Going Through the Big D...and We Do Mean Dallas (and Austin)

Our original post Christmas plan was to head back to St. Louis the day after Christmas. That would put us home late in the day with just enough time to re-pack, get a little sleep and be up early Thursday to catch our flight to Texas.  That didn't quite go as planned.  With an impending snow storm hitting Indiana early Wednesday morning we were worried we might get stuck in Ohio so we decided to leave late in the day on Christmas.  We ended up getting home around midnight which gave us a good 24 hours plus to un-pack, do laundry, and get ready for Texas.  We felt rested and ready to go.  Then we got to the airport and it was busier than I have ever seen it.  We ended up waiting in line for over an hour to get through security and missed our flight- not a great way to start a vacation-trust me!  Luckily we got the last two seats on the next flight out of St. Louis to Dallas and landed in Dallas only a few hours behind schedule.  After that little hiccup luckily the rest of our trip was a blast.

Our first stop was the Fort Worth Stockyards (http://www.fortworthstockyards.org/).  The stockyards is the old part of town where the livestock industry did business turned tourist trap.  Even though it was oozing with tourist traps (think cheap t-shirt and shot glass kinda stores, and old time photo kinda places) we had a great time wondering around and checking out the sites.  That night we enjoyed some music and dancing at Billy Bob's Texas: The World's Largest Honky Tonk.

Cute vintage train that runs through the Stockyards 

Daily long horn cattle drive

World's Largest Belt Buckle at Billy Bob's

The next morning we headed to Austin.  We had nowhere we had to be until the rehearsal dinner latter that night so we decided to stop at the Lydon Baines Johnson Presidential Museum on our way into town.  You know we can't pass up a good presidential museum!  As always I learned lots of interesting things and the obligatory picture with Mr. President:

After the museum we decided it was time for some good Texas BBQ.  My aunt, Hildy, who used to live in Austin recommended we check out The Salt Lick (http://www.saltlickbbq.com/).  Not only was the food out of this world we also got to drive a little ways into the Texas country and it was beautiful.  The food was so good we couldn't resist a picture. If you were ever in Austin this is well worth the drive.

That evening we had another amazing meal and a great time celebrating Sara and Will's last night before their wedding and somehow I ended up with zero pictures from that evening.

The next morning we woke up and headed out early to hit up some more Austin sights.  We started the morning at the Texas State Museum and then headed to the Texas State Capitol.

Nick and the Star at the Museum

At the capitol with the dome

Nick and Governor George Bush

After our educational adventure we met our friend Katie for lunch and wondered around town before it was time to get ready for the big wedding.   It was a beautiful wedding and we had a great time celebrating Will and Sara!

We had a great time in Austin celebrating the newlyweds and the next day it was back to Dallas, but this post is getting a little long so I will share that fun in another post.

A Murphy's Law kind of Christmas

**Sorry I know it is almost mid-January and I'm just now getting around to posting about Christmas, but I'm still not sure I have recuperated fully from our holiday which I think you will understand after reading the next few posts

You know those days when nothing seems to go like you planned?  Well that was pretty much how our Christmas went. We had great, grand plans for this Christmas.  It was going to be busy and probably stressful, but we had a plan and it was going to be great!  And then....life happened.  I will spare you the gory, gross (and I mean gross) details but needless to say it was not a picturesque, perfect Christmas.  That all being said, however, I do think we were reminded of one very valuable lesson this year- Christmas is less about the where and the what and more about the who.  Regardless of all the things that went wrong we were blessed to be surrounded by wonderful family and in the end that is what was important.  Here are some pictures (from my brand new fancy pants camera that Nick gave me) Mostly just pictures of cute kids- I promise the grossness what not caught on camera:

Christmas with the McGeehons:

Christmas with the Leaders/Kingmas:

Somehow I missed pictures of Emily opening presents probably something to do with 15 people opening presents = chaos.

After Christmas was our big trip to Texas for Sara & Will's wedding and some adventures.  I am hoping to have a post about that early next week.

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

Well it is December and that can only mean one thing....Lots and Lots of Christmas decorations!  As always our house is done up from top to bottom in all things Christmas.  We have made a few new purchases and I think our decorations are finally starting to come together in a much more cohesive way.  You may also notice a few new pieces of furniture that I haven't blogged about yet.  I have been planning on doing a House post 1 year later but haven't had the time to get the pictures done and now that all the decorations are up- it isn't quite what our house looks like all the time so I promise after the holidays I will work hard on getting that post done.  So without further ado, our house in all its Christmas Glory:

Pretty in Blue

I am officially a delinquent blogger.  I just realized I never blogged about a pretty significant house update that took place this summer- oh in like JUNE!!!  We completely updated the master bedroom and bathroom including doors, closet, vanity, furniture, window treatments etc.  Again by we I mean Nick did it all while I was out of town for the week and it was fabulous to come home to.  Because I wasn't home for most of it I tasked Nick with taking pictures and I also don't have a lot of details to share so enjoy some before and after pictures of the rooms.

Bathroom Before:

 Bathroom After:

Bedroom Before:

Bedroom After:

We still have a little bit of work to do in terms of adding art, etc to the walls and we also want to build a more substantial bed with drawers for storage (which I will do my best to update you on when they happen), but I think this is a huge improvement and just feels so darn cozy!

A Fall Refresh

Yikes...I have again become a delinquent blogger.  We have been busy just living life lately; nothing too out of the ordinary just everyday life and I just forget to blog.  We did recently do a small house update that I think is worth sharing.  Last spring we replaced the front door on the house and the front of our house went from this:

when we moved in

to this:

new door that doesn't match

after a little of this:

Turns out replacing a door is not as easy as it sounds, but we managed to get it done.  After we lived with a mismatched front door and siding for far too many months we finally decided we needed to take advantage of the little bit of nice weather weekends we had and finally get on painting the front door.  In that discussion we also decided to paint the shutters and the trim around the windows.  Nick did all the painting, well all the work really so I can't take credit for that and I think it turned out pretty darn great!  

It was a pretty small project but it was nice to cross it off our list  

1 year later...

Monday Nick and I celebrated our first anniversary.  It is hard to believe it has already been a year since the big day!  We decided to just get away for a short little trip over the long weekend.  So we booked a cabin overlooking the river in Grafton, IL.  We arrived late in the afternoon and got dressed up for drinks overlooking the river and a nice dinner.

On the deck of our cabin

After dinner we went to another restaurant on the river and just sat and watched the boats.  It was quite nice not to have anything we had to do for a couple of hours.  We spent the rest of the evening rereading all of our wedding cards.  We also brought along a bottle of pineapple wine that we brought home from our honeymoon.

We had decided we would save it for a special occasion, but I think we may have saved it a little too long because we both took one drink and decided that was enough and poured the rest down the drain...oops!

The next morning we slept in and then decided to have some wedding cake for breakfast.

Nick's reaction pretty much sums up how the cake was.  It wasn't terrible, (much better than the wine) just not as good as it was a year ago nor was it good enough to really want to eat more than a few bites.  Nonetheless, I'm glad we saved it; it was a fun little tradition. 

We spent the rest of the day exploring the stores in Grafton and the little towns around there before heading home.  

It wasn't an elaborate weekend, but it was nice to get away from home for a little while with no agenda and just enjoy our surroundings.