goodbye columbia

I've had this post started for about a month now and nearly every time I sit down to write it I just start bawling about missing our friends and life in Columbia. This week I think God has changed my heart. Don't get me wrong... there is nothing harder for me than moving to a new city where we know NO ONE {and this time I've felt so unbelievably sick and its a billion degrees and my husband has been at the hospital about 90% of the time... its been hard!} and it still is hard. but I think my stubborn heart has  finally accepted this for what it is and started to move on and try to embrace this new place. Our dear friends Kara and Sam came to visit for a few days last week and I think that really helped me. I think it made me feel like this was "my" city and "my" house and showing it to them helped me feel more at home here (does that even make sense?) anyway... I'm thankful that I can rest in my Jesus and know that HE has a perfect plan for us and HE has brought us here for a reason. and instead of just searching and looking and waiting for that reason I need to just enjoy each day that He has given us and pray He would be glorified through our family and that we would walk with Him each moment. 

so...

before we moved our fantastic small group threw us a little going away dinner at the Les Bourgeois A-Frame over looking the beautiful Missouri River. It was on our places to go before we moved and we never got around to doing it so it was so exciting to get to go! Everyone brought yummy food and we had a picnic and just talked and had a blast. We sure miss everyone but couldn't be more thankful that the Lord brought them into our lives - even just for a short time. Thanks for blessing our lives soooo much! You have no idea. 

and just another picture of these little cuties playing before we moved. reese seriously talks about addy and sam EVERY single day (if I'm being honest it's about 700 times every day). She ALWAYS asks if they'll be wherever we're going and when I say "no they still live in missouri and we moved to Iowa." then reese responds with "its ok. maybe the come? maybe mommy."like she will never give up hope that she will play with them again someday soon {which she will because we'll be visiting soon I'm sure!}

Praise the Lord for friendships!

dr. reese

reeser giving her baby doll a check up (just like doc mcstuffins) she does this about a billion times a day to her animals, to me, to her fishy etc. and lately she's even been throwing the animal across the room then running to it and saying "you ok teddy? you need a check up?" too cute. just had to document it!

i.love.the.beach!

again, more than a month late in posting this ... but here we go.

My absolute favorite week of the year! Beach week with my family. We went back to Orange Beach, FL and we were there the last week in May/first of June. We flew straight from Joel's wedding in Dallas to New Orleans where my dad picked us up and drove us to the coast. 

Sadly, Mark had to work so he couldn't go this year :( we missed him a ton. Aimee's husband, Kyle, only got to stay a few days because he had to work too and Taylor didn't get to come at all either because he was at Kanakuk. So it was a little different not having EVERYONE there but we still had a blast. Our condo was awesome and Reese absolutely LOVED the beach, the sand, the shells, the pool, her beach toys, and having so many people to play with. As usual, I'll let the pictures do the talking... 

our spot every day {the umbrellas closest to the water on the far right. my sweet servant dad would get up at 7 every morning and set it all up for us!}

R checking out the sand for the first time with Uncle Eric. She wouldn't put her feet down at first haha but quickly realized it was pretty fun!

"pajoe" was her favorite playmate :)

he made a "slide" in the sand all the way to the water and she LOVED it :) it was hilarious.

building sandcastles

my sweet sweet cousins! aimee & anna. Aim is going to have a baby too!! She's due in December. So excited for our babes to be so close in age :) 

uncle eric taught R how to wink 

uncle trent spent hours with R organized shells from one bucket to the next. so sweet.

most of the week the waves were really big so we didn't get in the ocean much but the last day it was perfect and reese LOVED the waves - obviously! i think it might be one of my favorite things as a mommy to watch my child experience new things and get so excited about them! 

papajoe got reese her own beach chair and she thought she was pretty cool.

we had the BEST time. {besides the fact that I didn't really feel that great and was 7 weeks preggo- i think.} we still had a blast. Usually after family trips, once we get home we all email back and forth and make a list of all the memories :) It's one of my favorite things to do. Kinda like the trip will now really live on forever. highlights from this year:

1. Eric surfing with a real surfboard (lightening potential!)

2. Bo perfecting the skipper board technique (and never giving up)

3. The lady with the poofy hair playing cards all week (and her sidekicks)

4. Trent and Joey's productive trips to the store (experts in shopping)

5. Reese's smiles and excitement (playing with shells with Uncle Trent)

6. The best meals we've ever had at the beach (thanks Holly and everyone else that cooked)

7. Bike rides in the morning with my sister:)

8.  Family time:)

 9.  Tractor, Tractor Harvesting the wheat:)

10. m&ms in a cup

11. waiting 4 hours for dinner- worth the wait!

