Bill and Helen

Last night we celebrated bill and helen's 49th wedding anniversary.

Ryan and I planned a little surprise party for the two of them complete with their daughter and her family, some neighbors, friendsn and lots of food. We decorated the house with streamers and tissue puff balls (thanks taryn!) and flowers, of course.

we started with a couple appetizers: I made my aunt Becky's salsa......sooooo good!

Kelley made these little weiners wrapped in bacon with brown sugar on top.....a heart attack but so delish!

matt, our next door neighbor taking care of the chickens and sausage.

the chicken was VERY yummy!

we also had potato salad, jalepeno bread and my mom's 5 cup fruit salad (I'm turning into a real betty crocker folks!) The fruit salad was quite the hit as well!

Most of the gang sharing stories and enjoying our dinner.

kell and truman.
bill and helen. Love this picture. They are so cute!

We made them blow out candles while we sang the happy birthday song but we slipped in Happy Anniversary. Haha, they were good sports though.

We asked helen her secret to a lifelong marriage (she was 16 he was 18 when they got married!!) And she said, "Just make sure you can look at that same face for forever, cause 49 years is one long time!" Haha, we all got a good chuckle outta that one. Seriously, she said, "you just gotta keep at it. It's gonna take some work."

I think they had a good time, we all enjoyed ourselves and getting to know their family a little better. They were quite surprised.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY BILL AND HELEN!! Here's to another 49 years!

Discovery Green

Friday evening Ryan and I had a little date night. We went to a new park in downtown Houston called Discovery Green. (It is similar to the American Airlines center in Dallas, where they show movies and such for free.) They were showing a movie about the first landing on the moon....celebrating the anniversary of America's part in the space race. The park is really neat, nice and clean, probably because it is so new but we still enjoyed ourselves.....even in the 100 degree weather. There are fountains all over the place, bacchi ball (sp?) courts, benches, a little grill/cafe, you can rent sailboats and float them in the pond, live music (unfortunately when we were there it was worse than bad karaoke...entertaining nonetheless.), and some fun art around the park. It was a lovely evening and we will definitly be visiting the park some more!

I love this man but why can't I get a normal smile?

lub ya!

most of the park. ::band to the left::grill/cafe to right::sailboat pond in front::

kiddies.

these things are cool.

they're about 100ft. apart but you can hear each other talking when you sit in them just right. good engineering.

my love

"honey, will you take my picture?" my most common words.

"make every moment count."

it looked like rain. we were lucky it waited until saturday though. :)


It was a great evening and I can't wait to go back again!

would you be my neighbor??

Since we have been living back in Houston we have gotten to know our neighbors quite well. We have Bill and Helen who live across the street from us, Matt and Alexis who live next door to us and Mrs. Angie who lives caddy corner (sp?) to us. Our nieghbor on the other side of our house owns the house but rents it out and it is currently vacant.

As time has passed by our friendships with our neighbors has grown. I think it is really neat that in today's society, where most people couldn't even tell you who lives next door to them, that we are so blessed to have such a nice, warm and welcoming neighborhood.

We have had the low down on past and current relationships, old neighbors, crime that has happened in the past....which is still quite minimal, children, health scares and successes, best nail/massage/and other beauty salons near by, best eats close to our house and of course the happenings of today.

Ryan and I have spent many afternoons either in the front lawn with Matt and Alexis just chatting it up or on the porch with Bill and Helen shooting the breeze (Bill is retired, Helen is semi-retired). Mrs. Angie usually ends up making an appearance and joins the conversation. She is a sweet, sweet lady! She is in her 80's and still mows her own lawn, which she is quite particular about as well. So cute.

Anyway, one day as we were talking about food and Mrs. Helen said that she makes this mud pie cake that is just to die for. We then told her that next time she makes it to let us know because we would certainly like to try it. This week, she made it, took a few pieces for her and bill and then brought the rest to us.

It's the best MUD PIE I have ever had!!

(which is a lot for me to say since I am not a "sweets" person!)

