Jackson's Baby Pics!

Hey everyone!

We got Jackson's pictures back from our great friend Christy. You can check out her awesome photography work Here. Anywho, here's the pictures:

My Baby Shower

Today was my baby shower and it was wonderful! My fabulous sister Katie hosted it and she totally out did herself with all the fabulous food and gorgeous details! 

It was so fun to celebrate being pregnant and the coming of this little guy!

Gorgeous mums... My sister always does the prettiest arrangements.

She made darling little garlands out of fabric and ribbon. The pendant banners were made by my sister Beth :)

I love candy so Katie wanted to incorporate it into the food and decorations. Not  only did she pick pretty colored candy she let me pick so it was all stuff I love. 

More yummy candy and gorgeous flowers!

The food table. I didn't get a great picture of the food table but trust me, it was pretty and super delicious.
The menu:
Chicken salad sandwiches on homemade rolls
Pasta salad
French Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting
Oreo pops
Mini pie pops
Mini Orange sodas and Ginger Ale

At this little table she had everyone make the baby's first ABC book. It turned out super cute and I love that I had something that everyone made to bring home.

Katie made these great mobile decorations, I think I may have to hang one in the nursery :)

Yummy, and darling Oreo pops

Mini peach pie pops. Aren't these just too cute?

I adore this! Katie made me a diaper cake using her favorite kind of diapers  and the cutest little Mario topper. He is sitting happily in the nursery :)
(he fell off in the car and when I couldn't find him Brandon said, "Don't worry babe he probably just went to look for coins." I have a pretty funny and cute husband huh)

Julee Phillips and me

Ashley Proctor and me

Carly Byram, me, and Angie Day

Christy Williams, me, Nada Payne, and Julia Swinton

Ashley gave us a Mario coin bank, he is also happily hanging out in the nursery :)

How cute are these little shoes?!

The sweet hostess and me

Julia and me.
Julia is due just a few days before me

Katie even had decorations outside the front door

This is what it looked like when you walked in. So pretty!

I am so grateful for my sweet sister and wonderful friends! 

Now that we've had the shower the next thing I am looking forward to is the due date :)

Brandon and I keep joking that our little man can't come too early or Brandon won't be done with school stuff yet! 

A quick update on Brandon and school... It's finals right now so Brandon is pretty darn busy and a little stressed. But he is doing well and studying hard. After finals are over Brandon will be applying for the Law Journal. It's a pretty big deal and really important when it comes time to find a job. You have two weeks to write and research the topic they give you, which if I understand correctly comes in a 200 page paper format. Doesn't that just sound like heaps of fun ;) I am sure he will do great at it though!

After that he will be working at the Nashville Public Defender's Office for his summer internship. He is excited about it and it is a big blessing for us since it's right here in Nashville and the schedule is flexible and not near as strenuous as a firm job. 

Life is good and we are very blessed!

Pictures of the nursery coming soon :) 

What I haven't blogged about...

Okay so it's been six months since my last blog post...

so what right?

There has been lots going on in the last six months,

and it's all been really wonderful!

Here it is...

1. We're expecting! I'm due May 28th with a little boy, yay! We are so excited to become parents and have loved getting ready for it all! I have loved being pregnant, it's been a truly amazing experience and I can not wait for our little man to get here.

2. We also found out our best friends here in Nashville are also expecting! I think I was giddy about this for weeks afterwards! They find out if its a boy or a girl in about a week.

3. Christmas- We spend Christmas with the Trouts last year. It was a great time! Then we headed over to Colorado for a visit with my family. Which was also a great time! While we were there Beth and Mike were sealed to their super darling little boy Caleb, and Emma was baptized. It was wonderful to be there for such special events.

4. For Christmas we chose a them of homemade gifts. Peter and Carissa drew our name and they made us a baby book! Seriously best. gift. ever! It is all scrap booked from the day of our little man's birth through every holiday in the first year, up to his birthday. Pretty cool I think.

