Standup and cutie pies

 This past Friday, a bunch of our Baylor people friends got together to see an old friend perform at Hyena's in Dallas.

 This is Clinton Pickens

 

 Clinton went to Baylor with us and was on the crew team for a couple years.  He was such a fun person to have around, always making everyone laugh!  We always knew Clinton would go on to do something fabulous because he was one of the most talented people we knew.  Clinton did go on to Los Angeles and has been doing stand up and commercials and I remember last year when we were watching the Super Bowl, all of a sudden we saw Clinton on TV!  Pretty cool!!!

It was so good to see him on Friday and he definitely did not disappoint...he's hilarious!  And a clean hilarious!

Again, there were about 10 of us that were out that night and it was so much fun to be with so many of our friends.  We hit up a couple cool places and it also was super nice not having to worry about getting back in time to relieve the babysitter because Dennis and Tracy stayed with the kids.  Nick and I got home after 1:00am and I can't even remember the last time we did that.  It was a blast!

Emily and I were trying to figure out how to work Conner's phone, both Emily and I have iPhone's but for some reason his iPhone was just a little tricky to figure out....apparently. 

Oh Blake....what are we going to do with you??

After about 5 tries, we finally got a good picture :)

 This weekend has been gorgeous weather so we've been trying to play outside.  This morning while Cole was running errands with Granddad, we took Finley outside to play.  Her and Dad were playing hockey and these next three pictures crack me up....she looks like a zombie, trying to get that hockey stick.

It's almost like a flip book...

 Cole and Finley wore matching outfits today and they were absolutely adorable so I "tried" to get some pictures of them today.  I mean, they were so cooperative, looked at the camera, said "cheese"...perfect angels!!!......Not!

This is about as good as I got....aren't they precious!

 "Cheese!"

 She is always making this face lately and it's hilarious!

 Cutest smile ever...love this kid, he pretty much melts my heart!

I had to share this picture of Finley during her nap.  She is always sticking her legs through the posts of her bed and today when I walked in I just had to laugh.  I guess she's taking after her brother in the crazy sleeping positions.

Meet Finley's best friend, her name is Roxy.  I can't remember the last time I've had a picture of the dogs on our blog but this is pretty much the story of Finley and Roxy's life.  If Finley has food in her hand, Roxy is attached to her hip.  Finley loves it though because she absolutely loves her doggies!  They were taking a break on Cole's bed this afternoon...:)

Hope Everyone had a great weekend!!!

Last two weekends

 I haven't blogged in awhile so I'm going to update on the last couple weekends.  Last weekend was Blake's birthday celebration so we got a sitter and hit the town.  We absolutely love our children more than anything, but we certainly love enjoying a night out without them!!

This is about how excited we were to be kid free :)

 See that empty car seat in the back there?  Yep.....

 Nick hates it when I do these self portraits of us.  Especially while he's driving :)

 Blake picked the restaurant and it is one that none of us have even heard of.  It was a tiny little place that only had about 10 tables and only 2 or so servers.  The food was amazing and Blake definitely picked a wonderful place. 

 Emily and the birthday boy

 After dinner we went out to a karaoke bar and it was so much fun!  Blake even got up and sang a song.  We will definitely be going back there, hopefully not too far into the future.

Now, this past weekend, we spent it in Houston with our good friends the Bell's.  Before heading down there Friday afternoon, we stopped at Conner's house to drop Nick's car off so he didn't have to come all the way home.  Conner was home and brought out his bear...I mean, dog Cooper.  Cooper is a goldendoodle and seriously looks like a bear!  He is absolutely enormous and would definitely scare me if I saw him wandering down the street alone.  Even Finley, who is absolutely obsessed with dogs, was kind of wondering what on earth that giant fluffy animal was.  He really is such a sweet dog though!

Nick decided to ride Cooper before we hit the road...poor Cooper!

