Pink Really is My Color

Preston and I went to see my best friend Robin run in her first (and according to her, final) marathon last weekend. I have not yet felt the need to ever run a marathon but was really proud of Robin. She ran the entire way and only stopped briefly when she saw us on the trail. Here's us at lunch after the race.

 Preston, Me, Carol, Mike, Robin, Chad, Casey and Trent

 The day before the marathon Robin and I went ice skating at downtown Houston's outdoor rink. It was like 65 degrees. I don't know how we weren't skating on a pool.

My parents watched the dogs while we were out of town and sent us updates via picture texts...

 Selma living the life.

 Patti really wants a cake ball.

 Selma on drugs for her broken leg.

And Selma sleeping with my mom. Mom is going to make me take this picture down.

Then on Martin Luther King Jr. Day my cousin had her first baby, Layla Harper, and she is 9lbs 4oz of sweetness...

 

Does this look like a newborn to you?! Don't you just want to squeeze those cheeks?

My cousin and her husband didn't find out what they were having ahead of time so our entire family showed up to the hospital to see if baby Chen was going to be a girl or a boy. I actually drove straight from work and made it just in time! (Chandra's water had broke at 1am the night before so I was lucky to even make it.) Here's a video of Derrick telling us it's a girl. It's hard to see because it is from my mom's iphone but he holds up a sign and we all scream and then mom drops her phone.

 Derrick and his mom after he told us it was a girl.

If you are friends with Chandra on Facebook go take a look at album of the birth. The pictures, taken by her sister, are so sweet. Here is another one of my favs from that day...

 Aren't they adorable?

UPDATE: My cousin's sister blogged about the birth and put up pictures on their blog here.

And now for a bunch of random stuff I want to tell you about.

Last week my cousin Alex sent me the following text repeating what her little sister, Ella (3 years old), said to her:
"Direct quote from Ella at Burger House: "Remember when we went to Shelbi's house and her puppy broke her ankle? So sad." Then she takes a pause and says, "Pink really is Shelbi's color."

I literally laughed out loud when I read that. Where do kids get this stuff?

And then there was my favorite quote via one of the contestants on The Bachelor this week:
"On a scale from 1 to 10, I think I'm going to throw up."
 Quotes like this are the reason I watch The Bachelor. 


This video is hilarious because it is SO me and sad because, well it is SO me. Please excuse the profanity in the title. They do not curse in the video.



I am guilty of the following:

"Hey, are you near a computer?"
"Can you read this and see if it makes sense?"
"Can you do me a favor?"
...and eating chips really loud while we're watching tv.

How do they know me so well???

Round Top Finds

If you are from Texas and you are not familiar with Round Top, you must make yourself familiar. "Round Top" is an antiques show that occurs twice a year in Round Top, Texas (in between Austin and Houston). I put Round Top in quotes because the area actually encompasses several towns spread out on one long road with booths upon booths and stores upon stores of antiques and junk. GOOD junk.

This map of the area is from AntiqueWeekend.com. A great resource for any and all things Round Top related.

My first time to Round Top was last fall and I am officially a believer! I went with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law for just a day (most shoppers will spend at least a weekend if not a week shopping). We started our morning in the fields of Warrenton and didn't even make it to the actual town of Round Top. With that said, our cars were full to the brim when we left! Want to see what treats I found?

Round Top Finds (Well, technically, Warrenton Finds):

Vintage Milk Crate
(sorry, iPhone pic)

I have so many ideas for this but right now I have it above my kitchen cabinet. 

Right there!

The crate AND bottles were only $20! Shortly after our trip I played around with the idea of putting flowers in it for a centerpiece. It would also look great just sitting in the middle of the table without any flowers (which is where it will most likely end up after the holidays). And think of all the fun Christmas things you could do with it…something with the 12 days of Christmas maybe? Alright I'm getting ahead of myself, but you see the potential in my $20 find?

Iron Letters

When I walked up to the vendor selling these letters and asked him how much they were I felt like I had struck gold. Apparently he'd been getting that reaction all day because he said he said he was overwhelmed with the attention his booth was getting and had already run out of several letters. I had been looking for letters to make the word "CINEMA" for our Media Room and these were pretty close to exactly what I was looking for. I can only hope he keeps his prices reasonable for next year because my mother/sister-in-law bought the last two giant size R's and I want one too!  I spray painted the letters red (the metal was awesome but I was dead set on red) and they turned out even better than planned!

Media Room Décor

Never settle for the ticket price at Round Top. I found a lamp (which is a Pottery Barn look alike) and movie reel in the same booth and asked the vendor what she would take for both. I ended up getting half off. Now that's a deal! I had been looking for décor for our media room all day and finally found something to fill the empty walls surrounding the screen. With the CINEMA letters in place, at least one wall in this room is complete!

