4 years, crawfish, and baseball

last weekend was a jam packed weekend. friday night was our 4th wedding anniversary. i am so happy i get to spend everyday with my best friend. he makes me laugh harder than anyone else and i am so anxious to grow old with him. i was so surprised to have a delivery at work of some amazing fresh fruit courtesy of my fabulous husband. he said it was hard to find something without strawberries (eww) and mostly pineapple (yum) but he did a great job! 

we went to dinner that night to a new-to-us restaurant and i can't believe i have been missing out on it for all these years. if you haven't been to backstreet cafe in river oaks.. go now! unfortunately, i forgot to take a picture of us.. just the food. :)

on saturday we ran errands all morning and then went to celebrate our friend trevor's birthday with a crawfish boil. this is the 2nd annual crawfish boil and we look forward to it every may. 

 after eating way too much and smelling like crawfish we headed to the astros/rangers game with my mom and sister. justin is all for the rangers and it was fun giving him a hard time about it. the astros won and he was depressed that he is 0-2 at the astros/rangers games. 

i picked up an order of bundtinis from nothing bundt cake this week and i couldn't stop eating them. delicious! can't wait to try more flavors next time. 

here's to another great weekend and celebrating memorial day! 

what i'm loving

i figured i would give this a shot... i told mandell i was considering posting today and she has reminded me 3 times that the post has not been published yet... patience my friend!! it was supposed to be what i'm loving wednesday, but today is thursday so oops...

anyways, what am i loving?

• i am loving that we will be in mexico in 62 days and i will be in florida in about 75 days. hello beach!!!! i haven't been to a true beach other than galveston in about 8 or 9 years.

• i am loving my new job (with the same company). i am now a residential mortgage loan officer so, if you are buying a new house want to refinance.. i would love to help you!
• i am loving that my sister is coming in town this weekend for mothers day. i love an excuse for all of us to be together.

• i am loving that i stocked up on jcrew's chino shorts at the outlet. can't wait to rock them all summer long.

• and as always, i am loving this boy more and more everyday. he lights up my life.

happy thursday!

busy, busy bees

justin and i have a lot going on right now. last week we both worked until after 7:00 on 3 different nights. 13 hours work days get very exhausting after a while... whew! 
so, what have we up to the past month or so? bullet points are always my favorite so here we go...

• we went to the rodeo cookoff. justin ended up being the only guy, bless his little heart. i feel like the rodeo cookoff is the same every year, but nonetheless it was fun.

• we saw 2 rodeo concerts this year, kid rock and zac brown band. surprisingly, kid rock was awesome! and of course zac brown band is always one of the best there.
• justin went to haiti for 8 days for the first week of march. longest 8 days ever. but, they accomplished so much and it is always one of his favorite weeks of the year.
•  grant joseph badora was born on leap day! i was sick for about 2 weeks straight so i finally got to meet him on saturday. precious bundle of joy and so proud of his momma.. he was 9 lbs, 15 oz! whoa baby!

• we went out with some friends saturday night to celebrate st patricks day. i think thats the first time i have celebrated the green irish in about 5 years. lots of green. however, i took no pictures.
• my bff since 6th grade asked me to be her matron of honor last week. how cute and creative are these? she loves all things bees and had the most delicious cookies. mine were gone in about 10 seconds. can not wait to stand beside her on october 5th.

happy monday!

special delivery: gjb

on saturday, mandell and i hosted a baby shower for one of our good friends, brittany. we grew up with brittany's husband, mark, who works for ups. it was so fun and i can't wait to meet baby grant. unfortunately, i only took pictures before the shower started so i don't have any of the momma-to-be but maybe mandell does. i will let the pictures do the talking. (the pictures are from my iphone and were taken in the middle of the day when the sun was shining through the back windows)

 brittany- we are so excited to meet baby grant and can't wait for his big birthday!

ps...check out mandells blog-- she was smart and used a real camera to take the pictures and got some wayy cuter ones than i did. :)

so i can kiss you whenever i want to...

what movie is the title from??? of course, my favorite, sweet home alabama.

i have seen this floating around some blogs and since i am super bored at work today i figured why not talk about my love story. i wish i had some pictures to go with it, but i am on my work computer and don't.

1. How long have you and your significant other been together? we have officially been together since march 15, 2005.

2. How did you meet? {What's your "love" story?} acu has a program called freshman follies they put on every year. after the saturday night performance, my friend emily and i were going to the car and we saw a group of people that she knew in front of mabee dorm. she introduced me to all of them and one of them happened to be justin. i remember this night like it was yesterday. we ended up all hanging out as a group that night. we were both dating other people, but we ran into each again the next week and we became quick friends. before we were ever dating, i told a friend that if we started dating i would marry him.

3. If married, how long have you been married? If not, is this the guy you hope to marry? {do tell} we have been married for 1,363 days.. haha we got married on may 18, 2008.

