Alex's Wedding Weekend Take 1: Pre-wedding festivities

The weekend was spent celebrating the wedding of my sweet, precious friend Alexandra. The wedding festivities started Thursday night with a shower and bachelorette party for Alex. All but two of her bridesmaids are from out of town so when they got here Thursday, it was non-stop wedding fun for the rest of the weekend. After the shower we headed downtown to Noma for some bachelorette fun.





On Friday Alex treated her bridal party to lunch at Bernardin's. They have recently moved their location to downtown. It was such a cute place and the food was delicious! It was so fun for all of us to be able to spend time with her before the big day.




The rehearsal dinner was at the Piedmont Club. Paul and I had our rehearsal dinner there too and we were so excited about getting to go back. The food and the atmosphere are amazing!


Not planned, but we were both rockin the wedding color.



Stay tuned for wedding weekend part 2, the wedding!!!

Upcoming Happenings

I love having things to look forward to and we have quite a bit to get excited about in the near future. Like...

My precious, dear fiend Alexandra's wedding this Saturday and all of the fun, pre-wedding festivities that come along with it.

My other dear friend Marie's wedding in 2 weeks

Thanksgiving

Decorating for Christmas! Have I told y'all how much I love decorating for Christmas? It's all I can do not to go ahead and bust out the stockings and nativity. Paul is doing all he can to make me wait until it's at least not 80 degrees outside.

CHRISTMAS!!!

Disney World! My family has been talking about planning a trip for years now. First we were waiting for my oldest nephew Matthew to be old enough, then my youngest nephew was born and we waited for him to be old enough and now it is finally the perfect time to go. We will be going for a whole week this coming spring. I haven't been in 14 years and I just cannot express to you how excited I am that we are finally going.

Chi-town baby! My friend Stephie lives in beautiful Chicago and is getting married there in May. I took my first trip there last spring and fell in love with the city. I am so excited to have a reason to have to go back and especially for Paul to be able to go too. I love going to professional baseball games and am really hoping to be able to go to a Cubs game while we are there. I got to go to a Whitesox game in the spring but I grew up being a huge Cubs fan and have always wanted to go to Wrigley Field.

I am also looking very forward to 86ing our second mortgage. Because it WILL happen, my God is faithful!!

Weekend Recap

Saturday Paul and I went to Boone for the afternoon. I love Boone. I could live there on the days it's actually above 50 degrees.



We enjoyed a delicious jerk shrimp burrito at a local favorite, Black Cat.


You can't go to Boone without a trip to the Mast General Store. Apparently everyone has that theory because there were like 847 people in there.





A lovely trip to Boone was followed the annual Reagan sports/booster club dinner catered by Firebirds. Yum! And the lovely dinner by Firebirds was followed by a girls night to celebrate the soon-to-be Mrs. from my previous post. Girls nights never disappoint! I am so blessed with such wonderful, fun girlfriends in my life.

Sunday after church we had a very special birthday to celebrate. Chuck Peters, otherwise known as "Big Bwana" to his many Africa rafikis, turned 75! Chuck is like a grandfather to me. He has been my Gram's Sunday School teacher for 25 years now and he is who started the mission to Kenya years and years ago. I grew up hearing about Kenya for so many years and it is still such a dream come true that I have gotten to go with him twice now. I find it amazing that at 75 he is still able to go to Kenya twice a year. I know there were a ton of people thanking God for Chuck's life this past weekend.


Big Bwana with his favorite Kenya rafikis!


The rest of Sunday was spent resting and doing a whole lot of nothing, which was exactly what we needed because this week is crazy busy for the Hicksters. Paul has his last two regular season games this week with an extra game as a make-up from bad weather at the beginning of the season. This week will determine what place his team finishes in the conference and next week will be the first play off game. I will miss cheering on the Raiders but am looking forward to our life slowing down a little in the next couple of weeks.

Have a happy Monday y'all!

Soon to be Mrs.

