Congratulations to Ray!

I am so proud of the newest professional in our little family! Ray just found out that he passed his final architectural exam and can now go through the process (hopefully short) of getting his professional seal! What an accomplishment! HUGE! If you don't know, this is quite a process for architects... 9 tests... which just takes quite a bit of time... I am so happy that they FINALLY posted the results after 9 weeks and now we can celebrate. This is a really nice thing to have done before baby T arrives. My goal was to for sure be licensed before kiddos, but little did we know both of us would be. happy days!

Kumquat?

What the heck is a kumquat?
Well, Whatever it is, little Baby T is about the size of a kumquat. Needless to say, Ray and I are *SO EXCITED*!!!
We had a 10 1/2 week appointment today and saw Baby T moving around and and punching like crazy, and that sweet little heartbeat just pounding away. I am happy to be almost done with my first Tri, hoping that the nausea will subside.

We have big Thankful hearts right now.

Thankful...

Thanksgiving was a wonderful time or shopping, eating, fellowshipping, football, driving, etc. Allison and Andrew's house is beautiful and she had quite the full house for the extended weekend, well almost a week! It was nice and cold and fun to see where she has been living the past few years. Sadie, their dog is getting so big (still small compared to Frannie) and we enjoyed loving on her since our sweet puppy didn't make the trip this time. The girls did a bit of shopping on Black Friday and found some good deals, but we did none of that 4 am craziness. We went to see "Four Christmases" on Saturday and it is really good and really funny! We laughed a lot- you should go see it!

This past monday Mom, Dad, Ray and I went to see Rockapella at MSC Opas. Mom got tickets for Christmas from a teacher-friend. It was not something that we would have necessarily picked to go to, but it was entertaining. I wouldn't necessarily want to see their regular show, but the Christmas one was fun- They are pretty entertaining and one of the guys is a beat-boxer- AMAZING! He sounded exactly like sleigh bells for several songs. He basically could do a full drum set wtih the microphones on his neck for the base drum- pretty impressive.

Unfortunately, we had a little cold bug that got spread around Thanksgiving weekend- so that has been fun for me this week... thanks rebs!

Hope your families had a wonderful holiday-

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! WE HOPE EVERYONE HAS A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY WITH LOTS OF FAMILY, TURKEY AND PUMPKIN PIE! WE ARE OFF TO ABILENE TO CELEBRATE WITH MY FAMILY AT ALLISON'S NEW HOUSE. WE WILL BE THE LAST TO ARRIVE THIS EVENING. SHOULD BE NICE AND COLD!

pumpkin...

Last night, I made these iced pumpkin cookies to take to work. Let me just tell you... delicious! Some of them I dipped in the icing and they are super sweet and the rest I just drizzled icing. They are a definite make again. I also made pumpkin bread to take to my sister Allison's house for Thanksgiving weekend. I followed a few of the suggestions and went ahead and used the full 28 oz of pumpkin (1/2 cup extra) and used unsweetened applesauce instead of vegetable oil. It looks and smells really good and I am sure it won't disappoint.
Are you enjoying your pumpkin this season?

what I did today...

Added to our garage freezer stash. Today I made chicken spaghetti (we had one of the 8x8's for dinner tonight- yummy...), lasagna, and verde chicken enchiladas (2-8x8 casserole dishes of each). I enjoyed adding it to the freezer with the Beef Stew, Chicken Tortilla Soup, Cabbage Rolls, and Spicy Sausage Pasta. I went to BB&B to get 4 more 8x8's so I could add more to the freezer.

...excited for easy dinners to come...

flowers just because...

he loves me...

Master Shams...

Our house is a work in progress, to say the least. The ultimate plan is to build a master bedroom, second bathroom and laundry room in the existing garage (which will involve bringing the front of the garage out about 8 feet). Needless to say, this is going to be quite the undertaking. We originally thought we would be pretty far into that project by now, but we ran out of cashola with the addition of the rent house. So, we will be a 3-1 for awhile it seems. All that to say, when we painted the room that is our current bedroom, we planned on that shortly becoming a guest bedroom and chose colors and curtains that way. Therefore we can't use any of the bedding we used in our Dallas master bedroom. I finally decided to make some pillow shams and got a new Ralph Lauren sage green combed cotton blanket (if you don't have one, you should- my red one from fish year at A&M is still my favorite!). I really like the way the shams turned out and I think they look really nice with the green blanket and white dust ruffle. It helps make the far away move to the garage feel more planned... and i like things planned :)

the back
blow up of the front- red, dark brown, white and sage green freehand circles

the front (you can also see the green blanket on the sides)

guest bedroom...