 

And the lamp (it's the tall one by the couch)...

Burlap sacks

My plans is to use these to make pillows for my living room couch. Seeing as I do not sew nor do I own a sewing machine, I do not know how I am going to accomplish that task so as of now they are sitting in these crates on a baker's rack in my entry way.


It was an exhausting day but well worth the trip! I'm counting down the days to when we get to go in Spring. For more info and pictures of Round Top, visit my friend Lori's blog. She's a Round Top veteran!

How GREAT Thou Art

Have you seen this? Made me cry. And wish Trey (my brother) had married Carrie Underwood like I told him to.

One time our house caught on fire

When we bought our house we were told it had caught fire in 2009 due to lightening. The second floor apparently burned completely and some of the bottom floor also. We knew the interior walls of our house were all brand new but hadn't seen pictures of the damage the fire had caused until this week. Preston stumbled across an old aerial photo of our house after the fire but before they rebuilt...

Crazy right? It's kind of spooky seeing what your house would look like (or in this case did look like) if it caught on fire. We bought the house in consideration of the fact that lightening never strikes the same place twice. :)

So Long 2011!

It seems I haven't posted in three months. Perhaps we should recap?

On Halloween we had our first trick-or-treaters ever...

 

And learned that our neighborhood is the coolest when we discovered the haunted house in one of our neighbors' backyard. I could hear the kids screaming from my house. :)

 

We bought a new couch and Patti and Selma gave their stamp of approval. I'm actually not sure what Selma is doing in this picture...

The twins spent the night with my mom and dad one night and Cameron took this picture of them on his chest when he woke up the next morning.

And then Patti decided to use Selma as a seat...

And we got bored with the Cowboys...

 

And Selma found her tail...

We went to Dean Fearing's at the Ritz for my birthday. We ate antelope and we liked it.

We went to Nascar for the first time with new friends of ours at Texas Motor Speedway and Preston got a funnel cake in windy weather. Never a good plan...

I bought Patti and Selma a swanky new bed and they destroyed it overnight. I unfortunately cleaned up the mess before taking a picture but just imagine the entire wicker bed below in a million pieces.

So I bought Patti and Selma a new bed that they can't possibly destroy.

We discovered Patti and Selma have a passion for cooking. They can hear a drawer open in the kitchen from a mile away.

We cut down our tree at the Walls Family Tree Farm again this year. In the past we have only searched for 4-5 ft. trees because that is all we had room fit in our house but since our living room ceilings are so tall this year we went out looking for a 9 ft. tree which was not as easy a task. After much deliberation we found one...

Chopped it down...

Wrapped it up...

Tied it to the car...

 

And drove it home just as it started to rain. It loves to rain when we decide to go cut down our tree.

Then we decorated our house for Christmas:

 

 

Where's Selma?

  
  My mom got me these for my birthday...they're mini mason jars!

The next weekend we went to Preston's work Christmas party and Preston won an Amazon Kindle Fire and $50! They had casino night and instead of winning money you won tickets which you could put in different jars to win different products. Well everybody (including me) decided they wanted to win an iPad 2 so most of the tickets were in that jar but Preston put all his tickets in the Amazon Kindle jar and what do you know? He won. Then he happened to be sitting in one of the "special" seats throughout the room that had a $50 AMEX gift card taped underneath. I'm thinking we missed our opportunity to go out and buy a lotto ticket that night.

The next day I went with some of my college friends to see the Nutcracker at Bass Hall in downtown Ft. Worth. Hopefully a new tradition for us.

Then Aimee came over to help with Chandra's shower and Patti and Selma discovered their love for babies...

 

 

And we had a baby shower for Chandra (pictures to come). 

And drove to Abilene to see Cammy graduate from college...

 

Then we celebrated Christmas with the Watten Grandparents at the Galleria mall and took family pictures...

And baby Jayde was born and she was perfect and my hair was a mess but Lynds and Les looked great!

The we drove to Austin and went ice skating at Barton Creek with the Rampys and woke up at 7:00am to see what Santa had brought Christmas morning (a tent for Garrison, a karaoke machine for Hadley and roller shoes for Dean).

 

Hayden, Malena and Preston

 

Jeff helping Hadley with her skates.

 

 Me and Garrison

And we drove back to Dallas and to compete in the Bible Bowl at the Bonneau Family Christmas. We also paraded 3-year-old Ella around to the entire family when we realized she couldn't quite say her "k's" yet and was replacing them with "t's" which gave the phrase "I love kitties!" a whole new meaning.

The next day, Santa made a special trip to my parents' house and we celebrated Watten family Christmas.

And that should just about bring us up to 2012. Whew!