Birdie Themed Baby Shower!

Last weekend my wonderful friend Andi and my amazing Mother in Law, and two Sisters in Law threw me a super cute bird themed baby shower! It was SO great to have all of my friends in town to visit and Aunt Lorie and Uncle Ed even came in from New York! I got tons of great stuff for Baby P and lots of love from all of the most important people in my life. I am truly blessed with an amazing family and friends. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

The girls and I at brunch before the shower. Black Walnut Cafe = yummmmm...

Our guest book :)

The adorable tablescape and diaper cake!
Words of advice for a first time mommy - put in a bird cage. So cute!
Awesome gifts!


Casey walking around with Will


Me + Him

The wonderful hostesses and me

1st Anniversary Weekend

This past weekend we spent our 1st anniversary in New Braunfels where we had our first "mini-moon" last year. If you don't know us, we LOVE the Texas Hill Country and New Braunfels is one of our favorite places. We stayed at one of our favorite places, Heidelberg Lodges which is right on the Comal River. Friday night we drove in and got to Heidelberg around 10. We sat out on the balcony for a while listening to the train pass by and some college guys playing guitar across the way and then hit the sack. We woke up early to head to (of course) Naeglin's Bakery for kolaches and donuts.
After Naeglin's we decided to walk around the square and happened upon a pretty awesome little Farmer's Market.

Handsome hubby at the Farmer's Market

We walked around a bit talking to the vendors and bought Casey's mom a beautiful orchid plant as a thank you for watching the pups.
After a Tiger's Blood snow cone and a little more perusing we headed back to Heidelberg for a dip in the river. It was SO. Freaking. COLD. I couldn't get in all the way so I just stood knee deep in the water for a while watching Casey swim around. We got out, showered, and headed up to Austin for my beautiful friend Christy's baby shower (see separate post). While Casey was waiting for me to get finished with the shower, he hung out at Frank - Austin. I didn't get a chance to eat anything (I ate at Maria Maria where Christy's shower was) but according to my BFFITWWW (best friend forever in the whole wide world) Leigh Anne (who happens to be a manager at the new Nacogdoches location) the food there is AMAZING. If you are in Nac - they are having a grand opening in a week so you should check it out! (Shameless plug over)

After Austin we headed back to NB where we ended up taking a glorious 2 hour nap before going out to eat at Huisache. Nom. Of course after a delicious meal you have to go home and pass out and that is exactly what we did.

On Sunday morning we woke up and headed to.... duh. We had to pick up some Apple Strudel for the folks as well as some yummies for us. Then it was back to Heidelberg for another dip in the river before checking out. We snorkeled (yes I got all the way in finally) and it was wonderful having my core body temp drop a little because it kept me cooler in general for several hours afterward. On the way out of town we stopped by the Christmas Shoppe to get a baby ornament (a cute star with a pea in a pod in the middle) and then to the outlets at San Marcos for a few hours to browse around and we ended up at Cracker Barrel for a yummy lunch before heading back to Houston. Ahhh what a nice relaxing weekend.... here are a few more pictures.

My ever expanding pregnant belly and me in the Comal River

Anniversary dinner at our favorite restaurant Huisache. I'm wearing all of the same jewelry I wore on our wedding day. :)

This deer reminded me of our sweet Zac pup, don't they look alike?

After snorkeling in the river.

Babies, Babies, Babies!

They say when you get pregnant it seems like everyone is pregnant, well in my case they are!

Last weekend I went to Fort Worth to Liz's twin baby shower. Yes that's right, Liz is having TWIN girls that are due in July! Along with Liz, there are 4 other pregnant ZTAs, all of which got married last year - crazy huh? Liz is due in July, Megan in October, Christy in November, and me in December! Here we are lined up for our bump shot!

Here's Liz opening the Princess Onesies I got her - gotta love that 5 point crown!

SFA Zetas

After the shower Christy and I decided to stay one more night (we had both originally planned to head home after the shower) and I am so glad we did. We met up with Natalie and Ashley at a cute little part of Fort Worth called West 7th (I think). We ate at a restaurant called Patrizio's that I assumed was going to be expensive because it looked so swanky, but was super reasonable! Yay for time with my girls!

I am so lucky to have such wonderful college friends. I'm not friends with that many of my high school friends because I graduated a year early, but I am so blessed to have these girls. Love my ZTAs!

Summer time and the living is easy...

Update time!

I have been a lazy, lazy blogger, and while I seriously doubt that anyone reads my blog enough to notice, I still feel like I should be updating more often. So here's what's been going on in the life of Sarah, Casey, Riley, & Zac (our new official spelling of his name):


1. Instead of going to New Braunfels for the weekend after the flooding that happened, we opted to make it a day trip and ride up to New Braunfels with Casey's parents to show them around that area (neither of them had ever been) and then to drive up to Austin for our wedding food tasting. On Saturday we took the Pages to New Braunfels and showed them around. We made our first stop at Naegelin's, the oldest bakery in Texas. This is always a must when we go to New Braunfels for 2 reasons. 1. We love supporting family owned small businesses. 2. Everything they make is incredibly delicious and very affordable. We ended up buying them out of kolaches so that we could take some back to the Chagla's who weren't able to take their family trip this year due to the flooding. After Naegelin's we went over to check on Heidelberg and were very sad to see that they were hit pretty hard with the flooding. All of their downstairs lodge rooms were flooded so all of the rooms were being gutted and repaired. Hopefully they will be back up and running by the time Casey's bachelor party rolls around in a few weeks.

