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!

The House and some animals

 Last week I needed to go up to our storage unit to see if I could get into our filing cabinets.  Well, the door went down as quickly as it went up.  I took one look into that storage unit and was appalled with the scariness of it!  Needless to say, I did not get what I needed and won't be opening that door again till the day we move!  While I was up there, Cole and I drove by to see the progress of the house.  With being kinda far away from the new house, we don't get to see the progress as much.  I knew that they started the framing last week so I was anxious to see something other than a slab of concrete.

And....here it is!!!!  Lovely ain't it??

 Cole is funny, when I said to him, "Cole look, there is our new house", he looked at me and said, "that's not our house, that house is broken". :)  Love his little mind!

This is also our house.  Behind our street is a big green space with a pond and nice walking trail, so this is our house from the back.  I love that we don't have neighbors behind us!

 Here is another view, I put an arrow there to show you where our house is, but you can see the pond in this picture.

 And this is the last view.  Again, there is an arrow pointing to where our house is so you can see how close we are to the park, pool, splash park, etc.  We are about a 4 second walk to all the fun-ness!!

 It's pretty exciting to see our house start to actually look somewhat like a house now.  The builder told us that once we get into the brick, stone and doing more of the interior stuff, it might slow down some because they have a shortage of workers.  We are totally fine with that because we are not in a hurry one bit and that means we can just save that much more money.

I also wanted to show some pictures of a birthday party we attended for our good friends Matt and Katy.  Their little girls Morgan and Rory have birthdays pretty close so they combined them and it was a blast!  Unfortunately the weather was a little crummy, wet and rainy, but everyone still had fun.  They had a petting zoo and it was great for all ages.  I knew Finley would go crazy for the animals because she's obsessed with any animal.  Cole was even having a ton of fun.  

This was a little pony that was very colorful!

 Finley kept calling all the animals "doggy".

The kids had a great time and took good naps, I knew they were worn out.  However, I do kind of feel like Cole is starting to transition out of his naps....booooo!!!  It's so hard because he doesn't want to take a nap and if he does it's for like 20 minutes but then but 6:00pm, he's in meltdown mode.  Hopefully we'll get that figured out soon because I don't like crabby Cole!

Oktoberfest, golf and adult school

 We have officially made it through a week and a half of being "homeless".  Obviously I'm kidding, but it has been such a great transition.  Tracy has been so accommodating and helpful with the kids, we definitely appreciate all they have done for us!  Of course we are getting anxious for our house to progress but for being in between housing, we really have it pretty good.  Speaking of our house, they started the frame this week so it will be fun to see the transition now.

We've been staying pretty busy lately, last weekend we met some of our Life Group peeps for dinner then went to a relationship seminar at church on Friday night.  I know, we are party animals on a Friday night!  It was a pretty good seminar but it was a late night for the kids...but they survived AND slept in the next morning.

 Saturday we took the kids to Oktoberfest.  It was a little hot but we still had a great time.  Beau, Grayson and Earlene joined us and it was so great to see them.  Mama Stacey was out of town doing some spa stuff...pshhhhh, I'd way rather spend a hot afternoon with crazy kids than having my feet up getting pampered (sarcasm).  Missed having you there Stacey!

They have this fun kids concert area and the kids had a great time listening to music, watching magic shows and dancing.

Precious!

Cole, Beau and Grayson

 Saturday night we got a sitter (hallelujah!) and joined some friends at Top Golf.  This is the coolest place and so fun!  It is also the perfect place, in my opinion, for dates.  It involves sports, cocktails, chatting and music.  Everyone's happy, right!?!

Jen posing in between shot

Is this even proper golf attire?

We had so much fun with great friends and can't wait to go back!

The rest of the weekend was spent driving to and from church (twice), having Life group and relaxing.  Nick has been super busy with work so we are trying to just relax a bit on the weekends.  

I have also decided to go back to school.  I know I'm crazy.  I figure that while I'm working part time, now would be a good time.  When the kids start school, I would like to return to work full time so that gives me about 4 years.  I've always wanted to get my Master's and I always regretted not getting it before we had kids so I think this is the second best time.  I'm getting everything situated to turn in but with not having done this in over 12 years, it's all a little foreign to me.  I'm hoping to get everything turned in and accepted so I can start in the Spring semester.  I have two options I'm going to pursue.  I'll either do the 36 hour Masters of Education for School counseling or the 52 hour Masters of Counseling.  Nick kind of feels like I should just go all out at do the longer one so that I'll have more options when I'm done.  I do want to still be in the school system but if I eventually wanted to be in a private practice or some other institution, I could.
It's all a little scary, juggling a family, work and school but I just feel this is the best time.  Oh, and if I do start in the spring semester, it will be right when we move into the new house.  Awesome timing, eh?!? :) THEN, as soon as I'm done, I'm pretty sure Nick is going to need to get his MBA.  So pretty much, we won't see much of each other for the next 4 years.  Booo!!!!
That's all for the latest updates!!