I started this post the week the Slack fam and Megan came to visit in late October... I am finally posting it with pictures...
Finally we are done with the guest bedroom (well sort of, I still have a lot of closet organizing and unpacking to do). My dear friends Lori and Megan are coming into town and we needed the bedroom so it was a good deadline push for us. Phew, that was a lot of work... and Ray will laugh at this because I don't even know the half of the work since he is the one who did the worst part, well him and my dad... You can't tell from the before pictures but this room had the heaviest texture on the walls I have ever seen. It hurt when you leaned your arm against it it was so heavy. We had the same texture in the kitchen/ living room. So my dear, sweet father and Ray skim coated the wall with sheetrock mud and sanded, patched, sanded, patched... until we had *LOVELY* smooth walls. The only texture is the paint, which Ray did a fabulous job of rolling, by the way. I was the cut-in painter girl this week. I really love the color we have chosen for pretty much all of our walls. It is such a nice tan-grey color. So soothing, unlike the mustard yellow that was in this room before- eek!

"after" picture... I really love the way it turned out- so calm and soothing

"after" picture- I love the picture I found on clearance at Target

before picture- I didn't do a good job of these before pics... this is the window that is barely in the 2nd "after" picture- it is hard to see the texture on the wall, but you can see the lovely mustard color :)

marmelade roll's visit... weekend update...

Karen (aka marmelade roll-ML, don't ask 'cause I don't even know anymore :) ) came to visit last weekend. I picked her up in Dallas since I had a doctor's appointment in the afternoon on Friday. We had a lovely lunch at Cafe R+D (if you live in Dallas and haven't been, it is a MUST- yumm!) Then we went to DSW, man I miss that place. After that we got a Sprinkles Cupcake, which I had heard about, but never tried... pretty a-ma-zing! Went to the doctor, which was the fastest visit EVER (ML must be good luck!). Finally, we had some tasty treats at Royal Thai... again, if you live in Dallas... Then the 3 hour drive home- we were SO TIRED at the end, both depserately trying to keep our eyes open.

Saturday Ray made pancakes and ML and I ran some errands in the morning, including a trip to Readfield's for some tasty steaks to grill that night. We also went to Target to get The Office Season 4 since we have the other seasons and ML had not hardly seen any of last season. We got home, had lunch and sat on the couch the rest of the day with Jim, Pam and Dwight. We took a break to make a tasty dinner of steaks on the grill, crash hot potatoes, and corn on the cob. Then it was back to the office. We watched all of season 4 save about 3 episodes. It was so nice and relaxing- what we all needed!

Sunday we slept in and then watched 3 episodes of The Office Season 5. Then it was off to Houston Hobby for the flight out. Pretty uneventful, but oh-so relaxing and such a good visit- lots of good talk time, esp. in the car!

love you Marmelade Roll and so glad you are a flight attendant so I can be spoiled by frequent visits! Also, I got the lovely pedestal bowl yesterday that you bought me for a belated bday present- LOVE IT!

beanie...

Saw this the other day at HEB, reminded me of my friend Lori...

so happy...

Karen is coming to see me tomorrow! I haven't seen her since we moved and I can't wait for her to see the house (she saw it before renovations when we first moved in), and more importantly to see her! Hip Hip Hooray!

vegan, gluten and milk free dinner...