2. I have been subbing at TWYLA and am loving it.

3. The weekend of June 18-20 I went to Nacogdoches and was lucky enough to be asked to help plan my best friend's proposal! James proposed to my beautiful best friend Leigh Anne on June 18th and it was perfect. I also got to hang out with my other best friend Sara Baker! Here are some pics from the weekend:






4. Upon getting home from Nacogdoches we celebrated Father's Day with Casey's family at Shannon's house. We got Casey's dad a bunch of miscellaneous gifts and among them was this book. I HIGHLY recommend it as it has made me laugh harder than I've laughed in a LONG time- WARNING: it obviously uses very explicit language- use discretion if you are offended by curse words. After getting home from Father's Day festivities we had Casey's (dog) Father's Day from the boys:




4. We went to Longview this past weekend to help my dad with some stuff and go to my cousin Lily's 5th birthday. Later that night my mom helped Casey and I give the pups a hair cut. Here are some pics from the party and also our hairless hounds:

Our God daughter Abby crawling all over me

My cousin Jen & I

Ms. Lily opening her gifts!

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

5. I've been missing some things lately... I really miss cooking, fashion, and photography. I used to be so passionate about all three of these things and I've really let my passion for these things go by the way side. So in addition to planning a wedding, trying to stay fit, helping my best friend plan a wedding, keeping the house in order, and working part time, I am going to try to also put some effort into bringing more artistic and creative endeavors into my life again. What this means for you blog readers is that from time to time I might post an outfit, photograph, or meal that I have cooked and that I am proud of. Whether these things will truly hold any artistic value will remain to be seen, but they will be things I am proud of and this blog is about self expression and finding myself so yeah... lol. Here are some meals that I have made that I am proud of:

I may have blogged about this dish before, but it's my signature dish and something I make all the time so I thought I would share. I call it Italian Flag Pasta (because of the red green and white)

Italian Flag Pasta:
-Any pasta - I usually use angel hair or penne and I mix 1/2 whole wheat pasta and 1/2 regular for texture
-Cherry or Grape tomatoes - quartered
-Chopped fresh basil (does not work with dried basil)
-Kosher salt (my secret ingredient in everything)
-Fresh cracked black pepper
-Olive oil
-Lemon juice

I usually add shrimp that I have sauteed in olive oil and fresh minced garlic, but you can have this as a side dish (I'm planning to have it as a side for our 4th of July party) or you can add grilled chicken or shrimp and have it as a main course. It's SO easy and so yummy! It's a perfect summer dish.

This is a pasta recipe that I got from HEB Cooking Connection. It's pasta with this amazing imported tomato sauce with chicken sausage, fresh basil, and parmesan cheese. You can really do this with any pasta, tomato sauce, and chicken sausage. I have been adding basil to everything because my basil plant is thriving - yay!

Okay so I think I have successfully overloaded this post and it just might be the LOOOOOOONGEST post ever. More later!

Isn't She Lovely?

WOW was this weekend a doozie! Casey and I drove something like 700 miles in 36 hours - here's how:

Saturday morning: I wake up at 5:30 - shower and we get on the road to Longview around 7am. We arrive in Longview around 10:30ish and my mom and I immediately go up to the bridal place to get my dress that FINALLY came in. It was absolutely perfect, more perfect than I remember and I am SO thankful. :) Leigh Anne came with me for support and it was so nice to have my best friend there with me for that.

After picking up my dress we headed to Bodacious to meet up with Casey and my dad for some BBQ. One thing I do miss about Longview is eating at the restaurants that I grew up eating - Bodacious, Papacita's, Lupe's, Pietro's... there's nothing like home sometimes.

After eating it was back to Dad's for quick nap and then on to Princeton, TX for Liz & Buckley's wedding! Casey and I made great time on the road and it was nice going a different way to the Dallas area (we took 80 instead of I20).

The wedding was absolutely gorgeous! Liz's colors were Red with accents of turquoise (a ZTA homage?) which is one of my favorite color combinations. Liz looked absolutely stunning and so did my beautiful Zeta friends who were all there that I miss SO much. Here are some pics from her amazing wedding!

This is us squeezing every Zeta at the wedding into this tiny photo booth (16 of us)- idea courtesy of Sarah Nicole Wood

4 ZTA weddings in one year? OKAY!

Blushing Bride!

Beautiful Liz and her Dad walking down the aisle to "At Last" by Etta James :)

Oh Astros...

Well I went to my first Astros game of the season last night with my friend Amy and I hate to be negative, but it does not look like it's going to be a very pretty season for my boys. Having said that, last night was a lot of fun!

Amy and I met up before the game to try out a new restaurant near the ball park called Irma's Southwestern Grill and it was actually pretty good. We were thinking it was going to be this cool hole in the wall kind of place, but it was kind of fancy! The only drawback - they didn't have menus! I thought this was very weird, but I knew I wanted to order the shrimp tacos anyway, so I guess it wasn't too bad. The tacos were good and we of course ate waaaaaaaaay too much chips and queso. My favorite - YUM! After eating we strolled over to Minute Maid where.....

It was retro night! Minute Maid and we celebrated 45 years of the Astros. Everything was retro themed (1965) last night and it was so cute! The jumbo tron was in black and white, the t-shirt girls and guys were wearing astronaut outfits and 60's "spacey" looking stewardess outfits - it was really.... cute! I guess that's the only word I can think of for it!

Here are some pics from the night!





Even though my Astros lost (yet again) it was still great to be back at Minute Maid welcoming back my favorite sport.