Badger Baby/ Dever Trips

By now everyone knows our connection with the Badger's.  Michelle was my roommate and TJ was Nick's roommate-we set them up on a date two weeks after we had started dating and...boom...the four of us got married and despite them moving to Denver after getting married, we have all stayed the best of friends since meeting 7 years ago.  When I called Michelle out and guessed that she was pregnant only about a week after she found out, I was thrilled to be an 'auntie' to this little baby!  Scarlett was born on April 17th, but I had to wait until June to meet her in person (although I did love getting a daily picture text each morning of the little honey, as we like to call her).

One morning we headed to Red Rocks for a little workout.  We thought we would be ambitious and run the steps....whew!!!  Let me tell you that is no joke.  I like to think I am in decent shape these days, but that altitude will mess anyone up!

We started at the bottom....

...and some how after an entire ipod playlist, made it to the top!

 We treated our selves to a pedicure and shopping trip afterwards as our reward!  :)

 A month later it was Nick's turn.  He was in Denver for work training and stayed through the weekend to love on this little girl.  I love how he is holding her like a football!  It is fair to say Nick has a slight phobia of babies because as he says "they break easier"...hahah!  But from what I hear he did great.

Just trying to pump those little legs of hers

The boys were jealous that Michelle and I went and ran Red Rocks, so they decided to have their turn at it.

 So happy for this family!  TJ has two older boys, and it goes without saying that this little girl has melted his heart.  We are excited to see her grow up!

Memorial Day weekend in Williamsburg

We decided that with Nick being on the east coast with this current project he is working on, we need to take advantage of being in 'closer' proximity to family.  With a long weekend ahead, we decided to make the 5 hour trek to Willamsburg.  I definitely did not have warm enough clothes.  It was cool and breezy at night, enough to wear we had to go and buy sweatshirts at the outlet mall (even Nick).  Then it was freezing in Nick's moms house-just the way their whole family likes it.  I on the other hand was best friends with Chris's snuggie the whole weekend.  

We did a few projects around Chris' house to help her out, and we went on long walks at night with Nick's sisters family who just got a new black lab puppy.  Chris is always trying to convince Nick to go through the closets upstairs to get his stuff out of her house and while digging through old stuff we found his high school letterman jacket!!!  Oh was that a fun find!  It gave way to an impromptu photo shoot and lots of laughs.  

We stayed up late playing charades with everyone and Nick mastered the grill every night.  We had a wonderful visit, and before we knew it we were back on the road to Wilmington.

Here the nephews are having too much fun climbing old trees in Colonial Williamsburg

 When it was getting late and Aiden decided he couldn't walk anymore, Uncle Nick became his vehicle.  Good thing he is strong.

 After the weekend I think the snuggie had permanently conformed to my body.

 Left to Right:  Michael jr, Aiden, Me and Nick, Michael and Amanda, Jordan, Chris, and Lanion.

Jamestown High School class of 2000. Gotta love this jacket, but I love Nick's modeling poses even more!!!  hahahah

 Nick was busy changing out like fixtures, staking a tree in the backyard, painting, and making multiple trips to Lowes, where my job was to help Chris with two walls of photos.  We made a wall of the grandkid photos that turned out to make a fabulous entry to her home.  The kids were all mesmerized watching us measure and hang frames, it was really funny.  The other wall we did was a grouping of art and a clock in her dining room.  I must say it turned out quite nice.  What can I say- my mother, Terry, taught me those skills.

We were glad to be able to spend time with Nick's mom and his sister, Amanda and her family.  I was asking the kids when they were leaving to go home on the last day if they had fun, and Lanion (who I think is 6 years old) said "maybe next time Uncle Nick won't have so many chores and he can play with us more like he used to."  It was so cute and so sad at the same time.  They love their Uncle Nick--but than again doesn't everyone!?!

Styer Summertime

It's time for the looooong summer update :)

Summertime for us always seems to have a common theme--sunshine and sweat!!!  When we are in Wilmington we like to spend our time at the beach of course.  The weather has been perfect in North Carolina and we have loved having my sister, Katherine and Nick's dad come visit.   In Arizona it has just been downright hot!  So the objective of any activity is to stay cool.  Nick was in AZ for the 4th of July so we had a BBQ/pool party with friends and then somehow we had a moment of forgetfulness when we decided to go to watch the fireworks standing on scorching hot concrete.  Oh man, were we all sweating and complaining!  While Nick has been busy working in NC, I've found some time to play with friends in AZ when I have days off.   My work girlfriends are seriously the greatest.  I'm lucky that I can spend all day with people and still want to hangout with them on our off time.  Lots of fun things going on around here and the pictures do a much better job of showing it :)

We love Wrightsville Beach, NC

This walk no matter how hot the sand gets is so worth it!

Katherine lives less than six hours away, so she is easy to convince to come down for a beach trip!

Our little slice of heaven in NC

After Nick gets off of work we like to come down on the beach for an evening workout.  

On the weekends in NC we like to go to the boardwalk at Carolina Beach, and this particular time we played miniature golf for the first time together ever.  I guess we didn't do all the cheesy stuff back when we were dating after all.  It was soooo humid this night.