So, Saturday night we invited our next door and across the street neighbors for dinner. Our next door neighboor, Crystal is allergic to wheat gluten and the Polish neighbors across the street are vegan and their daughter is allergic to milk. Wow... that really limits the options. I ended up sauteing carrots, onion, red, yellow and green bell pepper, and two kinds of zuchini in olive oil with salt and pepper. Then I added two jars of Bertolli organic spaghetti sauce and simmered until we were ready for dinner. I also made Spaghetti squash for the noodles. If you have never tried it, you should, it is VERY cool! and now is the time as it is a winter squash. All you do is cut the squash lengthwise and bake it at 375 for 30-40 mins, rind side up. Then you flip it over and take a fork and run it through the flesh and it shreds up just like spaghetti. When you put sauce over it you don't even really notice that it isn't pasta. Crystal brought dessert that I know we will make again for sure, so easy and light. All you do is heat up a can of peaches on the stove and put a few in a dish with a little scoop of vanilla (she brought over soy ice cream because of the milk allergy), then sprinkle corn flakes and cinnamon on top. It was really tasty, and something you could pretty much always have the ingredients for on hand.

It was really nice to have them over for dinner, exp. the Polish neighbors (we have gotten together with Mark and Crystal before). We had a really nice time talking with them about Poland, this is their first time to the US and they arrived in September. We took over some brownies last sunday which is when we found out that they were Vegan. I learned a good lesson that day about bringing new neighbors a potted plant instead of food. I felt bad for taking them something that I don't think they could eat. I hope that they will feel comfortable asking us if they need anything...

I love being called "hon" by clients... love it...

yesterday...

Well, looks like it happened like I thought it might- Obama was elected. As Christy said, The Lord is sovereign, thankfully. I am glad that the Bond for a new City Hall in CS did not get passed... at least that vote went my way... we are also getting some work out of Iola based on their voting, so that is good. I guess that is all I have to say about that- we shall see what pans out!

hb halloween girl!

This is a little late, but Happy Birthday Megan! I hope you had a wonderfully Halloween-ie birthday! After living with someone born on Halloween, I must say I enjoy Halloween more, for your sake!
Happy Belated Birthday Megan and welcome to the 30 club!

multitalented Ray...

Saturday was a very productive day (actually morning) at the Thomas house, thanks to my very capable husband... He said how this stage of the house stuff is really nice because you can get so many things done in a day... So, this is the list of his "checks" on our house list from the weekend.
1. Replace the fan in the kitchen, for some reason the fast speed had slowed to a crawl
2. Replace the hall light fixture
3. Replace the shower head
4. Install 2 smoke detectors
5. Replace the front porch light
6. Hang lots of pictures for me; in the kitchen, living room and hall
7. Hang up the Kuckoo clock in the living room

Still to do for our existing house to be completed (not including the new master, bath, and laundry in the garage addition, that is still to come).
1. Wall repair and paint the bathroom a lovely dark sage color
2. Paint Ray's office
3. Paint the exterior of the house (that will be a chore!)
4. Still need Gerald, the wood floor guy to come back and install the quarter round in the kitchen and fix the spot on the floor that was marred when we installed the oven (need to call him and get back on his list!)

I must say at times I am jealous of my little sister that just moved into a brand new house that they built... nothing to do to move in except landscaping... but yet I know that Ray and I much more enjoy doing it ourselves and seeing the finished product- It is just such a process, that I wish was over at this point.

overalls for Drew...

The night before Lori, Tucker and Drew were coming in town we were at Target and I decided to pick up a little surprise. It was SO hard to get the overalls to fit on the embroidery hoop (because they are small and so thick)! They turned out cute though- Little boys and overalls are so adorable!

slack family and megan visit...

My two best friends from A&M came to visit last weekend. Lori, Tucker and her little boy Drew came in for a wedding in town and Megan decided to come down too! It was so fun and really nice to be the midway point (we have plans of doing this WAY more often!). It was such a *BLAST*! Drew is just about the cutest, sweetest little *almost* 1 year old that I have ever met! He stayed with us while Lori and Tucker went to the wedding (first time they had left him except at church). On Sunday we went to the Bonfire Memorial which was really meaningful for us all to go to since that tragedy happened while we were in our Junior year at A&M and Lori, Tucker and Megan had not been to the Memorial yet. Drew especially enjoyed running around and trying to eat rocks, much to Lori's delight. I sure wish we all lived closer that 3+ hours away! Lori and Tucker are one of the most encouraging and uplifting couples to be around, I know they touch many a life over in Nederland!eatin' rocks

sweet baby Drew

Love you girls!

seattle baby girl...

