10

10 years ago I had my last first date and it was by far the best first date I have ever had.

(this picture is not of that night but the closest I could get! It was on January 5, 2002 at Doris' bday party at Banana Joe's. This was the night we danced a little {or a lot} closer than usual and realized there was something different between us!)

Of course that probably had something to do with who I was with and not just our evening out...together...not just friends anymore... I know we were both anxious to see how the evening would go. I mean, we had been out together hundreds of times but this time we were on an official date! I was only slightly worried it would be uncomfortable or awkward but that quickly faded as he held the door open for me to get into his truck. I still had the normal butterflies that you get on a first date but this one was different as we were already best friends and knew pretty much everything about each other and our past relationships. So although it was our first it felt like we were really starting at date 12 =)

Neil brought me my favorite flowers - purple tulips and surprised me through out the evening. We went to an amazing Italian restaurant (my favorite cuisine), Aldo's, that was "THE" place to go for prom when we were in high school. I never went and he remembered I always wanted to try it so I was so excited!

After a kiss by the car (I think it's so funny I remember that) it was off for another surprise and this has since become one of our favorite special occasion places to celebrate at - a fabulous jazz club downtown on the river called The Landing and the Jim Cullins Band performed (unfortunately not anymore). A quiet table on the first floor against the back wall with dim candlelight - holding hands across the table... romantic to say the least! A lot of times we will even request to sit at the same table when we go back.

That night confirmed that our leap of faith from our friendship to dating was going to be well worth the risk and ended up being the most amazing love we will find in another. The Lord's timing for us was perfect as He was getting us ready for the rest of our lives. Right now Neil has been composing "How I Met Your Mother" (he's on part 4) and it's been so fun to remember all the details and how again, His timing was perfect. Neil kept a journal during those years which is even more fun to read and talk about what was going on in our world and in our hearts so many years ago. We are so blessed and I couldn't imagine spending it with anyone else!

Symphony

Neil and I were blessed with a gift of AMAZING symphony tickets on Saturday at the Majestic! What a beautiful evening. They had a featured pianist for a piano concerto and she was simply amazing. We were as close as I've ever sat on orchestra left - her hands were a blur! It's rare that we get to be in the presence of such amazing music expression. What a joy it was to share it with my Neil.

We weren't supposed to take flash photography in the theater so this was the best I could do! The Majestic is stunning and my favorite performance venue (well, in the states!)
Me and my love

Every time I go to a performance, I realize how much I miss and crave experiencing music. I teach and sing but there just isn't anything like learning and performing Bach, Debussy, Barber, Whitacre - I know that I'm so blessed to be using the passion for music God has given me by teaching but I can't wait till I get to be part of a fabulous choral ensemble again.

9 years

Today we celebrate a VERY special day - our 9th dating anniversary! Not the anniversary of our first date because well, we had an interesting start. We pretty much confessed our love for each other BEFORE our first date!! It's the anniversary of when Neil and I met at Jim's with the same agenda - get the courage up to tell each other something was different between us - let's take a chance - and we never looked back! It was a HUGE risk but well worth it to spend the rest of my life with my very best friend. We never would've thought 9 years ago that we would be here - two girls and on our journey to our son.

And as we sit here on the couch tonight watching the LSU Tigers (my alma matar) and the Aggies (Neil's alma matar), I remember that a Tiger AND an Aggie both won that night 9 years ago! (chessy - I know but I just couldn't help myself!!)

We couldn't be more blessed! Next year we will be celebrating another special day on Jan. 7th - Ethiopia's Christmas - Ganna!

A Date with Eden

Last Friday Claire stayed over night with my parents so Neil and I took Eden on a little date! We love doing stuff alone with the girls so they get their special time with us. Eden LOVES bean and cheese tacos so we took her to Mama Margie's! We sat on the patio and just enjoyed watching Eden - she's growing up right before our eyes.

Gotta eat some of the beans before we close that taco =)
Me and my girl (trying to get away from me!)
She LOVED watching the cars drive by =) She looks so big in this picture with her stance, smile, pointy finger and big girl shoes!
Guess who learned to drink from a straw?! Props go to big sister because I could never get her to do it...and now she can't get enough.
We love spending time with you Eden girl! You are such a sweetheart!

A date kind of day

I am WAY behind on this post but don't want to forget to write about this day =) Back in late May Claire had her end of the year program at her MDO. She was more than excited to get all dressed up - picking out her dress and pearls herself. Unfortunately, Eden was super sick that day so we asked Claire who she wanted to go with her. She said "Daddy because he has to go to work and doesn't get to see his girls as much!" Too sweet-a date with daddy! So off they went to the program and later shared a Sonic picnic lunch. What a treat!

Her she is! Don't worry - I've cut her bangs since!! These pictures are so sweet but I can't believe I let her hair grow into her eyes that far!