4. If you are married, where did you get married at? Big or small wedding?  If not, where would you like to get married? And will it be big or small? we got married at the briscoe manor in richmond, texas. it was a dream come true wedding. it was pretty big (300-350 people) and it was on a Sunday. we fell in love with briscoe manor and it wasn't available on a Saturday for over a year. we decided we didn't care what day we were married, but we knew we wanted that to be the venue.

5. Do you have any nick-names that you call one another? Do share! we both say babe and he sometimes calls me case but i guess that is it.

6. Name 3 things you love most about your honey. his love for children and for our future children--- kids flock to him and he can play with them for hours. i can't wait to see him with our own children. his love for me and the way he shows it. not a day goes by when he doesn't let me know how much he loves me and how happy he is.  melts my heart everytime. his passion for the Lord and for mission trips. he LOVES Haiti and could probably go down there once a month if it were an option. he talks about his "kids" down there all the time and i know he thinks of those kids quite often. 

7. Tell us how he proposed? Or your ideal proposal?  my entire family (grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles) all went to pagosa springs, colorado for my grandma's birthday in july 2007. monday morning we had planned to go on a hot air balloon through the mountains. we had to be there bright and early--- around 7:00 (early for a vacation). my mom, dad, sisters and i all got in the car (apparently we were running late and everyone else was already there) and we drove over to the hot air balloon. immediately, when we drove up i knew what was happening. there was a big banner on the basket to the hot air balloon that said, "casey, will you marry me?" for all i knew justin was in austin working with his dad. he came out of the trailer and proposed to me right then and there in front of all my family. i was so surprised! i loved it.. we are such a close family and i wouldnt have wanted it any other way! my mom, sisters, grandma, justin and i went on the hot air balloon and afterwards we had a champagne toast. justin got to stay for 3 more days and we did so many fun things. it was the best vacation ever. july 30, 2007 was one of the best days of my life.

8. Is he a flowers and teddy bear kind of guy for v-day, or strawberries, champagne, and rose petals? umm neither?? i tell him not to get me flowers on valentines. they are wayy overpriced and i would rather be surprised with them on a random day. but if i had to choose i would say flowers with champagne... i hate strawberries. ha

9. Are you a sunset dinner on the beach kind of girl, or pop a movie in and relax on the couch? it would be fabulous to go to the beach, but we don't go very often. i am not a very "beachy" person. however, i can watch a movie with a take out dinner from our favorite restaurant any day of the week. i feel like in the past couple of years i have definately turned into a huge homebody.

10. Tell us one thing you'd like to do with your significant one day. If you could do anything? Go anywhere? i have a mile long list of things i want us to do. i want to travel europe with him for a few weeks.

11. Tell us what you plan on doing on this Valentine's Day. we haven't even talked about it. we will probably pop in a movie and eat some delicious food-- maybe cook a fancy dinner.. who knows!

12. Are you asking for anything this Valentine's day? nope. i never do. i leave it up to him.

13. Give us one piece of advice of keeping a relationship strong and full of love. listen to each other. and laugh together everyday. not a day goes by when we don't laugh together.

14.  Show us a picture of what love means to you.
us together in peace and quiet just dreaming of our future children and growing old together. love you justin!

texas sized love

a couple weeks ago, i saw a craft that i really wanted to do. i sent justin a picture with something along the lines of, "lets do this and put it above our dresser in our bedroom. i want ours bigger though." that night i came home and he already had the wood and was staining it to be darker. gosh, can i love him anymore?

when i said i wanted it big i meant bigger than the 1x1 on pinterest. ours is huge! it could be a little smaller but either way i LOVE it. justin nailed all the way around our big Texas that we had printed out at the local printer. it didn't take very long, but it was loud! we then starting stringing jute to each nail. we put the heart around abilene because that is where we met and we both wish we had a reason to still live there! it turned out better than i imagined in my head! don't worry, it will be hung on the wall.. its not going to sit there propped up forever!

happy monday!

december

december was busy. the first weekend we celebrated my dads best friends birthday out at their ranch. unfortunately, i have no pictures. we then decorated for christmas and justin worked on the table.

the next weekend we celebrated tatertots 1st birthday at his house. jennifer did a fabulous job and it was so fun. after the party we went to lights in the heights with some friends and i will definitely be going back year after year.

this wasn't at his birthday but he was the birthday boy!

the weekend before christmas justin flew to california and drove back with my sister and all her belongings. what a trooper. he then went to dallas to watch lake travis win their 5th straight state championship. his brother was with us for a week before christmas and it was so fun.

christmas was fabulous this year. justins entire family came in town and stayed at our house on the 23rd. we had christmas dinner and opened presents. the next morning we had some PW homemade cinnamon rolls and played with the girls new toys. we had a contest to see who could make the tallest tree with the whipped cream which the girls turned into a little whipped cream fight. (i was in the middle of cooking and had my new apron on from mandell)

on the 24th everyone left but his parents and brother and we went to christmas eve service at church and then had dinner at my parents. sunday morning we celebrated with both families and then justins family left. we then went to my parents for the rest of the day. it was a great time with family and celebrating the birth of Jesus!

up next... a 2011 recap??