Happy First Birthday, Abby!!

Wow, it has been over a year and a half since I last posted anything on the blog. Life has been busy to say the least, but I'm going to try and catch up a little with the blogging. Let's start with Abby's first birthday!

Our little monkey turned one back in 2015. She started walking a few weeks before her birthday, and hasn't slowed down! We threw her a watermelon themed party at the house with family. Matt smoked a butt and we had a fun time hanging out with everyone at our first gathering at the new house. Here are a few pictures from the day!

The happy, birthday girl sporting her cute shirt from Aunt Megan!

And again!

Abby was the only girl in the pool of boys, but she wasn't fazed at all!

Big Daddy was there to help her splash in the water with the boys.

Chanlee, Jeffery, and Dedaddy checked out the pool fun from a distance.

All the boys had a blast playing in the pool.

She had a few meltdown moments!

She wouldn't give a smile to the camera.

Nanny got Abby a water table for her birthday and she had fun breaking it in.

Her birthday cake!

While she did not enjoy her smash cake as much as her brother did his, she did dig in a little!

We had a great time celebrating Abby's birthday. It was really nice to be closer to family and have everyone attend her party! Here's to the first of many fun birthdays in our new home.

Every new beginning...

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"

I think this lyric is more than appropriate for this blog entry. In the next week our little family will be making some major life changes. The changes are not bad, but exciting and new. For the past five years Matt and I have called Jacksonville home. I will admit that when I first found out we were moving down here I was not too excited. I knew nothing of the city and we knew absolutely no one down here. Well, things have changed. That new beginning ended Matt's med school days and propelled us into his residency. It sent us to a place where we would spend the next five years growing as a couple and as a family. Jacksonville has become home to us and it will definitely be bittersweet to leave. 

The past five years have been challenging, but rewarding. We have made so many friends and memories while living here that it will be hard to say good bye. These close friends have helped us survive the hardships of residency. Neither of us really knew what we were getting ourselves in to when we started this journey and without our family of friends that we have down here it would have been almost impossible. I will miss getting together with everyone to just hang out and celebrating holidays with them because we couldn't make it home to celebrate with our own families.

When this journey first started I didn't think it would ever end. However, time flies and here we are five years later. Matt has accepted a new job and we will be moving closer to family. We are very excited about this move, but we also understand that this will start a new beginning in our lives without the people we've relied on so heavily over the past few years. 

I have chosen a few of my favorite pictures of our time here in Jacksonville to share. They are in no particular order at all!

In Vegas waiting for Britney 

Headed to the Trauma One dinner 

Andrea and me before the Trauma One dinner 

Hanging with Lenny at the wax museum 

The two of us at the Trauma One dinner. I think we clean up nicely :-) 

Family picture when Nate was six months old 

Newborn Nate 

Family pictures February 2013 

My fifth grade team at Amanda's wedding last year. 

Matt, Eric, Andrea, Kristy, and Nate chilling at Black Finn 

Kristy and Nate 

Matt has to represent in the OR 

We will miss being 15 minutes from the beach when we move. 

These awesome friends of mine made inservices much more fun!

Scary, I know...

This is what happens when Matt participates in No Shave November and then gets creative with the clippers on the last day.

Cousins

My sweet friend Bianca who helped me through my year of teaching third grade! 

So if you have the best team name at trivia you win a pitcher of beer. I was pregnant with Abby and Matt got called in to work so Andrea had to handle it herself!

Fuzzy shot of us on our first limo ride :-)

Girls night!

Andrea's 30th birthday bash!

Amanda and Catie came to see Miss Abby shortly after she was born

It's always great when we win at trivia!

Amanda and me at the Jags game. 

Newborn Abby courtesy of Tasha DeLoach

Andrea and Abby

Our new beginning will relocate us to Chelsea, Alabama. We will be within 2 hours of all parents and within 15-30 minutes of our siblings. This is a great move for us and the kids because we have been very isolated from our family over the past five years and we want the kids to have the chance to play with their cousins and see their grandparents more frequently. We are also going to finally be able to get out of this very cramped two bedroom apartment that he have called home for so long. Nate put in his request for a red house with stairs. We couldn't exactly deliver on the red part, but it does have stairs! It will also give us plenty of room to spread out and a nice yard for the kids to run and play.

Nate's 'red' house

We are very excited about this new chapter in our lives. Here's to the new beginning!

Happy Birthday, Nate!

