Easter 2011

This year Sam and I got to celebrate Easter with both of our families. I know that this is a daunting task and will only get more difficult when there are kids thrown in the mix, but I am pretty proud of our system right now! :) This year we went to my parents house on Saturday night to have an Easter dinner together because on Easter Sunday everyone was going in a different direction. We had yummy "Reggie Steaks" as Sam calls them with sweet potato fries and some other fixings, but those were the highlights of the night. We played Kinect, looked at old pictures, and got to hang out and enjoy each others company. Well when I say everyone I mean everyone minus one because Moriah didn't come home. She really needs to stop loaning her car out to her friends so she can hang with her awesome fam..but that's just my opinion! :) We stayed as long as we could..this year the Easter bunny wasn't coming around so no one needed to hit the hay early.

We woke up to a rainy, yucky Easter morning, but we didn't let that dampen our spirits. We got started our part of Easter lunch, got ready, and hit the wets streets for church. We had a great Easter service with plenty of worship and celebration of our risen Lord! Thank you Jesus that we can celebrate the hope of life with you!

We had to hit the road as soon as church was over, but we spared 2 seconds to get an Easter picture just in case we didn't get one later.


Emily had to be a part of our family picture too! She's part of the family. She even has her own room at our house. Ask her about it. She loves it!


Sam also thought that we would want to document us dressed up so nice. He never wears a suit, so we had to get evidence that this does occur once every blue moon.


We ran home, got a change of clothes, grabbed our dish, and were on our way again to Sam's mom's house. We all brought some goodies and had a delicious lunch. We are definitely going to have a circus running around when there are more kiddos added to the already rambunctious bunch we have. This year Chris's sister and her husband and daughter got to hang out with us too!

Although the rain did put a damper on the day, we didn't let it get us down. Sam and I went out and hid Easter eggs for the girls to hunt. They enjoyed every second of it. They kept saying, "I found one!" for every single egg they found. It was really cute. Samantha enjoyed getting into everyone's candy once they found all the eggs. I really like her approach: Let the big girls do all the work and then enjoy their candy while they are looking at the neighbors dogs. Smart little girl!

Here are some photos of the afternoon:





Aside of the time with family, the candy devoured, the stomachs stuffed to the brim...The most important thing is that we took time to remember why we have hope that this life on this earth is not the end. The struggles and heartache that we face will only last for awhile, but our hope is in the eternity of life with our Father. Thank you Lord!

One of my favorite songs that I got the chance to hear in concert is by Newsong called "Arise My Love". It brought tears to my eyes as I got the full understanding of the words and meaning of the song. I find joy knowing that these words could be spoken to me one day...

"Arise my Love, Arise my Love, the grave no longer has a hold on you. No more death sting, no more suffering. Arise, Arise my Love."

Happy Birthday Samantha!

It really doesn't seem like we should have a 3 year old niece, but I'm pretty sure that we were just in the hospital to get our first glance at our second little niece, Samantha.



It had been a long day, so no judgement on the appearance of Aunt Holly! :)

Now a year has flown by and we are back together once again to celebrate Samantha's 1st birthday. She is such a doll! She's a chunk, but we love every little roll and her chubby little cheeks. She always has a smile on her face and is very photogenic if I may say so myself.

She is working on walking. I think by the end of this week she will be walking solo. All she needed was a little finger to help her balance and she had the rest. She is growing so so fast!

Happy Birthday Sweet Samantha! You are one loved little girl! Keep smiling your toothy smile!



Love,
Uncle Samuel and Aunt Holly

Play Ball

I absolutely love spring. Spring brings some not so awesome things like allergies and storms, but spring brings so many great things such as warm weather, flowers, summer following soon, and last but not least BASEBALL! Sam watches all sports. Literally, he watches all sports. I don't catch a break from the sports, but the summer is my favorite time, aside from football in the fall, but still. We decided to take a night out and go support our local Minor League team. It was a great night. We hadn't been to a game since the summer of 2004, so needless to say it's been awhile. It felt like we were in high school again on a date. It was a great feeling. I think that we are going to be going to several games this summer. We are also wanting to hit some Braves games again this year too! We have to support our team with their new manager! :)

It's a.... and another update

It's a baby boy for the Hampton crew. We had a fabulous night with family at the reveal party that Regina and Mike threw. They had a potluck dinner with a blueberry or strawberry filled cake for dessert. We gathered around the cake and finally saw the blue of the blueberries! Unfortunately, I will not be able to tell you the name of my new little nephew because we won't know until he is born. I am having to adjust to this idea. They say they haven't decided. I say Regina is going to keep telling me that so I won't try to get it out of her. :) Ahh, sisterly love!

