happy birthday to me...

on march 16th i turned 35! ouch!!! i sure don't feel that old, so i guess that's all that matters. my birthday was stretched out over several days so that was fun. on the day of my actual birthday i woke up and jesse, abby and jared came in singing "happy birthday". jesse had cooked breakfast for me & it was so yummy!

 

that afternoon we had our spring women's event at the church. it was so much fun! we had lots of vendors come in so we did some shopping. then we had a really good dinner and had a speaker. there were so many things i would have liked to buy but i limited myself to just one thing. i got myself an origami owl necklace. it's rose gold so it matches my watch. you can pick all these different charms to put inside of it. i got a nursing symbol, a piano, a cross, and the birthstones of me, jesse, abby and jared.

                                   

the next day was the allen family birthday party for march. this was my first year to celebrate my birthday at this party & it was so fun! there were 8 of us with march birthdays...me, jared, natty, uncle bill, mr. jim, allen, uncle bob, and zach. for those of you who haven't heard of the allen family birthdays, every month jessie's family gets together and celebrates the birthdays for everyone that month...aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone...it rotates whose house it is at. whoever is celebrating a birthday that month, their family is responsible for bringing a cake. I learned this the hard way when we showed up to the october birthdays without a cake for abby....i didn't know i was supposed to bring one for her!!! so, jesse made me his famous cheesecake.

                             

i was completely shocked & excited by the gift that jesse gave me...he got me an ipad!!! I could NOT believe it. i have been addicted to it ever since. mrs. sunnye gave me a really pretty cover to go on it. I got some other fun things too : )

                              

we celebrated with my family on tuesday night. I had been wanting a new bible cover and katie got me a really cute one.

                              
stacy got me 2 fun scarves. this is one of them...i didn't get the baby for my birthday.

                               
mom and dad got me a gift certificate for a massage which I cannot wait to use! this will be me soon...



overall, i had a wonderful birthday. i am so blessed.



an avenger's party...

jared is turning 6 on March 11th and for his birthday he wanted a superhero party! jesse's family does a monthly party where we celebrate everyone's birthday for that month. it's lots of fun...all of the aunt, uncles and cousins are there and whomever is having a birthday that month brings a cake so we always have several cakes to eat. this month we will be celebrating jared's birthday there of course, but we also threw him a party for my side of the family.
i was so excited about the cake i found on pinterest. we ended up buying the cake from shannon taylor out in arlington and it was awesome!!

we had a few other little snacks. we had thor's hammer, captain america's shield, and hulk juice to drink.



these were just little pretzel sticks stuck in cheese cubes

this was strawberries, mozzarella cheese, raspberries, blueberries and then fruit dip

the hulk juice was lemon-lime koolaide with pineapple juice and gingerale

a banner of pictures of jared

aunt julie gave us printables for christmas.

the kids have loved to see which one i'm going to put up next!

jared was so glad to have noah at the party...it wasn't just girls for once!

jared got so many cool gifts from everyone! we all had a really good time and i was excited for stacy and katie to get to see the house finally : )

wedding festivities continued...

we had worked really hard up until the day of the wedding. it was a small wedding but i had definite ideas of things that i wanted. my future mother-in-law mrs. sunnye,and jesse helped me make all of my ideas a reality.

jesse made this little box for jared to carry our rings in. the front of it had a heart with our initials on it. it was so cute and i loved it!

this was on the walkway at the entrance where everyone came in to the ceremony. the frame and the "B" on the little table were both gifts that friends gave us at our wedding showers. kimberly and grant volner made the frame for us and jessica king made the "B". jesse built the chalkboard. i had lots of chalkboards around the wedding ceremony and reception. katie came out and did all of the writing on them for me...she has much better penmanship than i do! i love that i will be able to use these chalkboards in our home. since our wedding was all about family i loved the saying "as two families are becoming one we ask that you choose a seat & not a side".

mrs. sunnye did the decorations at the ceremony with the chairs and the flower balls and tulle. she also made fans for us to use as favors. stacy had taken pictures of us and the one we chose was one of us kissing and i was holding out a piece of paper that said "i said yes". they turned out cute!

while the girls were upstairs getting ready the boys were downstairs taking their pictures. they looked so handsome in their matching khaki's and blue ties!

jesse and kevin were in deep conversation about something! kevin ran the music for us while kristen took our pictures. it was really sweet to have them there since they are the ones who introduced us to each other.

i'm pretty sure jesse is asking leslye for advice on his boutonniere here! i'm so glad she, charlie and the kids were able to come in for the wedding. these are all of my "almost time!!" photos...

it's that time of year...

well, it's that time of year. valentine's day is coming up. i thought that since i haven't really documented anything at all about my and jesse's wedding this would be the perfect time to do so. i'm going to try to break it up into several posts over the month of february so it's not just one huge gargantuan post!

