Now your in New York!!!! (Day 1)

Finally I've got some time to relax, sit down, and do a little catch up on my blogging!!! Yay! And so I will begin with my massive catch up...but, don't worry, I'm going to break it up, cause I have lots to blog about!

December 10:

The first day of our New York, NY trip! We went to NY with Kolby's mom, Penny, his Grandma, and Keifer. We had been looking forward to this trip so much, Grandma was the only one who had been there before so we were all excited to go!

When making the plans for our trip, we decided to fly out of Austin as it was a more central location for everyone and it ended up being cheaper to! Our plane was due to leave at 6:05AM...seems simple enough right?! You've seen the movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York where the family is running through the airport to make their plane?! Well, that was us! It all started when we stopped at Whataburger on the way to the airport to get some breakfast, and they took forever to get our food. Once we finally made it to the airport, got parked and caught the shuttle to the terminal, it was about 5:30AM. The man at the check in counter was not very accomodating (or nice, for that matter) and as we were trying to check our bags, he kept repeatedly telling us that we were late and going to miss our plane, etc. All the while he was yapping, we were losing time to make our plane because he was going SO SLOW!! Keep in mind that due to bad weather in Chicago where our connecting flight was, this was the only flight for the day going from Austin to Chicago!!!! So we were RUNNING!!!

Thankfully, we did make our flight, I think we were literally the last people to board the flight! But we made it! Our flight to Chicago went smoothly, and we were ready to hop on our connecting flight after our 2hr layover. That was until they came over the intercom and said our flight had been delayed 1hr due to the bad storm that was moving across the East Coast. So we waited a little more! In the end, our flight was delayed about an hour and a half total. Finally we were in the air and on our way to NY!!!

With all of our craziness with our flights, I didn't do much photographing during our travels, so here are the only photos I got of us in the airports...

Kolby grabbin some breakfast during the layover

Keifer, Penny, and Grandma

Once our plane landed at LaGuardia, our story only continued! Due to our late check in and our delayed flight, our luggage made it to NY before we had, and so we had to go the claim office to find some of our bags, while others were stacked in the corner with claim tickets on them. Oh the fun of traveling, haha!

Once we had our baggage in tow, we then had to make it to our hotel. Yet another leg to the never ending story of getting to NYC! In my researching for the trip, I learned that we could take a taxi for about $40-50, or we could take the bus for $2/person. Since we had five people we would have to take 2 taxi's therefore costing us twice the price, so in our naivety, we rode the bus! Two words...BAD PLAN!!! It took us about an hour and a half to get to our hotel on the Upper West Side, not to mention that there were probably 50 people on this one bus! Apparently it was rush hour and the buses were packed!!! We got a good taste of NYC and we definitely got our $2 worth out of that ride!!! We all agreed that we would be paying for the taxi on our return trip! I wish I would have gotten my camera out during our bus ride, but I think my hands were pretty much tied to our luggage so no one sticky fingered any of it! But those pictures would have been priceless!

When we wer planning this trip, I asked Kolby what he wanted to do in NY, and his list was pretty simple: ride the subway, heat a hotdog from a street vendor, and go to an Irish Pub. Once we got into our Hotel, we went to find some supper, we got some New York style pizza at a little hole-in-the-wall place right down the street, then we went to the Dublin House to get a drink before going out for the night. First night out, we got to mark off the Irish Pub experience!

Fun fact: The bar tender said that this neon sign is the oldest working neon sign in NYC! Pretty cool!

We decided that we wanted to go see Rockefeller Center while the tree was all lit up, so we headed down there our first night! It was absolutely amazing, it definitely made you feel like you were spending Christmas in NY!!!

Me, Kolby, and Keifer...don't we look like true New Yorkers?!

Me and my man, I love this picture

Radio City Music Hall...so beautiful all lit up!

There she is in all of her glory! Rockefeller Christmas Tree!

I'm dreaming....

Of a white Christmas!!!!! Well almost a white Christmas, we had some snow up here in the North!!! So exciting! We usually get a little bit each winter, so we were excited to see it was here! Enjoy the pics!

The girls are trying to stay warm here, what'd you think, do they look successful??

Long time no Blog...

So I'm so bad...I haven't blogged in what seems like forever! My apologies! Going all the way back to November here, we went to Abilene for Thanksgiving with Kolby's dad's side of the family. Due to Kolby's work schedule, we weren't able to stay but Thursday and Friday, but we still had a fun time. Here are the FEW pictures that I got from our time there, (I don't know where my camera was during this time, but obviously it was not in use :-))

Jewels with her uncle Keifer

Jackie and Jewels

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we were invited to join Kolby's mom's side of the family in Arlington to go to the Tech vs. Baylor football game at Cowboy's Stadium. Kolby's aunt had box suite tickets for the game and let me say the seats were awesome!! All of Kolby's family was there and we had a blast getting to see everyone and watch the game.

Here is our view from the suite

GO TECH!!!!

I'm a bad blogger I know!!!