My dear friend Amy had a baby girl last week- Congrats Amy and Danny! I sent some goodies up with her mom that I hope she will enjoy. I was also going to add her name to a sleeper onesie, but my machine decided to eat a hole in the front instead of adding "lizzie". Boo... hopefully I can still salvage the sleeper and do something with it. I really love making baby gifts- so cute!

A few burp cloths... So weird, I bought some light peachie orange thread to use with the hot pink and peach polka dot ribbon (far right), but the embroidery machine didn't like it for some reason. It was the exact brand of thread I used for the green on the left, so not sure what that was all about, but the hot pink turned out cute...

A little lovie- Pink softness on the front and brown satin on the back with freehand hearts quilting it together. It is about 18 in square.

Andrew's bday...

Allison and Andrew came in from Abilene two weekends ago for Andrew's birthday. We had a nice time getting together at Andrew's parent's house and Frannie finally got to enjoy a larger puppy friend. I know they will have much fun in the future together. I didn't get any pictures when they came over on Sunday of people, I was just trying to get a picture of Frannie with puppy Sadie. Next time I will get people pics, I just forgot- I am so glad the Tech game wasn't too bad (although I must say I didn't watch hardly any of it- busy busy with mom and Allison)...

The good Ags are looking better and better!
Not like my sophomore year, of course, but better and better none the less- For some reason I can't get the text above the first pic... So, above is Sadie hoping not to get noticed on the window seat- She is sneaky and was told to get down repeatedly...

sharing Frannie's bed, although Frannie looks less than thrilled...

I need to get in the practice of having out my camera more- I was really good at that in college and then... not so much...

so busy...

Well, there will be several posts to come soon. Work and home stuff is keeping us really busy these days. The things that I will hopefully be blogging about soon include: my baby sister and brother-in-law's visit last weekend (including fun with Sadie and Frannie), our guest bedroom is finished, the reason our guest bedroom is finished (my best friends from college, Lori and Megan, coming into town), my new office, and some more projects that I have been doing (sewing wise). That reminds me, I need to go pick up my sewing machine from being cleaned today. Well, I am off to do that and get a lamp for the guestroom. more to come...

rain, rain, rain...

WOW! That was a TON of rain from Ike! I am so thankful we do not live in Houston or Galveston. There have been even more evacuees that came into town after the storm was over because they did not have electricity. Mom and dad came over on Saturday to join in on our movie watching because they lost electricity. I rented about 5 movies on Saturday and we ended up with some pretty wierd ones. I think I have lost the renting knack or something. I guess i just need to stick with ones that I have heard of. Two of them just ended at crazy parts and after that we didn't watch anymore of the ones that I rented and Dad and Ray went to get dinner and another movie. Next time I will be walking through the interior movie aisles instead of the new/ recent releases. We have seen those newer ones that we need to see, i suppose... I digress...

Anyways, we had a good lazy day on the couch in the rain- Frannie would not go out for anything- she HATES the rain... It is pretty funny... We had tons we could do around the house, but I (easily) talked Ray into just relaxing on Saturday and saving the work for another day. It was really nice, really nice not to be at the bad end of the storm. We are thankful for that and that we didn't lose any trees as there are a lot down in the neighborhood.

the hurricane crazies...

Hurricane's a comin... Wow, I thought that Dallas was crazy a few years ago when Rita was supposed to make it all the way up there. Not near as crazy as it has been down here. There are shelters set up for all the evacuees from Houston and wherever else they are coming from. We went to the grocery store during lunch yesterday because we had nothing for dinner and I knew it would be crazy after work. It was definitely already nuts! Our office is right across the street from Kroger and it has been pretty funny watching all the people stalking up on water- They have water sitting outside of the store luring them in... Schools were cancelled today, even though it is not supposed to hit Galveston until tonight (although i did see they are getting a good water surge right now on the sea wall). So, it should be interesting to see what happens. All I know is that I heard that after the storm, next week we should have some nice cooler weather, so I am looking forward to that!

skydive... check!

