Two thumbs WAY up for our visitors!!!

My adorable family came to visit and we had a WONDERFUL time with them! When we get together, mostly we like to shop and eat. That pretty much sums up their visit. We spent hours at a little strip mall a few minutes away from our house. We bought some purses, decorations, and jewlery. Our visitors ventured to make an eight hour drive each way with a few tiny kids so it was quite the sacrifice. Thanks for visiting Mom, Kimi, and kiddos! We LOVE you and LOVED the visit!!!Elise devoured the rolls at Roadhouse...that girl MUST be part of the family.Reading books and painting nails...

"All you need is LOVE"

We have been celebrating BIG TIME lately! For our anniversary, we went to one of our favorite places for dinner, the Olive Garden. Delicious, as usual. Mark gave me a dozen pink roses (one for each month we have been together), a journal for notes from him, and we are going to WICKED this summer!!!! I was extremely excited!!!

For Valentines Day, we went out to lunch. That night we had "RED DINNER" and then watched the NBA dunk and three-point contests. The Red Dinner consisted of spaghetti, layered jello, garlic bread with pink butter, and strawberry milk shakes. YUM YUM.
We also got a V-Day Pixie surprise in the mail! It had Valentines Day pancake recipes, a heart mold to make them, heart rubber scrapers, decorative dish towels, pink flip flops, and a CD visor for our car. THANKS TRIPPS!! We loved it.
Thank you mom for the delicious cookies and treats! We love you!

Happy Balentimes Day!!!

Here is a special message from the darling Texarkanians...

We played Math games for class today. The children seemed to love it! They are doing some addition and if they get the answer correct, they get to shoot a squishy ball into a laundry basket. It's a little lame but hey! they love it, so it works for me :)

FHE with Friends

We had Family Home Evening with Mark's home teaching family on Monday and we had an enjoyable night. We devoured some delicious carnita (a type of pork) sandwiches for dinner. We even tried some "pork skin" on the sandwiches for added flavor. I don't know if Mark liked it but I thought it was not too bad. They had some home made salsa (HOT salsa) to dip the sandwiches in. YUM but I think I'm becoming a wimp when it comes to spicy foods lately.....it's probably because all there is to eat down here is dang fried chicken. Just kiddin' love the fried chicken, potatoes, pickles, okra, biscuits, lettuce, and anything else you have in the fridge. HA HA.

Anyway that was a tangent and a half..... they speak Spanish (Mark included) so I was trying to pick out words most of the time to figure out what was going on. Sometimes I could kind of tell what the subject of conversation was but I couldn't tell what they were saying about it. It made me really want to learn the Espanol but my brain was about fried by the end of the night trying to pay attention so closely.

We played the flour game where you have to cut a piece of flour off the "cake" and whoever makes the button move has to get it with their teeth. I had almost forgot about that game! It was very fun! (even with the Language barrier :)
What a fun FHE!!!

Things that I love/think are hilarious about my job in TEXAS...

1. We say the Pledge of Allegiance AND the Texas pledge every day. Texans are hard core...that's all there is to it.
2. Every week I get an email from the "care committee" at the school that is entitled "Prayer Roll." It's a list of people to pray for.
3. A student accused another student of stealing something. He then said "I am Christian, I wouldn't steal."
4. I hear the students say "sho is" "flo" (floor) "doe" (door) "ya'll" "I'm fixin' to do this or that" at LEAST once a day
5. I've been asked how old I am I don't know how many times. Usually they ask if I'm in high school.
6. Pronouncing names from looking at the list is next to impossible. Nasya (na-zay-uh), Keanu, Clanterious, Setaliya (the 'l' is silent) (set-ay-ah), Daveanche, Marquavious, Shamajai (sha-mash-ay), etc. etc. etc. Da'shun and Dayshuwn are in the same group. :)
7. Today I was told "You go girl" (with a couple snaps and head swivels) by an 8-year-old
8. The other day the 3rd graders were doing a little quiz with story problems. One girl raised her hand and asked if they needed to put "mals" on their paper. I said "what?"
"do we need to put mals on our paper?"
"What is mals?"
"You know. Do we need to write how many mals?"
"I have no clue what mals is."
A few other children chimed in...."she's saying mals" "she said MILES!"
I couldn't help but just laugh. "Oh MILES."
(Welcome to TEXAS, Lacey). I guess I'm still getting used to it.

Happy Anniversary!!!

Happy Anniversary to us! One fabulous year down and infinity to go! Our first year of marriage has been absolutely wonderful. It seems like our wedding happened about 2 months or so ago. I can't believe it has already been a year.

What a perfect day.

Now I get to brag about my husband.

500 ish (just kidding) reasons why I love Mark...
1. He is perfect for me.
2. He opens the door for me all the time.
3. He makes me breakfast every morning.
4. He warms up the car every morning.
5. He is very helpful around the house and with cooking.
6. He treats me like an absolute queen!!!!

Need I say more? I feel blessed beyond measure to be married to the man of my dreams.

Road Trip: Alabama

We went to Alabama to visit our buddies Mike, Heidi, and Mason and we had a wonderful time!On our journey, we stopped to go to the temple in Memphis. It was a beautiful, small temple and we snapped a pic right before entering. I had forgot my recommend, we missed the session by 15ish minutes, and there weren't enough workers to do anything else....so taking a picture is about all we did there :) Oh well, maybe next time.

We toured the beautiful city of Huntsville, celebrated Mike's B-day with pizza, watched Prince Caspian, played some Mexican Train Dominoes, Yahtzee, and Clue, had some friendly conversation, played with darling Mason, and even reminisced about the good ol' college days. What a great weekend! Thank you Andersons!!!