Summer Wedding #9- Lauren & Pearson

Okay I really have to finish these special summer weddings!!! 

SO Summer wedding #9 was this BEAUTIFUL couple.....

LAUREN & PEARSON! 

Again, SOSOSO sad I wasn't able to be there with them- Their wedding was in Charlotte the weekend after the wedding in Wisconsin, the week before Matt & Jamie's in South Carolina, and less than 2 weeks before we moved out of the country, so it just wasn't possible. I was so sad to miss out, as Lauren is such a sweet friend. 

I met Lauren or "Linky" in 2005 when we spent the summer in Santa Cruz together. She is seriously one of the sweetest people I know. I just love her to death. 

Our hearts have become even more kindred since then, as she moved to EA right after we graduated. In fact... she lived in our apartment here 2 years ago, so I think about her all the time. 

Lauren and Pearson met when they were both living over here and quickly fell in love. I enjoyed spending the summer after they met here with her learning more about their relationship. It's obvious that they are so crazy about each other. 

So happy for you guys!

Love you Linky! 

Joyfully celebrating the Alsobrooks, 

A Few of my Favorite Things Friday {Oct. 22nd}

I hope you all have had a fabulous week! 

Here are a few of my favorite things this week.....

Fave #1.... Kentucky's amazing win over South Carolina last weekend! 

As spotty as our internet can be, I don't hold my breath that we will actually be able to watch football games when they air, but we woke up early last Sunday morning to a gloriously fast connection via our beloved slingbox and were able to watch the UK game live. And it was fantastic.

This is how we now enjoy football games. 

 Thank you Randall Cobb for being amazing....

Go Big Blue. 

Fave #2.......Fruit Snacks!

A little random I know, but this week as I was making a wish list of things I wanted from the states, I had some serious cravings for fruit snacks. Not just any fruit snacks though..... I LOVE Kroger brand. And not just any Kroger Brand- the variety pack......

And the "primary color" ones.... creepies, sharks, and dinos....

a little strange? yes. But the other ones are neon colored and I'm not a fan. 

I have also grown to love these guys .... and apparently they're healthy. Not that I really care as long as they taste good.  

And Fave #3......Old Navy Wool Coats!

Every year Old Navy sells fantastic winter coats in fun colors for insanely reasonable prices, and every year I say that I'm going to buy one and every year I kick myself when I don't. BUT this year, they are exceptionally cute. These are my 5 favorite..... (in no particular order)....

Yellow Ruffle Collar

Brown Double Breasted Coat

Blue Ruffled Coat

Oatmeal Toggle 

Green Peacoat 

love them. 

Those are a few of my extremely random favorite things this week. Get excited, because we are in a really fun city visiting friends this weekend and I have LOTS of favorite things from here. 

Joyfully delighted,

Our Cute Little Helper

Just in case I haven't raved about how cute Grady is......

This little guy loves to help..... any time tools come out he says, "Grady Help! Grady Do it!" 

So here he is assembling our nightstand from Ikea. No worries.... he didn't really nail anything. 

Then he had to sit in it for a while before we could put the door on.

So So cute. 

We also bought the tall dark piece of furniture with the baskets in the background at Ikea, along with a new dresser. I'll share more sometime. 

Joyfully Assisted,

A Few of my Favorite Things Friday {Oct. 15th}

......a few days late. I had this ready to go on Friday afternoon, and then the internet went down until this morning. no big surprise. 

Fave #1....

Mountains right outside my door!

A few weeks ago my phone rang and Adam said, "Hey go out on the roof and take my picture." I thought he was outside and wanted me to take a picture of him standing outside of our building from the roof- which I thought was strange. He clarified, "No get the telephoto lens and go to the roof- I'm on top of a mountain." How amazing is this? See him there on top of the mountain?

Who can go on their roof and take a picture of their husband on top of a mountain? I think it's pretty sweet. 

Here's a better picture of the view. There is a long range of these that stretches for miles alongside our city/town. These are a little bit smaller than some of the others and we were taking the pictures from pretty high up relatively speaking.

Fave #2.......Jessica's Bird Earrings!

Jessica is a sweet friend who lives in Argentina. I spent a week with her in Colorado this summer. She was wearing these earrings one day and I raved about them, as I've been looking for something similar on Etsy (or anywhere else) for a while. She got them in Argentina.... which was a bummer for me. But I was happy for her that she had such fun earrings. THEN later that night she gave them to me and said she could get more for herself! How sweet is she!? 

So here are my bird cage earrings that I LOVE! 