Also I said that I would post a new year's goal update. Well due to the fact that I feel that blown up tick this week, I don't feel like doing this update. I will say that from January to now I have lost at least an inch from my waist if not more and have maintained a 10 lb loss. Sam has lost at least 2 to 3 inches in his waist. His clothes fall off of him. It makes me irritated as the female that doesn't lose weight unlike the male in her life. :) I am so proud of the both of us for setting to a goal and continuing to work toward it. I have 10 more lbs to go to meet my goal! We shall see how long this takes.

One Year Anniversary

People celebrate their wedding anniversary. (August 9, 2008)
Some people celebrate their dating anniversary. (Decemeber 5, 2003)
There are people that celebrate the anniversary of their first kiss.(February 16, 2004)
There are people who celebrate the anniversary of the first time they held hands.
Some people remember and celebrate the first time they said, "I LOVE YOU!" (May 5, 2005)

I can remember the date of all these things, but we don't celebrate any of them but one now...even though they are nice to remember.

On March 31st, we hit the one year anniversary of owning our own home.



Over the past year, there haven't been many changes. We are still trying to grow some grass for our dirt yard. We are hoping to get a fence at some point to keep the crazies out and the dogs out of the woods. Really we don't have crazies around here, but seriously the dogs in the woods drives me insane! The house has encountered many, many days of snow. This is the very first snow in our new house! :) (a day or snow after!)

There have been many memories over the past year. Second anniversary here we come!

Mexican Getaway

I have been in school for 17 years. Of those 17 years, I never went anywhere for spring break. This year being the first year that I am in school and not the student, Sam and I decided that it was time to get away for Spring Break. We LOVED our trip to Cancun almost three years ago, so we decided that Mexico would be the destination. We also thought that it would be much warmer closer to the equator in March. Needless to say, it was an absolute awesome vacation!

We left on Saturday afternoon and traveled ALL day to Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Our resort was very fancy pants and after walking around noticed that there was more of an older crowd hanging around. It was cool with us though. We made friends with our lounge chair neighbors everyday.

We spent the first two days laying around the pool. The pool was made for me! It has lounge chairs at the edge of the water, so I could still layout with the coolness of the water. It is my kind of laying out!


We spent a lot of time in the sun, so on the third day we decided to take a trip into town. We took a taxi from the hotel. Our taxi drivers name was Alex. There were several Alex's actually. Easy to not forget a name, I suppose. Anyways, we were dropped off on 5th Ave. We spent the first hour and a half walking one little side of 5th Ave. We didn't understand what the hype was in this street. After finally finding our way to this gorgeous beach...

..we decided it was time for lunch. After lunch, we decided to head in a different direction and we were amazed! There were so many shops and restaurants. This was the place that people had been telling us all about. We walked and walked and walked, but never bought anything! It was truly an amazing feat. :)

We spent a couple of more days by the pool and then headed out into Mexico once again. This time we took a day and traveled to Tulum to see the Mayan ruins and then to X-la. It was an amazing day. We got to spend the day seeing all of God's awesome work. It was one of the most beautiful and interesting things that I have seen.






After seeing the ruins, we traveled about 20 more minutes to X-La. We got to snorkel and travel through a very long "jungle"ly place. We saw several zebra fish (my fav), Dorie fish, really big fish, really small fish, and three sting rays!






That night we got to have dinner with a true Irishman. Ironically enough, his name was Patrick from Dublin, Ireland! What a way to end Saint Patty's Day! :)

We spent the rest of our vacation soaking up as many rays as we possibly could. I got a little dark..and by little I mean a lot! Sam, my tanless man, actually got a TAN!! Not burnt an actual tan! This is a pretty big deal!



We had the most relaxing week of the year while in Mexico. We got to reconnect and let go of all the things that had been stressing us back home. We can't wait to plan our next getaway.

I Promise

...to get an update on the life of the Shrewsbury's soon.

Things to be blogged about...

* A Getaway to Mexico
* A One Year Anniversary
* New Year's Goal In Progress
* A Little Bun in the Oven Reveal (again...not me)

I could be wrong, but I think that after all of these posts I will be all caught up on the goings on in the life of the Shrewsburys.



For now.. I am off to bed. Looking at my blog list made me a little tired!