My Engagement!

So as many of you may know, last weekend was the best weekend of my entire life. I had a birthday and an engagement on the same day. It was an incredible time that I am sure to never forget! 

Here is the story for anyone who is interested. 

For the past few years I have wanted to go to Longview for the Hot Air Balloon festival that just happens to fall right around my birthday. For the past few years, it hasn't worked out for various reasons, so this year I was determined! We set it at the beginning of summer that we would go to Longview for my birthday weekend and do the Hot Air Balloon activities. As the plans progressed, we decided to invite my parents. My mom grew up in Longview and hasn't been back in a while. She quickly agreed to the idea. 

As the weeks went by, I was getting more excited for the weekend. I was just so thrilled that both of our families would be together for my birthday, but boy was I in for the surprise of my life! 

After waiting and waiting, the weekend finally came, and it started with a bang! Trey picked me up and said he had a birthday surprise! He started playing a CD and I quickly realized it was a recording of him playing guitar! He recorded himself playing the guitar and singing about 15 songs. It was the sweetest thing ever. 

When we made it to Longview, Trey's mom had prepared a fabulous meal filled with lots of laughter and chatting. My parents finally made it, and when we answered the door my brother, Scott, was there! SURPRISE #1! It was so exciting! 

Saturday morning, we had breakfast and then just relaxed! We took a tour of Longview, per my mom's request to all her favorite places. She had so much fun reminiscing and we loved seeing all where she grew up! We headed back to the house for snacks and chatting, then all started getting ready for dinner. 

We piled in the car and headed to get my birthday cake. Trey's mom ordered the cake from Kern's bakery, my mom's favorite bakery growing up where she always ordered her cakes and things from! When we got there my mom suggested for everyone to get out and take a picture by the sign, which I loved. We then all headed inside to pick up the cake, which I did think was a little odd that we needed 7 people to pick up a cake, but I didn't say anything. When we walked inside Trey's mom said we were picking up a cake and they brought it to the counter. They asked if I wanted to see it and I obliged. When I opened the cake box this is what I saw:

AHHHH!!! <--That's what was going through my head! SURPRISE #2!!  I went into total shock, and just stared at the cake for like 30 seconds! Finally my brain told my body to turn around and I saw this:

It was exactly how I always imagined. Happiest moment of my life! I can't remember exactly what he said, as I was in complete shock trying to focus on not freaking out, but I do know he asked me to marry him, and that's the most important thing, right?!? I said YES! and just like that I'm engaged!! 

Here are a few more pictures:

I was so thankful both of our families were able to witness this special moment. I am absolutely elated to finally be engaged to the man of my dreams and love of my life. Can you blame me??? He is such a sweetheart and totally spoiled me this weekend! 

A week with precious Luke!

I just wanted to do a quick post about my time with my sweet cousin Luke. My mom and I are basically obsessed with him and love to get time with him whenever we can. The lady I work for, as a nanny, took the week off, so therefore I had an open week and what better to do with that than spend it with baby Luke! 

I just wanted to post a few pictures that I took of him throughout our week! 

I love to read! 

Art time! 

Hanging out in daddy's shoes!

He found a big leaf! 

Snuggles!!

He LOVED the swings! 

Splash Pad fun!

All snuggled up! 

Look at my sweet new kicks! 

What a cutie!!

I am so glad we were able to keep Luke for the whole week! It was a blast!! He is a precious child and so much fun to be around. He brings so much joy to my life, and I'm counting down the days to see him again!

Until next time, Vegas!

 Finally, on our last day in Vegas, we made the plan to go to the Las Vegas sign! This was something I really wanted to do, and since it was our last day, we HAD to make it happen. We woke up fairly early, and got a cab to the sign. 

Once we got there, there was a guy taking pictures and he offered to take ours. He was really nice, and free! (We tipped him after of course), but he was really entertaining and really knew his stuff about how to get the perfect picture.

Elvis was there and sang Happy Birthday to me!!

How cute are we??

We had so much fun at the sign, but didn't need to stay long, so we got back in the cab and headed for the Venetian. I was so excited about visiting the Venetian because I have heard how similar it actually is to Italy, and of course I LOVE Italy! 
It was wonderful, and I loved walking around it. We didn't have enough time and also didn't want to suffer in the heat, so we opted out of a gondola ride, but did take a few pictures by them! 

After spending time in the Venetian, and finding a great slot machine (Sex in the City edition) where Sarah and Brittany won a combined $25 (Woohoo!!), we headed back to the hotel to get our bags and then to the airport to make the trip home. 