So, yesterday I had the opportunity to do something that I have always wanted to do... jump out of an airplane! One of my co-workers, Morgan and her husband, Dave skydive all the time and I asked her if her husband would take me tandem and so we finally did... WOW! What an amazing experience... I didn't get a videotape or anything because Morgan also jumped with us and as you can see from the pictures, there wasn't anymore room for the guy to take the video. One fun thing about skydiving is that you get to have two experiences for one... riding in a tiny plane and jumping, of course. (For some reason, I could not get the first pic to slide down under this text...) SO, the above pic) is us getting into the tiny plane, first me, then Dave, then Morgan. Notice how big we are compared to the plane, yeah... very small...

ok, all closed up, ready for takeoff.
The white door was opened once we were at 10,000 feet and then Morgan opened the door and crawled out under the wing on the "step". Then, I had to scoot forward and sit on the edge of the plane in the doorway and put my feet on the step. Then I got really scared and wondered "What the heckles and I doing up here?!?" Morgan said that my face looked really funny right about then as I was looking down at Coulter Airfield. Then Dave spun us around as we jumped and had a free-fall of about 5,000 ft before he pulled the parachute. WOW!!! I pretty much screamed the ENTIRE freefall. Ray followed the plane on the entier 25 minute ascent and was able to see us right when we jumped outwith his binoculars- he said you could hear the plane slow down. He said he kept thinking that we were getting really close and then would look without the binos and we were still small dots. It was exhilerating and amazing! I can definitely see why people spend a lot of time and money doing this.

doing turns
Once the chute was open we glided a bit and then Dave asked how I was doing and then we did some turns, first slow ones, then fast ones. Very fun!

Then we landed and it was over, it seemed like a long time, but it also went REALLY fast! Now, I feel like I have done all of the parachute type of activities that I want to do. Parasailing in Destin, Florida, Paragliding in Interlaken, Switzerland, and finally skydiving in Bryan, Texas!

so much to do...

so little time. Don't we all feel like this sometimes?!? There just isn't enough time during the week to have some downtime after work and then get much done around the house that needs to get done after the gym and dinner. We still have so much to do at our house remodel-wise and it is hard to be motivated sometimes, since we can sit in the living room and it feels nice and done. But, alas, we have much to do and I am gettting really ready to get it DONE and get everything unpacked and organized. It isn't going to be long before I will hit a wall and all the boxes will put my type A personality over the edge. So, I better get busy before that happens... ready for a long weekend... AND an Aggie football game- thanks for the tickets Becky!

long lost...

Karen... i miss you, my friend... we have been playing phone tag for so long and I just decided to leave you a message here, until we speak again! :) Remember these lovely moments in the 'burb on the move down from Dallas last February?!? Fun times... We definitely need to get together very soon- I got spoiled with you flying into Dallas so much for work!

miss you friend :(

baby gifts...

I got an embroidery machine last November and I love that adding a few letters totally transforms baby gifts (and other things)

this is a little outfit I got and just added the name. I was so excited when I opened it and saw the striped pants... so CUTE! I though it was all the pink circles- i love surprises like that!
i love making the personalized burp cloths as well. This was the first baby girl that friends have had since we bought the machine. All I have been able to do was boy gifts... I have some pics somewhere that I need to post of those.
I really love this ribbon I found with the fun outline font. Congrats on your baby Max and Virginia- something should arrive in the mail for you shortly... surprise!

anniversary dinner...

We went to a fairly new steakhouse, Eccel Steakhouse, in town for dinner on Friday to celebrate our anniversary. Our first impression was how warm it was in the restaurant, but for those of you who know us, any kind of heat at all is magnified in its effect on us. I guess the restaurant heats up too much during to day to be really cooled off by a 6:30 reservation. The food was really good and we especially enjoyed the smoked gounda mac and cheese with crabmeat. The mac and cheese leftovers really good for breakfast too, I might add :) After dinner we went over to our nextdoor neighbors to watch the opening ceremonies of the olympics. It was nice to spend some time with them. We have really missed that since moving from Dallas and leaving our couple friends. We are really ready to get plugged in at church.

happy 4th anniversary...

