Thanksgiving!

I just realized that I never posted on Thanksgiving! It was a great one!



We shot skeet (as usual) and I shot a handgun for the very first time!



Got to hang out with my favorite cousin Mikey and his awesome wife Ginger. They are professional food and still life photographers (ever seen a Chili's or La Madeleine menu? That's them!). I might be going up to Dallas to shadow them this summer and learn everything they know about photography. Check out their website!

We finished out the weekend with shopping, hanging out with friends, and celebrating mom's birthday on Saturday.

Shutterfly Christmas

Have you ever used Shutterfly? I am obsessed. I started using Shutterfly when I got a coupon and got an album made of Casey and my relationship going up until the wedding. It came out so cute and everyone really liked being able to see all of the pictures together. The other day I was cruising Facebook and I saw a friend post about free Christmas cards. Well we all know how much I love free so I looked into it and Shutterfly is having an awesome promotion! If you blog about their site, you get 50 free Christmas cards! I love vintage-y looking Christmas cards, here are some of my favorites:

I loooove how cute this one is with the candy cane letters! I'm obsessed with whatever font this is...

This one is kind of modern-vintage (I know that doesn't make sense!) and I love it!

I love the simplicity of this one with the old photo album look. I also love horizontal fold cards, can you tell?

I'm pretty traditional when it comes to Christmas colors, but I love the diagonal diamond pattern and the light blue of this card. It's very wintry and I love the font of the Happy Holidays.

And this one which is quite possibly my favorite:

I love the offset seal and the fact that it also says Happy New Year. I love the green border too!

Check out some of the great products at Shutterfly!

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards

http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards

Painting with a Twist

Here are some pics from our girls night last Thursday!

I am pretty much obsessed with Painting with a Twist now and we have decided to try to go back monthly! I really miss my artistic side... it gets so stifled with everyday responsibilities that I thought I had lost my touch.. I am SO happy with how my painting turned out!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like.... Thanksgiving...

Is anyone else REALLY excited about Christmas? It's taking everything I have to restrain myself from decorating for Christmas before Thanksgiving..

Check out our adorable new ornament from Naeglin's!

We also got these Old World Christmas ornaments as a wedding gift and I love them! I can't wait to hang them on our tree - thanks Uncle Jerry and Diane!

Okay no more Christmas talk until after Turkey Day... Happy Fall everyone!

Wurstfest

This past weekend we went to New Braunfels for Wurstfest with Casey's parents. We had been wanting to go for a few years now and when we mentioned it to Casey's parents a few months ago they were all about it. Thank God because with the past month that we've had (I'll just say it has involved a funeral and several run ins with not so nice students) we really needed to get out of town and without C's parents we probably would have canceled the trip. Here are some pics from the weekend:

Where have I been??

I don't know if I could even tell you - it's been such a hectic and busy year so far!

Here's a quick run down of what has been going on with the Pages in the last month:

First week of October: I had a mysterious mole removed on my arm. My doctor thought it might be Melanoma, but it came back clear - YAY! It did give me a good scare though, so I made a dermatologist appointment and when I went he said all of my moles/freckles looked good, but that I have pre-cancerous cells on my lips. I had to have the skin on my bottom lip frozen which gave me an awesome blister that looked like a fever blister. I also have to use this cream (over the holiday break) that will burn off several layers of skin on my lips to get rid of the scary pre-cancerous cells.

October 8th: College Day at my elementary school! I love college day because I absolutely love where I went to college. It was a blast telling the kids all about "Essefay" (S.F.A.) and letting them try on my cap and gown. They also loved seeing the picture of "Mr. Casey" and me on my graduation day.

October 8-10: Home to Longview to visit my dad and relax. Casey and I helped him fix the roof and paint his kitchen. My dad also started a new job recently that he really loves. Thank you Lord for giving my dad a job that he loves!

October 11: I survived Parent/Teacher conferences - Year 2. Last year I threw up on my way into conferences. This year was much better. :) I have a great group of parents this year - another thing to be thankful for!

October 16: Dinner with our old friends the Tolars. Trey was my outside salesman when I worked at Elliott Electric Supply and we became great friends during that time. It was so great to hang out with them and get to see their kids - they are such a cute family!

October 23: Stephen F. Austin vs. Sam Houston game at Reliant Stadium! Casey and I got tickets through the ZTA alumni association earlier this year to go to the SFA vs. Sam game and we had so much fun tailgaiting with friends and watching the game. Oh and the Lumberjack Marching band did Beyonce "Single Ladies" and Lady Gaga!! That absolutely made my day. :)

October 22: Family pumpkin carving night at Casey's Aunt Jackie and Uncle Gregs! A year ago Casey proposed to me at this event so it was really tough opening up a pumpkin and not finding a diamond ring (kidding). Casey and I went traditional this year and made pretty basic pumpkins, but they turned out really well. Here we are with our pumpkins!

October 30: Halloween parties. Casey dressed up as the "Hide yo' kids, Hide yo' wife" guy (Antoine Dodson) and I dressed up as Santana from my favorite show GLEE!

October 31: My MIL's birthday! I love that her birthday is on Halloween! We went out to eat at Black Walnut Cafe and then back to the house for ice cream cake - yum!

That pretty much brings me up to date!

MudQuest!

"It's time to get Mudieval!"

That was the tag line for the MudQuest Adventure Run we did this weekend and boy was it fun! You may be thinking to yourself, "Mudieval?"... well this wasn't just any muddy adventure run, it was medieval themed! Being someone who loves anything "themey", I was all about this!

We arrived in West around 11:00 to check everything out and get ready for our heat which started at 12:45. We found Carl, Jennifer, and Natalie and headed in the gates. We were surprised to see that everyone who had already run their heat was completely soaked and then we quickly found out that you actually had to swim down the creek for part of the course. We weren't exactly prepared for that, but we were all kind of pumped.. and maybe a little scared. :)

We ended up making "custom" shirts on the fly when we got there because we wanted to be a little more unified and I'm so glad we did - it's amazing what a old tank top and a Sharpie can do! Our team was called the "Bad Axes" because a. We're all Lumberjacks (even you Carl - you're honorary!) and b. It worked with the medieval theme!



By the time we got registered and our little "camp" set up, it was time for the race. Can you tell how excited I was?


The course was SO much fun and I'm so glad we did the 3.5 mile instead of the 2 mile - it was really great and the obstacles were challenging enough to push our limits, but not too difficult for everyone to do (especially me and Casey who didn't train for this - oops!). We can't wait to do MudQuest again next year!




After the race we hung out and listened to some of the bands and then headed to our hotel to get ready to go out. We had dinner at Cricket's and then headed to Austin on the Avenue for drinks and more live music. It was my first time dressing up since cutting my hair and it really gave me such an ego boost to see how different I looked - I love my bangs! Here's me and Jennifer!

I picked this handsome guy up at the bar.

A week bit sunburned. :)

And this is how the night ended after a few margaritas...

Not to brag, but my husband won the silly arm wrestling challenge! I am always so surprised at how strong Casey is because he rarely works out, but he still manages to stay strong and fit. Love him!

We had such a fantastic day/night with our wonderful friends - can't wait to see the Waddills in Longview next weekend!