We headed down to H-town and I was sort of dreading the drive because our sweet little daughter has never been a great traveler.  She has never enjoyed being in the car seat and lets the entire car know how unhappy she really is.  Hence, the reason we decided against driving 14 hours to Colorado for Christmas this year.  Paying that kind of money for flights is well worth it to save ourselves from the ear damage.  :)  We love that girl!!! :)

Anyway, she actually did fantastic on the way down there!  She was supposed to take a nap around the time we left but didn't end up falling asleep till we were almost to Houston.  But, at least she was pleasant and didn't cry too much.

Cole, has always been the best traveler and just sits so quietly and looks out the window and then about half way down there we let him watch a movie on the iPad.  I'm looking forward to the day when Finley likes to watch movies so that might distract her on long car rides.

We made it down there in time for dinner and Chris and Sharon made an unbelievable meal for us, seriously our mouths were watering!  The kids didn't waste any time and jumped right into all the toys and being silly.  We were so excited to see baby Charlie because we haven't seen him yet.  He's about 3.5 months and definitely a little chunk.

He's posing here with his new Mickey Mouse that Tracy got him.

And Tracy also got Reagan a new Minnie Mouse and some jammies.  She loved them both!!!

Cole and Reagan have always gotten along so well and been great buddies.  She is such a sweet girl and they crack me up.  Have you ever sat and actually listened to two 3 year olds have a conversation?  It's pretty much the funniest thing I've heard in awhile.

Cole and Reagan were having a snack and having very deep conversations, you know....politics, the last time they went to the bathroom, who has the better tasting juice.  Love it!

Saturday night, we got a babysitter...who was the greatest babysitter ever!!!  I was a little nervous about this girl who I've never met, watching 4 kids all under the age of 4!  AND, one being a tiny little baby!  I mean, she had to feed them dinner, give baby Charlie a bottle, put him to bed, get the other three ready for bed, put them in bed AND she cleaned up the house.  I was impressed!

So while she was hard at work with 4 crazy kids, the adults went out and had such a fun evening!  They took us to their favorite pizza joint and the pizza was to die for.  We even took a couple pictures while we were waiting for our table.

After dinner, we walked down to this really fancy grocery store and bought a bottle of wine and sat outside.  They have tables outside the grocery store so everyone does the same.  A lot of times people will buy little picnic items and take everything outside and have a picnic.  It was the perfect night! 

Chris and Nick

When I go pick up Cole from school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I am in the car alone for 30 minutes and lately I've been listening to Pastor James MacDonald on the radio.  Last week he talked about friendships and how it's so important to choose your friends and not let your friends choose you.  It's good to have those friends that may not believe the same things as you or be in the same walk with you, but they shouldn't be your "go-to" people.  Nick and I have a lot of friends, we have a lot of acquaintances but we have also been so completely blessed to have those friends that are definitely our "go-to" people.  

This here....these are "our people"!!!

We have many "our people" but the Bell's definitely hold a special place in our hearts!  They are those friends that you can be so completely silly with, even say a few cuss words here and there but can also talk about our faith and how important our relationship with God is.  These are the people that keep us grounded financially and spiritually.  We can talk about anything with them and know they would never judge us.

I remember when we first started on this Dave Ramsey thing a few years back, we called Chris and Sharon and went through our budget and just how we were going to get everything figured out to get debt paid off.  There aren't too many friends you can be so open with stuff like that but they have nothing but the best intentions.

Ok, sorry for my little rant there....just being around them this weekend made what I'd been listening to all last week on the radio make more sense.  And again, we have some of the greatest people and friends in our lives that just "get" us.  So blessed to have such amazing friends who are like family!

I will leave you with these sweet pictures of the kiddos.  We had to leave pretty early Sunday because we had life group and that's just one of those things that is definitely a priority in our lives and hate missing a chance to meet with our group.  We have definitely been doing life together lately and these people are the best!