I've been such a bad blogger lately!!! I have lots of good stuff to put up just not enough time! No excuses I know. I promise I will get us up to date soon! As for now, I wanted to tell about our other photo shoot we were lucky enough to get to be a part of. At thanksgiving kolby's dad got the family together for a photo shoot Friday after. Check out the pics here ! They look really good!

TWO WEEKS!!!

UNTIL...

AND

AND

CAN'T WAIT!!!!

TWO WORDS!

LOVED IT!!! I'll admit, sometimes, I'm a thirteen year old trapped in a 22 year old body! But I love the Twilight series, both books and movies! We went and saw New Moon this weekend, and I thought it was fabulous!!!

Not to mention, it doesn't hurt to get to stare at that!!!

Yet another Success!!!

So, today I had a good ol' day to myself, kolby went on a "man-date" with our nighbor Chad. They went to TCU to watch college game day being filmed there on campus. What a great guy thing for me to skip!!! So I took myself down to one of my most favorite places....Hobby Lobby!!! I could spend forever in there!

I finally was able to get my college diploma framed!!!! I've only been out of college for a year now, I graduated in Dec. 2008, but I have just been putting it off...Bad, I know! My mother-in-law gave me a gift card to Hobby Lobby for this exact purpose, so I finally put it to use!!! I am so happy with the results, it looks absolutely great!!! I think I ended up with a 16X20in frame, I can't remember, but it seems like it is huge! I went with the purple since that is Tarleton's school color, it wasn't just a random decision, haha *wink*! Here is a picture of the finished product, I know, it's still in the plastic, but I don't want the girls to scuff it up before I can find a place to hang it!!!!

My second project of the day was yet another wreath...this time a Christmas wreath! YAY!!! Although I'm not one to put up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, I thought that since I had the day to myself that I would get a jump on this project, since I wasn't too sure how I wanted to attack it!!!

Before you see the pictures of the finished project, I just want to put in my plug here and that is "that I'm so pround of myself yet again, I feel that I always underestimate my abilities on crafts, but when they are done, I think they turn out pretty good!!" I took the same approach as the fall wreath in that I looked at the premade wreaths first. But, yet again, I really wasn't into any of them, and they were expensive! So I started gathering my decorations!!! I decided to go with a red/gold theme, I don't really know what drew me to this, I just really liked the glitter, I think! So without further ado, here she is:

Berfore:

In progress:
Finished Product:

P.S. - I'm getting better at this bow making, too! I don't know if they are looking better, but they are definitely getting easier for me too make!!

They're here!!!!

Oh my gosh!!! Our Christmas photos are ready to be seen!! A big thank you go's out to Andrea Hughes our photographer, she was so great! Especially to accomodate us with our dogs! I love our photos and I love her other work as well! If you are in the DFW area and need a photographer, I recommend her!!! Check out our photos here!!!!! LOVE THEM!!!!

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words!!!

For anyone who knows me, they know that this picture made me the happiest person in the whole wide world!!!! I am obsessed with Smart Cars, they intrigue me! Let me put my disclaimer out there, that I know they are a death trap, and I would never drive one (I would like to test drive one though), but they are the cutest things in the world to me!!!!

Is it not the cutest thing ever???

I went to Dallas today with our friends Mark and Amy to watch her daughter Maddie compete in her competitive cheer league competition at the Dallas Convention Center, and I saw this little baby in the parking garage! I made them take my picture with it...hey, if you can't enjoy the small things in life, what can you enjoy???

How 'bout them Cowboys??

For Kolby's birthday treat, we all got party passes to go to the Dallas Cowboys game at the new Cowboy's Stadium in Arlington. We were all super excited, and we had a blast!!!

We learned that parking at the stadium was supposed to cost $75, so we all piled into one car, there were 6 of us, 5 big guys and me, I had to sit on Kolby's lap in the back seat, we were totally squished!

Cowboy's Stadium in Arlington

(we were still about 5-10 min walk from getting to it, it's huge!)

Me @ the Stadium

My man @ the Stadium

This is our view from our party pass seats, we paid $29 for our ticket, the seats right in front of us cost the people $100 per ticket!

Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders opening up the game!

Team huddle

Half time entertainment! "Wanted" singer Jesse James
Keifer and his new found "friends" The Miller girls

All the guys with Rodney!

Happy Halloween!!!

So this Halloween, we decided to combine Halloween with Kolby's birthday party! What a blast!! Kolby cooked crab and shrimp for everyone and I cooked a small brisket and took care of the sweets for the evening. Kolby's brothers, his aunt, and his dad all came in for the affair! Plus a few of our lovely neighbors/friends! We had a fair amount of trick-or-treaters, it was fun to see all the little ones dressed up! Here are some fun pictures from the evening!

Kolby as "The Crow", I was a fairy!

Kyle "the hipie", Kolby "the crow", and Keifer "the joker"

John, Jake, and Lexi stopped by for some eats!

Rodney, "Gene Simmons"
Here is the end result of my topsy turvy cake endeavor. Not exactly like the picture, but it tasted great! I had never used fondant before, and that stuff is hard to work with I've learned!!

My pretty cookies!

Our table of treats!