Road Trip!

Two weekends ago (I know...I'm slacking in the blogging department) my mom, grandma, and I took a road trip down to visit Betsy at her new place in Arkansas. We had so much fun and considering it was such a short trip I feel like we fit a lot in! 

For those of you that don't know, Bets moved to Arkansas to live with our cousin, Brock at his new place. I chuckle a little bit every time I think about her "moving to Arkansas to live with her cousin." Haha! Anyways, Brock just bought his first place and it is gorgeous! It is the perfect set up for roommates. Betsy has a great room and I think she will really like Arkansas. Selfishly, I wish she was closer, but if I have to visit her somewhere...I'm glad she picked a place close enough for me to drive, too. 

First order of business was to pick up dinner...seeing as how they had been living there for all of 24 hours, ordering out was our best option. There was going to be eight of us for dinner, so we just ordered a random assortment of entrees from a Chinese restaurant. What we didn't realize, was how big there servings were....below you can see our BOX of Chinese. SO. MUCH. FOOD. Oops. We ate Chinese for dinner and lunch and still left them with leftovers for the rest of the weekend. 

When we got to their new place we sat around enjoying some wine, chipped beef dip (my grandma's specialty and one of my favorite dips!), and good conversation. We also got to see my cousin Madelyn who is a freshmen at Arkansas. Go Razorbacks! 

The next day we went to a farmers market not too far from Brock's place. And it was AMAZING1 I loved it! I would go every weekend if I could. I made some great purchases including some delicious candies, homemade cheese (that lasted all of two days at our house...should have gotten more!), a gift for my mother-in-law, and my mom bought me a super cute apron. And I could have gotten so much more. Loved. It. 

 Fresh peaches...so many peaches...I loved the smell of them!

Gorgeous fresh flowers. I would be here every Saturday for the sole purpose of buying some beautiful flowers! Nothing cheers up a house like fresh flowers!

How do you know you are in the South? When you see statues honoring and commending the Confederate soldiers for defending the rights of the state against the federal government. War is over. You lost. Move on.

The first "Wal-Mart" ever. It has been turned into a museum. So, of course, I loved it.

One of the original cash registers. 

Sam Walton's office as it was on the day he died. The took tons of pictures to document it, then moved it all to the museum and placed everything back as it was...down to the papers and hand-written reminder notes he left on his desk back in their exact place. It is like a time capsule....and I love that. 

We were calling it the three g's trip for the three generations represented. And no I don't normally wear my hair like that...I had it wrapped up doing the no heat curls. I do them fairly regularly now...they are so easy, and actually keep my hair pretty curly. What's funny is sometimes I wear my hair out in public like this and people always compliment me on my 'do. Haha...I told one lady "oh no, I am just doing this to curl my hair...this isn't a serious style" and she said "why not...I think you should wear it just like that all day!" While I haven't gotten brave enough to do that...maybe I'll consider it someday soon. 

Bets and Beau in front of their new place ...love it!

One on the front porch. 

I didn't want to leave. :( 

 

Thought I would show how the no heat curls turned out. I tried to text these pics to my mom and grandma so they could see how it turned out since they rode the whole way home with me with my hair all wrapped up, not getting to see the end result. The one on the left was taken right after I took the headband off....the second one was taken about two hours later after playing around out in the heat....still curly! Love it!

Some of Rob's sophomore players playing backyard golf. I'm really good at that game. I totally schooled these boys....and then I offered a rematch but nobody wanted to play. Sore losers. :)

Some of the boys fishing out at Rob's grandparents farm. We had such a great time and I hope we spend some more time out there soon. 