Our smart, sweet, and not so little anymore little boy turned four in March. He is growing up way too quickly for me, but I love to see the person he is becoming. This year it was all about the Legos. We have Legos everywhere in our house and it was only fitting that he have a Lego themed birthday party. 

We celebrated his birthday pretty low key here in Florida and then had his party a few weeks later in Alabama. We took Nate out to eat at Mitchell's Fish Market the day before his birthday because he wanted strawberries. Nate loves his strawberries and this is the only restaurant I have found that will serve him a side of nothing but strawberries. His birthday fell on a Monday this year and he requested that I cook Spaghetti-O's with meatballs as his birthday dinner. The poor guy came home from school on his big day feeling great, but by the time Matt got home he was very lethargic and refused to eat his Spaghetti-O's. He spiked a fever before bed and eventually ended up in our bed later in the night. I gave him some medicine to help with the fever and by Tuesday afternoon he was feeling better. However, the fever returned that evening and by Wednesday morning he had a lovely rash all over his body. Thankfully his 4 year old check up was scheduled for Wednesday morning so I went ahead and took him in to the doctor. Poor Nate was diagnosed with scarlet fever. Not exactly a fun bug to get on your birthday, but after the antibiotics kicked in he started feeling much better. Thankfully Abby did not come down with it and our household was quickly on the mend.

We had his party at my brother's house in Moody. I owe a huge thank you to Jeffery and Chanlee for allowing us to commandeer their house for a few hours! Unfortunately, it was cold and rainy, but the kids didn't seem to mind. They had a fun time playing indoors, eating cake and pizza, and playing with Legos. It was great to be around family and the kids were so excited to get to see each other. Here are a few pictures from the day:

Pizza!! Can you tell that Nate's favorite color is red? 

Opening presents with the cousins 

My birthday boy!

Nate and Matt trying to make his Hex Bug work. Abby is in the background taking a nose dive with her Nanny :-) 

Nate and his Hex Bug 

Abby had a great time pulling Noah's hair 

Nate's Lego cake courtesy of Publix 

What is a Lego cake without Lego candles?

Nate loves to blow out the candles! 

It is insanely hard to get a family photo with everyone looking at the camera these days...

We had a great time celebrating our little man. He is growing up so fast, but we are loving every minute of it!

Hey baby, let's go to Vegas!

Back in February Matt and I were fortunate enough to travel to Las Vegas. He submitted a paper to a conference back in the fall and it was accepted. My sweet mom came to town to keep our little monkeys so that I could tag along. While Matt had several engagements he had to attend at the conference, we were still able to have a little time to venture out into the city and see some sights. We didn't have enough free time or cash to take in many of the popular Vegas shows, but that's okay! We'll just go back some other time. This was the first trip out there for both of us and we had a fun time checking out Vegas.

We stayed at the Encore. This was our view from our room. It was a super nice hotel!

Wednesday was our day to explore the city. We went to the mall first to try and find Matt a new pair of shoes. The sole decided to detach from his dress shoes after his first presentation! After shopping we at lunch at the Wynn buffet. We heard that when in Vegas you had to try a buffet. We headed back to the hotel for a quick nap before heading out to explore a little more. We walked through the Venetian and took in views of the gondolas.

,

I couldn't convince Matt to take a ride!

I like to watch the Food Network and I thought it might be fun to check out Bobby Flay's restaurant, Mesa Grill, while we were out there. We had dinner and it was pretty good. We had to meander through Caesar's Palace in order to find the restaurant, but it was a fun journey.

Us at Mesa Grill 

After dinner we wandered down the street where we saw the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas and the fountains at the Bellagio. It was really cool to see everything lit up at night. 

We were making our way to the one show we were able to see -- Britney! We caught a little grief over traveling to Vegas to see Britney, but whatever. She was in town, we were in town, why not go? It was a really fun show and the crowd was made up mostly of people our age. We really enjoyed it even though we were up way past our bedtime!

Here is a blurry picture of Matt presenting his research on Thursday. He did a great job! I wish my phone was better equipped to take pictures with the zoom!

 He even won an award for his presentation!!

We had a little free time Thursday afternoon so we decided to check out the wax museum. It was more fun than I expected! We took a ton of pictures, but I chose a few of my favorites to share.

Of course we had to have our picture made with Britney! 

I found my man, and he's really tall! 

This picture just makes me laugh!

It was a short, but fun trip. I've been telling Matt for years that we are going to Vegas to get our vows renewed by Elvis for our tenth anniversary. It's coming up next year. He thinks I'm kidding.......