My dear friends Alexandra and Marie are both getting married in the next couple of weeks. It is so exciting to know that two women that I care about deeply are about to experience the awesome blessing that marriage is. I helped host a shower for Marie on Saturday. It was such a fun, girly time.
Meet Marie, one of the beautiful brides to be.


My friend Abbie has been doing quite a bit of baking lately and made this precious cake for Marie. It was so cute I hated to cut it. Well, sort of. Not gonna lie, I was dying to know if it tasted as good as it looked. And it did!




I love these girls. We all became friends in the singles Bible Fellowship class at Calvary years ago. Four out of the six of us in this picture have been married in the last two years and the other two will be married in the next few weeks. It has been such a blessing to walk along side of these ladies and for us get to be a part of each other's marriages.


Stay tuned for upcoming wedding blogs!

Reagan Raiders' newest fan

Our friends Brad and Makenzi came out to support Paul's team and cheer on the Raiders Monday night. They brought their precious little one, Addison. I was so impressed with how good she was the whole game. Her eyes were even glued to the soccer field for the first 15 minutes or so.




Little Addi must have been good luck because Reagan took on the victory by beating RJ Reynolds in overtime. Gooooooo Raiders!

A miracle, a pumpkin patch and a precious baby

On Friday my grandmother (otherwise known as Gram) had a very major back surgery. She was expected to be in a lot of pain after surgery, in the hospital for at least 3 days and then in a rehab facility for who knows how long. That afternoon, only about an hour or two after she'd been out of surgery, she left me a voice mail in her sweetest, most energetic voice singing "God is so good". I couldn't believe she was even awake enough to be calling me. Then I laughed because I could only imagine her sitting in her hospital bed, doped up on morphine, singing to all of the doctors and nurses. When Paul and I went to visit her that evening, we couldn't believe how well she was doing and she was actually NOT doped up on morphine. By the next day she was up walking around and by golly if she didn't get to home today (48 hours after her surgery)! The doctors said she was doing so well that the rehab facility would not even accept her. Her full recovery was expected to be so much worse than what it has already been proven to be. You could never convince me that her healing is not a miracle from God!

Saturday we went to the pumpkin patch with the Sowers.












The pumpkin patch was followed by a trip to Greensboro for the day to see our godson, Cole. He was born in May and we got to meet him just a few weeks afterwards but have not gotten to see him since. My cousin and her husband (Cole's mommy and daddy) live in Kingsland, Georgia where Cole's daddy is in the navy. I am hoping in the next year or so they will get to be closer to home again. We sure wish we could see the little booger more, but we were thankful to get to love on him all day Saturday. He is already 4 and 1/2 months and is growing and changing so fast.








Being so cute sure is tiring!



It sure was a wonderful weekend for the Hicksters!

Fun at the fair

The Dixie Classic Fair proved itself to be wonderful yet again this year. The corn dogs, roasted corn and fried candy bars tasted even better than I remember from last year. Or maybe it was that I skipped lunch that day so I could justify consuming 3,000 calories in one night.
We joined the ever so famous Mason and his family for a fun Friday night at the fair.


Mason had the best time riding rides.


And horses.




Are these not the sweetest little shoes ever?



Sweet Landon was such a good boy the whole night. He didn't even complain about not getting a bite of our fried candy bars.


The biggest pumpkin weighed in at a whopping 642 pounds. DANG!


My friend Katelyn and her band sang at the fair that night. Landon thoroughly enjoyed dancing along to the music.


Us with Katelyn after their awesome show.


We also got to hang with my dear friend Amy and her family for a bit.


Amy's precious little ones.



New at the DCF this year-Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers. G-R-O-S-S. Now I am all about splurging on some good food but I can have nothing to do with this. Two doughnuts with a slab of beef, bacon, cheese and mayonnaise just make me want to barf.


Instead, I decided to end the night with a fried snickers bar. Because that is like eating a salad compared to a Krispy Kreme doughnut burger.