Okay that's all for this week.... I have more but the internet is too slow to upload anymore pictures. For the love, I feel like its 1998 with dial up again. 

Joyfully delighted, 

Lotsa Balloons

Part of our birthday fiesta fun came with balloons! 

We all so enjoyed Grady's delight with the "Qi Qiu"- he is still talking about them. My door bell phone (from the gate down stairs) rang a few days later, and when I answered I heard a little voice saying, "I want qi qiu Haley!" I thought he said xi shou- (just the difference in the ch and sh sound in English) so I said, "Sure buddy come on up and wash your hands." No no, he wanted me to throw balloons out of the window down to him. Cute buddy.  

All of the fun with the balloons provided a good opportunity for me to play with the new camera too, as he wanted everyone to keep throwing them in the air. I had a hard time finding the best way to use the multi-shot in semi-low lighting without the pictures being blurry. I used the shutter speed mode (TV), turned the shutter speed up, as well as the EV. They didn't turn out too bad, but I'd love to know if you have any advice! 

  The best part of these pictures is definitely Grady's face. He LOVED it. 

It seriously doesn't get much better than this- I mean this kid has got one of the greatest belly laughs you've ever heard, and these were deep enough for veins to start popping out. 

He wanted everyone to pop the balloons- He'd say, "pop it!" and tense up in anticipation like he might get a little scared as the balloon expanded, and then DIE laughing once it finally popped and say MORE MORE! This picture definitely captures his excitement.

The aftermath....

Such a fun night. Glad I could capture some of the joy. 

That's really all of the Fiesta now. I hope you've enjoyed. 

If you have any camera tips (we just got a Canon T2i before we came), or know of any good blogs or websites that are helpful, please do share! 

Joyfully partied out,

Birthday Fiesta!

Last weekend, one of our good friends here turned the big 30! So of course we had to have a big celebration for him. 

His theme of choice: 

a FIESTA! 

This was my first attempt here at cooking a meal for a large group of people. I can't take credit for all of it- my dear friend and master cook Ashlei already had the refried beans, tortillas, and salsa made. Having a big meal here can really take all day to prepare. A Mexican dinner in America is pretty easy- you can buy the tortillas, salsa, beans, cheese, and sour cream as is, and then you're only left with cooking the meat and cutting up some veggies. We were lucky to find the hard shells at a wholesale market in the city, but other than that everything was prepared from scratch! Including the tortillas, sour cream, and refried beans.

I cooked the beef all day in the crock pot, after Ash and I had to make a "mexican hot sauce" that the recipe called for to marinate it in. I made the rice which was a fun and new process for me, as there are no boxes of rice lying around. But considering where we are, it is clearly not hard to find. I went outside to the market that currently lives on our street (please don't envision your local farmers market or anything that you've ever seen in the states- for instance, they kill the chickens right on the side of the road. I really want to walk through there taking a video and post it on here. Maybe I'll do that on my way to class this morning... don't worry, i will not capture any animal killing.) ANYWAY... walk outside, find someone selling rice, have her scoop a couple pounds out from a large sack and dump it in a little baggie. Easy enough! Then cooked it completely from scratch with a few different spices, onions, pepper and chillies. I really enjoyed preparing everything, and didn't make too many major mistakes along the way. 

Enough about the food....

Our friend Joseph made this AWESOME Dragon Pinata for the party! The original plan was to fill it with candy, but clearly it is too fantastic to bust. He is now hanging out in his apartment. 

After dinner came dessert... and it was fantastic. Ash made homemade ice cream, hot fudge, and brownies. It was amazing.

 SUGAR GALORE! 

For the next hour, after the loads of sugar went into effect, everyone went into crazy mode. We had such a good time, especially since the little guy was high on life... and probably sugar. I don't know that I've ever seen a kid so happy! 

The girls used ribbon to decorate with, which quickly turned into headbands...

....and kung fu masters. We tried to get Grady to pose for the picture- he looks like he is doing the robot. Super cute. 

Grady likes to give you a "diaper to the face" as he calls it if you are laying on the ground. Adam gets them very regularly. Pretty funny. 

Then we decided we'd play games and instead of playing hot potato- or hot tamale going with the theme, we decided to play hot toddler and throw Grady around. 

The picture is blurry, but it captures the fun. 

After a game of spinning around blindfolded, which G took a little too far, Grady was pretty worried about his dad laying on the floor- rightfully so. Too cute. 

It was tons and tons of fun. Living here, we can get by with going all out for a small party with decorations, lights, games and all. Can't wait for someone else to have a birthday! 

Joyfully celebrating 30 years,