Of course we had to take one last picture of us on the airplane!

This was such a fantastic trip, and I am so thankful I was able to spend it with some of my favorite people! I am so blessed by each one of them, and the memories we made I know

will last us forever. 

Diva Las Vegas (Part 2)

Saturday morning we dubbed as my official unofficial birthday!! The big 2-1! I haven't actually turned 21 yet, my birthday is this Saturday, but we planned our trip early so we could see the one and only... CELINE DION! This has been my life dream for so long, and I was so excited when the planning to see her all worked out, and finally after many months of waiting, the day had come! 

We also had another fun thing planned on Saturday. When discussing the trip before we came, Brittany told me she really wanted to see a real Las Vegas show, and I was unsure of that because of their reputation. I did some researching on Pinterest and Google for the trip and I came across an advertisement for a backstage tour of the Jubilee! which is Las Vegas' only remaining traditional show. I read about it and it seemed fun, so to surprise Brittany, I told my mom we should do this and so we scheduled it for 11am on Saturday! 

We met our wonderful show girl guide, Julie, and she took us all around the stage, sets, backstage, and my favorite part, the wardrobe where all the costumes are! It was amazing! Julie told us that some costumes and headpieces weigh up to 40 pounds. Absolutely incredible! We had such a fun time looking at everything, and by the end of the tour, Julie had completely convinced us to come see her in the show, so of course we had to do that! More on that later! 

Julie,  our 6'1 tour guide! We love her!

After the tour, we grabbed some lunch and went back to the hotel to get ready for our big night, CELINE! We were so excited! We got all dressed up and headed to the Paris for dinner at Mon Ami Gabi, it was fantastic. We then took more pictures (duh) and trekked to Caesar's Palace to see Celine in The Colosseum. 

By this point I am freaking out, and we are practically running through Caesar's! We finally get there and I might have screamed a little and insisted upon this picture.

We then headed to our seats, which were amazing, and waited patiently for Mrs. Dion. She finally came out, and I can honestly say it was the best concert ever. She is so passionate when she sings and truly inspiring. She sang all her hits of course:

Power of Love

All By Myself

River Deep Mountain High

It's All Coming Back to Me Now

Beauty and the Beast

and ended the show My Heart Will Go On.

Incredible. We were all pretty much speechless and crying. After the show, we all sat in our seats until the worker came and told us we had to leave, oops! I didn't want the night to end, but I will cherish those memories forever.  

Sunday, was pretty much a repeat of Friday except we started off the day with a wonderful devotional led by Sarah. It is so encouraging to have her as a friend. She's truly gifted with words only from God.  I love listening to her and am always encouraged in her presence.

We hit the pool after that and soaked ip the sun, until it went away. :( It started raining, which is totally random in the desert of Las Vegas, and they even closed the pool deck, for about 5 minutes. Which was enough time for us to pack up all our stuff and leave only for them to re-open, but we decided to go have some lunch before going back, so we went to a place in the mall and ordered pretty much everything on the menu...when in Vegas, right?! We just ate and talked for a couple hours at the restaurant and then proceeded back to the pool. Lazy days! Reality hit us hard when we returned home. 

As you may have guessed, next we went back to hotel and got ready for our third show, the Jubilee! 

Before we left we opted for a quick photo shoot in our amazing floor to ceiling windows in our room. 

We had plenty of time to eat and make it to this show, because we opted for the 10:00pm show. We had another wonderful dinner and then walked around the Paris taking lots of pictures. 

Then came time for our show! I have to tell a funny story from the beginning:

When you first walk into the doors they have a huge sign saying "NO FOOD, DRINK, OR FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY!" As we are sitting in our seats, Sarah and I are taking pictures of ourselves and my mom has sneaked in a cookie, so she is digging in her purse and sneakily eating her cookie. We look up, and see a man working for the show point to us, and we immediately thought we were getting kicked out. We tried to play it cool and act like we didn't see him,  and then he kept motioning for us to come with him. I was freaking out, because i did not want to be in trouble. We grabbed our bags and followed him, and it turns out he was actually upgrading us to better seats in the front! We were so so excited! 

We really loved the show! There was *some* nudity, but it was really classy and we mainly loved the costumes and the dance routines, and especially cheering for and waving to Julie! She even gave us a wink! It was a blast!

