February

Hi Everyone!!  We have been surprisingly busy this month!! It has been a fun month so far for us!  Early this month we went with our friends Britt and Tye to the Florida Keys! Ryan grew up going to the Keys for family vacations, and we got engaged in the Keys almost three years ago, so it is a special place for us!!  It was a great 5 day trip, and just what we needed!  We had a very low key Valentines Day, and enjoyed a nice Sushi Date at one of our favorite South Tampa Sushi restaurants.  This past weekend we hosted a "Stock the Bar" Shower at our home for our friends Mary and Chris.  It was a great time hanging out with everyone!  We are really looking forward to having Morgan and Andrew come visit us from NC this week!  I cannot believe February is over!! Hope it ends well for everybody, and I will write again soon! :)

Gasparilla and Goodbye January!

Hi everyone!!  I cannot believe January is almost over!! Since last time I posted we made a trip to NC to celebrate Ryan's Grandmother's 90th Birthday!!  She is such a special lady, and we were so thrilled to be able to celebrate with her that weekend!  It was also great to see family and friends that we don't get to see very often from all over!!  This past weekend was Gasparilla!! It is such a big event here in Tampa, and we were excited to have Amanda and Grant come down and visit us and be with us for it.  We showed them around Tampa, and took them to some of our favorite places!!  Gasparilla was so fun this year.  We enjoyed going to Junior League Headquarters and watching the Invasion there, and then going to our friends Ben and Christina's home to watch the parade!  It was a long day, so we stayed home that night and watched the PACK defeat the Tar Heels over some pizza!!  All in all, such a fun weekend!! Ryan and I feel so blessed to have each other and to have such great friends here in Tampa and back in NC that we can share these special times with! I promise to update you all soon!!

The Pirate Ship invading Tampa Bay!

New Business and Family Time

Hi everyone!  Hope January has been a great month for you all. It has flown by for us so far!! We're enjoying being back home in our house and getting back to a fairly normal routine. I have started a little business making wreaths and home accents, and that has been exciting, fun, and taking up a little bit of my time.  Ryan of course is supportive of my venture, and I am really having fun with it. We were able to go to Oviedo last weekend to see Ryan's cousin Craig and his family, along with his other cousin Billy and his wife, and his Aunt and Uncle! We had a great weekend!  Ryan and I took the kids out for dinner on Friday night and enjoyed spending a night with them.  They are all growing up so fast!  We both feel so fortunate to be close to them here in Florida and get to watch them grow up for a while!  Saturday we watched an AWESOME win over Duke, GO PACK and went to church as a family.  Sunday was a Family filled day and we all got together and had our normal "Family Dinner", which always consists of lots of good food and great laughs!  What a great way to spend our weekend!  This week has gone by so fast.... It's almost the weekend, and I kicked that off a little early with a girls dinner last night with Mary and Mandy at The Lime, I mean Green Lemon ( new name...)!!  It was great to be able to catch up with them!  Hope everyone has a good rest of their week, and I will update everyone again soon! <3

Happy New Year Y'all!

Hi Everyone! Happy 2013 to you all. I hope this will be a great year for us, and for all of you. We have just gotten back to Tampa from our long vacation home to North Carolina!  We had a great time, and it was wonderful to be able to see so many of our family and friends! We started off in Greensboro, and enjoyed some delicious meals, decorating, and a few shopping stops. My Dad and Ryan were able to do some "man things", while mom and I had some fun "dates", which involved a little shopping and wining and dining! Also, while we were in Greensboro we were able to go to church in Winston Salem at the church that we were married in, and that was so special for us! It was beautiful all decorated for Christmas! My parents and Santa did well for us this Christmas. Ryan got a beautiful Iron "Fisherman and Fish" that can go in our back yard, and he also stocked up on some Brooks Brothers items, new boots, and hunting gear! I got a Tory Burch purse, A t-shirt quilt made of my Sorority t-shirts from collage, and some other beautiful things!  Needless to say, Santa did well for us this year.  After Greensboro, we headed up to Shelby to be with Ryan's family.  In addition to being able to see his parents and brother, we were able to spend time with MomMom, Ryan's almost ninety year old Grandmother, and that was truly a blessing!  Being able to spend so much time with her was probably the highlight of our trip. Everyone enjoyed opening presents together, and between the two of us we got some neat things. Ryan again racked up with Brooks Brothers items, and we got a small Flag holder and bird feeder for our back yard. We love doing stuff around the house, so those were great to get. While we were there we had family time, and we were also able to catch up with my best friend Heather and her husband Jimmy. All the ladies went and had their nails done, and we also did some shopping and eating!  Girl time is always so much fun!  We ended our trip to Shelby off with a nice dinner with some of the Rindone's old neighbors and great friends! What a wonderful dinner and what a joy to be able to see them while we were in North Carolina.  It was a great way to end our Shelby visit, all together!  Morgan Dog had a wonderful holiday too.  He was a very good boy this year, so Grandma Gwen, Grandpa Kimmon, Ryan, and I got together and bought him a Serta Dog Bed. Combined with some treats and toys from  us and Ryan's parents, he had a great Christmas. Needless to say he's really enjoying his naps now! From Shelby we went to Raleigh and we were able to see several people. First we went to Billy and Sara's and we enjoyed some yummy BBQ and an NC State Basketball game.  Then Ryan and I enjoyed doing around in Raleigh and going back to some of our favorite places (Vestique, Village Draft House, and Bailey's just to name a few...). We were able to stop by and see my cousins Kyle and Sherry and their husbands and kids at their parents home.  We had never met their young ones, so that was a treat and it was great to catch up with them.  We then met up with Morgan and Andrew and went to a nice dinner at the State Club, where wehad dinner with my friend Joe and his wife MK!  We had a blast catching up, and we really enjoyed the State Club experience.  On Sunday we went to Wilmington to celebrate the 50th Wedding Anniversary of Nancy and Snodie, who are extremely important members of our family and we were able to re-connect with a lot of extended family.  It was so great to see everyone and get to catch up.  We took a dinner cruise, which brought back a lot of memories for me, as we did a similar cruise out of Wilmington to celebrate my Grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary about 20 years ago! It's hard to believe all of those years have gone by now. Ryan and I spent NYE with the Flynts, and it was so great to be with them and get the opportunity to meet some of their other friends. New Years Day we went up to Charlotte to celebrate my cousin Tommy's marriage to his wife Carolyn, and we were able to see my other side of the family.  It was a beautiful celebration, and it was great to see everyone!  We are now back in Tampa ready to start a new year together, as in love as ever with each other, and our three year old puppy son!  God bless you all in 2013, and may this be the best year yet for us all!!


Happy New Year and lots of love from our family to yours!

Ryan, Megan, & Morgan Dog