Friday, February 24, 2012

Grab your boots, your jeans and your turquoise….

It is THAT time of year. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, bless your heart. ITS RODEO TIME!

I have been so busy that it didn’t hit me until we got all our cook-off passes yesterday but then it really sunk in when I spotted the trail ride riding through town.

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If you still don’t know what I’m talking about you can read my posts from last year, here and here

To sum it up, if you didn’t know, the Houston Rodeo is the biggest and best Rodeo in the world! Real cowboys ride in from all over to meet up at the Houston Rodeo. And the Rodeo Cook-off is a huge BBQ cooking contest (about 300 competitors fighting for the title of best BBQ) kicks off the Rodeo every year. Picture it: tents and tents and tents of the best BBQ in the world, drinks and music. pretty much it is HEAVEN. I can’t stress enough, before you die, visiting the Houston Rodeo and Cook-off HAS to be on your bucket list! Would I ever lead you astray??

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Same guy two years in a row! He always dresses like a cow!

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Not only do us Texans go out for the BBQ, drinks and country music, Rodeo also calls for a certain kind of fashion! Jeans, boots and turquoise is usually the Rodeo staple outfit

Here is my inspiration for this year

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Even if you do not have the joy of a Rodeo in your town, I urge you to find your inner Texan and dress like you do!

Have a great weekend, y’all!!

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Becoming The Broussard’s: baby makes 3

Read Part 1: The Engagement story here

Fast forward to a couple of weeks about mid November, a few wedding plans have gone under way (but major plans like date/place had not gone well) which I know now was by the grace of God. If we had booked something then (we were planning for August of 2012) we would’ve been stuck waiting until after the baby or losing a lot of deposit money.

My monthly visitor had been coming but hadn’t been normal so when she didn’t come, I really didn’t think it was anything. I figured it had been off the past couple months, there’s probably just something going on with my body. I hadn’t been sick, I had been having my period but I took a test anyway just to rule out that factor. So there I was in my apartment, alone, taking a pregnancy test that I knew would be negative and it wasn’t. Insert immediate freak out. Actually to say I freaked out, would be an understatement, I flipped the F out. I took 2 more tests to be sure aaaand sure enough, I was knocked up. Brad came over and was a god send, he was so calm (in fact, I am still waiting for him to freak out) but none of it felt real, I’ve always heard that women just “know” when they get pregnant but I had none of those feelings!

The next week we went to the doctor and told her I thought I was about 6 weeks, *remember I had been having my period

She starts the ultrasound and says to me “umm you’re a little farther along than that” and up on the screen pops an actual BABY, not a tiny little spec that you can’t tell what is what, there on the screen was a head and arms and legs and a BABY. as I stare in shock the doctor says to us “you are 15 weeks and your due date is April 30”.

Here I was sitting there and was not only finding out we really were pregnant, but not only that, I was already past my first trimester. I was due in APRIL. I hadn’t even moved into Brad’s house yet. W. T. F.

I will say, hearing the heartbeat was so beautiful, it brought us both to tears, but I was overcome with so many emotions that day.

what are we going to do?…. should we still get married, or wait until after?

if we do get married, will I look like so fat? ….. I can’t drink until April?

all these questions and many more were flooding my brain…

I know these are really superficial thoughts to have but I am being completely honest. I, like any other female had planned my wedding since I was a little girl and I had never thought I’d be pregnant while planning this dream wedding. or sober during my bachelorette party, but I remembered these were my plans I was referring to, not HIS. I urged myself to remember that He has the perfect plan, not me! A few people tried to convince me to wait until after the baby was born, and that I couldn’t pull off a wedding in a matter of a few months but I just couldn’t see after my priorities had changed so much with a baby, wanting to have bridal showers, a bachelorette party and honeymoon but I didn’t want to sacrifice those important things either…..  so after talking to Brad and our families…  my dream wedding was what I was going to plan, and did I ever! 

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Becoming The Broussard’s: The engagement

Thank you all for the sweet comments and congratulations, we have been so overjoyed by all the blessings God has given us… all at the SAME TIME! but let me preface this by saying, it took me a while to get to this place. I want to be real, really real, so that anyone else that may go through the same thing can know that its ok to freak out and be scared, and maybe think “why me”, but also know that God would never give us more than we can handle and he has His perfect plan so while now I may be happier in every way, it did take me some time to accept that my life was about to change forever and granted, much faster than I had planned! I’m going to begin recapping the past few months so we’ll start with the engagement!…

October 23, 2011

Brad and I had been together almost 3 years, of course we had our ups and downs but always knew we were “it” for each other and needless to say, being a female in loooove, I had been wanting to get engaged for about 2 of the 3 yearsSmile Throughout our relationship we have always gone and stayed at his family’s bay house in Galveston, and that weekend, Brad suggested we go down to Galveston for the day. so of course, we drove the hour down to the beach to grab lunch, hang out, but then we checked in to the Hotel Galvez. This is when I knew something was weird, he isn’t a good liar and he had a house in Galveston, why would we stay in a hotel? I didn’t want to get my hopes up so I brushed it off that he was just doing something sweet.

We had walked around the strand a bunch but then Brad said he wanted to go walk the beach again before dinner and was adamant that I hurry and get ready so we could get to the beach before the sun set (red flag!) Still, not wanting to get my hopes up I just brushed it off and we headed for the beach.

We walked, and walked, and WALKED for what seemed like forever (he says he was waiting for the people around us to go away hah) and I thought “ok this really isn’t happening!” but then he said “look at that shell!” He bent down and picked up a seashell from the beach and I wasn’t really paying attention, it was just a shell… but then he said “look what’s inside” I turned towards him and saw the most gorgeous diamond ring I had ever seen!!

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Finally I had caught on, either it was our luckiest day and we just found a diamond ring or he was proposing!!! He got down on one knee as the sun was setting and said a bunch of sweet things then asked me to marry him and I said “of course”!!

Tears started pouring when he unveiled the story behind the ring. It was his grandmothers aunt’s ring (who had told him after meeting me for the second time, that she had a ring she wanted me to wear one day) and is a European cut diamond from the 1920’s with about 10 baguettes and 18 small diamonds around the sides. not only is that incredible and such an honor that his grandmother wanted him to give me this ring, but when he slipped the ring on my finger, it fit me PERFECTLY. talk about fate! it could not have been more perfect and more beautiful than any ring I could have imagined for myself!

What a perfect weekend!

Monday, February 20, 2012

Back in blogging action!

and it feels so good! Let me just say my life CHANGED drastically in the last couple of months, but blissfully better in every single little way… read my new little bio on the right to get the summary of what’s been going on! And I’ll begin posting with more details on allll the craziness.

talk to you soon!

~Momma Broussard Smile