She's so funny! She practices all around the house but doesn't really sing when she's there. Honestly, the programs are nothing to brag about but they do the best they can with what they have - makes me kind of sad as a music educator. Can't wait for Claire to be with her new MDO next year!
Claire was so excited about her Sonic stuffed tots!
Love this Girl!
That evening it was date night with mommy! Claire LOVES to go to any choir concert or recital with me so off we went to the Stevenson concert (where I went to middle school). I'm trying to get on teaching there once a week next year since it's so close by so we went to go check out the program. Wasn't the best concert to attend to check out vocal technique as they were doing all pop numbers but we still had fun!

Claire had to bring her baby who matched her dress for the evening. Everyone thought she was beyond precious carrying around her baby in her carseat! She got this 2 1/2 years ago and still plays with it =) Notice her matching necklace, bracelets and headband - all her choice!
Me and my girl!
We love doing special dates with our girls so that they get one on one time with us. Tomorrow Claire and I are off to see Toy Story with some friends!

Austin IS weird!

HA! We had a fabulous time in Austin visiting with friends and being tourists for a little bit on Saturday. That's where the title comes from... it's amazing how Austin is it's own little culture in itself (much like New Orleans). We saw some crazy things but the winner was when we were at a light on South Congress and I saw a very tan man riding his bike with only a thong on. WOW - wasn't expecting that but I must say he had a very even tan =) Apparently he's well known around town and everyone knows him by name. Tell Lesley "hi" next time you're in A-town.

We got up to Mike and Heather's just in time for dinner. They took us to a well known place called Max's Wine Dive. Super good! No kids! A double date =)

Mike and Heather love their gardens! They have this one and another one next to it.

Jalapenos!

A baby eggplant!

Saturday morning we spent a quiet time reading, Neil played video games, enjoyed our coffee and I mean, it was QUIET! What a wonderful morning! Then we headed to South Congress to take in some tourist action. I ate at the Mighty Cone Trailer - a yummy fried avocado taco!

Neil grabbed a slice of pizza and then we walked around the shops. Such unique places! My favorite was the costume store - I'm thinking we should have a summer costume party =)

Then we were off to Mozart's Coffee shop on the lakefront to meet our friends Julie and Charlie Johanson. We knew them from church before they moved about 5 years ago and just recently got back in touch via facebook! They are adopting too so we had a ton to catch up on. We talked for 2 1/2 hours! Can't wait to see them again and hear about when they get matched up with their little one.

For dinner we met Heather, my childhood friend, at Z-Tejas. Heather and I met in the 4th grade in math class. We lived around the corner from each other and walked our baby dolls (yes, we still liked dolls!) back and forth to our houses. She is an AMAZING NICU nurse!

Kisses after dinner =)

Sunday morning we got up bright and early to get to UUMC for Homes for Haiti. I didn't have my camera while we worked but got a few shots after everything was completed and cleaned up. We worked with a great group and met a really nice, young guy. He had melanoma, three kiddos and was adopted himself so we had A LOT to talk about. Hoping to run into them again while we are visiting my parents. We also met up with a former student of Neil's, Kassandra. She randomly found our blog the day after we worked and left the sweetest message for us =) Thanks Kassandra!

Here are parts of the houses that had been bound and were ready to be shipped off. It was a great experience and they actually ended up building 70 houses rather than only 50! God is good!

Here is a finished one. They also had something like bunk beds inside.

After cleaning up at home we headed downtown for our free night at Hotel Valencia. We love it there! So modern and such a special place from our wedding night =) We ate at Michaelino's - excellent food and a great view from our river side table.

Can you believe the size of this chicken parmesan? Gotta love Neil's face!

A shot of the happy couple!

Cheers to our wonderful 7 years!

We took this very same picture on our fourth anniversary. Valenica is in the back!

Neil talking to the girls before bed time! They were having a great time at Mimi and Poppa's.

One last shot before our camera battery died!

Monday morning we took it easy and walked a little more on the river. We went to the Quarry for a movie and then to Mencius for a late lunch. Oh, our time together was WONDERFUL! Already can't wait for next time! We had the best time but we were anxious to get back to our girls that afternoon. They had so much fun with their grandparents swimming, eating out, playing outside, getting spoiled, etc. Thanks for letting us have our weekend getaway!

It took the whole week to get back into the swing of things and now we're back off to Austin tomorrow for an adoption Hague Training with our home agency! We're also super busy getting ready for our next garage sale, preparing for VBS next week, setting things up for me to start teaching my summer lessons on Monday, finding babysitters, coordinating other activites for fundraising, getting my application and resume in for NISD to teach privately, etc. Always seems to be something on our plates but we love it!

Thanks to Sara, Tara and Cindi for leaving a comment on my last post. A girl can dream can't she?! Well, I left a long list of our thrifty vacay advice on my last post if you're interested in reading.

Hope yall had a great week! I have so much more to post! Hope to get caught up when we get back into town.

Road Trip!!!