5. Brandon applied for summer internships. What an adventure! We have been so blessed and he was offered a job at the public defender's office here in Nashville. He is really excited to start work in June.

6. Nashville actually had a real snow storm. Here in the South they cancel just about everything if they even think it's going to snow. So the fact that it actually snowed and it was kind of a lot was a pretty big deal. It took Brandon about four hours to get home from downtown, it's usually about a 20 minute drive. Pretty crazy.

7. We took a trip to Atlanta. With absolutely no pictures to show for it :) We drove over on Monday of Brandon's spring break, shopped til we dropped at Ikea (I love that store!), had a really yummy dinner at a "hipster" restaurant, at least that's what Brandon called it :), and then drove back the next day. It was the perfect little getaway.

8. I started working at, and have since already stopped working, at a daycare. It was a really great experience and I am very excited and grateful to be able to stay home with our baby.

9. Had a sleepover with Aubrey and Carter. They are both really good sleepers so this actually went really well and was a blast! Being the nervous aunt I am, I was up every 30 minutes to check on them. They never even woke up. Oh well :)

10. My mom and Emma came for Spring Break and Time Out for Women. It was a great weekend and I loved it! Time Out for Women was truly inspiring and amazing. I walked away feeling uplifted and reminded of my many blessings.

So there you have it. Life is pretty darn good. So grateful for the wonderful life we have, this new little baby headed our way, and all of Brandon's hard work in law school.

P.S. Tried to upload lots of pictures but it didn't work so I'll try again later.

Happy Anniversary!

Sunday was our one year anniversary, yay :)

I can not believe it has been that long already, the last year has flown by!

I also don't really remember what life was like before we were married!

I am so blessed to be Brandon's wife and treasure every day.

Alright enough of the mushy gushy love stuff, lets get to the fun weekend details!

We went to the Melting Pot on Saturday night, our waiter brought out our dessert with a candle to celebrate :)

The food was amazing! I mean absolutely amazing and totally worth every penny!

We had a spinach artichoke cheese fondue with different kinds of breads, chips, and apples. So good! Then we had a meat course with duck, sirloin, chicken, pork, shrimp and pot stickers. All of it was so good! I had never had duck before so that was interesting. Then for dessert we had "The Flaming Turtle" it was milk chocolate, caramel, and pecans flambeed(hence the "flaming") at the table, complete with cheesecake, brownies, marshmallows, rice krispie treats, strawberries and bananas. We definitely left full!

Brandon loves taking pictures of me, he always says, "Pretty wife." and then takes more pictures!

Brandon also took the day off from studying on Saturday which was wonderful! We slept in, made breakfast together (buttermilk pancakes with cinnamon butter, also so good), watched a movie (Iron Man 2. Am I a good wife or what ;) And then went to an early dinner. Downtown Nashville is really beautiful and we got to park right on the river.

We also had some of our new friends Mike and Carly over to play Settlers and make cookies after dinner. I won at Settlers which definitely made the night a little sweeter. I'm not braggin', I'm just sayin... ; )

On Sunday we had dinner on the patio and I made homemade beef stew, which was an adventure because I have never made homemade soup before. But it turned out very yummy if I do say so myself.

We didn't stay on the patio for very long because despite some bug repellent we both got bit a number of times... Welcome to the South!

We have some cute little lanterns and patio lights outside that I just love, so Brandon being a sweetheart took pictures of them too!

It was an amazing weekend! Very relaxing, very fun, and full of lots of yummy food!

I think I like anniversaries.

One big update

Wow! We moved to Nashville 6 weeks ago already!

It has just flown by!

We LOVE it here!

We feel so at home and are really enjoying being here.

We've been here....

They have over 32 kinds of pancakes and the yummiest syrups!

Think sweet potato pancakes with sweet cinnamon syrup :)

We've also been here...

This is a full size replica of the Parthenon at Centennial Park.

