Next three...

Lauren with her daughter Josie at Christmas Brunch.

Me at Luke's dads and Mary's opening a present from one of my nieces, a handmade by Raegan bracelet, I love!

Luke with his niece Peyton reading with her till it was her turn to open again!

The girls at brunch in front of the tree, Leslie, me, Lauren, Meghan, and Shannon

Kris with her four Boys at Christmas Friday.

Friday we had Christmas with Luke's mom and brothers, his brother Ben is in town from Vegas and staying with us so it was great to have him there. With Luke's mom on Thanksgiving we go around and say what we need/want for Christmas, I love this, it makes it so much easier! Well I got just about everything I asked for and then some, they must of been really great listeners this year! :)

Saturday morning I planned a brunch for some of my girlfriends since my friend Shannon is in town for Christmas, and I couldn't see her any of the nights she was here. Brunch was such a nice change of pace from going out to a bar, I made a few of the things and the girls helped out with bringing stuff too! I hope we keep this tradition up I had a lot of fun having breakfast and mimosas with the girls and visiting....

Then it was off to Luke's dads for the annual Christmas get together, all the brothers and his sister from Illinois and her four kids, we stayed over there till about 1am! It was a lot of fun over there playing games and visiting with everyone and this year I got my own stocking with my name on it!!! Everyone has one, which means there are like over 20!

Between planning times, foods, and gifts for each of the events it was exhausting and it was a lot of Christmas but it was worth it... So good to see everyone and get to have a little holiday cheer time with everyone. Sunday I used a gift card I got and treated myself to a massage, It was needed!

Hope everyone had a very happy holiday!

Christmas Eve and Day

Boomer and Baby Girl relaxing after all the commotion of the day

Boomer opening his Christmas stocking with ma ma

Crystal and Greg with my nephews first Christmas gift from me, even though he is not here he needed a present to open!

Our beautiful Christmas eve dinner!

Whew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is about all I really have to say right now. What a crazy, fun, family filled, weekend! This was our first Christmas as a married couple and in our new home, so it was an exciting one. We didn't have plans for Christmas eve so Luke and I made a wonderful dinner of crab legs (one of our favorites).... Then we got ready for the next day, My family was coming over and we hosting Christmas at our house, my mom, dad, sister, brother in law, grandma, grandpa, uncle, and 2 cousins. It is definitely a lot of work hosting a holiday like that, but it all went great, we had a lot of fun opening presents, visiting, and eating of course! Christmas night my mom and her puppy ending up staying the night and hanging out with me and Luke. They went home the next morning and I cleaned up from the day before. We had Christmas with Luke's moms over at his brothers, and about an hour before we left for that we got a horrible phone call. Some of you know that Luke and I have a rental property in the city and that we have been having major problems with it, no renters or buyers etc, Well all the pipes busted and it is now full of water. Luke and I were so upset all we could do is cry. Now not only do we not know what to do about making the payments (we are officially out of money for this) now we have this HUGE mess that we have to clean up and fix before we can do anything. Anyway, please keep us in your prayers about this it has been so overwhelmingly hard on us, Luke has a couple meetings with people today and I am really hoping for the slightest bit of good news.

I will post about the next 3 Christmas events tonight :)

Ho...Ho...Ho...

We decorated the house for Christmas! This tradition is usually done the weekend after Thanksgiving but since we will be in KC next weekend we did it yesterday.

We hung lights outside, put up our tree, and put up all of our fun decorations.

While we spread around our holiday cheer I tried out a new appetizer on Luke, ham and cheese Hawaiian rolls. They are SO good, and something new to make for parties this season!

We are stealing a tradition from my sister, getting an ornament each year that symbolizes something from that year, I found the perfect one while shopping at Cabala's, notice how they are marshmallows on chocolate and graham cracker? too cute! We also have some other ornaments that are special to us, one is from my sister, one from my friend Meghan, and of course Boomer has his own ornament he helped to put on!

Here are some pictures of our decorating day!

Halloween Weekend

How fun that Halloween was on a Friday this year, and with such great weather for all the kiddos! I have been trying to start some traditions for Luke and I and for when we start our own family. So Friday when I got home from work I started on a big pot of homemade chili, we lit our pumpkin and sat out in front and handed out candy, had some beers, and ate some GREAT Chili! I thought this would be something fun to start doing. We didn't get too many trick or treaters so after a little while we went over to a friends near by that was having people over. Saturday night we went to a BIG Halloween party, One of my moms friends threw it, the house is vacant so they had it decorated so neat! A bar, dance floor, and fire pit out in the front, the back had tables set up, and every room of the house had a different theme, it was amazing all the work they put in to it! Here are some pics from the night.

Luke was a prisoner, my mom and Laurie were future grandmas and I was a fancy mouse.

Here are all the Ya's and petite Ya's well most of them.