12. beating the college co-eds in volleyball (to anna and elizabeth- "ya'll are so good, why would you stop playing?")

13. Caribbean like water

14. everyone being pregnant

15. RIP The Warf --> Long Live the SUGAR SHACK

16. losing 50 cents and winning 9.50 in quarters (who cares if we started with 10?) we still won back 38 quarters and had a priceless amount of competitive fun.

17. watching the two little boys play with the toys and destroy the footballs right in front of our eyes

    18. dip n dots

    19. the weird brown cloud

    20. reeser in the pool

    21. uncle trent and reese playing with the shells (and R watching as uncle trent brought the cooler down and her saying "he got it mommy! there it is" :)haha

    22. sting rays!! and kite boarding

    23. reese saying everyone's name around the table :) she LOVES all of you so much!

  24. Looking out my window every morning and seeing the "complete" beach set up! Thanks Joey

    25. Oh yeah - Winn Dixie!

    26. Is that me tingling or was I just stung by that jellyfish - HaHa!

    27. I'm 52 and I finally have a real beach chair!

    28. Bike rides to the park with the beautiful weather

    29. Burn Bo Burn - now that's a man - Vaseline is for sissy's

    30. Maybe Uncle "T" will share Reese with Polly next year - HeHe - Maybe not

    31. Looking at opening an Alvin's in Baton Rouge! Beach wear and 10 quarter machines - OK OK Five!

32. Trent and Joey winning the spades tournament again (by default- the Holly and Jeanie wouldn't play us!)

33. The elevator (though fast- I went to the wrong room twice!)

34. Incredible Hulk walking the beach

35. Playing tennis with Mom!

36. Reese not wanting to put her feet down

37. The golf duel (thanks for taking it easy Bo)

38. Incredible food!

39. almost full moon reflecting on the ocean

40. cool lightening strikes from the balcony

41. cooking sons-n- law  awesome jambalaya and breakfast burritos, my girls married well!  Thank you boys!

42. incredible beach set up every morning before 7 am 

43. fresh tuna, never frozen

44. fixing the umbrella with a bobby pin

45. watching Reese slide on her sand slide

46. getting a phone call from Taylor!

47. Reese's Big Sis shirt! 

48. Baby flip flops :) 

49. Gulfport!!! 

50. Gulfports food court-- every "restaurant" was open and running! Haven't seen that in years! 

51. Lunch in one condo, dinner in the other. 

52. The movie that never happened. 

53. Capri sun on the beach (and milky ways and snickers of course!) 

54. Pink shorts dude. 

55. That huge poodle that was being led around the parking lot (Trent, I think y'all should get one of those!)

j&j's wedding

I can't believe I am so behind in writing this but here we go...

Mark's little brother Joel married his sweetheart Julia over memorial day weekend in Dallas and we had a total blast being there for all the wedding festivities and having the whole family together!!! We adore Julia and are so excited to have her as an official part of the Mason family. Reese and I flew to DFW a few days early and got to spend some time with Anne Marie (annieann as reese calls her) and I got to spend the morning on day with my grandmother in ft. worth. I also got some quick visits in with a few of my dear dear friends from Baylor. It was just sort of refreshing to get to be there with everyone for a weekend. That friday Mark's parents, Honey and Pops, got there and took Reese (and me & Annemarie) to the Dallas Aquarium. It was pretty much the coolest thing ever! Reese was in heaven. Like seriously she was just pointing and staring and saying "mommy look! oh look!" she loved the fishes, the penguins and the alligator the best and still talks about them almost every day :) The rest of the weekend was a total whirlwind running from event to rehearsal to set up to change to put reese down for a nap.. etc. and I was reminded of how much I hate dallas traffic. but everything for the wedding went soooo perfectly! all of J&J's friends were just the greatest and said the sweetest (and some hilarious) things about them and then the wedding was just beautiful and such a worshipful night looking out over white rock lake. Here are a few pics of our time...

