Wedded Bliss

Last Saturday my friend Darcy got to marry the man of her dreams, Cody. It was a beautiful, God centered ceremony and that will continue into their marriage. Darcy and I have been friends since cheering together in jr. high and for the last year we've been in community group together. We've laughed together, cried together, prayed together and become good friends. It will be weird not seeing her every Wednesday and Sunday, but we are so very excited for this new chapter in her their lives.

Congratulations Darcy and Cody! 

Becky and I got to make the flower poofs for the reception. 

Who doesn't love a good photo booth?!

Most of our community group was able to celebrate with the lovely bride and groom!

Where have we been & what have we been doing?!

Hello there! It has been one hectic May (not that I'd change it)! We have been here there and almost everywhere...in the Metro East. I don't have many pictures, so this will just be a lot of words, here goes:

Our weeks are filled with work, Cardinals games (woohoo!), meeting with the youth group, meeting with our small group, training for a half marathon (which is in less than two weeks....eek!), getting coffee with friends and of course hanging out with our main man Moose. As if that is not enough awesomeness, we jam pack our weekends with all sorts of fun. Here is a look back at our past three weekends....

The weekend of Friday May 2 to Sunday May 4:
Friday was the Trailhead Students Lock-in! It went great and we had a lot of fun and so did the students. We slept for a few hours but not nearly enough for the work we made for ourselves on Saturday.

--Back Story: When we purchased our home we knew that the landscaping on one side was not ideal for water to flow away from our house. We also knew that the basement had a history of moisture. Our inspector told Alex what would need to be done to (hopefully) remedy the situation.--

So on Saturday, after maybe four hours of restless sleep, we decided that we should tackle the landscape. We dug out a tree...yes with a shovel, then removed about 9 full wheel barrel loads of dirt to grade the landscape away from our house and down the hill a bit (the rocks and such were above the siding with no visible foundation, we now see some of the foundation). Then I Face-timed with my Dad who was the engineer from afar, to get his approval. He said good, not great and then after my defeated sigh and a bit of coercion, my parents agreed to come over and help us on Sunday afternoon.
I'm not sure if my parents qualify for sainthood yet, but mark my words, they meet all the requirements! On Sunday, they came over and my Dad and Alex removed even more dirt, moved the paver/brick things three feet further from the house, dug some sort of a trench to get the water to flow how they wanted it and added half a ton of rocks, literally, it was half of one ton! After the hard work was done, I planted some flowers to give us a cute little garden and both Alex and my Dad slept well that night! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

--We are pleased to announce that after a few storms with substantial rain, we still have a dry basement! Hopefully the landscaping did the trick.--

I don't have an after picture of the front yard yet. We're still planning more projects, more on that later.

The weekend of Friday May 9 to Sunday May 11:
On Friday I rested...Alex played poker with some friends. Not too wild of a night in the Williams' house. Then Saturday we woke up went on our long run and came home to manicure our lawn. We mowed, weed eated...ate? I even got to use the blower and we made sure everything was clean and ready for a party. Alex's brother, Greg, graduated from SIU-E with his Masters degree and we had the honor of hosting his party! It was a great evening full of eating and hanging out with friends and family. We are so proud of Greg and are exited for his next adventure at University of Kentucky, but we will really miss having him around. On Sunday, we headed to Carlyle to celebrate our niece and nephew's birthday's. These kids are growing up far to quickly and frankly I'm not ok with it. The party was great and the kids did not go without. We got to see Alex's mom at the party and wish her a Happy Mother's Day and I called my Mama about 3 times to make sure she felt loved.  :)

Last weekend:
We had no plans!! It was great! We did a little shopping, a little eating, a little cheering (Go Birds!!) and a little resting.

We are so grateful for everyone and everything in our lives. In this season of our lives, we are truly enjoying  the hustle and bustle of life and all the celebrations involved. We have an amazing family and group of friends, God has given us far more than we could ever ask for or imagine. It's hard to imagine that he could have so much more in store for us. God is so, so very good.

We have two more weekends left in May and they are quite full, so hopefully I get back on track blogging and there won't be any more super word-y posts!

work in progress + a video

Hello there! I'm in the working on a post to recap last weekend but in the mean time, watch this video. It's great for all of the other Frozen lovers out there. Enjoy!

happy hump day!

It's Wednesday which means the upcoming weekend is just as far away as last weekend. Hopefully I'll get a chance to binge sleep...yes sleep.

I'll start with what we're looking forward to. On Friday, Alex and I along with Brian, Melinda and Corey are going to be locked in with the teenagers of Trailhead. We've made a timeline with events and whatnot, but I'm still not really a night owl so it will be an interesting evening. But we're really looking forward to hanging out with the students.

Then on Saturday (after we've recovered from the lock in slept) I have a to do list for Alex and I to improve out house's curb appeal a bit- scraping, sanding and painting the small portico over our front door, sealing the wooden steps and landing area, planting flowers, laying some sod from where we've removed tree's and of course the ever present battle against the weeds. There has been some talk of building a fire-pit but that's still a discussion point and not quite on the list...yet (I'm persistent). But, all of that yard work won't hold a candle to our fun weekend last weekend.

My sister, Becky and her family came down to spend the weekend with us and to enjoy all that living in the metro area has to offer. We spent Saturday in Forest Park with a picnic and the obligatory trip to the zoo. The animals that we saw were very entertaining and it was great to watch Ethan and Nora enjoy them. Becky has more pictures on her blog than I do, so check it out.  

After the zoo we headed back to Edwardsville and ate dinner at one of my favorites: Dewey's. There, we gave Nora a lemon to try...

She wasn't a fan but, she sure is cute! After we ate, we got another Edwardsville staple- Annie's frozen custard. The kids were sad to see the night end but we were all tired and ready to rest up for Sunday. 

On Sunday, my parents came over after church to hang out with Nora while the rest of us headed to Busch Stadium. We were concerned about the weather, but after a few prayers, we had perfect ballpark weather- not too hot, not too cold. It was perfect, God is good. Ethan had a great time and so did the we! The little boy in front of us got us on the jumbo screen with his mad dancing skills and at the end of the game Ethan got to run the bases with 5,000 other kids. We had a great weekend and cannot wait for the Collier clan to come back for a repeat! 

For more pictures from this weekend, check out Becky's blogpost .