It's absolutely gorgeous and the park is really beautiful too!

During the summer the city hosts Big Band Dances in the park under a lighted dance floor.

We were able to go in August and had a blast! Sorry no pictures, we were dancing!

I've been here with Katie and "the kids" (her kids Brayden, Carter, and Aubrey)

So much fun! We got caught in the rain way out at the giraffe cage and had to run to the car. We were soaking wet! Brayden loved it! Carter not so much...

One of the things we have enjoyed the most being here is only living about 20 minutes from Katie and David. It is amazing! Katie and I see each other almost every day and love hanging out and playing with the kids. Brandon has started "herding" me out of their house at night because he said if he didn't I'd never leave : ) We get to have dinner with them at least a few times a week and get lots of play time in.

We've also been doing a little bit of this....

Sitting in traffic is new for me. It also takes a lot longer to get places. I guess that's all just part of living in a bigger city. (To be fair Brandon does most of the sitting in traffic on his way to and from school.

We've also spent some time here... My sweet little nephew Carter (he'll be 2 on our anniversary :) got appendicitis and a horrible infection that the doctors thought was the flu and spent 10 days here :( He is just about the sweetest (and cutest) little sick kid there ever was! He is feeling better now but still needs to have his appendix taken out. We got to watch my other nephew and niece while Katie and David were with him in the hospital. It was few crazy weeks.

We've also gone to ward camp out and fish fry (good times!) where someone was baptized in the lake. No joke, we all hiked down to the lake and this teenage boy was baptized. It felt totally Southern but was very simple and reverent. I am so touched by the testimonies of the converts here. People say the church is the same everywhere, but I'd say the GOSPEL is the same everywhere. The church is definitely different out here than it is out west, in a good way :)

Brandon is loving school! It's definitely hard and a lot of work but he really enjoys it. So far, we see each other WAY more than anyone told us we would.

That's a good thing.

We also love our ward and have made so friends.

Oh and we love our new apartment! I'll hopefully post pictures soon.

Ok well longest post ever, so sorry about that!

Have a great week!

Why I haven't been blogging

I have been meaning to blog more, I really have, but haven't for a few reasons. The biggest being that we really have nothing blog worthy going on, just "waiting" to move it feels like. Anything exciting going on in our life is actually not in OUR life, it's in our families lives'. Like my sister's having babies or getting married, and those should be things they blog about, not me right? And Blogger hasn't been letting me upload pictures lately and a blog post without pictures is boring and lame so even if we did have anything interesting going on there would be no pictures to accompany it and that is just sad panda as Brandon would say : ) See picture below, if you don't really get why it's funny that's ok, it's totally a nerdy geek thing : )

I uploaded this picture from the internet which is why it actually worked : )

Brandon's Graduation

Oh what a fabulous weekend! I didn't get enough pictures but I am getting better! We bought a new camera as Brandon's grad present so that should help : )

Both of Brandon's ceremonies were awesome and all the talks were so inspiring. I might have cried a little bit when Brandon stood up during commencement, when he walked across the stage during convocation, when his name was called, and when all the spouses where asked to stand up and he blew a kiss to me. Ok so maybe between all of that I cried a lot I am such a sap I guess! I am so proud of Brandon and all his hard work! He is happy and relieved to be done with school, at least for a little bit : )

The best part of the weekend was all the family time! We had dinner with Brandon's family on Thursday night, dinner with both the families on Friday night and then a BBQ for friends and family on Saturday! I love the combination of great food and great company!

The Trout's left on Saturday afternoon, *sad* but my family stayed until Sunday and we got to spend some more time together dress shopping for Meg, watching "the twins" (JT and Kasaundra's sweet little babies. I say twins as if they are the ONLY twins ever : ), having a sleep over with Meg and Emma, and playing Rock Band.

The whole weekend was so great and we both felt like it wasn't long enough! We are excited for the start of summer though and have lots of planned.