R soooo excited about watching the airplanes :)

visiting Grandmama in ft worth

swimming at auntieannes

anneanne took R to see the ducks and turtles at north park and got her a few surprises at h&m

pics from the aquarium:

all the mason girls and gamma at the rehearsal dinner

flower girls practicing :) did i mention that Reese was a flower girl?? it was adorable! they did perfectly during the wedding and I was so proud. We had practiced with reese and talked about it for months how she was going to walk down in her pretty dress and go to daddy (the best man) and if she did it he would give her a surprise! worked like a charm and she did so good. they were all adorable. the other two sweet girls were sisters and the one on the right could be reese's twin. they looked so similar :) it was too cute!

sisters

beautiful beautiful bride!

happy wedding weekend j&j :) we had just the best time!!! thanks for letting us be a part of your special weekend. we love you!!!

....

and now today mark and I are celebrating our own anniversary!! I cannot believe its been five whole years. Today I keep thinking about this exact day five years ago and how giddy and excited I was to marry my sweet Mark. and here we are 5 years later, four cities later, one child and one on the way later, and lots of adventures in between.... and I'm still just so giddy when I hear his car pull up in the driveway every evening. I am so blessed to have such an incredible hubby and man to support me and encourage me and take me on so many adventures! i love you mark mason. can't wait to see what other adventures the Lord has for us in the next 80 years!! :) 

hello.

oh hello. where to start?

Well, we live in Iowa now.

We love our new house. We'll probably still have things in boxes this time next year at the rate we're going now... but who cares. (well I do actually but i'm trying to let it go)

We've met all of our neighbors and they're wonderful. You know the part in the Moving Day berenestein bears book when they move into their new house and all the animals come over immediately on the moving day in packs to say hello {oh wait of course you don't know that part because you don't have to read that book six hundred times a day like I do ha} anyway... thats what we felt like on our moving day! Everyone came over and said hello and offered to help and was just so sweet.

Mark is already crazy busy with work but is really liking the program so far. I picture him as the cool "experienced" intern that all the other interns look up and watch because he knows what he's doing since he did this last year :) of course Dr. Mason would never admit to that being the case. I'm just very proud. We had dinner with all the interns last week and loved meeting them all. I already feel so much more connected to the program and to the people at the hospital here than I ever did in Columbia (or at tech).

So far Iowa sure doesn't seem much different than any other place we've lived! It's still a billion degrees, thats for sure. Our water bill will probably be a thousand dollars this month because we are desperately trying to keep our new grass alive in this heat. Just like everyone else, we're praying for rain! oh one thing thats different is that almost every time I say 'y'all' someone comments that I'm obviously not from around here. I proudly say 'you're right.' ha. oh another thing is that I have absolutely no idea what other cities there are in Iowa. I feel ridiculous when people tell me where they're from and I've a) never heard of the town and b) couldn't repeat the name of it because its got to be in another language.

I'm now 12 weeks preggo. I've been feeling quite awful actually. I think I probably just overdid it with packing and now unpacking and chasing a two year old and it being 103 degrees. I'm praying I turn a corner soon and start to get energy back and can stop eating bananas and peach (only peach) yogurt and frosted mini wheats every hour - to keep from getting nauseous. I have had the most hilarious aversions and food things this time around. Its like one second something sounds good and the next second I want to throw up if I smell it or even think about it. Poor Dr. Mason has had to eat the weirdest dinners lately ha!

The little Reeser bug is just as cute as ever. She sure misses her little friends Sam and Addy and talks about them ALLLLLL the time but we've been having fun in our new house too! Oh and she is now sleeping in her big girl bed :) yippee! She's doing great in it too!! I do have to lay with her for a while until she falls asleep but she's been so exhausted most days that doesn't take long. She really seems to love our new house. The first time she saw it (when she and I came for the walk through) she just walked on in by herself and sat on the carpet and started playing :) cutest thing ever. She has 'her spot' in her closet that she LOVES to play in! She's become even more obsessed with giving her animals a check-up and does this all day long. (have you heard of the show doc mcstuffins? she's obsessed and she truly thinks she is a doctor too. I even heard her say 'toys go stuffed' the other day when i walked in hahaha!! - thats what the little girl says to her toys when they're alive and playing and stuff and then another grown up comes in and they have to go back to being stuffed animals again.) oh man. that girl is hilarious.

