St. Louis/Blake and Stacey's Wedding

Long time coming...

One month ago I met my parents in St. Louis for little Blake Williamson's wedding to Stacey. It was just a gorgeous wedding, I was so amazed at the event space, it was beautiful! It was also a TON of fun to tour around St. Louis with my parents and Laura Kirkpatrick.

Of course there was TONS of dancing at this wedding...Blake is a SUPER dancer, and I found out, so is Stacey. So we had a splendid time living it up, I was just sad Andrew wasn't there to dance like crazy with us. We were grossly sweaty by the end, but I think that just shows what a fantastic evening it was!!!

One fun thing that happened: my parents dropped me off at the airport and I'm going through the halacious security line and I hear someone shouting my name. It was the newleyweds themselves!! Turns out they were on my flight to Dallas before they headed to my favorite country, Costa Rica! It was great getting a little one-on-one with the newlyweds!! I will try to get the entire slew of wedding pictures up somewhere, but for now these will have to do.

My Parents and I at rehearsal dinner

The Arch

Budweiser Tour

Event Space...in my favorite color no less!

The wonderful couple

Sweaty Lindsy and I...told you there was a lot of dancing!

JUMP! For my love...

I HAVE A NEW JOB!!! Well, some of you may know this, but I am leaving BRIT for a position with the American Heart Association! I will be doing the Jump Rope for Heart/Hoops for Heart programs in Tarrant, Cooke and Wichita Counties!!

I totally remember doing Jump Rope for Heart when I was in elementary school, and I ABSOLUTELY loved the program, who would have thought years down the road I would be working for them?!?! I will basically be working out of my car, as I get to travel around to schools and visit with PE teachers and principals. sooooo fun!

It has truly been a blessing this past month as prayers for Andrew's and my jobs have been fulfilled. Andrew was put on full-time with Executive Air Share at the beginning of the month, and I will begin work with AHA at the end of the month!! Hurrah!

P.S. I will be posting pictures from this past weekend in St. Louis for Blake and Stacey's wedding soon, such a blast!!!

P.P.S. Happy 28th birthday to Lindsy, my little leprechaun bestie!

Aw, friends award!!!

Ok - so I LOVE checking on all of the blogs I have on my list! Well, I went to check yesterday afternoon and sweet Meagan Hamblen (Bluebonnets and Blue Bell, isn't that the cutest name?) had tagged me in a friend award blog post!

With this little post I have to name 10 things that make me happy, and then tag some blog friends as well. Apparently you are supposed to name 10 blogs or something, but as stated previously, I don't have a TON of blog friends, so I will tag, but it won't be 10. I love you though, and I only put the ones I love on the blog list!!

1. Having my husband on a weekend has now made it all the way up to number 1, b/c it is SUCH rare occurrence now that he is full time with Executive Air Share. 2. To tack on to that last one, Andrew and I are going to my favorite city in the world - Austin, TX - this weekend to celebrate sweet Baby Beicker's impending arrival!3. Hanging with my parents, and seeing them, plus my best friend Lindsy and her husband next weekend at her brother's wedding in St. Louis!4. Stealing this from Meg, but it is SOOOOOO very true in my life. The Winter Olympics are over, regular TV is on, and tomorrow we get to see "The Office Baby"!!!!!!
5. That my husband just got put full time on his flying job, and we can finally start looking for houses!!! He is such a rockstar!

6. Four Vines Naked Chardonnay! So, maybe you're alchy if you put wine in your top 10, but quite frankly this is AWESOME wine! It wins at every competition I take it to, and it is less than $12. 7. That my dear friend Suzanne had a successful, though very long, labor and delivery, and now we can celebrate sweet baby June's birth!

8. That my other dear friend Jennifer got engaged to her amazing boyfriend Ben recently, and they have asked me to be a bridesmaid in the their wedding! (yes, I know the picture below CLEARLY shows my ghost white skin, as Suzanne would say)
9. That I have ONE piece of frozen chocolate pie left in my refrigerator, and I get to eat it when I get home from work!

