Baby Shower!

  I waited and waited for my baby shower to get here... it meant I was getting very close to the end.  I wanted it to be a month to six weeks out from my due date which ended up being perfect because that was when my sister was in town.  It would also give me something to do (indoor!) during that last stretch.
  My other wonderful sister was the hostess for my shower... she did an amazing job and I'm so very grateful for the turn out!

  These are my wonderful hostess that pulled the whole thing off!!!  My sister is to the right of me.  :)  So blessed by each of these ladies!

  These are my most amazing sisters and mother... They each mean the world to me and would be terrified to walk into this new adventure of kiddos without the wisdom each of these woman have (and my mother-in-law is included in this statement!).  God blessed me with many wonderful ladies surrounding me.

  My wonderful sister-in-law spoke a few words to start off the event.  She is two steps ahead of me down the road of motherhood.  With a 2 1/2 year old and 5 month old she is right in the thick of it and remembers all the details quite clearly.  ;)

  A few photos of gift opening... The bag on top was from Layton's grandmother.  The diaper bag I most wanted!  :)  Bottom left is a quilt that my sister made for my mother-in-law with salvaged material from an old family quilt that used fabrics from baby Hink's great-grandfather's old suits.  And the bottom right is me opening my grandmother's gift of homemade receiving blankets and a towel.  :)

  And lastly, the grandmas!  Both so excited!! This will be the first grandbaby on Layton's side which is always super exciting!  :)  It will be the third in less than a year on my side... cousin time should not be lacking!  :)

  So there you go!  To all who came and blessed baby Hink and myself... Thank you so much!  We were very overwhelmed by the giving and could not wait to get home and show it all to daddy.  ;)

~Enjoy your weekends!  39 Weeks tomorrow!!!

Hinkle Colorado Vacation

  Catch-up post number 1.
  We went to CO with Holly, Larry, and Chewy back in August.  It was a lot of fun and we all really enjoyed getting away.  Though it was a lot of car time since we went to 3 different destinations.
  There was lot so laughter and talk, games and hiking, telling each other not to panic while in the mountains and telling Chewy to scoot over!  :)  Coffee, sights, and fresh air.
  Our first stop was to see Kim and her family.  She was a high school friend of Holly's and they hadn't seen each other in 23 years!  We stayed with their family in Denver and got to go up to Estes Park.  It was a lot of fun getting to know new people and see new places.  :)

  This is Kim's family.  The girls were so sweet!  They adopted these two girls and then have three grown kids of their own.  :)

  We stopped at the cutest little coffee shop on the way up the mountain.  But sadly we found out a couple weeks after we got home that it is no longer there, due to the big flood that went through Estes.

  We stopped half way up the mountain and did some hiking and enjoyed the fresh air and time out of the car!  We had been in the car for 14 hours the day before this, so stretching our legs was a much needed experience.  :)

Oh the love!  ;)

Beautiful, beautiful!!!

We made it up the mountain safe and sound.  It was super cold at the top so we didn't stay up for too long.  :)  And then it was quite an adventure getting back down the mountain and out of Estes due to a bike race that was taking place that day.

  Next stop in our trip was to see Holly's mom and her husband Ed.  We enjoyed our time with them and it was a little more relaxed which was nice.  We played games, went to coffee, walked the dogs, and went ATVing in the mountains.  Lots and lots of fun!

  Playing dominos.  We were all laughing so hard that I couldn't get a good picture.  =P

Attempting to get the second four wheeler out of the truck without unhooking the trailer.  They got it, but I was quite nervous the whole time.

Half way up this mountain...  We stopped at this beautiful waterfall and an abandoned gold mine close by.  Needless to say... the boys did get gold fever.  You will see more of that later on.

  And our last stop of the trip was to see Holly's dad and his wife Wina.  They were super sweet the whole time we were there.  Continually try to give us anything and everything we wanted.  While we were there the guys went dirt biking, we went hiking in the mountains and had a picnic lunch, had dinner with Holly's brother Rick, and went tubbing down the river one day.  Lots of fun and we enjoyed all the sunshine.  :)

The waterfall we hiked to when we were up in the mountains. Absolutely beautiful!

