie from our vast dvd collection, popped popcorn, and bought some candy.  It was perfect!  I highly recommend it as a cheap, wonderful date night.

Ninja!

My nephews informed me of this game that, apparently, all the kids are playing called Ninja.  It is kinda like fighting, but you only get to move once and then have to freeze while the other person moves.  Confusing, I know!  However, Tripp got Nick to play with him and it was hilarious.

It took some convincing for me to believe this was a real game and not one my brother made up and taught his kids...it wouldn't be the first time!  My brother created the "Trip Game" to play with his kids...without using hands you try and trip one another, and obviously if you get tripped and fall you lose.  It is important to remember that my brother is 33 and his kids are 6 and 9, so he doesn't exactly lose at this game.  The Ninja game is real though, before school was out my 6th and 7th graders wanted to play it in P.E.  The things I learn from being an aunt and a teacher are rather amazing!

500 Days!

Yesterday marked the 500th day of Nick and I being married.  I only realized this because I had a counter on Facebook to count down how many days until the wedding.  Once the wedding day came, it started to count the days we have actually been married.  I happened to look at it yesterday...on day 500.  I really can't believe we have married for 500 days!  It has been fast and absolutely wonderful.  Luckily for us the first year and half of marriage has not been hard, and I look forward to growing old with my best friend! 

I called Nick at work yesterday to jokingly wish him a happy 500 days of marriage, and he decided to surprise me...

Tulips and a cookie cake that reads 'Happy 500', I married the most wonderful man!

The Volunteer State

Nick and I just got back from a fabulous trip to Tennessee.  We met up with his parents and basically did the entire state sans Memphis.  Practically everyone asked us why we were going to TN, but we had a blast and there was so much to do!

Warning: Lots of pictures ahead!

First up was the Jack Daniel's Distillery.  Every single drop of Jack Daniel's is made here, and it is in a dry county which we thought was crazy and made for no free samples.  Although Nick and I are not big drinkers, the tour was ridiculously interesting.  Plus, Lynchburg, TN is one of the smallest, most fun cities ever!

We went to Ruby Falls, which is the largest underground waterfall.  AMAZING!  We toured the cavern, saw tons of amazing things, and at the end was this beautiful, natural waterfall that is underground!

If you look real close you can see Nick and I behind the waterfall...it was an incredible experience.

We went to Mayfield Dairy which is pretty much their Blue Bell.  It was a fun tour, and, as you can see, we had to wear hair nets before we could go in!  I don't typically do milk if it has no Hershey's syrup, but the milk at Mayfield was surprisingly good.  The ice cream was incredible, but it was definitely no Blue Bell!

Not only did we see the largest underground waterfall, but we also saw the largest underground lake.  This was in a completely different cave, and was just as amazing.  We actually got in a boat and got to check out the lake and cave.  The history of the caverns is pretty ridiculous...we saw where Indians lived, confederate soldiers hid, and where Moon Shine was made!

We toured Sweetwater Valley Dairy Farm as well.  This cow had just given birth (you can kind of see the baby behind her), and her utters looked like they were about to explode!  We saw the whole milking process, learned how they make cheese, and got some pretty awesome cheese too.  It was crazy how a lot of the things we did were connected...the corn mash that makes whiskey for Jack Daniel's goes to the Sweetwater Farm to feed the cows, the milk from the cows goes to Mayfield Dairy to be processed.

They have a museum that has all kinds of cars that were in movies and TV shows.  These were the actual cars used, and they have some celebrity's cars as well.  It was so cool to be able to get so close to these cars.  I am a sucker for cars...I know nothing about them other than make and model, but for some reason I love them.  My dad, my brothers, and I always go to the car shows, and I absolutely love it!

One of the coolest things was playing mini golf on the Smoky Mountains!  We rode this ski lift thing to the top of the mountain and played down the side of a mountain.  It was fabulous and beautiful!

The Country Music Hall of Fame was pretty rad, and even better then we originally thought it was going to be!


We went to several caverns, and here are some of the amazing formations we saw:

Tennessee was a blast, we did everywhere from Nashville to Chattanooga to Sweetwater to Lynchburg to Knoxville to so many more cities.  We had an incredible time, saw amazing things, did rad things, and thoroughly enjoyed our trip to the Volunteer State!

World Cup 2010

Anyone who knows Nick knows he is a soccer fanatic, and I mean that in every sense of the word!  This means our lives are all about the World Cup right now.  It is definitely an exciting time for the world and U.S.  Nick has decided he is jealous that I have all summer off and can watch every World Cup game; however, I so don't foresee that happening!

Happenings...

As usual I have been a slacker when it comes to posting.  Nick and I have kind of been all over the place.  We have had family stuff, friend stuff, and us stuff.  Yesterday was the first time we were actually at home most of the day.  Anyway, here is what is going down at our house...

I had mentioned that I was doing black frames down one of our hallways.  Here are some completed frames, and here is the start of the hallway:

It is still a work in progress, but I love it so far.  I love having old family pictures in the house, and having everyone that we love be in our house is awesome.  I think it makes our house feel like a home!

Then I changed the breakfast table to be more summery, and the best part...it was free!  You can't see how fabulous the place mats are, but trust me!  They are from Target and are so so cute.  The red napkins I had.  The sunflowers are from a garden turned farm just across the street.  They said we could take however many we wanted, and I put them in a Santowski milk bottle.  So lovely!