10. Michelle got us tickets to see Michael Buble here in DFW for June...CANNOT wait for that little diddy!!And now to tag my blog friends in this fun award:
Sara
Suzanne
Denae
Abby
Monica
Whitney
Sean and Julie
Kenley
Rebecca

Parents

I know that most people think this, but I have the BEST parents in the world! Andrew has been flying a TON lately, and it seems that it is always on weekends. Which of course is when everyone else wants to fly, so makes sense, but makes me a weekend widow. Anyway, my parents came down this weekend to spend time with me and keep me company this weekend. Sidenote: Andrew is in Las Vegas this weekend, so fun, and we tried to find a last minute flight out for me to join him, but it didn't work. boo. My parents and I had a BLAST doing some new things in Fort Worth, well, new to me at least. Of course I forgot to bring my camera. However, if you live in FW and ever feel like buying some nuts - GO to the Vending Nut Company on Montgomery. It is local, they have great prices, and it is a really neat little store. Then we headed to the Ridgmar Farmer's Market, kind of a dud b/c they were remodeling. Then of course we took our rascal puppies to Fort Woof...the best dog park ever!! I am pasting a picture of my incredible parents, b/c I like to show off.

This is my parents in Chicago

P.S. Next weekend Andrew and I are off to Austin, YAY for Amy's baby shower as well as fun with friends. Then the following weekend it is Blake Williamson's wedding, such fun! Lindsy, his sister and I have been BEST friends since we were 5, so I really feel like Blake is my baby bro getting hitched!

P.P.S. I am SOOOOOOOO excited that my friend Suzanne and her husband Dan just had their baby girl, Lena June Biase, if you want to see the darling thing she is in my block reel as Dan, Suzanne, Vern, Muef'te and Zeus.

Werner Wine Party - Feb

Terri and Alan threw one of their famous wine parties this past Saturday. It was a perfect Valentines celebration, you didn't have to go to a fancy restaurant and fight crowds for a dinner, you got to celebrate with friends and have delicious food and wine at a fabulous home!

Andrew was called to work all weekend, of course, in Cabo no less. So, being a resourceful lady, I had Dick come as my date! Andrew called Dick prior to heading South and told him he better not be driving tipsy with me in the car, so we had a driver...nice. The party was just a fantastic evening, and I loved hanging with everyone. My $12 Chardonnay won AGAIN in its category, and beat more expensive wines. So, everyone needs to start buying Four Vines Naked Chardonnay...its awesome. Actually, don't buy it, that will probably drive the cost up and then I can't buy it. Forget I said anything!

Below are some pictures of a fabulous evening with friends!

My date and I

Terri and Brent

Christa's yummy deconstructed Sushi
Terri and meDoug posing with food
Michelle and I hanging by the wine tableJeff during the smell competition
Michelle and ScottWerner's cork stash

Snow Day Part Duex

As I mentioned in the post about Michelle's Birthday, we had another snow day on Friday. An even more exciting part to that story, our apartment complex was all over the news due to the downed car ports in the complex. There were 11 downed carports in our complex alone. Luckily, Andrew and I noticed two fallen ones on Thursday evening, so we parked my car outside and not under the port, however, ours never ended up falling. Pictures of the bizarre thing below.

Michelle's Birthday

Yay, celebrating Michelle's birth! Michelle turned 32 on Friday, and we were able to celebrate with a trip to Mi Cocina with a good group.

Friday was also a snow day, so fun, so Andrew and I spent the morning working out and having fun, then at lunch Andrew got a call to fly to Cabo San Lucas. So unfair. ha. The man who owns the plane was without power due to the storm, so he decided he and the fam would go to Cabo. Which meant that Andrew would miss Michelle's party, and the Werners party on Saturday. That was a bummer, but I am SUPER grateful that we had a snow day Thursday, b/c Andrew and I had a terrific day just hanging out and being together. So, thanks for the snow God, we appreciate it!!

Back to Michelle's bday. We wavered for a while on where to go and how to celebrate, but in the end we decided Mi Cocina, b/c Mexican food is awesome and it was close to Scott and Michelle and me and Andrew. I made a chocolate on chocolate cake for her to celebrate with, and we enjoyed many a marg and Corona. Michelle then ended up coming over for some girl time as did Keri and we had a blast. Once again our intentions of watching a chick flick ended up, us falling asleep by about 10pm, but whatever. Great celebration for a great friend!

Michelle blowing out candles

Michelle and KyndleKeri, me and MichelleMichelle and Scott

SNOW DAY!

I LOOOOOOOOVE snow days more now as an adult than I think I did as a school kid. I especially love them when they come after Andrew has been away on a four day trip, and the two of us just get to hang out all day. We had a leisurely trip to the gym and met Michelle, then grabbed some lunch...then just hung out all day with our dogs!!