Pumpkin Carving Time

Saturday evening after all the fence excitement we thought it was finally time to carve our pumpkin! As I have previously mentioned Fall is one of my favorite times of the year, so I was obviously excited about this. Luke trying to be the great husband he is, came home one afternoon very proud with a big pumpkin to surprise me... It was so sweet of him except I love going to the pumpkin patch, we made a whole day of it last year, went to Eckerts, did the festival, went on the hayride, did lunch... so needless to say I was a little disappointed I missed out on all that this year. So I decided to make carving the pumpkin a fun time for us. With our favorite appetizer: hot cheesy corn dip in the oven, the Mizzou homecoming game and world series game on TV, and an early fire outside we carved our Halloween pumpkin, hope you like him.

Double Date Night!

Friday night we had double date night with Leslie and Jim, he was in town for a golf tourney on Saturday. On our date of fun, we encountered a fabulous hair do, Luke loved it! And Jim and Luke reminisced on their childhood friend "Shredder" and even drew us a picture of him!

One of mine and Boomer's many conversations:

Momma for me really??? You are the best, thank you so much for my new ball!

Let me just sniff it here for just a sec, you know I need to make sure it is okay!
Yes it is great! I love it! My ball! My ball! My BALL!!!

Mom, could you please stop taking my picture and let me play with my ball already... go watch the debate with dad.... okay?

Two Rooms Down!

Well we have two rooms pretty much done, unpacked, and decorated. Of course the rooms we use most often, the kitchen and family room. I love these rooms, I love the dark browns and warm colors... Eventually we would like to get a new kitchen table that seats at least 6, And we are installing an above stove microwave that Luke just got from my mom for Christmas!

Update: Boomer is adjusting great to his new home, he is not a huge fan of the floors, but loves the bunnies all over, and loves going up and down the stairs!

Girls + Jim weekend at Tablerock!

Girls weekend + Jimbo = SO much fun!!! It ended up being just me, Winnie, Meghan, and Jim, Jim lives in Arkansas now, and just about an hour from Tablerock, so we had to invite him, BUT he was just one of the girls! We shopped till we dropped, filled the whole trunk, then Jim carried all the bags inside for us, he even did a fashion show in his new pants. Then we all chipped in and made a huge array of Mexican food, and played Cranium, for the record the Ashley & Winnie team WON, this is going to go down in history!!! The hurricane did hit us Saturday night, but luckily it was by the time we were back to the condo! Cant wait till Girls weekend next year!

Unfortunatly Leslie had to miss Girls weekend due to her grandmothers passing, our thoughts and prayers were with her and her family all weekend, We love you Leslie!

Moving Days!!!

Well we closed on our first house last Friday! It was actually a huge weight lifted to finally have all of it coming to a close, but now the work begins. Thanks to our wonderful parents we had a lot of help the first weekend, we got a lot of little things moved, my mom and I cleaned and disinfected, and Luke and his dad put together a piece of furniture... very productive! This weekend we are going to get all 3 bedrooms painted, and Saturday our subdivision is having its annual block party, we are going to go meet all our neighbors, we have already met the 5 by us, and they all seem really nice!
We've had a few visitors so far but are looking forward to seeing everyone... stop by soon!!
So to answer your question about the poll.... The 29th we have movers coming and we will be all in, thank goodness for that!
Here are some pictures from our first weekend we look forward to many great memories here!


Luke hugging his new home


Carrying me over the threshold

Cheers by the fireplace

Champagne toast outside

Momma approves... whew!

Weekend Getaway

A few weeks ago, Luke and I both took off on a Friday and set out to get away, we stopped in Effingham to see his sister and her four fabulous children, They have a great house with a ton of land for the kids, Angie made us these great sandwiches for lunch and we all hung out, then we set out to my grandparents, I haven't been there in SO long, I will a little rough on those country road directions but I got us there, It was fun seeing the farm and seeing them, we got to go to dinner with some other aunts, uncles, and cousins that it was really good to see too, and then we stayed up late playing domino's with my grandparents, I think grandma Ad was the Champion. In the morning we set out to go to Chicago, Luke had never been there and I love Chicago, we also got to visit some friends from college. We ate, shopped, and enjoyed the city, all in all it was a great weekend and we look forward to doing it again soon!

Luke's Luggage

To Answer an ongoing question that we get faced I thought I would post about this...

NO... Luke never got his luggage back! Yes we were compensated $300, thanks a lot Royal Caribbean No we have no idea where it is or if we will ever see it again, we are hoping we didn't have anything too valuable in there, but at this point cant remember. Yes we are very glad it was his and not mine!!! The last question we get about this is what did Luke do for those 7 days with nothing? Well... it was our honeymoon ;) Okay, Just kidding, he did what any of us would of done, bought clothes, used girl deodorant and razors, and made do with what we had. With that said I have to hand it to him, I don't know how he does it but somehow he manages to put on a happy face no matter what and make the best out of things. We found that I was the one angry at the front desk while he was at the pool with a drink, I guess opposites attract but that is one of my favorite qualities about him... His amazing patience.

Our honeymoon was not ruined, just a little delayed (the first 3 days we thought it was lost ON the ship so we were searching on a HUGE ship!) We met some great friends, and even made our own pub crawl to the 20 + bars on the ship, the reason for the fingers being held up in some pictures.