I can't believe we have already been married 4 years. Time has completely flown by, and I couldn't be happier to share the rest of my life with you! I am looking forward to celebrating once you get back from Panama City. ILU and can't wait to see what the future holds!

sun in seaside...

we spent an afternoon in Seaside, such a lovely beach town. We all went and it was pretty hot so most of the group were ready to go back pretty quickly.

Don, Monie, Ray and I stayed to explore while the hot and bothered peeps went back home.

Don and Monie just outside of Bud & Alleys, a great beachview bar with a fab ocean breeze. We had a little snack of peel and eat shrimp coctail, sweet potato fries, rum punch and iced tea.
below is a picture of the neighborhood school in Seaside, SO cute!
next is a picture of rooftops in the arts district.

they all have cool rooftop spots to see the ocean.
store sign in town... everything is so bright and colorful
a taco bar, we definitely have to go back next time we are in Florida and have more time to go in all the neat spots.
on the way home we got a little lost looking for the right highway for a quicker route home. We were actually really glad we did because we would not have seen the amazing house below. The picture doesn't do it justice- it is really neat- looks like a ship... sort of...

sandcastles...

We had quite the snd castle artists in Monie, Ray and Dad. They did sand castles 3 days. I don't have pictures of the first one, so I will post some later.

This was the second castle... each of them took a side to create a diverse castle that drew everyone on the beach to look at it...

Below is Ray's side...

next is dad's side- he did castle ones because the little boy nextdoor really liked the first one he did the day before that was very "lord of the rings"
and finally we have Monie's side, very artistic, she had the sea shell and stair skills down.
this is a picture of the whole castle so you can see how the three fit together... sort of...
finally, below we have the one that Monie just did the final day. It had a shell and was very organic looking with lots of large tunnels. Later that night there were about 10-15 sand crabs that had made homes inside and on top of this castle.

miramar beach, florida...

we had a wonderful week in Miramar Beach, Florida. It was so nice to go back to where Allison and Andrew got married 2 years ago, and to be able to just have fun, not prepare for a wedding. fun we definitely had... I am waiting to get more pics from my sisters from our actual vaca spot. The pic below is taken from one of the balcony/ porches of the house we stayed in. It is a picture of our beach that we played on all week. I got REALLY sunburned the first day on the front of my legs ... REALLY sunburned... It kind of cramped the first part of my fun, unfortunately, but I still spent some good times at the beach. Now, I am peeling and itching like CRAZY. But, really what is a beach vacation without someone getting sunburned, right?

Below is a picture of some entertainment provided pretty much daily by four guys in matching speedos and hats. Our beach setup was just behind them. They liked to go "frolic" by the water up and down the beach. Pretty bold, and humorous...

in 5 days...

we will be in Miramar Beach, Florida. I am so excited to be doing alot of this (Ray loves building sandcastles)...

and definitely a lot of this... with a book-

We are going back to stay at the beach house where Allison and Andrew got married two summers ago. Mom and Dad, Ray and I, Allison and Andrew, Rebecca and Tucker and Don and Monie are going to stay at the house and enjoy the sand and sun for a week! It was a blast when Allison got married and it will be even better without having to prepare for a wedding. Can't wait!

hb Kareb...

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Marmelade Roll,
Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday Karen Olivia!
I hope that you have a fabulous day and a fun weekend of celebrations!
Love you friend!

Oh Tilly...

We are keeping Tilly, my parent's Yorkie while they are in Colorado for a few weeks. She has been quite the challenge trying to escape under the fence. First, she went over to meet the neighbor dogs. They have installed a new electric fence just inside their fenceline to keep their dogs in, so she was sure in for a suprise! Later that day, she escaped out the other side of the fence and went towards the alley. There are tons of sticka-burr plants along the fence and in the alley behind the fence. When we found her she seriously had about 500 sticka-burrs in her hair. She looked like a lion with her hair matted and sticking up everywhere because of the stickers.

yep... unbelievable!

So, she got a little haircut, and we are definitely NOT professionals so it looks pretty terrible.