Thank you for your prayers - Eden is feeling so much better so Neil and I get to go on our road trip this weekend! WHOO HOO!!! We have been looking forward to this weekend for about a year now. Crazy huh? We wanted to do something for our 7 year anniversary which is June 21st but Memorial Day weekend was easier to get babysitting =)

Well, a year ago we were planning a trip to London to go visit our sweet friend Kyle and travel a little around country side. Then about 8 months ago we thought we should probably save a little more of our tax return so let's go to New Mexico and do some cool things that we've read about - lunch with the lamas, stay in a tee-pee, visit Acoma Pueblo.

Then God's plan for us to start our adoption came a bit earlier and we needed to save all of our tax return so we are now going on an AWESOME low budget, fun trip to Austin and San Antonio. We realized all we really wanted was to have some time together without the kids (we haven't done this since our 5 year anniversary 2 years ago - it was time!) and to SLEEP IN!! Yeah!! Plus we'll be taking two amazing trips to Ethiopia within the next year and a half.

So here's the plan =) We are leaving late this afternoon to drive to Austin and stay with Mike and Heather. Saturday we're going to try a different Ethiopian restaurant called Karibu (Austin has 3 and we've tried Aster's which is SOO good!) and then find something cool to do before we meet up with my sweet, childhood friend Heather Adams for dinner and stay at her house. Then we're driving to SA really early for our shift at Homes for Haiti (check out my earlier post to see how you can still get involved this weekend!). Then it's off to downtown where we had a free nights stay at Hotel Valencia from our 4 year anniversary. They gave us a free night and we've never used it =) We stayed there the night of our wedding so it's a special place for us! Then Monday we're just going to kick back, relax, grab some lunch and maybe a movie or museum before we pick up the girls again. We are so excited!

A huge thank you to my parents for keeping the girls tonight and Sat. night and Neil's parents for keeping them Sunday night. I'm SUPER nervous about leaving them because Eden has never stayed away without us. (except the trial run last weekend at my parent's house which she did well!) This will be a great mini trip for our parents and the girl's for when we have to take our longer trips to Ethiopia. Wow - I STILL can't believe we're going to be there!

Gotta run and pack! This might be a little cheesy. I know there are a lot of you out there who visit our blog and I'd love to hear from you! (I'm a lurker too!) I have a map tracker and it's so exciting to see what cities around the world keep up with us so........
leave a comment even if you don't personally know me!! What are your best low budget trip tips? We will need be using them this weekend for sure! If you don't have any, just leave a comment and tell where you went on your favorite vacay!

Disney on Ice and Kerrville

OK - I have to finish my Spring break posts because now I have bluebonnet pictures and egg hunt pics! =) So here are the last two big events we had for spring break wrapped into one post!

Thursday we hurried back from Austin to drop Eden off at home with Grandpa (thanks dad for the last minute babysitting!) Claire was so excited for her special date with mom and dad by herself but couldn't stop talking about Eden on the way. She thought Eden was going to be sad she missed the show and that she was going to tell her all about it. What a sweet big sister!

We met our friends down there to enjoy the show. Here is Philip and Doris with Iliana. Congrats on their new baby boy Philip IV who was born less than a week later!

What a good looking family =)
Thought the princess section would've been Claire's favorite but nope! She LOVED Mickey as the Sorcerer's Apprentice when the brooms come to life. It was a really cool part of the show and my favorite when I was a kid too. Guess that's why they call it classic!
Priceless face... even if we had bought the tickets this face would've been worth it all!
Ili LOVED Claire and kept touching on her face. Claire was pretty smitten with her too!
Here is Jenny, Danny and Lily. Danny's brother in law works for a radio station and is the one who gave everyone extra tickets. Thanks Danny for asking us to go!
So we thought we'd splurge on a souvenir - a snow cone in a Mickey cup!
The finale!! So cool! The best part was when the Toy Story characters came out and they had a troll that danced - it was HILARIOUS!
Walking back to the car on daddy's shoulders. One of Claire's favorite spots =) You can see the Tower of America's in the background. Love this picture!
Claire didn't get to bed till 11 p.m. that night but again, worth it. Of course, we have a child who wakes up early even when she goes to bed super late so she was up by 6:30 a.m. YUCK!!

Then is was ready to get things together to drive to Kerrville to visit Neil's grandma. We took her out to lunch for her birthday and then we spent some time down by the river. Beautiful but windy day! Too bad the ducks were hiding from us!
Windy Claire
Oh - that's a joy face! She was so happy to be able to get out and about after two days of road trips and sitting in her high chair and car seat. She LOVED pointing to the flowers and chasing the birds.

Went back to Maw Maw's for yummy chocolate cake and some more time out back. She has such a green thumb and I had a great time talking to her about everything she had getting ready to bloom. Claire and Eden enjoyed an egg hunt that Maw Maw put together for them. So sweet of her! Claire kept hiding the eggs over and over so she could hunt as long as she could =) Funny.... even when she hid them she would have a hard time finding at least one. She must be a good egg hider =)
Love all the pics of Maw Maw with Eden showing her the flowers. Eden loves flowers and hopefully will be better at keeping things alive than her mama!

Whew! That was a crazy but fun week! The weekend was full of more time outside, a birthday party, raking leaves, painting sand box covers and other little projects.