Lauren is getting married!

My brother married well.  :)  God is so good.  When my brother got married to his wonderful wife Allie, I gained one of my sweetest friends.  Not only did I gain a wonderful friend, I get to be family with Allie's family.  LOVE them!!  Allie's sister is getting married in a couple of weekends!  I am so excited for Lauren and Donnie!

Allie's mom, her sister and Allie

 Allie had a lot of helpers to pull this adorable party together.  

Everything turned out so cute!!

 The food was delicious!!  

They served a couple of different quiches, cinnamon rolls, muffins, lemon bars, peach jewels and yummy fruit!

Happy 30th Lauren!

Last weekend we got to enjoy the evening with some new friends.  

We met these friends about a year ago when Aubrey Rose came home from Awana's, 

asking us if we "knew who Drew was going to marry."  

I, at that time, had no clue who "Drew" even was, 

let alone who he was going to marry.  

Aubrey proceeded to tell Blake and I, 

"He is going to marry me!"  

Oh really???!!!  

We are not okay with her already talking about marriage.  

She is only 5!!  

However, then we met Drew's parents.

They are wonderful!  We hit it off right away.

Here is Drew and Aubrey Rose.

Well, Drew's mommy turned 30 and her husband and her sister 

threw her the most adorable party.

 It was a black and white cocktail attire party.

 Here are the ladies who were at the party.  

We didn't get a picture of the guys!

Lauren has three sisters.

Here is Lauren (sitting next to me) and two of her sisters.

I would definitely love to be an adopted sister in this family.

These girls were so fun.

Or maybe even better we could have an arranged marriage for our kids.  HA!!

9 years!

Today marks 9 years of marriage to my favorite guy.  We dated for 6 YEARS!!  So to say we were ready to get married to each other is an understatement.  Today I am so very thankful for those six years.  I feel like the transition to married life was a pretty easy transition.  We were 24 years old.  We share the same moral beliefs and standards.

We had celebrated a ton of holidays together.  We knew each others families so well.  We understood how each other's families worked and traveled.

We understood what made each of us tick.  We knew what each other enjoyed and also didn't enjoy.  We both had graduated college.  We were done with school.  We were both working full time with pretty much the same hours.

Our dating relationship was done in community.  We did very little with just the two of us.  We were either with friends or family all of the time.  We are so blessed with such wonderful friends.  Each friend who stood by our side that day, we still see on a regular basis.

Our wedding day was a perfect day.

I loved becoming one.

After our ceremony, we had a reception out of a movie.

It was incredible.

 We danced the night away and had the best time.

It was quite the party. (Sorry this one is so blurry.  I took a picture of a picture.)

This picture below is my favorite picture of the day.  Every time I see it, I remember how giddy I was and how much excitement and love we felt on that day.  We were finally married!

The day we got married was the first day we lived together.

Now here we are 9 years married.  Blake makes me want to wake up another day together and figuring this life out one step at a time...together.  I absolutely love being married to this guy.

A surprise?? Not so much...

We celebrated Big Papa's birthday the weekend before, by taking a trip to Santa Barbara, but the fun did not end there.  The celebration continued with friends and family back at home.  Even though he wasn't surprised like we had hoped, I am pretty sure he felt the love.  :)  (He is too smart!!)

  

Happy Birthday Bill!  Cheers to 60 more!  ;)  We sure love you!!

Mimi with Austin and Aubrey Rose

Cousins and sweet friends!  I love it!

Carter's 1st Birthday!!

It feels like just yesterday this little boy was born.  Hard to believe it was a year ago today that we met him in the hospital.  We had so much fun celebrating his birthday this past weekend.  LOVE you sweet Carter!  Happy Birthday!!

Here are some of the adorable details and some of the fun we had from this past weekend....

For more of the fun party details, click HERE for Christina's post about her little birthday boy's party.  Thanks B&C for letting us be apart of the fun in such a special way.  We had such a great day celebrating your little man!

Miss Sami's Wedding

One of our favorite babysitters got married about 2 weeks ago.  She asked Aubrey Rose to be one of her flower girls.  Aubrey loved EVERYTHING about being a flower girl.  She loved walking down the aisle and standing up in front with the beautiful girls.  She loved her dress.  She loved the way it twirled.  Even the color of her dress.  :)  She loved following Miss Sami everywhere.  She didn't want Miss Sami to be out of her sight...EVER.  :) She loved dancing with Miss Sami.   She loved passing out bubbles.  She also loved taking pictures, especially with Miss Sami.  Miss Sami was the SWEETEST to Aubrey Rose, holding her hand and letting her be apart of her special day in such a special way.  Christian, Sami's husband, was beyond cute with Aubrey too.  We love both of them! 

We are so excited for Christian and Sami.  They are going to be starting their new life in Germany.  He already had to go back, since that is where he is stationed.  I am so happy for them, but selfishly we are going to miss them!!  Everything about their special day was so beautiful!  I loved all the details.

 We danced the night away.  Actually, Blake and Aubrey Rose danced the night away.  They would not stop.  It was such a fun night.  At 11pm, Aubrey cried because she didn't want us to leave Mrs. Sami.  :(  She loved everything about being a flower girl.  Thank you Sami and Christian for choosing our little girl to be apart of your wedding in such a special way!!  We love you guys!!