Diva Las Vegas (Part 1)

As some of you may know, over the July 4th weekend my mom, best friends Sarah and Brittany, and I all took a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate my 21st birthday early! It was a completely wonderful trip I will never forget! It couldn't have come at a better time, and I am so thankful for everyone who helped put it together.

We were there for 5 days and did a lot of sight seeing, relaxing, chatting, and a TON of laughing. I would like to give you an overview of each of our days! I hope you enjoy hearing about our fantastic time in VEGAS!

The first day we left super early, like earlier than bright and early because it wasn't even bright yet! I think we all woke up around 3am, yikes! We loaded up my mom's car and headed to the airport where we pretty much went through security and walked right onto our plane! Didn't even have time to sit down, we had an easy flight complete with lots of laughter and possibly a mean joke from my mom.

       ***We were trying to take pictures of ourselves on the flight 

and the guy infront of us said it would be hard 

because it was such a small space, 

but my mom thought he said because we had small brains! 

It was so funny at the time and probably even funnier 

because we were all going on 3 hours of sleep!***

Three best friends!

 After a smooth flight, we proceeded off the plane and directly to taking pictures!

We then headed to baggage claim where we waited patiently for Sarah's bag that never came (womp womp!) After my mom "pulled a Laurie" and we got a refund for that bag, we only had to wait 45 minutes because it was on the next plane to Las Vegas. We considered ourselves very lucky!

Next we headed to our hotel and man it was fantastic! My mom's boss, graciously let us use his membership with the Hilton Grand Vacations and so not only did we get to stay in an amazing hotel, but we got treated like royalty too! Our hotel was called the Elara, and it was fantastic! I recommend it to anyone going to Vegas.

Our perfect room wasn't quite ready when we first got there since we arrived at about 9 am Las Vegas time, so we checked our bags and hit the strip! First stop: The Cosmopolitan! This was a perfect first Vegas hotel for me to see because it was so elegant and beautiful complete with so many sparkles everywhere! It was so girly and glamorous! (Can you tell why I liked it so much??)

Next Brittany guided us to the Secret Pizza place that her friend told her about when she came to Vegas last year. It is a pizza place, but basically a hole in the wall down a hallway, but they dont have a restaurant name and they dont advertise. It is only heard about through word of mouth. It was really really good! 

The rest of the day was spent exploring around the Paris hotel just walking, people watching, and when we got tired we would stop, have some ice cream and chat! It was perfect. We then headed back to our hotel and after waiting a little longer, we were finally able to get into our room and it was well worth the wait! 

It was absolutely fantastic! We were on the 55th floor, with floor to ceiling windows in every room overlooking the strip with an especially great view of the Eiffel Tower and the Bellagio Fountains. I mean what more could you ask for?? 

Next we refreshed, changed clothes, and headed out for a bite to eat. Our hotel was connected to the Miracle Mile shops, which turned out to be really convient because it allowed us to walk through that to hotels instead of the blistering 108 degree heat! Anyways, we got food in the mall and then headed back to our room to change into our pjs for some great girl talk and then we set up to watch the Caesar's Palace firework show from our hotel room!! Incredible!!

The next morning we woke up and went straight to the pool to reserve our cabana. (Since we were "members" we were able to get a cabana for free! SCORE!)

We quickly changed into our swimsuits and hit the pool where we stayed for the entire day. We laid out, read, napped, chatted, and swam. It was the most perfect girl day! 

Can you say DIVAS?!

Around 3 we headed back to the hotel to start getting ready for our night which consisted of dinner and a show! It was our first night out in Vegas so of course we wanted to look our best! We planned out all our outfits and spent lots of time getting ready. It was so much fun being so girly with my best friends! 

When we were finally ready we took a taxi to the Wynn hotel. It was an interesting cab ride because my mom's seat was wet from the driver's drink, and the three of us in the back were burning up! It was pretty hilarious though and we did get this picture out of it!

We finally made it to the hotel, took pictures of course, then headed to the box office to pick up the tickets for our show. It's a good thing we decided to do this before dinner, because we found out it started 30 minutes before we thought, so we had to rush dinner a little bit and then run to our show which was pretty hilarious because 4 dressed up girls running in heels was quite the sight! We made it to our show in perfect time.

The show we saw was Le Reve. It is like Cirque de Soiel, but not owned by them, but it is really unique because the whole thing is in water! It was really amazing and literally breathtaking. I would highly recommend it!

That concludes our second day in Vegas and it is safe to say we had a great time so far!!