My beautiful mother-in-law.  :)

The guys with gold fever.  They panned and panned and panned.  I thought they would never quite so we could get to Rick's in time for dinner.  ;)

And this is from the day we went tubbing.  It was beautiful weather and the water was perfect.

  The next day we headed home.  We had a wonderful time but were definitely ready to get back to Texas and all we had left there.  It was a really long ride home, but we worth the trip.  :)  Next time maybe we can make this trip while it is snowing...  :)

Birthday Blessings

  I know, it really has been forever.  But I have to admit... updating my blog has been nowhere near number 1 on my priority list.  Between still getting settled in from the move, not having internet for quite a while, and then finding out that baby Hink is on the way, and all the sickness that has come with that news, I have not even thought about the blog until last week.
  So now, I am going to attempt to do better.  I have quite a few "catch-up" posts to do, but those will come later.  :)

  On with life... my birthday was this past week.  The big 21!!!  I was absolutely pampered all day.  :)  My husband made breakfast for me that morning and then we acted like we had never grown up by playing the wii for a little while.  After that the real celebrating began...

  First stop was a lunch date at Cheddar's.  Definitely one of my all time favorite restaurants.  :)  This is the onion ring appetizer... it is huge so don't expect to be hungry after eating these.  ;)

  And my sweet husband let me get a Dr. Pepper for my birthday!!!  I have decided to do one a month... and maybe one day I will give them up for good.

  Then it was movie date to go see the new Thor movie!  It was really good and we both enjoyed ourselves.  A very fun day out, but it definitely wore me out.  :)  I came home and crashed out on the couch.
  On top of all the wonderful things my husband did, I got many encouraging texts, facebook posts, and phone calls throughout the day.  I am one very blessed lady!!!

~Enjoy your weekend!  And the beautiful weather outside!!!

Anniversary Date Night

  So, I know this is a little late, but better late than never, right?  So, Layton and I made it... One year down.  Though it has been a hard year of trials we have praised God for the fact that we got to go through it all together.
  So to celebrate one wonderful year Layton bought tickets to Bass Hall to see Sister Act.  He had never been to a live performance, much less a musical. :)  I was thankful that he was willing to try something new.  And what do you know... He really liked it.

  At Bass Hall.

After the show we went to P.F. Chang's to eat dinner and then Layton took me to go do a little shopping.  This was when we were getting ready to head home, on top of the parking garage.

  Individual pictures... I had to get a picture of him all dressed up for me. ;)

  One year down, hopefully many, many more to go. :)  Thankful, thankful, thankful!

It's the Small Things in Life

  I know, I know... it has been forever.  We have been in the process of buying a house in the last month and with that comes boxing everything up and getting ready to move.  :)

  I'm so excited about living in our new place (we closed last Friday and we get to stay our first night tomorrow), but it has been a lot of work and very stressful at times.  I know it will be great though.

  Layton and I are not big apartment people.... I have many friends and family who are, but when something breaks Layton and I like to fix it.  I love to paint and make a place my own with the tile I like or that specific ceiling fan.  ;)  And since we have been living in this apartment for almost a year now we have not been able to do anything ourselves... and we are definitely ready to.

  But anyway, through all of this crazy process it has definitely been the small things that have made my day... like

A homemade Frappe on a hot, muggy day.  And it had salted caramel on top...  :)

Or a wonderful walk with my husband to get out of our untidy, boxed up, in the process of moving apartment...

Or coming down stairs in the morning to a lot of clean dishes (done by my husband at 5:30 in the morning).

  Through out it all there have been hard days and easy days.  Those good days and the bad, but I praise the Lord that I can always find a reason to smile.  :)  He has blessed us with so much and now we will be completely blessed with a new dwelling place.  We are very much looking forward to having a place of our own.

~God Bless and Enjoy your Memorial Day!

{Together}--The Joys of Married Life

  Layton and I went to our first bed and breakfast a week ago.  We so enjoyed it.  The bed and breakfast was in Grandview, TX on a 860 acre, working cattle ranch.

