Saturday, September 27, 2014

First week of Fall!

I am loving this Fall weather! Alabama treated us pretty nice this week bringing us cooler weather! Ty and I enjoyed leaving the windows open every night this week! I always argue that with each new season, it is my favorite...and I think that's ok! I like to think I thoroughly enjoy every new season God gives us! :)

Monday night I thought Lasagna Soup would be the perfect way to end the first day of Fall! And man, it was so good! We ate on it for two days! I will post the recipe soon.


Tuesday Emma was a little excited to see me when I got home from the gym...she has no idea what personal space is. 


Thursday, Ty and Luke had an intense game of living room basketball and I got to snuggle with this little one:




Last night we had a date night & went to the outlet malls to walk around and shop! I left with a new black watch!!! 

I could spend all day in Charming Charlie...if your town doesn't have one, y'all are missing out. I love how everything in that store is divided up by color!!! Whoever thought of this concept is a genius. 

This morning, we went to visit my granddaddy with Christen and some of the kids! Aubrey and Kate enjoyed riding a huge stuff dog, paddling through imaginary water with a golf club...
Ha!!!

And this little one gets cuter by the minute!!! 


When I got back from Granddaddy's I found some selfies on my phone:
She is totally a pro at 2 year old selfies! 

We have no plans for the rest of the weekend, just enjoying this lovely weather!!!

Hope you've had a good first week of Fall as well! 

Monday, September 22, 2014

Honeymoon, Part 2

I'm back for more of our honeymoon recap!

On Wednesday we woke up and headed to the pool before our Dolphin Encounter, which was late in the afternoon. I so enjoyed just relaxing by the pool. It was so hot every day so there wasn't much laying out, we stayed in the pool most of the time. The resort was a big melting pot, with people from all over the world. The first day we were there, I was standing in the lobby and I could hear about 5 different languages at one time. It was so fun to hear people talk and people watch at the pool!

I obviously couldn't get any pictures of us with the dolphins but I snapped a few of a dolphin show we watched while we were waiting and we screen shotted some pictures that they had put online for us.




 


 



We all got to give our dolphin a command - this was "act like a shark"! I was amazed at how many commands he knew - he was so smart! It was such a fun experience!

After we played with the dolphins, we went back to our room and got ready for dinner.
That night we went to a restaurant right on the water and it was my favorite dinner view all week. Just absolutely breathtaking. If only we could eat dinner with this view every night!




 
Another yummy drink!
 

So peaceful!
 

Honeymoon Selfie :)
 
 
 
Next up, our snuba diving experience!!! Time to go finish dinner - we are having lasagna soup tonight! Recipe soon :)

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Honeymoon, Part 1

I am finally getting around to documenting our honeymoon, almost 2 months later! Being a wife is a busy job! :)

We went to Duck Key (right smack in the middle of the Florida Keys) on our honeymoon and stayed 6 nights and 7 days. We stayed at Hawk's Cay Resort and I cannot say enough good things about the resort. It was amazing. They catered to our every need, we got an AMAZING free breakfast every morning, and it was absolutely beautiful. I am already bugging Ty about wanting to go back. If only money grew on trees....

The night of our wedding, we drove to Atlanta (yes, we are crazy), stayed at a hotel for about 3 hours and then hopped on a plane to Ft. Lauderdale. We were running on NO sleep (I actually don't think I slept in several days), but Ty was a trooper and drove us the 2 1/2 hours from the airport to our resort. I slept the entire way and only woke up when we stopped for lunch. We had an amazing first meal and wondered how the rest of the week would follow after such a yummy first meal!

Here was our view at lunch the first day...
 
 
After lunch we had some time to kill before we could check in so we went to get some groceries. We had some issues checking in but while we waited, we ate melting ice cream in the rental car - because that's what honeymoons are for, right? If you know Ty, you know he is crazy about eating healthy, so I thoroughly enjoyed the guilty - free trip! :) We also drove around our tiny island and took in the gorgeous views and luxurious houses. A little fun fact - Duck Key has the most expensive houses in the Florida Keys!
 