School started last week and I feel like I haven't had much down time since then. I'm excited for it to be a few weeks down the road when the beginning of the year stuff has settled down a bit and both me and the kiddos are in more of routine. The start of school was made a little easier though with some sweet flower deliveries. The roses were dropped off by my sweet mother-in-law the day before school....and on the first day these daisies from Rob were delivered during one of my classes, so of course the girls in class think Rob is just the sweetest. And they might be right. :) 

 

Then later last week we lucked out when Tedder's Sterling soccer team came to play Hesston College in a scrimmage. Rob and I got to go out and watch Ted play...which of course I loved. During the game the goalie for Hesston took a hard hit and was down for the count. It was really scary at the time because we knew he had been knocked out, and after he came to he didn't appear to be moving and was put in a neck brace while the ambulance was called. He didn't have any family there so the Hesston Resident directors sprung into action and were really there for him...which was neat to watch. Seeing things like that scare me so much....if one of my brothers ever went down like that, I would be hysterical. I am not the person to have around in high stress situations. I was the only one there when both my brother's broke their arms and when Ted broke his leg. While I didn't totally break down...I did cry a lot and freak out when the doctors wouldn't treat them or tried to give faulty diagnoses. Wait....does crying and freaking out constitute a break down? Don't even get me started on when I saw my mom pass out in college. Anyways...back to the soccer game. I was just so scared for that boy that it was hard to enjoy the rest of the game. Thankfully, he was ok. During the break Sterling dropped to a knee and prayed for him. I am so, so thankful Ted chose to go to such a great school and is part of such a great team. During the game there was at least three corner kicks, all of which Ted tried to hit in with his head...that is one good thing about being the tall one on a soccer team....your head always beats out everyone else's head. :)

Go Teddereddie!!!

He's the blurry one in blue. :)

Down on their knees, praying for the Hesston goalie. 

After the ambulance showed up. It took forever for it to get there, but I guess there is an EMT that lives right across the street from the soccer fields, so they ran and grabbed him to help stabilize him while waiting. Gotta love a small town. :) 

 Last weekend after the blue and gold scrimmage (during which I took no pictures...oops!) I went to Hesston to watch Robby run a Bunco night for the student activities center. It was so great! The kids were LOVING it! So much fun! And they had 220 kids show up....which is almost half the Hesston student body and nearly two-thirds of the students living on campus. I spotted a bunch of Robby's baseball players there...since I hadn't seen boys play bunco before it was really funny to not only see these jocks playing bunco...but watching them LOVE bunco and get really into it. It was so fun!

Ok, I think that is all for now. We have another wedding to go to this weekend so I'll be back with pics from our get away to St. Louis sometime next week! 

Love a good wedding

Yesterday I got to watch a friend I have known since kindergarten marry the love of her life. And I loved it. I loved seeing her excitement, her happiness....I just loved being witness to her big day. Chelsea and I went to school K-12 together and grew up "across the ditch" from each other. We lived a block away from each other and would often meet up at this ditch between our houses to go ride our bikes around the neighborhood or swim at her house, come over to my house and play with my siblings. We even spent one summer buying up wedding magazines at Hastings and making "wedding binders"....cutting and pasting pictures for our dream wedding someday. Well, she had hers last night and it was gorgeous. I had the best time catching up with some friends and laughing really hard with my Mom. Seriously...we were cracking each other up left and right. And once we hooked up with my friend Meg and her mom....there was no stopping the four of us. :)
I'm so happy for Chels and Derek and so glad she asked me to come and help document some of the day! I thought I would put up a little preview of pictures for them to see before they jet off for their honeymoon! Have so much fun guys!

First up....photos of her dress....it was gorgeous and absolutely perfect on her!

Giving her mom a little loving.

I loved watching her Dad watch his only daughter get ready for her wedding. I can only imagine the thoughts and emotions running through his head. 

The bridesmaids were having a blast all day!

 Wedding dresses can be very heavy! Especially when it is 95 degrees outside. 

 Beautiful bouquet! In the second picture you can better see her grandmother's broach...it was gorgeous!

 I spotted some of my favorite people across the aisle before the ceremony started! 

Love that Lanning/Carey family! 

 I have so many expression shots of Chels throughout the ceremony I could have made a whole collage of them! This one was one of my favorites though. :)

 The parents of the bride looked wonderful...and so happy!

 I love these girls....and I love that now when we take pictures together and they have their cute little babies hanging around with us, too!

Yay! Congrats, Chels....you looked absolutely beautiful!

Whew....lots of pictures. I'm waiting for my Arkansas ones to load right now so I'll be back with another post soon!