Merry Christmas

I know I'm a couple days late, but I figured the holiday season isn't completely over yet so from our home to yours...

Here are some fun pictures from the last few weeks.

Our new Christmas tree!

Candy cane cookies:

 Matt with his new salt and pepper shakers.  In case you didn't know, he has a thing for birds.

 

Candy.  Lots and lots of candy.

Yep, Matt got a watch.  Another one.

 Food processor? Check.

Update

Back in September Matt and I took a trip to North Carolina to see my best friend, Tara, and her husband, Morgan. While we were there, we carved pumpkins (Matt's first time!), played lots of cards, and took a trip to Wilmington. We had a blast and I can't wait to live closer to them! Here are some pictures of our trip.









As you can tell, Wilmington was gorgeous! I could definitely see myself living in a place like that one day :)

Toward the end of October, Matt's brother, Chris, came and visited us in Houston for the first time since we've moved here. We figured since Thanksgiving was so close we would have an early Thanksgiving dinner and yes, before Halloween. Trust me, I'm not the type of person that celebrates holidays way too early. I made an exception this time because I LOVE Thanksgiving dinner and thought it would be nice to have a traditional family Thanksgiving meal together (it was, me, Matt, Chris and Matt's mom).

Last year was my first time baking a turkey, which you can read about here. This time around I, again, brined the turkey before baking it and it turned out amazing! I'm thankful for the access I have to the massive amount of information on the world wide web.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of the turkey, but it looked pretty much like last year's:

I'm really excited about the upcoming holidays. I'm very thankful that I will get to spend time with my wonderful family (my parents, two sisters, brother-in-law, 6 nephews and 2 nieces!) and old friends during the next couple of months.

Laura Came to Visit!

Last weekend our good friend, Laura Davis, came to visit.  Laura is on Summer break and was taking a road trip with Houston being one of her stops!  It was so much fun spending time with her and catching up.  We went to the movies and saw Inception, which I highly recommend, and ate out a ton because what else is there to do in Houston (ha! just kidding).

One night we went to an AMAZING custard place called Ritters.  If you live in Houston and haven't been there, you must!  It's on Fry Road so it may be a bit of a drive, but it's SO worth it! 

On Laura's last day in Houston, we went to NASA.  Matt and I have never been there before so we were excited to finally visit.  It was really neat getting to see all of the history. 

Matt and Laura were really excited! Ha!

They had one of the Saturn V rockets on display.  It's HUGE!  Pictures don't even do it justice.  The Saturn V rockets sent all of the Apollo missions to space. 

We also got to see Mission Control.  It's a lot smaller than I imagined.

We really enjoyed our day at Johnson Space Center.  Afterwards, we stopped at Crave on our way home for some AMAZING cupcakes.  Later we played Phase 10 and Laura dominated!  I've never played such a short game of Phase 10 before.  I don't think I've ever played such horrible hands of Phase 10 before either. Ha!

Matt and I had lots of fun spending time with Laura while she was in town and we hope to get to do it again soon!

5 Year Anniversary

Back in May, Matt and I celebrated our five year anniverary!  I can't believe it's been five years already.  It feels like just yesterday we were doing this...

On the weekend of our actual anniversary, Matt and I took a short trip to San Antonio and spent the day at Sea World.  It was so much fun seeing everything that was there!  As a complete surprise to us, Jars of Clay (one of Matt's all-time favorite bands) played the night we were there.  So fun!

A few weeks later, Matt and I went on a 7 day cruise to Jamaica, Grand Caymen and Cozumel!

One of Carnival's signature towel animals:

I don't think I was hungry for even one moment on the cruise.  So. much. food.  One night we ate dinner at the steakhouse.  Here's a picture of our fancy desserts:

In the picture below, you can barely see a red mark on Matt's left cheek (near his sideburn).  It was caused by an unfortunate accident that occurred on the ship involving a lawn chair, very strong winds, and Matt's face.  He was okay, but if you know Matt and his queasiness with blood, you can only imagine the situation.  That was accident #1. 

After being at sea for two days, we finally arrived to Jamaica!  We chose the Dunn's River Falls excursion.  Doesn't climbing a beautiful waterfall sound amazing?  We thought so too.  And so did the hundreds of other people who were climbing the waterfall with us.  Don't get me wrong, it was beautiful.  But it was also very chaotic.  There was a group of 10 of us and we all held hands pulling each other up the waterfall.  And I mean you're IN the waterfall.  Water is literally pouring all over you while you're climbing.  If you don't put your weight on your foot, the water pressure would literally push your foot off the rock.  You also couldn't always see where you were stepping.  I was right behind the guide so I would simply step where he had.  I guess Matt didn't get that memo.  At one point he stepped a little farther over than I did, but there was nothing to step on so down he went.  What's funny is that when he fell, he took me and the 10 year old whose hand he was holding down with him.  That was accident #2.  Again, he's fine, just with a few more scars. 

While on the Falls, it started pouring rain, which didn't really matter because we were already drenched.  However, that's when the lightning started.  At one point lightning struck a tree causing it to fall about 30 feet from where we were standing.  Crazy.  I think this is the point where I starting freaking out.  Literally hyperventilating.  I'm not one to freak out like that but Matt did a great job with calming me down.  I still get a nervous feeling just thinking about it.  We later found out that they closed the Falls right after we went up due to the weather.