So good in fact that I took a few pics for you all to enjoy.

Looks good huh?!?

Ryan and I feel so truly blessed to have these people as our neighbors not only cause they are nice and bring us sweet treats but because they are what good neighbors are supposed to be. So many times we are taught to treat our neighbors kindly and many times we think we are too busy to stop by and say hello or just wave good morning to them. I think that we all need to take a little extra time to enjoy the lives that surround us....you never know how they may help you in the future.

So, be nice to your neighbors and get to know them. Trust me, it's fun.

free?....for real??

Gotta love the Internet.

Ryan said he had been reading online about these "free markets" that go on every once in a while in different cities. Houston was hosting one this Saturday and he decided to give it a go. (I decided to forgo the trip, due to work and am now regretting it.) Typical me just assumed that there was no way that this market would be completely, for real, 100%, no joke free without some sort of stipulations.

I should have gone.

It is in fact completely, for real, 100%, no joke FREE!!!

Think of a gigantic garage sale ~ sans the little circle dot price tags. This market is full of people who have too much stuff and want to get rid of it, so they brought it to the market and gave it away. You know what they say, "Another man's trash is another man's treasure." This is so true. Ryan was able to gather me a few goodies and surprised me when I got home from work. He was telling me about all the cool stuff that was there and how the only rules were, 1.) no prices and 2.) no bartering or trading. We can defiantly live with those rules! Here are the goodies loverface got me. Thanks hun! lub you!

A little jewelry dish to put these......


into here.....

a little piece of photography.

and a cute little teddy bear

not sure where or when the next one is but I will certainly be researching this!!

4th of July

Our 4th of July was fun and quite enjoyable. We started the weekend on Friday heading out to kelley's mom's house, Mrs. Erin who let us swim, grill out and bring our pups to enjoy the 4th as well. THANKS ERIN!

Suprisingly the dogs like to cool off on the rafts.

Harley and Truman are such good buds.

J's belly was all red for the rest of the day from this belly flop!

The whole crew minus J and a typical face from ryan.

our grill was stuffed with AMAZING burgers and chickens!

SMOKIN'!

Then Saturday ryan and I headed over to the Bellaire to see the parade and work the Kay Bailey Hutchison tent that was there. It was a cute little parade that mostly consisted of fire trucks and old cars.

They had an olt timey band that played all the cool songs from back in the day. They were so cute!

They also had a petting zoo....me and the llama

and this is a scottish highlander cow....I thought he was cute and furry!

After bellaire, we went to kelley and j's apartment to enjoy some sun in the pool there for a few hours. Once it got to be too crowded we headed over to Sugarland to do some more campaigning. Kelley and J were nice enough to accompany us there.

Kell and J at the sugarland festivities

Fianlly, we were done campaigning there and headed back over to downtown to see the fireworks show they had prepared for the night. It was FABULOUS! and I was suprised to see some new additions.

This smiley face was really cool, even though in the pic. he looks angry. There was also hearts in the show.

::SUNDAY:: ryan was working in the yard again and found this little guy under all the brush. He named him George and wouldn't stop talking to him. haha. so cute. He was asking what they like to eat and how to take care of them (luckily, I had experience with a turtle as a household pet) and I told him they eat lettuce and to just put him in some water. And so he did.

George

Ryan and George. His new friend.

Sawyer was unsure of george.

As was Harley

But instead of keeping george out of the jungle we decided to free the little man in the Bayou on allen parkway. I think he will be much happier there.

It was another BLAZING hot day and the pups were panting pretty bad so we walked over to this fountain and let the dogs swim a little to cool off. They enjoyed it.

A little family photo.

Now that the weekend was over I was able to enjoy a good nap after dinner. This is how sawyer and I like to cuddle. For some reason he enjoys sleeping on my head.

Well that was our fun little weekend. We also put up gutter on the backside of the house and spent some time with our neighbors Bill, Helen, Mrs. Angie and Matt. Hope everyone had a great 4th!!