  We loved every minute of it.  Just a break in every day life.  A time to get away from all the craziness.

    Our room was so pretty!  They had rose petals on our bed and gave us complimentary champagne and chocolate covered strawberries.  :)  My absolute favorite part of the entire room... it had a claw foot tub!  It was wonderful!

  Here are the pictures of our room and bathroom.  It had an old-fashion toilet, beautiful hardwood floors, and a huge king sized bed with feather pillows.

  Along with breakfast we also got to go to dinner on the ranch.  They have a restaurant on the ranch as well and since it was Friday night they had a live band playing.  There was also a huge dance floor in the middle of the room and all these older couples out two-stepping and doing all sorts of fancy moves.  It was really cute... they all looked so happy together.

  They had a pool table in the dining room too, so Layton and I played a few games after dinner.

  It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed our first experience at a bed & breakfast!  So much to be grateful for and so many joys in married life.  We are definitely blessed by the road God has planned for us and we just continue to take it one step at a time!  :)

 {Togetherness}

~Valentine's and Anniversaries~

  I know it has been a long time once again... life just never slows down, no matter what stage of life you are in.  Different stages just bring different complications, different things to keep you busy, and different things that "have" to get done.
  Meanwhile, through all of the craziness, Layton and I have celebrated an anniversary... not the anniversary of when we wed, but of when we got engaged.  He proposed 3 days before Valentine's so it should always be pretty easy to remember and brings a whole new meaning to Valentine's Day.
  We haven't celebrated big yet... that has to wait a few weeks, but we are apart of a young couples group and last night they had a Valentine's Dance and so we were able to celebrate that way for now.  :)

  We enjoyed dinner, the company, and the dancing.  One of the couples taught us all how to swing dance.  Great fun!  haha... but pretty funny as we were all trying to figure out what we were doing.  :)

  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!  I plan to spend my week focusing on God's gracious gift of giving me my wonderful husband.  Our journey was a rough one, but it has been wonderful to look back and see God's grace throughout our relationship and now to be married is marvelous!  God is good!

A Dallas Adventure...

   So, last Saturday Layton and I used some Christmas money we had gotten and went to the Dallas Aquarium.  It was so very fun!  We both enjoyed a day out together.  And we decided beforehand that we were going to take our time and not rush... just a relaxing day, so that was really nice.  :)
  First we went to Starbucks... Layton's idea.  :)

He got a vanilla spice latte because his throat was bothering him.  :-/

I got a White Mocha Frappe with toffee nut... So good!

It's by far my favorite.

   Then to the Aquarium we went... traffic wasn't too bad which was really nice and we got there rather quickly.  Though once we got got of our car we realized it was very good we were going to do an inside expedition... it was really cold out side and windy.

   As your walking in there are already animals which is fun.  We purchased tickets and then started our adventure through the rainforest.  It was pretty crowded which was a bit of a bummer, but not to bad.  All the exhibits were really fun.  There were monkeys, birds, turtles, fish, sharks, and so much more.

This guy was one of the free range birds and he had landed on a branch right above our heads.

Our camera does not do him justice... his colors were beautiful.

This guy was hilarious.  Layton and I laughed at him for a while.

They are tiny little monkeys and they move super fast.

And I loved his mustache... :)

At one point he even jumped onto the fence right in front of us.

This was taken in the main aquarium part...

He loved swimming on the glass.

The crazy part is he looked huge and I went to another aquarium one time and they said that the glass makes everything look 20% SMALLER!  Craziness.

Flamingos!  They were orange, not pink, which was interesting.

Afterward we went to the Dream Cafe.

It was suggested by Ben and Rhiannon and was pretty good.

They serve brunch and lunch, so Layton got pancakes and I got chicken enchiladas.

   We had a marvelous time and I would definitely say it is worth going to.  And it is always just fun to take a little road trip and do something you have never done before.  =D
   Now it is another weekend, starting tonight...
~Enjoy your loved ones and all the blessings God has given you!