 
 
We finally got checked in and slept for a good 4 hours. When we woke up, we decided to just eat at one of the restaurants at the resort and it was delicious!
 

On Monday, we woke up with no plans, but decided to get right to planning our week! My sweet best friend, Melissa had made me a "honeymoon goodie bag" and included several travel books for the Keys. We ate breakfast and then headed to the pool to relax and do some planning!

Our resort had its own dolphin adventure (we ended up going to another place when we swam with dolphins) so we enjoyed watching the dolphins Monday!


 
 
Monday night we went to a local restaurant that was very laid back and reminded me of where Jimmy Buffet or Kenny Chesney would be hanging out. :) We came back to this same place on our last day to feed the tarpon (more on that later).
 
 
 
I made Ty chase the sunset pretty much every night, and Monday was the first of many unbelievably gorgeous sunsets. I was in awe of how amazing our Creator is.
 

 


On Tuesday, we woke up and ate breakfast - have I mentioned how wonderful this breakfast was each morning? We were skeptical because we got a week of free breakfast but assumed it would be cereal and milk....boy were we wrong! They had waffles, pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, fruit, smoothies, cheese, bread, toast, bagels, muffins, a chef making fresh omelets, and more! I absolutely LOVE breakfast food (I think I could eat it for all 3 meals everyday) so I was in heaven!

It was a little overcast Tuesday so we went to a little zoo, where we fed stingrays and saw a few sharks. :)


 
 
Feeding the stingrays felt so weird, they would come suck up the food out of your hand!
 
After the zoo, we went to check out a key that is known for having wild deer roaming around everywhere. Ty was so excited! We didn't see many but it was so neat to see them roaming around free! Here was one that we saw just walking through someone's yard!
 
 
 
After we left the sweet little deer, we went to a Turtle Hospital! Yes, you heard right. I thought it might be boring, but it was quite interesting and the poor hurt sea turtles were so cute! I learned alot about turtles and I want to do a unit with my kids about sea turtles!
 
 
These sea turtles have something called "bubble butt" and they stay afloat unless weights are put on their backs!
 
 
After we left there, we went to a restaurant down the street that had a pool! If we would have known, we totally would have brought our bathing suits. :) I was introduced to a Key Lime Pie drink, which quickly became my favorite! Most of the restaurants down there had some form of the drink so I ordered it several more times during the week.
 
 



 
 
After dinner that night, we headed back to the hotel and went to the lagoon and pool! The lagoon was ocean water that was pumped in & a little sand around it with some chairs (the Keys don't have beaches like we are used to, its just the ocean in front of you! So the lagoon felt more like we were at the beach than being at the pool).
 
 

We had an amazing sunset!!!!!

Reading by the pool



The Lagoon


 
That wraps up this post, it only took me 2 days to write - ha! Hopefully I will be back soon with the rest of the trip!


 





Saturday, September 13, 2014

September

September, I am loving you! I love waking up on the weekends to my husband and cooking him breakfast! I love the cooler weather you are bringing us. I love seeing fall decor starting to pop up everywhere. I LOVE spending my Saturdays watching college football. I could go on and on and on, but I'll stop and leave you with some pictures! 

My sweet Lauren is having a baby in November and I was able to go up to Huntsville a few weeks ago for her first baby shower. I cannot wait to meet baby Wesley! 


My birthday sunset.

This angel is getting so big!!!! Thanking The Lord for this blessing!!!!!! I love being his Aunt! 

Rachel and I love going with our husbands when they shoot skeet! We have girl time while they shoot, then they give us the guns for a little bit and we get to practice!!! I smoked all my targets that night! 

Just me and my girl last Friday night.

Emma got some dove last weekend! She loves hunting with her daddy! 

How gorgeous is this field of sunflowers? I got to pick some for my kitchen!!!


Wednesday night sunset walk with my sweet cousin, Karlie!

Today Christen had to volunteer at a consignment shop so I picked up the girls and we had a girls day! We went on a walk, played at the park, and got milkshakes!!! I loved spending the day with them! 

These two are usually petrified of emma, so we conquered a mountain today when this happened. 

Milkshake smile! :)

Happy Saturday and Roll Tide!