Des Moines is a HUGE city. It's pretty overwhelming to me because I don't know how to get anywhere  or know where all the fun stuff is to do... I know it's out there though because people keep telling me things. I do know that we have 5 targets and one is about 2.5 minutes from my house. so thats awesome. can't figure out which grocery store i like best though. (probably because at this point all grocery store gross me out!!)

ok thats all for now... summer update in pictures coming soon. I can't believe I haven't even shared the fun we had at Joels wedding and then at the beach!!!! maybe tomorrow I can get around to doing that.

xoxo

party of four

Look who's going to be a big sister in January?!! :)

Mason baby #2 on the way!!! We couldn't be more excited!

new house!!

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future!"

Jer. 29:11

I am so overwhelmed by what the Lord has done and I absolutely want to give Him ALL the glory!! 

Let me say first of all that we originally thought we would rent something for six months or a year while we figured out Des Moines since we had never been there and don't know anyone. So we went to look at a few rental options and realized quickly that we needed to change our plan. way too expensive. way too gross and old. way too small. So we came home. Prayed that God would work out the details if He had a house waiting for us in Des Moines... and oh.my.word.... HE got to work and I just cannot even believe all that He has done!!! 

I'll keep a lot of the details just for our little family to keep special and remember ourselves... but the whole mortgage process has been just unbelievable the way they keep saying 'oh you will need to pay this BIG amount of money here' and then they decide... 'oh never mind. you don't have to do that anymore.' Hello God. (I'm crying tears of joy now that I'm typing this.) remember how we still own our home in Amarillo and we're renting it out? yeah we thought that would make this all a little crazy and it did at first... but then God paved the way and provided OVER AND BEYOND ALL THAT I COULD ASK OR IMAGINE.

So, a few weekends ago we went back to Des Moines to go house hunting. Our realtors were the greatest and we saw 17 houses that Saturday - and we bought one! that day. we made an offer just like that and the next morning they accepted. I promise I'm not just saying this but I really sorta knew going into the weekend that this house was the one God had for us there. I can't even explain all the little details that God has ALREADY done to make sure we live in this house. He's so good. The one couple we know there sent us a link to the house months ago and said they saw it in this area called Beaverdale {which -from what we've heard- is a fun older neighborhood with a little square and restaurants and shopping and lots of younger people are apparently moving there and fixing up the older houses} It's definitely really cute, lots of character, and lots of big pretty trees. and also only about 10 minutes from the hospital for Mark. So.... we saw only one picture of the outside of the house and saw it was still in the process of being built. The builder bought this empty lot where there was just the remaining basement from an old house that had been torn down, so he built on it. It was so cute from the one unfinished picture and I just knew the inside would be cute too. It was quite a bit over our price range but we still wanted to see it just in case. I think Mark had even contacted the builder about it and they said it would be sold in a few days. So, we really thought it would be taken already by the time we got there. 

The second we pulled into the driveway my heart started beating so fast and I just couldn't stop smiling. I just knew. This was it. and again, it was unfinished. hadn't been painted. no grass. stickers on the windows. but still. It already looked perfect. we walked in and mark and I both were practically jumping up and down saying 'ok lets put an offer on it' haha. we hadn't even seen the upstairs or downstairs. :) so... we saw several more houses. some of them were pretty great, but we just kept thinking about this one. We prayed about it together. We went back to see the house one more time. My mom met us there with Reese. They both loved it. The builder came over and walked through the house with us. He seemed pretty great. He said the other couple who was really interested had just backed out the other day. Hello God. We called all the money people- taxes, insurance and mortgage guy - and God did it. HE worked it out. HE was building this house just for us in Des Moines.

My mom took this picture of us sitting outside just before we put an offer on it. and no, the photo is not doctored, or instagrammed or anything. It might be cheesy but I KNOW that is God shining down on us just like this picture shows. Telling us its going to be ok in Des Moines and He has prepared it all for us. 

It's still in the process of being built but we've gotten to be a part of picking out little things like floors, appliances, countertops, knobs, etc. It's been fun! The house will be painted sort of the color of the garage. and It's not really as big as this picture makes it look haha We're heading up there again this weekend to walk through with the builder again and make a a more decisions.

Don't get me wrong... I'm still a little terrified about moving to a new BIG city where we know no one. But thank you Jesus for giving us so many small little signs that you're taking care of us and that you'll provide exactly what we need. Can't wait to see what else is in store.