Amy and Jesse's Wedding

09-15-12

when we first decided to get married we really went back and forth on where to get married and how large of a wedding to have. at first i said i just wanted us to go to the justice of the peace with abby and jared...but my sisters got mad at me and said i would regret it later. then we said we would invite only very close family and friends. the problem with that was that with our families being the sizes they are that number was adding up really quickly...and we were no longer having a small wedding like we wanted. we finally agreed that the best option for us was to only have parents, sisters and grandparents. unfortunately, 2 of jesse's sisters were unable to come since they live so far away...jaemye had just moved to utah and julie had just had tennessee a couple of months ago, so we completely understood but we missed having them there.

the next thing to decide was location. we looked into and thought about several different places but finally decided the perfect place was right under our noses-at jesse's parents house. they have a beautiful piece of property with a gazebo that julie and leslye both got married in.

i had pinned this picture on pinterest and told mrs. sunnye that these were the colors i wanted to use.

she was SUCH a big help to me with the wedding!!! i absolutely could not have done everything without her help.
these posts may seem kind of random, but i'm just going to post the pics i have in my wedding album and blog about them.

mrs. sunnye had a room for me to get ready in...i think they said it used to be julie's room?? it was so pretty and relaxing with the view over the yard and the nice bed. i asked stacy to come help me with my hair. there's not a lot you can do with short hair but i really liked the way she fixed it! i did my own make-up but i wanted red lips (which i never do) so i asked her to do those for me as well. stacy also did abby's hair. abby was thrilled as you can tell! mom and julie came a little early and just hung out with me while i was getting ready. it was a fun time. katie was mad because she wasn't there but i reminded her of what a HUGE help she had been the day before! she came out and helped with set-up the day before when i was going crazy.

after i was ready kristen made jesse hide in a room upstairs and took me out on the front lawn for some pictures. i am so glad that we asked kristen to do our pictures for us. she did such a great job and completely capture the feelings of love, family and fun from our wedding day.
so that's the first little bit of our wedding....more to come!



a little of this and that...

well, we are half-way through january and we've had a busy but fun month so far. the first weekend we went over to granny and grandaddy's so jared could launch his rocket that santa brought him. it was the perfect day! it wasn't as cold as it had been and there wasn't too much wind. we launched it 3 times and then had dinner. it was a fun day.



the next week at school was class picture day! abby and jared looked so cute : ) we took a picture before leaving for school and then they each wanted to take one with their stuffed animals.

this past weekend trisha threw a surprise 30th birthday party for brian. it was at the restaurant old timers in millington and she asked us all to dress up like old people! we had a fun time hanging out with everybody.

group shot!

me and jesse in 40 years

we have been working on redecorating the house and our latest project was abby's room. we decided to work on it the day after the party since we didn't have the kids that weekend. she had told us she wanted a purple room with stripes on one wall...but she didn't realize we were doing it this weekend. her bed was not in great shape so we brought in a bedroom set from my house for her to use. the set we put in her room is one that memaw smith gave me. it's one that papaw bought for her when he was still alive so it's really special to me. we haven't done any decorating in the room yet, but that will come. she was so surprised and excited. i loved seeing her so happy! we plan to do jared's room next!

this past week the kids had a day out of school for bad weather. we didn't actually get any snow but there was ice on the roads. they spent the morning watching cartoons and then decided to make cards to send to all of our out of town cousins. they sent cards to gavin and kelsye, tennessee, lilye, alex and clarke, and jenna and jett. they had a great time decorating the cards and then telling me exactly what they wanted written in them.

well, that's about it for our first 18 days of january! hope everyone else is having a fun 2013 : )



looking back at 2012...

so i've given up on going back and blogging about everything that happened last year. maybe at some point i'll go back and write about it in detail. for now i'm just going to give an overview of my amazing year.

the first exciting thing to happen was that i got a new niece!



blakely kate white

i was so excited to be part of meagan and trey's wedding! meg was beautiful, as always, and we had so much fun.



the girls of st. jude

in may i met jesse and we started dating. we went on our first "big date" with the kids when we went to sikeston and ate at lamberts...home of the thrown rolls.

it was so good to get together with all of my girlfriends for a nashville weekend in the summer. there was lots of shopping and eating!

bev, april, kelly, kimberly, me and irene...only kristie was missing

our next trip was down to alabama to visit jesse's sister jaemye and her husband bryan and son gavin. bryan was down there doing an 8 week training before they were stationed in utah so we were glad to get to spend some time with them. we had a fun time on the lake on saturday.

we officially got engaged!!! my ring had to be sent off and specially sized since my finger is so little...by the time we finally got it back we practically had everything done for our wedding!

my sweet, wonderful friends threw me a shower at one of my favorite restaurants, salsa.

the one thing that happened last year that was absolutely heartbreaking was that my dear liberty passed away. i had liberty since she was a tiny baby and when she died she was about to turn 11 years old. she had several tumors in her belly and was in a lot of pain, so i had to make the difficult decision to put her to sleep.

abby started 2nd grade and jared started kindergarten!!

my mom and sisters gave me a lingerie shower! i also had a church shower and a work shower. i felt very blessed.

the most amazing part of last year was on september 15 when i became mrs. boyd!! i married my best friend and the love of my life.

call me crazy...but the week after we got married we loaded up in two 15 passenger vans and headed to disney world! we had 20 people with 10 of those people being 8 years and under. it was a fun, stressful, LOUD week!!!

in november my husband and i went on our first get-away! we went to nashville for the weekend and had such a good time.

at the hermitage

...and now we are all married off!! melissa and mark are perfect together and i was so happy to be part of their wedding day.

our first christmas together as a family!

i have been so blessed by the new family that i have married into. i now have 3 new sisters, jaemye, leslye and julie. my in-laws have been so good to me.i have 7 new nieces and nephews, grandparents, and a ton of cousins! everyone has been so incredibly sweet to me and i love them all.
this past year has been amazing and i can't wait to see what 2013 has in store!