After our full day of adventure, we returned to the ship ready for some serious relaxation.  Jamaica had a beautiful sunset.

The next day we arrived in Grand Caymen.  It was gorgeous!  I seriously think I could live on an island.  Unfortunately, the only good picture I have is below because the rest were taken on our underwater camera and none of the pictures turned out.  Bummer.  We had a much more relaxing day there.  We spent the day snorkeling at a reef and a ship wreck.

Our last shore day was at Cozumel, Mexico.  Matt's and my favorite excursion was spent in Cozumel.  We got to swim with dolphins!  It was seriously one of the most fun things I've ever done.

This is the resort that had the dolphin swim. Gorgeous. 

This is the hug.  Notice how the dolphin looks like she is smiling.  They are such sweet creatures!

This is the dolphin swim.  AMAZING!  The girls had a little bit harder of time with this because our bikini bottoms started to fall off because of the force of water!

This is the handshake. 

Matt is getting a sweet kiss.

Isn't this next one amazing?!  They did this right in front of us!

Overall, Matt and I really enjoyed the cruise, although next time we probably wouldn't take one with so many sea days.  You start to run out of things to do on the ship...especially if your bottom is so sunburned you can't be in the sun ;)

Catching Up

Last night I watched an episode of House which had Laura Prepon as a guest star.  You may know her as Donna from "That 70's Show."  Her character was an avid blogger who put pretty much all of her thoughts and health problems on the internet to get her readers' opinions.  I'm definitely not going to put my every thought on here, but it did motivate me to blog since I haven't in such a long time. 

Matt has been leading worship a lot at HFBC, which he loves, but man do I feel bad for him when that alarm goes off at 5am each Sunday morning for sound check.  He has also had a lot of freelance projects recently so when he's not working at the church, he's working at home.  I've been going to the Beth Moore Bible study on Tuesday nights.  We're doing a study of David, which has been fantastic!  If you haven't done this study before, I highly recommend it.  So far, the Lord has taught me through David to bring every decision to God, no matter how big or small the situation is. David was great at that.  If only I were so disciplined.

In February, Matt and I hosted our first game night for our Sunday Bible Study (Sunday School).  It was a blast!  We had about 12 couples come to our home and had three different groups playing games at once.  It was so fun getting to connect to other couples our age.  It was a great idea and I can't wait until the next one!

My parents are going to be visiting in a couple of weeks and I can't wait to see them!  Then Easter will be here.  Man, time is flying!  Be on the lookout for a blog post from Matt.  He will catch you up on what 2010 has been like for him!

Happy 2010

Matt and I spent Christmas and New Years in Pensacola and boy was it fantastic!  We had so much fun spending time with family and all of our old friends.  Besides spending oodles of time with my parents (which was AWESOME), we got to spend some good times with some of our favorite people.  We had dinner with Brandon and Krista at the Mellow Mushroom the night after Christmas.  Normally our tradition with them is to go to the Tuscan Oven for the best pizza and mozzarella sticks, but they were closed (bummer), but the Mellow Mushroom was really good.  After dinner, we went to their house to play Hilarium.  If you haven't played this game yet, you must.  It was so much fun.  And as the name suggests, it was hilarious! We also spent some time with one of our favorite families, the Coleys.  They were getting ready to move to Prattville so we just had some good quality hanging out time with them.  We're excited for this new chapter in their lives.  I will miss seeing them when we visit Pensacola.

For some reason we lost all of our pictures from Christmas day so unfortunately I won't be able to show you any of those, but I do have some of our camping trip on New Years Eve.  Matt and I went camping with my parents at Blackwater River State Park.  Anyone who knows me well knows this girl strongly dislikes camping, however, this trip was lots of fun AND relaxing!  Fortunately for us we were in a camper - the ONLY way I will camp in 30 degree weather.  My dad and Matt spent most of their time outside while I stayed warm in the camper with my mom while reading, napping, etc.  Matt spent hours tending to the fire. He probably spent more than eight hours trying to get the fire going because the wood we were using was wet, so it was a bit of a challenge for him.  But he was victorious:

As you can see by the picture above, Matt was proud of his finished product.  He had to tweat it :)  Of course both nights we had s'mores.  Lots of them.  We finished a whole bag of marshmallows and I don't regret it one bit.  Thanks, Mom and Dad, for taking us with you!  We had a blast!

When we got back from camping, we went to my nephew's birthday party.  Nikolaus turned two!  He's such a cutie:

Matt and I returned to Houston last night after spending 10 days in Pensacola.  I don't know why, but this time coming back was one of the hardest for me.  Maybe it's because we were there for so long.  Who knows?  Tonight we are going to take down all of our Christmas decorations and have homemade pizza...yum!

I think 2010 has a lot in store.  I'm looking forward to the year ahead.  Happy New Year!

Merry Belated Christmas

I apologize for this being so late, but during the days before Christmas, we had absolutely no time to update the blog.  So here are some belated Christmas pictures of our house.  Enjoy!