I was able to test out the new camera my parents got me for Christmas with Andrew and the dogs in the snow. There were having the time of their lives! I'm excited to note that on Sunday I am taking pictures of Jennifer and Ben as a pre-engagement picture practice session. Though I love shooting pictures of my dogs, I am really excited to have new subjects.

Gus hanging in the snow

Huck probably not happy we were out as long as we were

Andrew with the boys!Handsome Hubs

My Husband - Phil Dunphy

I LOVE the new show Modern Family! It is so stinkin hilarious, and Andrew and I love watching it on Wednesday nights. I will even re-watch immediately after if Andrew came in late from flying or something. So hilarious. Anyway, once the show started, I began getting comments from a lot of friends saying, "the Phil guy on Modern Family is SOOOO Andrew." At first I kind of laughed...then I noticed Phil says a LOT of things very similar to my husband. Main one of note...word for word mind you...is one about swim wear. Andrew always maintains it is fine for him to wear boxers around people, he even jumped in the San Marcos river in boxers on the way home from school one day, as they are the same as a swimsuit. Well, in one of the first episodes Phil comes out in boxers, gets scolded, and he says "what's the big deal, the cover the same thing as a swimsuit." Hmmm, definitely similar. Well the other day there was an episode where Phil tried out a mustache for fun...Andrew did this on Halloween. When Andrew had the stache on it changed his whole personality, it was really funny...anyway, Phil's stache had the same effect. I LOVE it. It's like looking into the future...

Apparently here is my husband at 40....ah swoon.

Jewel Charity Ball

That's right, I'm making up for not blogging for an entire month by posting two blogs in one day! This one even has pictures!

One of our friends invited Andrew and I to be her guest at Jewel Charity Ball. Her name is Leanne, she is a FABULOUS graphic designer, and she designed the invitations for the Ball. JCB is a great organization that does fund raising throughout the year for Cooks Children's Hospital here in FW. It all culminates in January at their HUGE gala ball...seriously, there were 2,000 people there. Basically it is like the fun part of a wedding...dinner, dancing, drinking and an all around good time. It was held at the Omni this year, the food was great, the wine was great and the dancing, oh the dancing. I even got to wear a floor length evening gown I bought from Neimans!!! (on HUGE sale mind you)

Andrew made me proud again, he ended up on stage with the band at one point in the evening dancing. I just LOVE that I have a husband who loves to dance and really gets into making a dancing evening a fun time. We ran into our good friends Doug and Julie Renfro as well, and Andrew and Doug found props to wear during the dancing. Leanne and her husband John were out on the floor with us the entire time...just a great time! The band even played Lady Gaga...hilarious.

Leanne and I during dinnerAndrew and I on the dancefloor

Andrew and Doug with their festive props!Andrew on stage with the bandA little decaf at the end of the evening

Christmas

Well, I'm over a month behind, but I have my Christmas update complete with NO pictures. Boring.

This year was an interesting Christmas. It actually made me REALLY hate the Bing Crosby song "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas." I will never dream of a white Christmas, in fact, I will only dream of a white Monday morning in January when work might possibly be canceled. Anyway....I digress. This year Andrew and I had a GREAT plan as I blogged about in my last post (yes, I know that was a month ago, no jeering).

To start, Andrew and I had an incredible Christmas just the two of us on Christmas Eve eve...lots of fun, we loved our gifts, and our tradition of watching Christmas Vacation by the fire!!

The morning of Christmas Eve worked out great! It was wonderful having his family over for brunch, and we had a great relaxing time together. However, the snow was starting to fall, and I was getting slightly nervous about the drive to LBK. Anyway, we went to Uncle Julio's for lunch, and that was so fun as well, but decided that we should skip Andrew's grandmother's Christmas Eve night due to the weather, and begin our trek to LBK. We were caught in the horrible snow, it took us 2 and 1/2 hours to go 20 miles and back to our apt. I cried. A lot. First Christmas morning without my parents EVER. Anyway, Andrew had a flight the morning of the 26th, and couldn't come to LBK with me when I left Christmas Day, b/c he would have to turn around and head back. So our second Christmas together was spent apart. Not that fun. However, after my 7 hour drive to LBK (usually a 4 1/2) I got to head straight to my dad's parents house with my parents and just see and love all of that family. Then, my mom's side graciously agreed to move our Christmas with them to the day after, so I got to have that feast with them as well in LBK. Other than my husband missing, it was GREAT!

So you can see why I am not wishing for a white one next year. Clear as a bell pretty please!!