Easter Weekend

Hey friends, hope you all enjoyed your Easter weekend and are back into the swing of things this week! Matt's sister Erica visited us for the weekend. We had a great time!

Saturday we took her to the Desert Botanical Gardens. But first we made a quick stop at my favorite tourist attraction-The Hole in the Rock!

We headed into the gardens before it got too hot.

We were able to get really close to a hawk and an owl on display that day.

I have been wanting to see the new butterfly pavilion, and it was so cool! It was very peaceful in there. (I had more pictures in there, but for some reason I am having a hard time locating them.)

I love it when the ocotillos are in bloom. It only lasts a couple weeks, but I think they are so pretty it makes the other 50 weeks of the year-when they look like they should be chopped down-totally worth it!

There was a selfie station so naturally someone had to participate!

I think this might be the tallest cactus I've ever seen!

Such pretty views!

We grabbed lunch and came back to the house to dye Easter eggs. My family has dyed Easter eggs every year so I am trying to continue the tradition with my own family.

I got the "marbled" kit so we attempted to make some "marble" looking eggs.

Matt placed his eggs into the cups about 15 minutes at a time. Some turned out great, but then another ended up like this! Oops!

Our pretty batch of finished eggs!

Sunday we enjoyed Easter services and came back home for lunch. 

We spent the rest of the day at home playing lots of board games. We ended the night with LIFE. Matt and Erica ended up each having 5+ kids during one round. I've never seen so many "people" packed into those little cars!

Monday morning Erica and I headed out to do a little baby shopping. We had a blast! Good thing I don't know the gender of this baby or I would have two closets full of baby clothes! They are just too cute! I couldn't help myself and had to get this fun little onesie. I thought it was too funny and was sure to share it with my speech therapist friends!

We had such a fun visit with Erica. We have more friends coming into town this weekend, and then it's our turn for a vacation. Keep watching for more fun posts to come!

Announcing...

We have wonderful news to share with you today my friends...

We're having a baby!!!

We could not be more excited. Matt and I have been dreaming of this day for what seems like forever. And now I have also found out I have two other co-workers due within three weeks of me as well! It should be a dreadfully hot summer for all of us!

Here are some of the details. We are due in the middle of September. We will not be finding out the gender of the baby until he or she is born because we both like surprises. So you can all wait with us to determine if we will have a Little Lexi or a Mini Matty. We have had names picked out for what feels like 3 years, but we probably won't share because who knows if those will be the ones that actually stick! I sketched out my plan for the nursery hours after I found out I was pregnant. We are planning to do a safari themed nursery with lots of neutral colors like grays and tans and add a few pops of color after the baby is born. 

It was really important to us to tell our families in person. So thankfully we had a trip planned in February for a friend's wedding. I had a few gifts to share with my family. A "First Grandchild" frame for my parents, two "best aunt ever" frames for my sisters, and a pretty cool 'uncle' t-shirt for Nolan.

We also made pregnancy announcement cards to pass out to a few friends and family members. We took the picture on South Mountain to get the desert and city in the background while wearing our State Forty Eight shirts. We tried to fit in as much Arizona as we could!

We are so happy to share our news with you. Stay tuned for more information over the next several months!

~Every good and perfect gift is from above.~

James 1:17

Nolan Visits

It's that time of year again. My brother Nolan came down to visit! We did not jam pack our week quite as much as we did last year. If you want to take a look back on that, check it out HERE, HERE, and HERE.

The main attraction of his stay was the NHRA Arizona National drag races on Saturday. So we started his trip with the highlight! It actually ended up being really fun. We saw motorcycles,

 pro stocks, top fuel dragsters,

and the funny cars.

They seriously went SO fast! Like 330 MPH!!!!

During the break, we headed to the pits to check out some of the cars.

In between races, the crews change out pretty much everything on the cars.

This is a terrible picture, but this is Leah Pritchett's top fuel dragster. She won the whole event!

Here is the one terrible selfie I tried taking the whole trip. We were looking right into the sun, if you can't tell!

The guys checked out the Mello Yello tent where they got a simulated ride in a pro stock car and plenty of free Mello Yello.

As we headed back to sit down, the top fuel dragsters were being pulled back to the race track for round 2.

In the second round, they also had one jet car. Before it took off, there was a ton of smoke!

And plenty of fire as it sped down the race track.

Papa John's did their fair share of marketing and won our vote for dinner that night. We ordered when we got back to our car thinking it wouldn't take us too long to get home since we live 10 minutes from the race track. The re-rerouted traffic so many times, it took us an hour and a half to get home!!! 

Sunday we headed out to the West Valley for some Husker baseball! They were playing on a practice field so we basically got to stand on the field to watch the game. 

Our friend, Tanner, is one of the athletic trainers so we also got to catch up with him!

Matt snagged up one of the foul balls!

Monday we headed out for more baseball. This time it was Spring Training, Angels vs. Padres, on a rainy day.

Mike Trout up to bat.

After the game Nolan and I stopped for some ice cream and found this little business in the strip mall... 

I spent the next couple days working off and on. Nolan went and picked up Little Miss BBQ for us one day. We have seriously been waiting to try this for like two years, but you have to wait in line forever. I think it was totally worth the wait!!

Thursday Nolan and I made a stop at his favorite spot, Shoppers!

And another favorite stop that night, Top Golf!

Nolan also enjoyed our new favorite game, Ticket to Ride Europe, with us. Matt continued to ask to play another game because he got last place every single time!! ;) It was another fun week. We are so glad he comes to visit us!

Life Update

Well friends it's been a little while since I have posted an update. We have just been doing life over here. The weather has been gorgeous so we have been trying to spend as much time as we can outside. We joined a sand volleyball league with our neighbors and Matt's cousins. Since we have six players, we take turns rotating so I finally took some pictures on a set I sat out. They are not the best quality since we play at night, and all I had was my phone.

Abby came along to cheer this week!

I also made another Cookie Pie order. It was so much fun making this one!

One weekend we had no plans (woo-hoo!!) so we bought ourselves a new game, Ticket to Ride Europe. It's a really fun strategy game! Matt won the first several games, but I have upped my skills and have been beating him a lot lately!! ;)

Remember the pottery class Jenny and I took on my birthday? We finally made it back over there to start painting our pieces. I decided to make a chip and dip bowl set. I decorated my two smaller bowls while we were there.

I bought a bigger bowl while I was there and will decorate that next time. 

I can't wait to see how they turn out! That's our life update. Hope you are all doing well!!