Last Couple Weeks

 Now that things in our life have settled down some, I thought I'd post some updates from the last couple weeks.  Here are a few things we've been up to:

Trip to Colorado:  Last week, Finley and I took a quick trip to Colorado for a few days.  There were a few things in Colorado that I had to take care of and since Finley still flies for free, she was the lucky one that got to accompany me :)  Plus, Cole had his first day of school and Nick had to finish packing our house.  Yes, this wasn't the greatest timing, going to Colorado while moving but ah well, things needed to get done.

Our flight there was alright.  Finley was supposed to fall asleep but I guess I wasn't surprised because she's not the most cooperative child out there :)  We did have an empty seat next to us so she had more room to roam around.

Once we got to the airport and my mom picked us up, she crashed right away.  I feel like she looks gigantic in this picture!

Those lips.....

That first evening we were there, we ate at the country club and Finley sat in a big girl seat.  She did pretty well, actually!

I am so blessed to have the best sister-in-law ever!  Rachel was such a trooper and watched Finley for me during the days.  I truly believe that Rachel is super-mom so I knew Finley would be in great hands.  I'm sure all three girls were a little bit of a handful but I know Finley had a great time with her cousins.  

Finley, Cameron and Sydney 

 Rachel sent me this picture the first day, ha!  I think they were playing with 3D chalk.

 Rachel watched Finley for 3 days and I'm sure by the time Friday came around she was ready to get back to her regular schedule and life.  I so appreciate all of Rachel's help!  The last night we were there my parents took all of us out to dinner to Texas Roadhouse.  I'm not sure how many of you have attempted to take 3 little girls, under the age of 3 out to dinner....????  I would highly recommend NOT doing it! :)  I really can't complain at all, they all just acted like normal little girls but it sure is exhausting trying to do all that you need to in order to not draw too much attention to table.

Mimi and the two little girls

 Sydeney and Me....she is such a sweet baby!

 The last day that Finley was at Rachel's house, I went to pick her up and as we were playing outside a bit, she had a little fight with the driveway...the driveway won.  Her poor forehead and nose lost the battle.

Cole's 1st day of Preschool:  Since I was not in town to take Cole to his first day back at Stonebriar Preschool, Gigi was nice enough to help out with Cole that week.  I was so sad to not be there for his first day but it sounds like he had so much fun.  He absolutely loves his teachers and I know it will be a great year.

This is the picture Tracy sent me, right before they left for school

Flight back to Dallas:  Finley and I flew back to Dallas last Saturday evening and I was sort of dreading the flight because she is just at that age where she just wants to be on the go.  She hates sitting still. To my surprise, we sat next to this sweet little girl who was 3 years old.  I knew Finley would love sitting next to her and that definitely kept her distracted for part of the time.  

Then, the lady that sat across from me asked if the two girls wanted to see her new puppy.  This puppy was the cutest, sweetest thing...only 8 weeks old.  Finley is absolutely obsessed with dogs so I knew she would be so excited about this.  Finley loved up on this puppy and was in heaven for quite awhile.  This lady was so nice to let the girls play with her puppy!

 Then after that (and this is the funniest thing), the flight attendant, who was the funniest lady ever, came up to me because Finley was being a little noisy and she took Finley from me.  Finley was more than happy to go with her as long as her mean mom wasn't making her sit in the seat. :)  I don't know if you can see but the flight attendant took Finley up to the front of the plane and talked to a couple random passengers along the way.  On the way back, the flight attendant put Finley in Mr. Wayne's lap (he's a grandpa who was the nicest man and everyone joked that he was the junior flight attendant for that flight).  Mr. Wayne entertained her for a bit then he brought her back to me and by that time we were just about to land.  So nice to have such accommodating people and I just couldn't believe how nice everyone was! 

 The Move:  Again, I was unable to be there when Nick moved out of our house.  I really did feel pretty bad that I couldn't help out but I knew Nick could handle it.  It did take him quite a bit more time than he expected but I wasn't too surprised by that.  It was a pretty stressful couple of days but it got done and we officially closed on Monday afternoon.  I had to run up there really fast right before we closed because 1.  I needed to get some dishes out of the dishwasher that we overlooked and 2.  I needed to say goodbye to the house.  It was pretty sad to see the house empty, the house that started our marriage, brought our babies home from the hospital and had many many memories.  

We are excited to start the next chapter but it's still always sad to say goodbye to something like that.

This is the picture I took right before I left for the last time :(

Till our new house is done being built, we are shackin up with Nick's mom.  She has been so accommodating and helpful and the kids, if you can imagine, are loving it.  This is them last night, pretending to be transformers :)  Finley really has no clue what she's doing, she's just doing whatever big brother is doing.  

Sorry for such a long post, I'll try to be better with more frequent updates from now on :)