My sister's wedding

I have three sisters, and my baby sister got married last weekend! Laura is six years younger than me. Laura and Kyle have been together for about 2 1/2 years, and I am really excited to have a new brother-in-law! Kailey and Makenna were the flower girls, and I was one of the bridesmaids. Here are a few pictures from the rehearsal dinner:





I ordered their pillowcase dresses from this shop on etsy!

After the rehearsal dinner, my sisters (Allison and Emily), and I planned a Bachelorette Party/Lingerie shower for Laura. We kept it pretty simple, but we did have one super cute activity that Emily planned. We made bra and panty shaped cookies, and each girl had to decorate them. ( I made the cookies using a heart shaped cookie cutter, and I just chopped them in half before baking them. You can order an actual cookie cutter, but it is $16.99!)Laura got to pick her favorite, and ideally that girl would win a prize. However, we forgot to buy one. :)




Me and my sisters!


I ordered the banner from this shop on etsy and the sucker favors from this shop on etsy.

Laura and Kyle's wedding was at 12:00 on September 3. That morning Kailey and I got to get our hair done. Kailey sat very still (for the most part) but she was very unsure about the whole process!





The girls looked absolutely precious in their flower girl dresses! I made Kailey some flip flops and I ordered Makenna these elastic flower bands for her feet from this shop on etsy. They turned out to be perfect! I really thought they were both going to walk down the aisle and do just fine, but when they got to the front of the aisle, Kailey froze, burst into tears, and said "I don't want to! I don't want to!". It was sad and funny all at the same time. Casey ended up having to go and get her! Makenna on the other hand walked all the way up the aisle like it was no big deal at all!









Here is a picture of our reaction to Kailey stopping the show!


The wedding turned out beautiful. Her colors were juniper, gray, ivory, and orange. The flowers were gorgeous and everything was perfect!





Here are the girls relaxing during the reception. I ordered them these adorable flower girl shirts from this shop on etsy.




Laura and Kyle got to honeymoon in St. Lucia! For an entire week! I have been super jealous this whole week, but I am super happy that they got married!

A New School Year

Our new school year started last Monday. I started teaching at South Belton Middle School, and the girls each started a new class at their "school". Kailey is now in 3 year old pre-K, and Makenna is now in the "Toddler 2" class. (She sleeps on a mat now and eats lunch at a table!). Kailey also promoted at church, and she has been coming to "big church" with us the past 2 weeks. They are both getting so big!

I was dreading this school year, because I had to leave the school I have taught at for 5 years, against my will. Nobody wanted to leave to go go the new school, because we were all just so comfortable where we were. I knew that God could see the big picture, and that He had a purpose for moving me, but I was still very sad and discouraged. I pretty much dreaded the move all summer long. I really wanted to be with my friends! So many people prayed for me all summer, and have continued to pray for me as the school year began. It has really been amazing to feel the transformation that has taken place in my heart over the past 2 weeks. I can honestly say that I have never had such a great start to a school year, and I am so incredibly happy at SBMS. My principal is so incredible, and so efficient and on top of things, it has been wonderful working for her already! My campus is an Apple campus, meaning that I have a Macbook Pro and an iPad 2. My students are all getting their own iPad 2's as well within the next couple of weeks. We are piloting a challenge based learning program for the school district, and so far so good! There are obviously challenges up ahead, but I am incredibly happy! My school is beautiful, and the people I am working with are great. I will never be able to replace my besties at BMS, and I definitely do not have as great of a department team as I did at BMS, but other than that, things are just about perfect! Here are some pictures of my classroom! Thanks so much for your prayers!










My school is all about collaboration, so we have tons of windows to the hallway and the outside, and our hallways are very wide. We have dry erase board walls in the hallway, as well as couches and tables. We also have projectors mounted in the hallway in case we want to pull 2 classes out to work together at the same time. I don't have any pics of all of these delightful areas, but here are a couple pics of the school, and a video (with my principal and a few co-workers!)to watch!

An End to Summer

As you can tell by my lack of blogging, we had a very full and busy summer! When we got back from our fourth of July trip, Casey started three very busy weeks with the youth ministry! We had one week of VBS, he had one week of an event called Un-Civil War (a competition between the area youth groups for 5 nights in a row), and then he left town for his annual Rock the Desert trip in Midland, TX. Basically, it was three weeks where daddy wasn't home very much, but we made it through! The first week of August I had a three day teaching workshop for my new school, and then the next week we took a much needed family vacay. I guess you could call it "Family Vacay #2". We took the girls to Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, TX. We stayed at the Lodge one night, and then rented a Priceline hotel for the second night (since you could use the water park at the lodge until 9pm on the day you checked out!). We had a lot of fun swimming and just hanging out as a family. The girls had a ton of fun swimming! We even got scaredy-cat Kailey go go on a couple big slides by herself!











We also got to see our friends, the Dugans, one day. We hung out at Grapevine Mills Mall. The kiddos rode some rides, the mall train, the carosel, and we had lunch before heading back to Temple. It was a nice way to end our very busy summer!

As always, there are tons more pictures on facebook!