Miss Finley all cuddled up with her blankie

Again...he is the best traveler ever!!!

So many fun things!

Here are a few updates from our last week...

A Limo ride:  Uncle Blake and Auntie Em went to last weeks Monday night football game.  Blake is a big Chicago Bears fan so Emily got them tickets for his birthday.  However, when this nice white limo pulled up to take them to the game, Blake was definitely surprised!  

Cole even got in on one of the pictures...he thought it was pretty cool being inside the limo!

Nice weather = outside:  Last week was great weather, mostly in the 70's.  The little town where Nick's parents live, they have a great park with all these ponds and great walking trails.  There's lot of ducks to feed, puppies to pet and grass to run in.  However, I did get a little nervous with Finley because she has absolutely no fear so if I wasn't watching, she'd just jump right into that water trying to catch one of those ducks!

Friday evening....it got COLD!!!  We met up with Beau and Stacey and some other friends and celebrated Tiff's 30th birthday.  From the time we got to the restaurant to when we left, there was about a 20 degree drop, but I loved it!  As always, it was so good to hang out with our friends and celebrate a birthday!

Pumpkin Farm:  Saturday morning we had Miss Rowan's 1st birthday party at one of the best pumpkin farms.  We had been looking forward to going as a family and even though it was stinkin cold, we still had so much fun!  

I guess I wasn't quite ready for this cold weather because I couldn't find any of our winter stuff!  Somehow all my winter boots ended up in our storage unit, along with all my scarfs and some of the kids winter accessories.  Awesome!

Both kids loved feeding the animals but Finley was going crazy over them.  She kept saying "mooooo" to all the animals.  Apparently goats and cows are the same thing in her book!

Cole and I took a little train ride and he was so excited that I rode with him :)  Love this kid!

My attempt to get the kids in a picture together.  Not bad, eh?!?  And yes, those are socks on Finley's hands :)

Rehearsal Dinners:  Our good friend Christian, Nick's roommate from college and one of our best friends, got married this weekend so Saturday night we had the rehearsal dinner at Carey's parents house in the old part of McKinney.  I absolutely love this neighborhood and all the houses, so cool!!  Nick was a groomsman so he had to be at the rehearsal earlier than the kids and I so we hung out at the house for awhile before we drove up to McKinney.

Love this sweet face

Finley has to copy everything Cole does....always!

I knew most of the rehearsal dinner was going to be outside so I had to put Finley in her poncho that Mimi got her last winter.  This thing is the greatest and she got so many compliments on it.  Granddad just thought this was the funniest thing when we got her into the carseat with the ponch on :)

The rehearsal dinner was great, the food was amazing but if you can imagine, it was tiring trying to keep the kids under control.  Finley just wants to get into everything and do things that are a little unsafe...like fall down wood stairs, oops!  So, we didn't stay too long at the rehearsal dinner.

Monty Python themed wedding:  Yes, you read that correctly.  Christian and Carey had a Monty Python themed wedding and it was hysterical!  Like I said, Nick was one of the groomsmen so I had a little bit of an idea of what it was going to consist of but I had no idea just how hilarious it was going to be!  Christian and Carey did not disappoint and definitely went all out!  Good for them!  It definitely was a wedding I will NEVER forget.    

I tried to get a picture of Nick before the wedding.....

but he pranced away before I could get a good one...true story!

 

This is a video of the groomsmen/women galloping (yes, galloping) into the ceremony.  I can't make this stuff up, people!!

The full wedding party

And Nick waiting to take pictures after the ceremony

It was hard to take this picture seriously...

We love Christian for him and all his quirks.  He is such a great friend and we couldn't be more excited for him and Carey.

Best of friends!!!

Matt, Nick and Chris (these three are trouble!!!!)

Even though it was a busy and crazy weekend with lots of driving, we still had so much being with great friends and celebrating such a wonderful thing.  We are so blessed to have such great people in our lives!