Here I am holding up my proud score card showing my hole in one!!!  It came down to the last hole, and somehow Nick beat me  :(

Even though there are not any beaches in AZ I find I do a lot of this when I'm at home:

Polaroids have made a comeback!  A few of my friends have gotten these new Polaroid cameras that take mini photos.  They are so much fun.

And, even though shopping is a year round activity for me, this summer I stood in this 40 minute line just to get into the Tom's Shoe Warehouse 3-Day only sale in Tempe.  Oh, and how could I forget to mention that there was no air conditioning!

Boxes and boxes of Tom's to dig through!

2 hours later, I bought myself nothing :)  But, let me tell you my nieces and nephews are going to be styling!

And continuing on with the sweating theme, I have been moving on with my exercise and eating clean program.  I've been lucky enough to workout with an awesome group of gals at a local bootcamp.  Down almost 30 pounds!!..and feeling great!

This picture is just to make me laugh in the future.  I work out with an awesome group of girls who keep me motivated, which at 7am at the high school to run bleachers on a Saturday is what I need.

Haha, this picture is also only in here for memory sake.  Nick and I text "selfies" of each other after we workout to see who has more sweat!  

Nick came to Arizona in July and one of his first projects was to get the cuckoo clock we bought in Germany up and running.  I thought he was going to lose his mind trying to get all the tiny working parts in place, but he finally did and it is working--loud and annoyingly :)

The finished product on the wall of the office

While Nick was in town, my mom came to visit.  We went down to Tucson to help my grandma move into a new place.  Just love these two ladies

 Nick spoiled us all by being the grill master at our house and cooking up dinner one night.

All of Nick's hard work moving Grandma earned him a trip to Bass Pro Shop where Terry bought him a rain suit he has been wanting for work.  My mom and I definitely earned our 'patience' medal while waiting for him to pick this ugly thing out :)

 While my mom was here we facetime'd with Henrik to see all his tricks. That kid cracks me up!

4th of July: More evidence of how much Nick loves to grill

Happy birthday America!

We went to Tempe Town Lake with our friends, Cody and Caitlin, and nearly sweat to death--but somehow being patriotic and seeing fireworks almost makes it worth standing out there when it's still triple digits at 10pm

 This picture just makes me laugh because we both look so hot and miserable.  I need to remind myself never to go watch fireworks again while I live in AZ.  haha.

 It wouldn't be summer without a lake trip and thankfully my office had a 'work' meeting at the lake one day.  It was 112 degrees, but no one seemed to mind.  We had a great time and everyone was so incredibly sore the next few days from being tossed around on the tube and wakeboarding.

Canyon Lake is really this green.  HAHA, it is disgusting

 Part of the office who went on this outing

 This is the "before" picture because we are smiling!

While talking about work we have an older couple who are patients of the office that live in Sedona and drive the nearly two hours to come see us.  They are always traveling all over the world and when I saw them last a few months ago she told me that they were getting ready to go to Bali and Bangkok.  I jokingly said, he bring us back something from your trip!  Sure enough in the mail came a package and a sarong with my name on it!!!  Haha.  It made my day!  I have the best patients and the card from them was so sweet.

And one more note about the girls I work with...I just love them.  We have so much and I am grateful to work somewhere that there is not any girl drama.  Well the baby of the office, Kim, just turned 21 so we all decided to have a night out to help her celebrate.  It was a blast and a good excuse to not wear scrubs for once.

Nick has been having his share of summer fun in NC when I'm gone.  He has been golfing quite a bit and had 'significantly improved' his game.  His company sponsored a hole at the Make a Wish charity golf tournament and Nick's dad came down to play in the tournament with him.

This is what Nick's office looks like.  Okay, so maybe this isn't where his desk is, but he spends more time up here than any where else, and he loves it!

Lastly this summer I have gotten to meet three friends new little babies that were all born within a week of each other at the end of April: The Hatch's (in Wilmington), the Grigg's (in Arizona), and the Badger's (in Colorado).  Sadly, I didn't get a picture of Tara's baby Nina when we went to dinner one night in AZ, but she is the perfect mix of Garrett and Tara.

Our friends, the Hatch's in Wilmington, welcomed a new little boy, James, their first.  Nicks serves in young men's with Micah and they are always so nice inviting Nick over to dinner when I'm gone.

Baby Badger is here!  We are so excited to TJ and Michelle to have Scarlett, and it killed me to have to wait to so long to go visit her, but it was worth the wait!  She is beautiful!  I went in June (more on this trip later) and snuggled on her for a long weekend, and Nick was in Denver in July for work, so he got to love on her too!  Nick is not a fan of babies, so I love this picture of the two of them together.

 Michelle looks fabulous of course!

 Proud auntie Jen here!

And here is one more friend about to pop when this picture was taken.  Alli is my scheduler at work, and Kristina and I took her out for a due date dinner!  Here Alli is a week overdue, but don't worry 3 days later she had baby Beckham and he too is as cute as can be.

For all of you who know us, you know that we didn't just stay put in AZ and NC this summer.  We had a few fun trips too.  More on those in the next posts.  Maybe summertime should also mean BUSY :)